The Shopify vs Magento decision isn't primarily a features comparison. It's a total cost of ownership decision - and when you factor in hosting, development, security, and maintenance, the numbers often look very different from what they appear on the surface.
What Magento offers
Magento (now Adobe Commerce in its commercial version, Magento Open Source in its free version) is a self-hosted ecommerce platform with deep customisation capability. Its architecture supports complex product catalogues, B2B workflows, multi-store configurations, and custom integrations at a level that required Shopify Plus to match.
The genuine advantages of Magento:
- No platform fee - Open Source is free to download
- Deep catalogue flexibility - complex attribute structures, configurable products, custom product types
- Complete control over hosting infrastructure
- B2B features built into the core (customer groups, tiered pricing, quotes)
- Multi-store management from one admin - multiple storefronts, currencies, languages
What Magento actually costs
The "free" in Magento Open Source is the licence fee. Everything else costs money.
Hosting. Magento requires serious infrastructure - a properly configured Magento store needs dedicated or cloud hosting with appropriate memory allocation, a CDN, and a staging environment. Expect £200–£800/month minimum for managed Magento hosting from providers like Nexcess or Cloudways Magento plans. Adobe Commerce Cloud (the managed hosting version) starts at around $22,000/year.
Development. Magento is complex. Magento developers are expensive and harder to find than Shopify developers. A competent Magento developer charges £100–£200/hour in the UK. Customisation, theme builds, and module development cost significantly more than equivalent Shopify work.
Ongoing maintenance. Magento releases security patches regularly and major versions every few years. Keeping a Magento installation up to date requires a developer - patches aren't one-click updates, they require testing and deployment. Expect 8–20 developer hours per year just for security maintenance, more for module updates.
Adobe Commerce licensing. The commercial version (formerly Magento Commerce) is priced as a percentage of GMV - typically 1–3% of annual revenue with significant minimums. For a £5M revenue brand, this is a material cost.
Total cost of ownership for a properly run Magento store at the £3–10M revenue range is typically £80,000–£200,000/year when you include hosting, development, and maintenance. Shopify Plus in the same range is £30,000–£60,000/year including development support.
When Magento is still justified
Magento makes sense in a narrowing set of circumstances:
- You have genuinely complex catalogue requirements that Shopify's product model can't accommodate - thousands of configurable product attributes, non-standard product types, complex manufacturing or ERP integration requirements
- You have existing significant Magento infrastructure investment and a technical team that knows the platform deeply
- You require multi-store management for many storefronts with different locales, currencies, and product ranges, at a scale where Shopify's Markets or expansion stores aren't sufficient
- You're in a regulated industry with specific compliance requirements that demand on-premise hosting control
What Shopify Plus now covers
Five years ago, the Shopify vs Magento debate was more balanced. Shopify lacked native B2B, its checkout was inflexible, and Shopify Plus was less mature. That's changed significantly.
Shopify Plus now has: native B2B with company accounts, price lists, and net terms; Shopify Functions for custom checkout and discount logic; expansion stores for multi-storefront management; and a headless option (Hydrogen) for complete frontend control. Most of what used to require Magento for mid-market brands is now possible on Shopify Plus.
The brands most likely to switch from Magento to Shopify Plus are those where the Magento complexity isn't generating commensurate value - where maintenance overhead is high, developer resources are stretched, and the platform is a drag on velocity rather than an enabler of it.
The migration question
Migrating from Magento to Shopify is achievable and well-trodden. The scope includes products (with all attribute data), customer accounts, order history, and 301 redirects from every Magento URL to its Shopify equivalent.
Magento's complex attribute structure requires more planning than a simpler platform migration - product attributes need to be mapped to Shopify's metafield and variant structure, which doesn't have a direct equivalent. This is the most technically intensive part of any Magento-to-Shopify migration and requires a developer who's done it before.
The migration window (the period where both stores run in parallel) is typically 6–12 weeks for a medium-complexity Magento store. For an enterprise-scale Magento installation, longer.
If you're on Magento and finding that developer availability, hosting costs, and maintenance overhead are limiting what you can ship - rather than enabling it - the migration conversation is worth having. The migration service page covers what a platform move involves end-to-end.
