Magento or Shopify? Should I Go with a Magento Development Team or with a Shopify One
So, Shopify’s conveniently easy to use, even for a novice. But Magento, on the other hand, is famed for being robust and ideally scalable. Should you team up with a Magento development Toronto team and have your website built on this powerful eCommerce platform? Or should you call on some Shopify experts instead and leverage this eCommerce platform’s simple and intuitive UI?
Usability or extensibility, what do you value most?
A “decent” no. of third-party apps at hand or a mind-blowingly rich collection of add-ons, each one standing for a site-specific functionality that you might need to inject into your eStore?
Should you delve deep into the heavy load of Magento templates and themes? Or maybe hire a Shopify developer in Toronto to install one of the fewer, yet more visually-appealing themes available on this platform?
A bit stuck in the middle? Which one of these 2 eCommerce store building platforms is right for you?
And there’s no better way to find your answer than by… defining your priorities in terms of features:
What features do you value most in an eCommerce platform?
- Plenty of Themes to Choose From vs Fewer, But More Stylish
Magento’s built to “spoil” its users with an overwhelmingly rich collection of free themes and templates.
You get to dig through a massive selection of themes, built to fit a whole lot of industries:
- fashion
- healthcare
Still, do bear in mind that it’s classic (not to say “old-fashioned”), heavy-style themes, developed by the Magento developer community, that you’ll get.
As compared to Magento’s theme collection, Shopify’s load is significantly lighter, but it includes:
- more visually-appealing
- more up-to-date
- intuitive
- immersive
… themes.
And where do you add that they’re fully customizable, as compared to the Magento ones, where you need either:
- hands-on developer expertise
- a Magento development Toronto team to rely on for customizing your site’s theme
- Lots of Third-Party Apps to Extend Your Site’s Functionality or Stellar Support?
Do you depend on additional integrations? Is it critical for you to be able to easily extend your online store’s functionality?
Then Magento stands all the chances to be the right platform for you:
It comes loaded with a whole lot of add-ons to choose from. If there’s a specific new feature that you need to implement, at one point in the future, stay assured: you have thousands of external integrations to dig through and choose from
But if:
- additional integrations aren’t essential to you; you just need a platform that would get your site online in no time
- you depend on stellar customer support, instead
… then Shopify is the most suitable platform for your needs.
Then it’s a Shopify developer in Toronto that you should consider teaming up with to get your online store up and running in the blink of an eye.
For, as compared to Magento’s community of developers that you could “bug” with your questions and inquiries, Shopify’s got your back with real-time customer support.
- Self-hosted vs Hiring A Magento Development Toronto Team to Set Everything Up
How comfortable are you with finding the best hosting, installing, configuring and setting everything up yourself before you even get to start putting together your eStore?
For, you should keep in mind that if Magento — which is not self-hosted — is going to be your platform of choice, you’ll need to either:
- have an above-the-average level of coding and web programming know-how
- team up with some Magento experts, like the OPTASY team, to look for a hosting provider for your website and handle all the due configurations
Shopify, on the other hand, provides website hosting out-of-the-box…
- An Easy-to-Use Admin Interface or Robust SEO Features?
Shopify’s impressively intuitive user/admin interface is probably its biggest selling point.\
It makes admin-specific tasks such as:
- managing categories
- changing fonts, colors…
- adding modules/products
… conveniently easy.
In short: if you want to be empowered to manage your store with utmost ease — with no outstanding technical expertise needed — consider hiring a Shopify developer in Toronto to get your site up and running.
By comparison, Magento’s admin area’s considerably more complex, less intuitive.
Yet, the platform does compensate with its SEO features, significantly more robust than those provided by Shopify, that’s more famed for its built-in social media capabilities instead.
From:
- site mapping
- to friendly URLs
- to Google content API
… Magento’s “packed” with all the most powerful features needed to boost your eCommerce site’s SEO.
Final Verdict: The Platform That Best Meets Your Feature Needs
Coming back to your dilemma now:
Should you go with a Magento development Toronto team or opt to build your online store on Shopify instead?
I’ll sum up all the above-detailed benefits and limitations of the 2 platforms in 2 equally valid answers to your question:
- go with Shopify if it’s a small or medium-sized eCommerce website that you have in mind, you value a fast development cycle and easy-to-use UI more than unlimited power of customization and outstanding flexibility/extensibility
- go with a Magento development Toronto team if it’s a large size eCommerce business that you’re running; if it’s an ever-growing product portfolio that you’ll need to manage on your online store, one requiring a lot of customization and scalability is essential for you
