Shopify vs. Adobe Commerce (Magento)

Commerce should be simple, not stressful

From cost and speed to security and innovation, Shopify absorbs the complexity of commerce because you shouldn't have to.

Thousands have already migrated

Join the many brands that have made the switch from Adobe to Shopify, where commerce is simplified. Just as it should be. 

  • Universal Store
  • Life Interiors
  • Glue Store
  • Makeup Cartel
  • St Frock
  • Lulu & Georgia
  • Sennheiser
  • SodaStream
  • LSKD
  • Spanx
  • Bombas
  • Culture Kings
  • Gymshark
  • Rebecca Minkoff
  • Jones Soda
  • Outdoor Research
  • The New York Times
  • Stanfield's

Why Shopify

Four reasons brands are switching

  1. 1
    Better TCO

    Shopify’s total cost of ownership (TCO) is 29% better than Adobe Commerce’s, on average.

  2. 2
    Greater agility

    Shopify’s ecosystem and effortless admin let you build, evolve, and grow faster.

  3. 3
    More secure and reliable

    Shopify’s managed infrastructure keeps your data safe and site running smoothly.

  4. 4
    Faster innovation

    Shopify's pace of innovation is unmatched.

Better TCO

Do more, spend less

Whether we’re saving you maintenance costs or freeing up your dev teams, Shopify’s total cost of ownership is, on average, 29% better than Adobe’s.

29% Better TCO on Shopify than Adobe Commerce, on average

Use our TCO Calculator to see how much you could save when you switch to Shopify.

Calculate your TCO
29% Better TCO on Shopify than Adobe Commerce, on average

On average, compared to Shopify, Adobe Commerce has:

42%

higher implementation and setup costs

42%

higher platform fees and ecommerce stack costs

24%

higher operating costs

*According to research commissioned by Shopify from a leading independent consulting firm to study TCO across major platforms in North America and understand Shopify’s relative positioning based on objective research methods.

More Capability, better value

Experience the efficiency of unified commerce

With built-in features like promotions, merchandising, and advanced analytics, Shopify cuts down on your need for third-party apps and fees. On Adobe, you’ll need developers at additional costs for simple tasks like publishing products, configuring promotions, or making design changes.

Smoother implementation

Save on setup and avoid delays

Shopify’s user-friendliness and easy configuration are key reasons why it’s 40% faster to launch a new storefront on Shopify than on Adobe Commerce—not to mention that it’s 42% costlier to implement on Adobe Commerce, on average. And with prebuilt connectors that integrate ERPs and financial systems, we drive down implementation costs even more.

Improve ROI

Avoid lost conversion opportunity

Shopify’s checkout converts 5% better than Adobe Commerce’s, on average, and is the best-converting checkout in the world. Consider this an opportunity cost of not using Shopify.

Shopify has the fastest server speed in commerce

Faster site speed impacts everything—from revenue to operations. Measure your site’s performance to see how it could affect your sales and how it compares to the competition.

Get your custom report
site speed graph

Shopify Plus is a specialist and best-of-breed in the ecommerce and retail omnichannel industry. As a direct-to-consumer brand, Shopify Plus empowers us to achieve our ambitions and our vision, as well.

Greater agility

Empower your whole team

Shopify helps everyone move faster—whether we’re freeing your operational teams from being overly dependent on developers or giving your dev teams more time to work on high-value initiatives. That way, anyone in the business can do the work they want to do, compared to Adobe, where even small adjustments require development support.

Faster pace, less friction

Empower business users

Shopify gives everyone in your business the power to work together smoothly, making it easy to launch fresh ideas fast. Whether teams want to create discounts, launch campaigns, tweak the website, or promote products, we make it a whole lot simpler. In contrast, Adobe Commerce is built primarily for developers, which can result in longer lead times and higher budgets for projects. With Shopify, you won’t need a developer for everything you try to do anymore.

More automation, less manual coding

Shopify Flow and Shopify Functions let you easily create custom workflows for unique buyer experiences and back-end tasks. You can streamline setting terms and sending invoices without hassle. While Adobe requires manual coding for these features, Shopify has it all built in.

Commerce that’s truly unified

Shopify gives you one unified back office for managing every way (and where) you sell—POS, B2B, and DTC. It all just works together, giving you a single view of your customers and a better customer experience as a result. That means no more stitching together multiple systems like you do on Adobe.

With Magento (now Adobe Commerce), we always had the issue that for almost everything where we needed marketing, we also needed an agency. This, of course, translates into costs and a higher time-to-market.

Apps vs. extensions

Opt for plug-and-play over coding

Shopify's apps offer a user-friendly, plug-and-play experience with simple setup, while Adobe Commerce relies on extensions that may require significant coding for implementation. This may lead to continuous maintenance with each update to the core code or extension.

8,000+

apps with plug-and-play installation

Developing made simple

Engineering with more efficiency

Choosing Shopify means gaining access to tools that help developers ship faster. Whereas developers on Adobe Commerce are responsible for maintenance, hosting, upgrades, security, and more, Shopify takes care of all that for you—without sacrificing flexibility. Our Storefront API, based on GraphQL, is the engine behind more modern, user-friendly, and potent technology that frees you up to focus on innovating more, and stressing about toil and maintenance less.

Extensive APIs and stable connectivity

Shopify offers a variety of adaptable, well-documented APIs that perform swiftly (with ~100ms average storefront API response time)—letting your customers make purchases, quickly.

More secure and reliable

Never miss a sale on Shopify

No matter how much traffic your storefront gets, Shopify can handle it, ensuring reliable performance during peak sales events. The best part? We keep the tech up to date, so you’re not on the hook to constantly maintain your code base.

100ms

Average storefront API response times.

99.99%

Shopify’s average uptime ensures that online stores are always accessible to customers.

Built-in compliance & protected data

Take privacy compliance off your plate

At Shopify, we prioritise your compliance with frameworks like PCI for secure payments, SOC 1, 2, 3 for retailers, and GDPR for data protection. This way, you can focus on growing your brand, knowing Shopify keeps your business safe. Meanwhile, although Adobe takes on security responsibility of their infrastructure, your teams are responsible for maintaining compliance with every customisation to your code base.

Performance you can trust

Deliver better shopping experiences—faster

When your customers are ready to buy, site speed shouldn’t slow them down. And on Shopify, it won’t. On average, Shopify stores load 2x faster and convert 5% better than those on Adobe. When you move to Shopify, you’ll join millions of brands in over 175 countries giving their customers faster, smoother shopping experiences.

Avoid fraud

Shopify ensures your protection

We take fraud prevention seriously. Our built-in fraud analysis employs analytics for monitoring order risk, authorisation rates, chargebacks, and more. That way, your business can make decisions informed by key insights and risk levels. Comparatively, Adobe provides no native fraud assessment tools, meaning you’ll have to manage that entirely through third-party apps.

The growth of the company was at risk, and hence we wanted to move to a partner where scale or performance were not an issue.

Faster innovation

Get more innovation with Shopify

Shopify is 100% dedicated to commerce, while Adobe is known to prioritise their creative tools. It’s this undivided attention that competitors like Adobe don’t have that lets us ship more features and functionality for both online and in-person selling than anyone else. So you can keep your business on the leading edge. Just ask Schleich—they picked Shopify because of how fast we ship.

1st

to market with original products and features

200+

product enhancements and updates in the past year alone

More evolution to support you

At Shopify, we have thousands of engineers working hard to roll out hundreds of product updates twice a year through Editions. Most of these new features are delivered directly to the code, available right away and without requiring any version upgrades. With Adobe, any updates you receive will also require you to invest the time and resources to make the upgrades yourself.

Built, not bought

Designed with your success in mind

At Shopify, we built our platform from the ground up to change how businesses do commerce. Meanwhile, Adobe acquired Magento, which means their platform runs on a different architecture from their core data solutions, like Experience Platform. With Shopify, you get a single, unified system—so you won’t waste time and resources trying to get everything to work together.

Billions invested in commerce

We’re standing by our mission of making commerce better for everyone. Shopify has spent billions on research and development (R&D) to continuously make commerce-focused product improvements for our customers. And while Adobe also invests significantly in R&D, the bulk of this goes to their flagship design and creativity products—not commerce.

Shopify Editions

Shopify ships innovative updates at a rapid pace

With hundreds of new product updates annually—from tools to reach and retain customers to new opportunities to sell your products on multiple social channels—we’re here to help you succeed. You can check out our comprehensive list of everything we’ve built in Shopify through Shopify Editions.

Billions

Invested to improve Shopify’s platform for its customers

800+

Shopify features and improvements added since 2020

In the end, we chose Shopify because the speed of development is significantly faster. Shopify is simply an absolute innovation driver in the field of ecommerce.

Analyst validation

The experts choose Shopify

2023 Leader in Gartner® Magic Quadrant™
2024 Leader in Gartner® Magic Quadrant™

70%

Shopify’s market share from the top 800 global DTC brands, according to 2PM.

83%

Number of rising apparel brands on Shopify, according to 2PM.

Forrester logo

Forrester

Shopify achieves highest possible scores in The 2024 Forrester Wave™: Commerce Solutions for B2C

Shopify received the highest scores possible across 12 criteria, including Cart and Checkout, Payments, Innovation, and more. Get the report to dive into the Shopify strengths that led to our high designation.

Get the report 

May 5, 2024

Forrester logo

Forrester

Shopify named Leader in The 2024 Forrester Wave™: Commerce Solutions for B2B

Our commitment to delivering powerful solutions for B2B has paid off. Read the full report to learn more about why Shopify earned the Leader designation, including the highest possible scores in Innovation, Market Presence, Partner Ecosystem, and more.

Get the report 

May 6, 2024

IDC logo

IDC

IDC names Shopify a Leader due to rapid stand-up time, reduced standup time, and more

Shopify is a Leader in the IDC MarketScape: Worldwide B2C Digital Commerce Platforms for Midmarket Growth 2024 Vendor Assessment. From our proven DTC track record and low TCO to built-in payments and vast third-party ecosystem, IDC reports that “Shopify will be particularly attractive to buyers looking for a multitenant SaaS digital commerce platform.”

Read the report 

January 30, 2024

Gartner Peer Insights Customers’ Choice 2023 logo

Gartner® Magic Quadrant™

Shopify is once again a Leader in the 2024 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™

Shopify continues our tradition of excellence and innovation in commerce, being named a Leader for the 2nd consecutive year in the 2024 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™.

Read the report 

August 21, 2023

Migration partners

Migrate with the largest commerce partner ecosystem there is

Thinking about moving on from Adobe Commerce? Let our Shopify Partners smooth your path to growth. Our global network is ready to help you expand.

10,000+

App and technology partners

100+

Shopify Plus Certified App Partners

Shopify vs. Adobe Commerce

Want better results? Switch to Shopify.

From higher revenue potential to constant innovation, customers and analysts agree that Shopify’s the leading choice.