Adobe Commerce powered by Magento or Shopify — which one should you choose to build your eCommerce website?
Some eCommerce sellers may only need a simple interface to sell a few products or services, or to manage a purchase portal for drop shipments. Others may have multiple arms of their business, including any or all of the following:
- B2C sales
- B2B sales
- Online sales
- Offline sales
- Multiple stores
- Multiple warehouses
- Multiple product groups
- Multiple customer groups
- Multiple inventories
The more complex your eCommerce endeavor is, the more comprehensive your website needs to be. You can trade functionality for lower costs on the front end, but you’ll usually end up paying just as much in lost revenues from poor customer experiences.
The goal of your eCommerce build should be to make navigating and purchasing as easy as possible for buyers, and managing backend processes like invoicing, accounts receivable, shipping and logistics as easy as possible on yourself
Adobe Commerce/Magento Vs. Shopify
Adobe Commerce/Magento and Shopify are very different, while serving the same core purpose: making it easy to sell online.
Scalability
Shopify is an OK option for the small seller seeking to get started with eCommerce. There are plenty of tiers, including a Lite version that lets people sell on an existing website or on social media. Those seeking a simple website with selling capability can use the hosted eCommerce solution that offers a limited opportunity to scale. Shopify Plus offers more functionality and support than the basic Shopify packages, but still doesn’t give you the ability to customize everything, particularly for checkout.
Adobe Commerce/Magento comes in a free open source version (with a more limited feature set, and which means you’ll need to develop certain things yourself) and an on-premise eCommerce solution with the full suite of modules and functionality. You can do whatever you want with customization, to create exactly the customer experience you need your consumer base to have.
Selling Use Cases
Shopify doesn’t have B2B features or support, making it impossible to support B2B or hybrid B2C/B2B selling models, without significant customizations or complexity. This makes it a non-starter for B2B companies, and a bad choice for organizations that plan on a hybrid B2C and B2B site or may choose to expand into B2B from B2C only later.
In contrast, Adobe Commerce/Magento has a robust suite of features designed to support B2B sellers. You can operate instantly as a B2B seller, or transform into a hybrid easily later on without having to start from scratch. It also scales much more easily than Shopify does for easy expansion into new verticals and geographical areas.
Capabilities
Shopify takes a template-based approach, with an “Easy to Use” feature set that is only optimized for a narrow range of use cases. Implementation and management of separate silos is required to support multi-site, multi-language, or multi-brand instances. Capability gaps can be bridged for certain aspects, but these require additional app purchases.
Adobe Commerce/Magento covers a much wider range of scenarios, allowing users to scale easily into new sectors and regions without having to revamp extensively to accommodate language barriers. Configurable products, subscriptions, and more are all administered across multiple sites with a single license, under a single administration.
Overall, Shopify may be the right solution for B2C merchants who want to leverage eCommerce on a SMB scale. For larger sellers or those who may plan to incorporate B2B or hybrid selling, Adobe Commerce/Magento is just as affordable and much easier to configure, customize, and scale.
Thinking about entering the world of eCommerce with a solution built on Adobe Commerce powered by Magento? Find out how you can connect your site with an enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution for streamlined functionality and user experience. Contact Pixafy today.
