Why You Should Migrate from Magento to Shopify Plus

Discover why you should migrate from Magento to Shopify Plus. Presented by Parkfield Commerce, eCommerce Design & Development Experts!

It’s no secret that more and more big enterprises are migrating to Shopify Plus from Magento platforms they’ve been involved in for years. It’s not taken lightly, either, as Magento since its 2008 development had brought innovation to the market with its fantastic open source tools and solutions. Since then, it’s lagged somewhat behind the times and the outdated service is showing in usability and modern functionality. Together with fairly non-existent support, Magento’s legacy may well end up falling by the wayside and it’s not one-way traffic anymore as Shopify comes roaring alongside to offer some serious competition to the e-commerce market.

A SaaS platform like Shopify is beneficial in so many ways and they’re on the increase even still, it’s no wonder that enterprise-level merchants have already moved to Shopify Plus, with its less technical and more easily navigable and usable interface and mechanics.

1. Architecture

Shopify has been developed in the present when Magento feels like it’s been developed in the past. It’s a hosted platform when Magento requires you to do your own hosting and also configure a vast amount of back-end architecture to kick you off. It takes time, development skills and programming skills.

It’s an easy decision as to which is better as there’s less reason to employ comprehensive dev teams and tweaking your architecture and its optimization for your site and its various extensions is more akin to the plug and play nature of software which we’re so used to these days.  For less tech-savvy start-ups, it’s refreshing to follow more automated processes when configuring your e-commerce website.

Hosting costs associated with Magento are high, you are on your own to find them and it can cost upwards of $4,500/mo. for multiple, dedicated servers if you need them.

With Shopify Plus, you can really build your business instead of worrying about site architecture.

2. Enhanced Security

Site security is partly handled by Shopify when with Magento, it’s down to you. Many online shoppers remain skeptical about parting with large amounts of cash online and it’s still paramount to online shopping experiences to make customers feel both safe and secure when using your store. One of the best ways to certify this is with something called PCI Compliance, which is the security benchmark for payment handling online websites. Magento did make it easy to gain this but it was still by and large merchant responsibility to deal with it and that’s just another distraction from the business operations you want to concentrate on.

Shopify really takes away this stress, though, as you don’t have to worry about hacking or theft—that’s the platform’s responsibility. Basically, Shopify ensures that your site is Level 1 PCI-compliant and they even carry out compliance and security assessments annually, you won’t have to worry about it! Which is quite amazing really as this was always one of the major points of contention with setting up an online shop – that rigorous, non-stop assessment of your security.

3. Ease of Customization

One area where Shopify fell down upon is its script availability. If you needed an app in-store which couldn’t be accommodated in the Shopify Plus or Magento marketplace, you’d have no option but to fabricate one yourself. Recently, Shopify has released scripts which allow developer access to Shopify’s servers and architecture, allowing them to delve into the platform’s mechanics, in turn, opening tons of possibilities regarding customization.

4. Customer Service and Handling of Bugs and Issues

Finding a bug in Magento was like your site catching the plague – no end in sight, customers dropping like flies, frenzied attempts failing to find a solution. Magento extensions were always less stable, they weren’t built to the same rigorous quality as Shopify Plus equivalents and as a result, they failed.

On the customer service front, Shopify easily holds the aces. They’re responsive, detailed and go beyond the bare minimum. That’s a recipe for stress-free site operation!

5. Unlimited Scalability

Brands and enterprises grow and you need the software to grow alongside you. One of the big concerns of large brands is how well a platform can meet their complex needs once they’re really, really large and traffic climbs and climbs through the roof. Magento’s scalability methodology revolved around managing your architecture round transient periods of high traffic. This might not be often at all, but when it does happen, you need to be prepared. Shopify is more flexible and reactive and is handled by its in-house development team who enable unlimited scaling with extensive APIs.

Considering a move away from Magento? Book a chat with our Migration Expert.