Shopify vs Adobe Commerce: Which eCommerce Platform Is Right for Your Business?

As an ecommerce business owner, choosing the right platform to power your online store is an important decision. Getting it right can help your business scale and succeed, while the wrong choice can hinder growth. Two of the leading options for ecommerce platforms are Shopify and Adobe Commerce. Both offer compelling features and benefits, so how do you determine which is the best fit for your business?

In this article, we’ll compare Shopify and Adobe Commerce across key factors like ease of use, hosting, cost, design, plugins, SEO, scalability and marketing capabilities. By evaluating the performance of each platform in these areas, you’ll be equipped to make an informed choice on which solution aligns best with your priorities and needs. This platform will shape your business for years to come, so take the time to understand them before committing to one. Your company’s future success could depend on it.

Summary

1. Significance of Choosing the Right Platform
2. What is Shopify?
3. What is Adobe Commerce?
4. Ease of Use
5. Hosting
6. Cost
7. Design and Themes
8. Plugins and Integrations
9. SEO Capabilities
10. Scalability
11. Omnichannel Features
12. Marketing Features

Significance of Choosing the Right Platform

Choosing an eCommerce platform is one of the most important decisions you will make for your online business. The platform you select will significantly impact your company’s growth and success. While making the wrong choice is reversible, migrating to a different platform can be expensive and time-consuming.

Both platforms provide strong foundations to build your digital commerce strategy. Determine which solution meets your current business requirements while providing room for expansion as your company grows. The ideal platform for your organisation depends on your business model, target market, and available technical resources. Conducting thorough research into each platform’s capabilities will lead you to the best choice for your unique needs.

What is Shopify?

Shopify offers subscription-based pricing plans for businesses of all sizes. It has an intuitive user interface, with many features like product variants, customer profiles, and discount codes that can be set up easily. Shopify also has a large collection of contemporary eCommerce templates and an app store with over 8,000 apps for additional functionality.

With Shopify, you can get a professional looking store in a short space of time, without advanced technical skills. It offers beautiful store designs that can be fully customised.

Shopify handles the technical aspects of running an online store including payments, shipping and security. It provides an all-in-one solution so merchants can focus on growing their business rather than managing the technical operations.

What is Adobe Commerce?

Adobe Commerce, formerly known as Magento, are offering both enterprise licensed commerce edition and also an open-source ecommerce edition. The free version, Magento Open Source, is suitable for smaller businesses. Adobe Commerce has a licence fee which is a percentage of a business’ total annual revenue.

Additional costs are associated with Adobe Commerce, including: security, extensions (applications that enhance store functionality), and development time to construct and update your store. With hosting and domain registration included, Adobe Commerce is a viable ecommerce solution. However, the pricing may place it out of reach for most small businesses.

Success with Adobe Commerce depends on coding knowledge and is therefore more suited to larger businesses with in-house development teams. Adobe Commerce necessitates web development expertise to use the platform fully. You are also responsible for server and hosting arrangements, domain name registration, troubleshooting errors, maintaining updates and ongoing site security.

Setting up Adobe Commerce requires a high level of technical proficiency; otherwise, you may be better served by Shopify. Adobe Commerce requires a developer to invest time into learning the platform and working on it continually.

Ease of Use

Adobe Commerce may require additional coding knowledge to set up and manage. Shopify, on the other hand, offers an intuitive, user-friendly interface for business owners of any technical skill level.

Shopify’s dashboard and tools are designed to be simple to navigate with a shallow learning curve. Tasks like adding products, customising your store’s design, running sales and promotions, and viewing analytics can all be accomplished with just a few clicks. For those preferring a hands-off approach, Shopify also offers managed services to handle the technical aspects of running your store.

In contrast, Adobe Commerce gives experienced developers full control and flexibility to build a custom ecommerce solution. However, this means business owners may face a steeper learning curve to master the platform and leverage all of its capabilities. For some, the additional complexity could prove frustrating or time-consuming without a dedicated technical team.

Overall, while Adobe Commerce may appeal more to large enterprises with in-house development resources, Shopify’s simplicity and ease of use make it an accessible choice for businesses of any size looking to get their store up and running as quickly as possible. The platform you choose will depend on your technical skills, available resources, and how much control you need over customising your ecommerce solution.

Hosting

When it comes to hosting, Shopify and Adobe Commerce offer different options. Shopify is a software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform, meaning all stores are hosted on Shopify’s secure servers and maintained by their team. This hands-off approach is ideal for merchants lacking technical expertise.

In contrast, Adobe Commerce is self-hosted, so stores are hosted on servers you set up and maintain. While this provides more control and customization, it also requires managing hosting, security patches, and scaling. As a result, the platform demands significant technical knowledge and resources. For enterprises with dedicated IT teams, self-hosting may be preferable. Conversely, for most small to mid-sized businesses, a SaaS model is more practical.

Cost

When determining which eCommerce platform is right for your business, cost is an important factor to consider. Shopify offers three monthly subscription plans ranging from $29 to $299 per month. The Basic Shopify plan starts at $29 per month and is suitable for most small to medium-sized businesses. The Advanced Shopify plan ($299 per month) is tailored to high-volume stores with advanced needs.

In contrast, Adobe Commerce has a few fees that you should take note of. Firstly, it requires either purchasing a licence or paying a monthly subscription fee for their cloud-based Adobe Commerce as a Service, which starts at $4,000. Licenses are free for the Open Source version and starting from $50,000 for the Enterprise Edition.

Without further ado, let us dive into the pricing tiers for different versions of Adobe Commerce:

Magento Open Source is free to download and install on your server. However, you’ll be responsible for managing web hosting, domain, security certificates, and any additional add-ons or extensions. Magento Open Source can cost from $10,000 to $60,000, depending on specific requirements and associated service costs.

For Adobe Commerce (Commerce on-premise), the pricing for this version begins at $22,000 per year for businesses with gross sales revenue under $1 million. As the revenue increases, the costs scale accordingly:

• $1 million to $5 million in sales: $32,000/year
• $5 million to $10 million in sales: $49,000/year
• $10 million to $25 million in sales: $75,000/year
• Over $25 million in sales: $125,000/year

Lastly, for Adobe Commerce Cloud, tailored for larger businesses, this plan includes hosting services. Pricing starts at $40,000 per year for businesses with gross sales revenue under $1 million. Just like the base Adobe Commerce, your costs increase with higher revenue:

• $1 million to $5 million in sales: $55,000/year
• $5 million to $10 million in sales: $80,000/year
• $10 million to $25 million in sales: $120,000/year
• Over $25 million in sales: $190,000/year

It’s crucial to note that these costs exclude additional expenses such as web hosting (for non-cloud versions), domain registration, SSL certificates, and any required custom development or extra extensions. When everything is added up, the total cost of an Adobe Commerce build can easily exceed $100,000.

While the initial investment in Adobe Commerce is high, it may be cost-effective for large eCommerce stores in the long run. For small to mid-size businesses, Shopify’s low monthly fees and lack of upfront costs make it a very cost efficient option to get an online store up and running quickly.

Design and Themes

Both Shopify and Adobe Commerce offer attractive, customisable templates to suit any brand. However, Shopify’s themes are generally more stylish and contemporary, with designs targeted at newer online stores selling fashion, jewellery or home decor. Adobe Commerce caters to a wider range of industries, with themes suitable for B2B, wholesale or traditional retailers.

Shopify’s themes are mobile-optimised, easy to customise without coding knowledge, and regularly updated to follow current web design trends. Adobe Commerce’s themes require developer customisation, but offer more advanced features for large product catalogues or complex ecommerce needs. Some Adobe Commerce themes may lack responsiveness for mobile devices without customisation.

For non-technical users, Shopify’s design capabilities are superior. For full creative control, developers will prefer Adobe Commerce’s open-source platform. Both systems allow the use of third-party themes to expand options.

In summary, Shopify offers stylish, contemporary themes for fashion and lifestyle brands. Adobe Commerce has a wider range of themes but may require developer skills to optimise. The choice depends on your technical abilities, brand identity and target market.

Plugins and Integrations

Plugins and integrations expand the native functionality of eCommerce platforms, enhancing your store’s capabilities.

Shopify offers an array of plugins and integrations in its App Store, with options for marketing, sales, shipping and fulfilment. The platform is also compatible with many external applications like email marketing, accounting, and CRM software. However, some apps can be expensive, and the selection is more limited than Magento’s. Shopify Payments is built-in for secure credit card processing.

Adobe Commerce boasts a vast collection of free and paid extensions, with over 5,000 options. The open-source nature of the platform means developers actively build and improve extensions. Adobe Commerce also seamlessly integrates with many third-party services. The downside is the complexity – managing extensions and integrations requires technical expertise. Adobe Commerce requires a payment gateway extension for processing credit cards.

In summary, while Shopify offers simplicity and convenience, Adobe Commerce provides unparalleled flexibility and customization. The choice depends on your business’s needs and technical abilities. With the right extensions and integrations, either platform can become a powerful eCommerce solution.

SEO Capabilities

Both Shopify and Adobe Commerce provide SEO tools to help optimise your online store for search engines. However, Shopify has made significant improvements to its SEO capabilities in recent years through native features and integrations.

Shopify’s SEO features include customisable page titles and meta descriptions, automatic sitemap generation, and 301 redirects. The platform also allows you to add structured data to pages to improve search visibility. In addition, Shopify’s blogging capabilities facilitate building authority and improving search rankings.

WhileAdobe Commerce also performs well for SEO, requiring greater technical knowledge to implement best practises. Adobe Commerce provides SEO guides and prompts to help optimise URLs, page titles, meta information and more. However, creating a blog requires integrating a third-party extension.

In summary, Shopify may have a slight edge for SEO given its ongoing improvements and ease of use. However, with the right technical knowledge and resources, Adobe Commerce can also achieve strong search engine optimisation. The choice comes down to your business’s technical capabilities and needs.

Scalability

Both Shopify and Adobe Commerce are infinitely scalable, allowing businesses to handle an unlimited number of products as they grow.

Shopify’s scalability comes from its cloud-based infrastructure, with data centres around the world to ensure fast loading speeds no matter the business size or customer location. As orders increase, Shopify automatically allocates more resources to ensure optimal performance. For enterprise merchants, Shopify Plus offers additional scalability through a dedicated infrastructure.

Adobe Commerce is also highly scalable due to its open-source nature, which provides access to Magento’s core code. This allows developers to fully optimise the platform for maximum performance under heavy loads. Large Adobe Commerce stores often use a custom enterprise edition with a tailored infrastructure to achieve superior scalability. However, scaling Adobe Commerce typically requires more technical expertise compared to Shopify’s managed scalability.

In summary, while both platforms offer enterprise-level scalability, Shopify may have a slight edge for smaller businesses wanting an easy growth path without the need for extensive technical resources. For highly customised enterprise stores, Adobe Commerce remains a top choice if you have a skilled development team to tap into its full scalability potential.

Omnichannel Features

Both Shopify and Adobe Commerce offer robust omnichannel capabilities for a seamless shopping experience across different channels. This includes marketplaces such as Lazada or social media, placing your product in front of a wider audience.

However, their main difference lies in their POS systems. Shopify has its own POS system, which allows you to sell in-store and online using the same catalogue and inventory. You can fulfil orders from any location and provide customers a unified shopping experience.

Although Adobe Commerce does not have a POS system, it integrates with various POS systems and payment gateways to achieve a unified commerce experience. This may come at an additional cost depending on the payment gateway used.

Marketing Features

Both Shopify and Adobe Commerce offer powerful marketing tools to help drive sales and engage customers.

Shopify’s marketing features include the ability to create targeted discounts and promotions. Merchants can also leverage Shopify’s built-in blog and social media integrations to increase brand awareness and connect with customers. Robust analytics and reporting provide insights into marketing campaign performance.

In contrast, Adobe Commerce provides native tools for creating discounts, promotions and email newsletters. However, a blog is not included. Adobe Commerce is ideal for selling in high volumes or to other businesses. This is because the platform facilitates bulk discounts and tiered pricing. Merchants can integrate third-party email service providers to enhance marketing capabilities.

Shopify has a slight edge for small to mid-size businesses. However, both platforms offer sophisticated features for building an impactful marketing strategy and driving sales. The ideal choice depends on a merchant’s specific needs, technical skills, and business model.

Conclusion

In conclusion, while both platforms are robust eCommerce solutions, Shopify is the superior choice for most online merchants. If your priorities include ease of use, affordable and transparent pricing, and a swift setup process, Shopify is likely the ideal fit for your business. On the other hand, if your requirements lean towards an enterprise-level, highly scalable, and customizable platform with advanced omnichannel and marketing features, then Adobe Commerce might be considered.

In making your decision, it’s crucial to align the platform’s capabilities with your business needs, ensuring you provide an optimal experience for your customers and maximize the success and growth of your eCommerce venture. For most merchants, Shopify emerges as the preferred option, offering a seamless and efficient solution for building and expanding their online presence. Besides, when your business takes off,you can upgrade to Shopify Plus, an enterprise solution that will fulfill larger objectives.

Choose Verz Design as Your Shopify or Adobe Commerce Development Partner

At Verz Design, we boast expertise in both platforms and are proud Shopify Plus partner. If you find yourself uncertain about which platform suits your needs best, don’t hesitate to get in touch with us! Our consultants are here to provide tailored advice to guide you through the decision-making process. With grants for both Shopify and Adobe Commerce, you’ll save substantially when you establish your online store.