Brandon Jones

September 13, 2024

Shopify Plus and Adobe Commerce (previously Magento) are two of the most popular e-commerce platforms available to businesses. It’s important for business owners who are thinking of using either platform to be aware of the main similarities and differences between the two and their features.

You should keep in mind any limitations and price differences to reflect the true overall value of their service offerings.

What is Adobe Commerce?

Adobe Commerce, previously known as Magento, is a well-known and trusted e-commerce software that offers businesses access to advanced technologies that allow them to effectively achieve their e-commerce goals. Since its launch in 2016, it has been a great option for businesses, with great customisation abilities and support offerings.

These features have allowed it to remain to be one of the most popular e-commerce platforms used among business owners.

Adobe Commerce has many different versions including Magento Open Source, Magento Commerce Cloud and Adobe Commerce. With Adobe Commerce, businesses have the choice between self-hosting and Adobe Cloud hosting.

What is Shopify Plus?

In contrast to Adobe Commerce, Shopify Plus is not open source. Shopify Plus launched in 2014, and has only grown in popularity ever since.

The platform is well known for being easy to use and having fast launch times for new sites. Its biggest draw is Shopify API, which allows custom app integration. Overall, Shopify Plus acts as an all-in-one solution for businesses that are looking for reliability from their e-commerce platform.

Shopify Plus also offers many B2B functions such as unlimited bandwidth, automation tools, support services and plenty of security features alongside it. Recently, Shopify Plus has launched yet another appealing B2B function that allows businesses to manage both B2C and wholesale stores all from one store.

Shopify Plus vs Adobe Commerce Pricing

One of the most important aspects for businesses to consider when choosing between Shopify Plus and Adobe Commerce platforms is the costs of each service, which are drastically different.

Shopify Plus Pricing

Shopify Plus follows a revenue-based pricing structure that includes monthly platform fees of around £1500. On top of this fee, it charges businesses an additional 0.25% of their monthly revenue capped at just over £30,500. This price model allows businesses to choose their costs based on their initial monthly revenue.

Shopify Plus is also classified as a service as a software (SaaS) which means it includes both hosting and IT services as well as the many features and benefits for creating your e-commerce store. This can save money in the long term as businesses will not need to factor in their additional costs.

Hidden costs include a 0.20% per transaction fee to cover security costs if you choose to use a third-party payment gateway instead of Shopify Payments.

Shopify also allows up to 9 expansion stores, but does charge a monthly fee of £200 to do so.

Overall, the total costs of a Shopify Plus e-commerce store are generally lower than an Adobe Commerce store, as using Shopify Plus allows you to avoid hosting and IT costs.

Adobe Commerce Pricing

The price of Adobe Commerce starts at around £16,000-£17,000 for businesses that have a revenue of £1M or under, with the final costs varying based on your total business revenue. This pricing model can be better suited to businesses that have a stable revenue and those that expect steady month-to-month growth.

Adobe Commerce is a platform as a service (PaaS) meaning it is solely a platform and doesn’t include hosting or site maintenance, which will in turn mean additional costs for users in the future. Users should also consider the cost of a server to host their store and budget for IT support if needed. Costs of app integrations may also need to be considered too if they are something you would like to use with your store.

If you choose not to self-host then it will cost a fee of £80-£100 per month to host your site via Adobe Commerce. However, the price of the server goes up based on the size of your business, with large-scale businesses paying the most for hosting services.

Adobe Commerce Cloud pricing includes cloud hosting and costs can range between £30,500-£150,000 with costs being linked to annual revenue overall.

IT costs should also be considered, especially because you may need to update your website code to align with the updates to the Adobe Commerce software as and when Adobe rolls this out.

Adobe Commerce pricing includes more hidden costs in general. However, unlike Shopify Plus, there is no transaction fee for payment processing regardless of the payment gateway you choose to use.

Shopify Plus Vs Adobe Commerce Features And Capabilities

Shopify Plus and Adobe Commerce have very similar features and capabilities, and both offer everything that is needed to create a successful e-commerce store.

However, both platforms have their strengths and weaknesses in different areas. Adobe Commerce has more customisable features, whereas Shopify Plus has more app integrations. Both can aid you in different ways.

Shopify Plus Capabilities

Shopify Plus offers a user-friendly environment and allows its users to make changes according to their brand designs very easily. Shopify Plus also gives users access to a huge library of themes and templates to work from and customise to create a unique and individual storefront.

Technical support and hosting are included in the cost of subscription and this makes the process of launching your site or implementing a site update much faster, easier and more cost-effective.

Shopify Plus advertises its platform as ‘future-proof’, meaning that all updates or new features it rolls out are integrated smoothly and at no disruption to your store.

Shopify Plus does not allow its users to adjust or edit the base code, so this may mean that you can’t customise every aspect of your site. However, the platform has tools in place to combat this issue and does allow users to integrate well with various apps and hosts a wide range of themes to allow for quick customisations.

Shopify Plus allows users to access a wide range of data reports, which can make putting together analytics reports a user-friendly process. Having these reports will allow you to access a deeper understanding of your business operations.

Shopify Plus features are a great option for small to medium-sized businesses that want to save money by cutting costs for hosting fees and IT support. It allows businesses to avoid the technical side of their business and focus purely on growth.

Adobe Commerce Capabilities

Adobe Commerce is an open-source platform and offers highly customisable features. It offers a huge range of customisable frameworks for businesses to build their stores with that are tailored to their branding and any other specific requirements they may have.

Due to its open-source nature, Adobe Commerce allows the modification of base codes and the addition of attributes within this code. However, this requires you to have some coding knowledge or to hire someone who has this knowledge to take full advantage of this element. Adobe Commerce also offers its users an array of themes that are made by community developers, with these themes being categorised by industry, products and business size.

The Adobe Commerce features that truly help to set it aside from other e-commerce platforms are its multi-shop and multi-source inventory capabilities. Adobe Commerce is designed to support businesses that want to manage both B2B and B2C aspects of their enterprise, either within the country or globally.

It caters to B2B businesses as its catalogue is designed to house multiple stores and can group customers by region, it even allows businesses to sell products at different price ranges for both retail and wholesale.

Security, analytics reports and app integrations are pre-built into Adobe Commerce. These features make Adobe Commerce the most scalable option for businesses. The full customisation abilities and self-hosting make Adobe Commerce a great choice of platform for larger e-commerce businesses.

Shopify Plus Vs Adobe Commerce Global Capabilities

When looking to grow and expand your business, it may be important to you to look closely at the global capabilities of each platform, especially if global business operations are already a key aspect to your business or if you want to eventually expand your business globally. Both Shopify Plus and Adobe Commerce have global capabilities, but the extent of the global features differ for each platform.

Shopify Plus Global Capabilities

Shopify Plus allows its users to expand globally by selling across multiple channels and marketplaces. It allows businesses to integrate with many different social media platforms across the globe. The enterprise-level Shopify POS offers a built-in multichannel selling platform, unfired reporting across multiple selling channels, local pick-up and delivery and synced customer profiles.

Adobe Commerce Global Capabilities

Adobe Commerce offers its users an enterprise-level e-commerce solution that has a huge amount of support for business growth and development. It aids in the creation of new brands and product cataloguing, including multi channel connections, and multi-region storefronts making it perfect for larger businesses.

Shopify Plus Vs Adobe Commerce Mobile Friendliness

When wanting to reach more people, it is important that your store works across multiple devices, including both desktop and mobile. Shopify Plus and Adobe Commerce both aid with mobile-friendly design but each in its own various ways.

Shopify Plus Mobile Friendliness

Shopify Plus is committed to delivering excellent mobile-friendly designs and offers various responsive themes that automatically alter to different screen sizes across multiple devices. It means that users will receive a consistent and visually appealing site experience when shopping on a mobile or tablet device.

With Shopify Plus, businesses can create a mobile-friendly online store without extensive coding or design knowledge. Businesses can easily ensure that their stores are mobile-friendly with Shopify Plus pre-built themes.

Adobe Commerce Mobile Friendliness

Adobe Commerce themes work seamlessly across multiple devices. It is a highly customisable platform which allows businesses to tailor their mobile experience to specific requirements.

It is known for its Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) they can be installed on a user's home screen or even in offline mode, and they help to create a faster website experience.

Shopify Plus Vs Adobe Commerce Add-Ons, Integrations, Extensions And Apps

Both Shopify Plus and Adobe Commerce offer a variety of add-ons, extensions, app interactions, payment gateways, security systems, marketing software and much more.

Shopify Plus users will find themselves relying more heavily on app integrations than Adobe Commerce users due to the inability to change the base code within Shopify Plus. For that reason, Shopify Plus offers more apps and themes to its users in the Shopify App Store than in the Magento Adobe Commerce Marketplace.

Shopify Plus users can also develop their own custom apps via API and integrate them into their sites using the Shopify Partners Program. Adobe Commerce doesn’t have this capability but will allow users to alter the base code to achieve the same goals.

Overall, Shopify Plus is the better platform for apps and integrations for those who are just starting out or for those who have no coding knowledge and no budget to hire a developer.

Which Platform Is Better, Shopify Plus Or Adobe Commerce?

When it comes to picking a platform to host your e-commerce store on, Adobe Commerce is a great PaaS option for larger businesses that have larger budgets and need unlimited customisation capabilities. However, for small to medium-sized businesses, Shopify Plus is a great SaaS solution for saving money and using Shopify’s IT support and easy app integrations.

Now that you have a more thorough comparison of both platforms, you can decide which may be best for you. This will help you to scale and grow your business.