Shopify Plus and Magento Enterprise are two competitors at an enterprise level. The eCommerce industry has been booming for the past few years. The global eCommerce retail market heightened to USD 3.54 trillion in 2019. This figure is projected to grow to USD 6.54 trillion by 2023. It indicates that online shopping is one of the most prevalent activities across the globe.
For the past few years, Shopify Plus and Magento are being considered rivals of each other when it comes to eCommerce platforms. As a result, they are often compared by enterprises themselves as well as the IT professionals.
We are going to scrutinize both the leading platforms. We will evaluate which platform is better and why? So that it is easy for you to make the right decision of choosing a platform that best suits your eCommerce business. Let's get started...
Magento Enterprise
Magento Commerce, formerly known as Magento Enterprise, It’s one of the most popular, next-generation eCommerce platforms. It’s an open-core digital platform with the slogan, “designed to grow, built for flexibility.” Magento was acquired back in 2018 by Adobe for USD 1.68 billion.
Magento Commerce is a professional enterprise-level platform built for rapid innovation. With cost-effective and unique functionalities, the platform offers robust, scalable solutions. Today, Magento Commerce is unlocking sustainable growth and improving business efficiency with brilliance.
Magento Enterprise has reemerged as an improved and better version for business needs. After fixing more than 500 bugs and tweaking major to minor concerns. The platform has changed thousands of eCommerce businesses. Currently, there are 1,691 Magento Enterprise live stores that made it to the Top 1 Million list.
Shopify Plus
Shopify Plus is the enterprise version of the Shopify store. Launched back in 2014, the brand came into existence with a motto and a slogan. The commitment was, “cost-effective enterprise platform that’s built for change.” After launch, the platform shook the eCommerce world with its innovative, user-friendly functionality.
Shopify Plus offers access to ingenious features, multiple integrations, and a reliable support system. In addition, it’s a fully hosted platform offering a unique automated suite and scalable SaaS enterprise solutions. With unique underlying code for your store, Shopify Plus is beneficial for large eCommerce businesses.
Today, Shopify Plus is suitable for enterprise-level businesses that have large selling volumes. The platform also offers a “Shopify Enterprise-Level Plan” for committed companies. As of 2020, 2,862 live Shopify Plus stores made it to the Top 1 Million business list.
Shopify Plus and Magento Enterprise – in a nutshell
Here is a quick overview of both.
Shopify Plus
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- It is a SaaS product that is theme and template-based
- With the restricted ability, it allows management of user interface
- Preferable for high-growth enterprise retailers
- Requires minor back-end and front-end development
Magento 2
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- Highly customizable platform
- To maintain code for the store, experts are essential all the time
- Preferable for larger-scale stores with extensive product catalog
- A larger scope of development work is necessary
Which One is Better for Your Business?
Based on the following parameters, we are going to compare both Magento Enterprise with Shopify Plus based on the following criteria:
- Cost and pricing
- Multi-Store Management
- Extensions and Applications
- B2B Functionality
1. Cost and Pricing
When comparing both the eCommerce development platforms, pricing is an essential factor to consider.
There is no fixed pricing for Shopify Plus. Instead, it can be negotiated as per the sales volume of the user. Typically, it costs USD 2,000 a month. It includes the licensing, support, and SaaS hosting from Shopify; however, once your store starts earning USD 9.6 million per annum, the cost increases.
On the other hand, Magento Commerce licensing starts from USD 40,000 annually. It can be USD 24,000 per annum as well on on-premise. Based on the merchant’s turnover, the pricing can be increased. The on-premise cost does not include hosting or developmental charges.
When it comes to costing, Shopify Plus is affordable. However, Magento Enterprise is recommended for store owners who require access codes for developmental purposes.
Determine the traffic of your eCommerce store to choose the platform for your business. If the traffic on your site is exponentially high and the server is weak, it will crash down within seconds.
2. Multi-Store Management
Either it is Shopify Plus or Magento Enterprise; with both, you can create multiple stores. Following are the features you can unlock with both platforms.
Shopify Plus
There are three main features of Shopify Plus, facilitating multi-store management.
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Expansion of the Store
The platform allows you to add multiple storefronts for the shoppers. You can add up to nine storefronts from different locations. You can manage all of these stores from a single dashboard. It also provides analytics, user permissions, automation tools, and employee accounts conveniently.
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Currency Converter
All those stores that have enabled the Shopify Payment feature can enjoy this. Through this feature, you can cater to many locations at once. In addition, you can utilize the multiple currency conversion features to upgrade the payment structure for your users.
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Multi Warehouse
This feature is the same as that of Shopify. With Shopify Plus, you can set up multiple locations to track your inventory. Through this feature, you can also fulfil the orders with efficacy. However, the location setup is limited to a maximum number of 20.
Magento Enterprise
With Magento Enterprise or Magento Commerce, you can avail the following features:
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Expansion of the Store
With Magento Enterprise, you can create as many additional stores as you desire. In addition, the platform allows you to create multiple websites from a single brand. You can also create various brands using Magento Commerce with convenience.
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Set-Up of Localized Pricing
There are chances that your business is running globally. Therefore, you might want to set different prices for your products depending upon the location. With Magento Enterprise, you can list different prices on your stores as per the location.
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Localized Multi-Source Inventory
Magento Enterprise offers a Source Selection Algorithm that optimizes the operations of your inventory. Through this platform, you can set up sources, stocks, partial shipment, and scalable quantities.
When comparing the features of both platforms, Magento Enterprise is better. It offers better multi-store management with highly customized options.
3. Extensions and Applications
Both of the platforms have established a fascinating ecosystem for applications and extensions. All the major third-party systems are available on their application store and the marketplace.
Shopify Plus has hundreds of pre-vetted applications that are available to support the merchants. The cost is manageable and affordable. It allows access and support with advanced growth opportunities for the merchants. Shopify Plus offers:
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Launchpad
In your Shopify admin, there is a scheduling tool known as the launchpad. Through this feature, you can schedule the visibility of your product. There are themes, Shopify scripts, discounts, etc., that can be managed here. You can define the start and the end time of the campaigns easily. You can also automate your sales campaign without human interference.
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Shopify Flow
It’s an eCommerce automation platform that ensures you reclaim your time and focus on the growth of your business. With the Flow tool, you can easily automate the imagination and the tasks within your store. It also improves the process of automation across the apps.
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Transporter
Shopify Plus has a transporter extension that streamlines the process of switching. Either from Shopify store to Shopify Plus or Shopify enterprise-level plan. However, to do so, your data file structure must be as per the standards of Shopify. People with technical expertise can help you during the migration process.
In contrast to Shopify Plus, Magento Enterprise doesn’t offer the same characteristics. It restricts the building of exclusive apps for large-scale merchants and users. However, you still can avail the choice of the 404-third party extension apps available on Magento Marketplace. These can support self-hosting as well as cloud-hosting variations.
4. B2B Functionality
Shopify Plus allows you to set up a separate channel using a Wholesale section in the dashboard. You can customize the products, customers, and their orders and configure the pricing structure.
However, this feature is limited to the sellers. The front-end template of the store is essential and cannot be edited. Only the logo of the store is editable. For instance, you cannot add other details of the product on the category page. Neither can add a star rating system. For this, you need to customize the theme from scratch or build a separate store for wholesale.
With Shopify Plus, you have limited payment and shipment options. For example, you cannot provide multiple payment options, such as paying a certain percentage as a deposit first.
With Magento Enterprise, B2B functionality is entirely different and unique as compared to Shopify Plus. The Magento B2B suite comes with various functionalities such as:
- Management of quotes
- Creation of customer specified catalogs
- Managing multiple settings against the customers
- Setting up credit limits
- Approval of multiple workflows
- Assigning budgets to the users
Even with Magento Open Source, the majority of the things are supported. For example, tiered pricing, product availability, customer-based pricing, promotions, etc., are available. These features are well support on Magento Commerce with enhanced functionality.
Conclusion
Talking about overall structure and flexibility, Shopify Plus is better. we are recommendation for those stores that are rapidly growing. And require convenience, simple integration, and customized solutions. You can easily migrate to the Shopify Plus store from any other platform.
Shopify Plus’s core strength is simplicity with minor front-end and back-end development. Whereas, Magento Enterprise is more complex with intense coding and developmental work.
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