Magento vs Shopify Plus: feature comparison at a glance
Magento merchants evaluating Shopify Plus compare the two platforms on seven dimensions. Magento merchants are typically mid-market to enterprise ($1M-$100M+ GMV), so Shopify Plus is the relevant destination tier. Standard Shopify is rarely the right fit for stores migrating off Magento. Here is how Magento (Open Source and Adobe Commerce) and Shopify Plus compare:
Hosting and infrastructure
- Magento: Self-hosted (Open Source) or Adobe-hosted (Adobe Commerce Cloud). You or Adobe manage hosting, scaling, backups, and uptime; performance and reliability depend on infrastructure choices.
- Shopify Plus: Fully hosted SaaS on Shopify's globally distributed CDN. No server management, predictable uptime, dedicated launch infrastructure for Plus merchants.
Security and PCI compliance
- Magento: Your responsibility on Open Source; partially Adobe's on Commerce Cloud. PCI compliance, security patching, and quarterly audits are ongoing operational work.
- Shopify Plus: Shopify handles PCI Level 1 compliance, SSL, and platform-level security. Enterprise procurement gets dedicated compliance documentation.
B2B and wholesale
- Magento: B2B Commerce module on Adobe Commerce only (or third-party extensions on Open Source). Powerful but complex to configure and maintain.
- Shopify Plus: Native B2B suite on every Shopify Plus plan: company accounts, price lists, quote workflows, net-terms payment, catalog visibility rules.
Total cost of ownership
- Magento: Adobe Commerce: $22,000-$190,000 per year in license fees (revenue-tiered) plus hosting, dev costs, and extension licenses. Open Source: free license but high dev and infrastructure spend. Real TCO for $10M store: $200,000-$500,000 per year.
- Shopify Plus: Starts at $2,500 per month base ($30,000 per year) plus standard processing. Volume-based above $800,000 monthly GMV. Predictable, no separate hosting or extension costs.
Development velocity
- Magento: Magento codebase is large and complex. Feature changes typically take 2-8 weeks of developer time. Specialist Magento developers are scarce and expensive.
- Shopify Plus: Liquid templating, theme app extensions, and Shopify Functions enable most feature changes in days. Shopify developer talent pool is far larger.
App and extension ecosystem
- Magento: Magento Marketplace extensions, often complex to install and version-fragile. Many enterprise-grade integrations exist but require integration work.
- Shopify Plus: 10,000+ apps with native, first-class integrations for Klaviyo, Gorgias, Rebuy, ReCharge, ShipStation, NetSuite, and most enterprise tools.
Migration and launch support
- Magento: Adobe support is tiered; community support varies in quality.
- Shopify Plus: Dedicated Launch Engineer during migration plus a Merchant Success Manager thereafter.
Most Magento merchants who migrate cite three reasons: hosting and security overhead, slow development cycles, and the rising cost of Adobe Commerce. Shopify Plus eliminates the infrastructure burden, ships native B2B and multi-store, and prices transparently.
How to evaluate a Magento to Shopify migration partner
Magento to Shopify Plus migrations are the most complex of any source-platform combination because Magento stores typically carry years of customization, extensions, and B2B configuration. The partner you choose matters enormously, and not every Shopify Plus partner has the Magento source-side depth to do this well.
- Magento-side expertise on the team. A team that has migrated five Magento Open Source stores and three Adobe Commerce stores knows the gotchas (custom EAV attributes, configurable products, customer group pricing, layered navigation behavior) that a Shopify-only team will discover the hard way on your dime. Ask for redacted migration case studies.
- Extension-to-app translation playbook. Magento stores typically run 30-100 extensions. The partner should audit your full extension stack and provide a Shopify-native alternative or app substitute for each, plus a clear list of where custom development is required.
- B2B and customer-group migration. Magento B2B implementations vary widely. The partner should walk through how they map Magento customer groups, shared catalogs, requisition lists, and net-terms payment into Shopify Plus B2B.
- Redirect mapping at scale. Magento sites often have 10,000+ URLs across products, categories, layered nav facets, and CMS pages. The partner should build a complete redirect map and have a verification process post-launch.
- Time-to-launch and parallel-running strategy. Magento migrations of $5M+ stores typically run 16 to 24 weeks. The partner should propose a parallel-running plan (Magento and Shopify Plus side by side during cutover) rather than a hard switch.
