today we're going over the top 10 things you'll want to consider when picking Shopify or magenta
for your business stay tuned welcome to the e-commerce playbook brought to you
by iwd agency where we share tools tips and tactics from industry leading experts to help
you take your ecommerce game to the next level now here's your host jill McFerrin
ok so today we're going to the top 10 things you'll want to consider when picking Shopify
or magenta for your business first of all both of these platforms are super powerful platforms at
the top ecommerce platforms in the world they're used from small business to enterprises from
mom-and-pop shops all the way up to 100 million dollar companies so either one is going to be
super powerful but there are some top differences that you'll want to consider if you're trying to
decide between Shopify and Magento here's the top 10 things we came up with we've been working with
both for over 12 years so number one the first thing that you'll want to consider is cost of
ownership so Shopify a Magento license fees are relatively the same so what do I mean by that
well Shopify has a basic version of their their platform and it starts at $29 a month magenta
also has a basic version of their platform is sort of a source edition and it starts at $0
so it's free but you have to pay for hosting so there is some costs associated with that that is
included in the Shopify version so both of those starter packages are essentially relatively the
same amount of money and then you go to the enterprise level - Shopify plus it starts at
$24,000 a year and Magento Commerce which used to be known as Magento enterprise which starts
at 22,000 dollars a year so Magento in that scenario for enterprise is cheaper but so but
they're relatively the same cost the you know $2,000 a year when you're getting up to more
of an enterprise level isn't a significant amount but for cost of ownership you'll need to consider
what is the cost of maintaining this platform so magenta actually will in the lifetime be more
expensive likely than Shopify and the reason why is because it's open source and since it's open
source it means that you have to manage the system yourself you have to do your own security patches
just do your own upgrades you have to maintain the integrity of the system altogether there are some
benefits there's some huge benefits to being open source but since you have to do all this yourself
it is more expensive than Shopify which is a SAS hosted solution and they do all the upgrades for
you they do all the security patches for you they make sure your PCI compliant so you don't
have to spend any money on that so and that can get costly Oh magenta so magenta in the long term
for most people is going to be a more expensive platform number two the second thing you'll want
to consider is open source or closed source so Magento is open source platform meaning you can
get into the code and you can change anything you want you can modify the whole system depending on
your needs and wishes and dreams you can move you modify as much as you want you can get into
any aspect of the system there's no parts of the system that you can't change to your own
discretion Shopify on the other hand is a closed source system this means there are areas there
are a lot of areas that you don't have actually access to changing the code for - as mentioned
before there are some benefits to this this does allow them to manage security for you and allows
them to manage the integrity of the platform for you but it doesn't allow you to change anything
that you want on their platform so you you do have to go by their standards you have to - you
can't just change anything that you want there there will be some limitations there so that's
number two number three is the different types of products you can do in each platform so in
Magento you have seven different product types and we won't go through all of them in this
video in another video we might through that and more death but there's simple products there's
configurable products there's bundled products there's downloadable products there's virtual
products missing a couple but all those different types of products gives you a lot of flexibility
on building out more complex products and complex solutions on the other hand Shopify only has one
type of product they do have some flexibility with this one type of product but it doesn't give you
as much flexibility as magenta does out of the box so for complex situations it's not going to be as
robust as Magento is a leadbox number for this is a big one for a lot of people but multi-store
Magento can handle multiple stores from one administrative panel Shopify is a one-to-one
relationship so you can have one front-end store to a bunch Shopify instance for people that are
managing you know tens to hundreds of stores is a big deal you don't want to have to log into ten or
a hundred different administrative panels to be able to manage restores manage inventory manager
customers manage orders and we'll get into this later but it also will tie into international
shipping and shopping this is a big deal there as well but one of the big differences between
Shopify and Magento is how many stores can it handle out of the box magenta is unlimited
Shopify is a limited to a one to one relationship number five b2b b2b is growing tremendously in the
e-commerce world there's a lot of manufacturers and wholesalers that have been in business for you
know hundreds of years making their product and they're now just getting a look around to getting
online and getting their their wholesalers and distributors to purchase online Magento is ahead
of the curve on this and they have especially in their enterprise software they have a lot of
b2b features built into that natively even on the community version there's a ton of
extensions that cater to this market identity agency actually has our own a b2b module that
enhances bugs the community version and the enterprise commerce solution as well Shopify
on the other hand they're a little bit behind the curve on this one they don't have the b2b
features out of the box there are some extensions that support some of the b2b features that b2b
merchants will want but it's still very limited so Magento definitely has the one up on on b2b
e-commerce and I'll actually create another video just about b2b in another in another video number
six customer groups so for customer groups this is also another very powerful feature
that Magento has you can group your customers and different segmentation you can give them
different discounts you can give them different shopping priorities you can give them different
the catalogs this is a very powerful tool that you can do in in magenta Shopify is lacking this
feature Shopify does have tags you can't sort through through customers using tags but it's
not as powerful as the Magento customer groups this is a leg up that magenta has over Shopify
currently number seven okay international shopping so we talked about this a little bit earlier with
the multiple stores if you're doing international ecommerce then there's a lot of different rules
in different countries and different parts of the world yeah girl I need different catalogs you're
going to need different taxes you're going to need different shipping options you're going to need
a different payment methods so with that being said a lot of times you'll want to set up a whole
different store front for different countries in different areas of the world to to target that
that audience so with Magento having the multiple stores per one administrator panel it really does
international ecommerce very well Shopify being a one to one relationship it's really
lacking on this availability to do do a full the international ecommerce storefront manage from one
administrative panel so Magento is a more robust system going to come to international ecommerce
number eight high-risk or controversial items so items such as guns ammunition tobacco related
products x-rated products these type of products Magento essentially says if it is legal then
they're going to allow you to to sell it on their storefront they're not going to dictate what kind
of products that you can sell on your system and they're not going to be the gatekeeper on on that
it's up to you as long as it's illegal they're not going to they're not gonna raise any flags
or try to shut down your store on the other hand a Shopify has a different localness and they if
it is a controversial item they don't necessarily want it on their system so one example of this is
guns and ammunition that one example of this is guns and ammunition they no longer allow it to
be sold on their platform there had been many a merchant said that had been selling this on
their platform for a long time and Shopify came out with news to them that they're no longer
allowed to sell these items on their platform anymore and so they had to completely rebuild
and migrate their store to a new system so it is something that you want to consider when you're
picking a store or you're picking a platform is if you have a controversial item then you
might want to steer clear Shopify number nine PCI compliance and security so this is a big topic and
this is something that you every ecommerce owner needs to make sure they check this box and check
it well you don't want your customers data to get hat been stolen you don't want to get shut down
by Visa or MasterCard you want to make sure you can sleep well at night knowing that your store
is secure and that you're following all the PCI compliance that that you need to so that you can
function that your store won't get shut down so out of the box Shopify offers PCI compliance and
security upgrades as long as you're on their platform they're going to make sure that your
PCI compliance with Shopify being closed source they can control the integrity of the store and
make sure your PCI compliant do all the upgrades that you need to do do all the scans that you
need to do with Magento since it's open source it's a different story they on the other hand
you can modify anything you want so they cannot be responsible for the code that you write and
the the things that you change on your store this is a big reason why you want to make sure
you have certified developers and that you have trusted developers working on the system because
you don't want to open your your store up into vulnerabilities we've seen a lot of times in the
past where developers have written really bad code and it's been a bad boner abilities where credit
cards are just being stored right on the server without it being encrypted and the store owner
had no idea about this so you really want to be make sure your security is title Magento this is
on the store owner to make sure this is happening there are many companies like ours that can help
you make sure your PCI compliant but this will be on you to make sure that you're doing it this
is different than Shopify that they will on there and make sure that it's being done correctly and
number 10 developers so since Shopify is a closed source system they don't allow you to modify the
core files that don't allow you to to modify stuff that will essentially break the story you can
break the store but you're not gonna you know make it vs Pete not PCI compliant you're not gonna make
it where it's not upgradable it's a lot easier system to work with since it's the easier system
to work with there are more developers on that platform they're easier to find you still want to
find good developers you still want to find good designers you still want to make sure you have a
good QA team you know this is your your your baby this is your business you want to make sure that
you sell the right people a but there is a bigger pool of developers out there for Shopify because
it's the easier platform to work on for magenta other hand because it's open source and because
you can really big stuff and it's a little bit more of a complex system the pool of developers is
smaller and you really want to make sure that you get someone that's certified that understands that
that understands that back in front of magenta inside and out that knows the PCI compliance
standards because with magenta you can really screw up stuff if you don't do it correctly so the
pool of developers is is smaller they're probably a little bit more expensive because they have to
have that experience and they have to be very specialized so with the big difference between
the two is Shopify you're gonna it's going to be easier to find more developers and with magenta
you're going to have a smaller pool of developers to look for okay guys so that was a top ten
reasons to pick Shopify magenta please let me know al anything left anything out if you want to stay
up to date with the latest news for for e-commerce magento shopify bigcommerce WooCommerce any of the
major platforms subscribe to this channel and like this video and until next time see you guys later
you