E-commerce has been one of the biggest success stories globally over the past decade. What was worth $700 billion in 2011 is expected to reach $2.5 trillion by 2018. Magento has been one of the premier tools powering this revolution. It has been the first choice as an e-commerce development tool for small and big online stores around the world. As a digital agency catering to global clients around the majority of the projects we have so far worked on has been on Magento. But there seems to be a big shift happening and even though Magento enjoys an overwhelming lead over Shopify in terms of market share, it has been continuously yielding territory to the later. So, what is powering this change of trend? What incentives does Shopify have to offer? Let’s delve into this phenomenon in the following points.

# Effortless SEO
You don’t choose an e-commerce platform solely thinking about SEO, right? Perhaps you actually do and given the fact that 90% of all searches being on Google and they account for more than 35% of direct sales on an average online store, it makes sense to choose a platform that allows you to effortlessly optimize the store. While Magento and Shopify offer the same benefits in terms of custom URLs, Meta Data, Product Description, and links, Shopify wins the battle thanks to a very useful app that comes embedded with it – Traffic Control.  How does it help? It allows you to manage redirects effortlessly, something that would require SEO expertise on Magento and ensures you don’t lose traffic upon migration. In simpler terms, you don’t need a seasoned SEO expert to manage optimization on Shopify like you do in a store powered by Magento.

# Price
Price is one reason that open-source platforms such as Magento enjoy huge fan following. They allow you to cut down on development and maintenance costs substantially. Magento Community Edition is completely free whereas with Shopify you would have to spend minimum $29 if you choose the Basic Shopify Plan. At the other end of the spectrum is the Advanced Shopify Plan that will cost you $299 a month. So on paper, Magento sounds cheaper but it exactly isn’t the actual case. You can expect to run a basic store using the Community Edition but if you want to create a robust presence (which you surely need to do)in a competitive ecosystem you need to opt for the Magento Enterprise Edition which will cost you $18000 or upward annually.  Do your math now!

# Design
Unless you have advanced designing skills, you will never be able to create stunning product page on the online store using Magento. While there are a number of freely available themes on Magento they definitely aren’t something that would propel you to greater heights. The inbuilt customization options tend to confuse less experienced users. On the other hand, Shopify offers you a wide selection of themes and the ability to customize them without any coding knowledge. If you want to create a sleek and mobile responsive store, Shopify is always a better option.

# Support
Magento boasts of a huge community of developers who would solve your problems whenever you seek help. While that sounds good, you also need to have technical expertise around this platform to actually benefit from the community. Without in-depth technical knowledge about the platform, such kind of support would mean little to you.  Shopify offers 24/7 support service and these representatives take care of your problems and resolve them in quickest possible time.

As you can clearly see, Shopify has good reasons to be your first choice e-commerce tool over Magento and it explains the big shift that is happening in the industry.