Creating a user-friendly website for your e-commerce business is mandatory, but what is more crucial is selecting the platform of the website. If the platform is suitable, then creating, managing and maintaining an online store becomes measurably easier. This is particularly essential for a small business since it can only afford limited resources to start with and sometimes a small budget for support functions.
While some platforms are there since long, many new ones have sprung recently with upgraded features required in today’s time. Therefore, it is important to spend time on understanding what your business needs from the platform you choose to build your site on.
Magento has been on the market for almost a decade now. Introduced in 2008 as an open source solution, Magento came up with unrivaled flexibility and extensibility, giving previously thwarted developers a new wave of excitement with innovative features to build online stores.
But in recent times, Magento has dawdled with outdated functionality, unmanageable integrations, security risks, and low-key support. All this and more including general user-unfriendliness that’s characterized Magento from day one has pushed its users to look elsewhere.
But e-commerce has now seen the light of new developments which have come to its revitalization. More and more online businesses are waking up to the shortcomings of trusting on an open-source solution like Magento—and the advantages of choosing a SaaS platform like Shopify. With fewer technicalities and more manageable features, who wouldn’t want an easy-to-operate-platform for their business.
Today’s post is for those readers who are still using Magento but looking for an alternative. Let us look at the justified reasons which you should know before you make the leap to migrate to Shopify from Magento.
1. Hosting and managed services
With Shopify, you get hosting and managed services specifically made for you. With a rock-solid architecture, Shopify will host your online store and manage it for you the way you want it to be managed.
While with Magento, you have to buy your own hosting and configure the back-end architecture before going live. This requires development knowledge and programming skills to establish a user-friendly online store which can attract customers.
Migrating to Shopify means you never have to worry about adding too many products or the volume of traffic on your site. Shopify Plus is an upgraded version which provides added benefits to its users by accommodating massive traffic during peak sale period and no slow down periods.
2. Security
Since your site is the very foundation of your online business, you want it to be the best, perform consistently and always be up for customers to visit anytime. Security plays an important role in keeping your site’s performance up to the mark. Lack of it may stop people from shopping on your site. With Magento, PCI (Payment Card Industry) compliance falls on you. You have to determine the level of compliance and check with your hosting service if they provide that. This also means you have to invest in manpower and other resources to manage this aspect of your trade which can be a costly and time-consuming endeavor. Many time handling these daunting tasks can leave merchants feeling stressed and distracted from the core aspects of running their business.
On the other hand, Shopify Plus has made it simple for you. They set all this for you and provide PCI Level 1 compliance as default with your plan. This is a means to ensure that your customers can shop without fear of their financial information being compromised.
With their annual compliance check and risk assessment, they set free from juggling with these additional tasks. This saves a lot of your time and money.
3. Third-Party Integrations aren’t a Pain
When Magento came up with their extension marketplace, it was the best thing to happen. It appeared like a haven where you’ll find all of the apps to customize your store and define its functionality.
But Magento apps are not exactly turnkey solutions for all your customization needs. Meaning, most of them need high coding knowledge to be up and running. Even otherwise, setting these apps would cost you.
Shopify on the other hand eliminates the need for extensive development skills and relieves of the dependency on a programmer. Integrating an app for your marketing team is easy with Shopify. Your resources are free from the hassle of looking after these tasks and can focus on other important aspects of the business.
Maintaining your site becomes easy with Shopify Plus and saves you thousands of dollars without worrying about backend operations.
4. Scalability
Scalability is one of the primary concerns of enterprise-level businesses. Every online store encounters peak traffic during sales and their revenues hit the roof. When this happens, the last thing you want is your site to crash at that time. The platform you choose to build your site on becomes the backbone of your fall or decline in such circumstances. You need to be confident that it serves you very well during all times and will never let you down especially during peak times.
Both Magento and Shopify have the capacity to manage high-value businesses, the demands of the merchants may differ. Magento requires you to design your architecture is a way to accommodate the single highest peak in traffic. This enables you to handle high peak traffic once every day.
But with Shopify Plus, scaling has no constraints. It can be accomplished much more easily. With its team of knowledgeable developers and programmers, Shopify Plus offers unmatched scalability and extensive APIs.
Shopify can be your best bet if you’re wanting a platform that has the ability to evolve with your business.
5. Community
Being a decade old in the market, Magento has surely developed a significant community of developers and programmers. An impressive number of people have had their share of success with Magento. This can be the single most reason to migrate to Shopify. Most of the users being first-timers, there is a great need for expert opinions. However, with Shopify Plus Partners Program, a thoroughly vetted group of experts, has been contributing towards the community and provides the best information in their given capacity.
Along with it, they have a VIP page for Shopify Plus members to encourage conversations and discussions about e-commerce and related topics like apps, design, themes, and online strategy. These discussions help business owners to make informed decisions as well.
6. Round the clock support
Shopify cares for its clients and dedicatedly provides 24/7 support service for any issues you face with your store or if something goes wrong while setting it up. You can use various means to contact them. Drop them an email, call or use the live chat feature to speak to a Shopify expert. They take pride in promptly reply to your queries with appropriate answers and will point you in the right direction.
This is one of the numerous advantages of paying for an integrated Ecommerce solution- that is Shopify Plus. It might cost a bit more than doing developing the store yourself, but you can count on troubleshooting expertise when you require it most.
There is a facility called ‘White Glove’ for managing the accounts for an enterprise solution membership of Shopify Plus. It provides higher support to its elite partners.
With Magento, this support is limited and has only available in its Enterprise solution. Since you are managing the hosting and the site on your own, the hosting provider or the development team has to be contacted if anything fails.
7. Transparent Pricing Structure
Though it is a bit pricey owing to its hosting services, Shopify is completely transparent about its pricing. With plans starting from $29/month it won’t cause a hole in your pocket for you to start your business after all.
A non-hosted solution might cost you anything from $100-$600/year for SSL and $70+ for CDN (depending on your traffic) PLUS all the time and work installing them.
Shopify clearly states its pricing on the site, whereas Magento doesn’t. You will get an idea about the money you will be spending on your online store. Within months, you will have a good idea of how many transactions you’ll be processing to work out what your monthly fees.
Conclusion
With all these benefits, who wouldn’t want to shift their business from Magento to Shopify Plus and get a plethora of features to use.
If you already have a running store or starting a new online business, it’s a good time to switch to Shopify and Shopify Plus. WebBee can be a good starting point for you if you require any customization of the website for your e-commerce needs. Shopify development company, WebBee has expertise in development, designing and customization of e-commerce Shopify store development and applications. We can provide you with 24*7 support and bespoke customer service. Contact us for further details to cater to your needs.
