Shopify vs. Magento: Which eCommerce platform is right for you in 2025?

Picking an e-commerce platform is one of the biggest decisions you’ll make for your business. It sets the stage for how you operate, grow, and connect with customers. In this ring, we have two heavyweights: Shopify, with its famously user-friendly approach, and Magento (now Adobe Commerce), the powerful, open-source titan. It’s easy to feel stuck between the two, but figuring out the right fit really comes down to what your business needs right now, and where you see it going.

This guide will walk you through the Shopify vs. Magento debate without the jargon. We’ll break down everything from how easy they are to use and how much they actually cost, to how much you can customize them. But we’ll also touch on a challenge every online store faces sooner or later: scaling customer support. Because once the orders start rolling in, keeping customers happy is the real final boss, and we’ll show you how modern AI can help you win, no matter which platform you’re on.

Shopify vs. Magento: What is Shopify?

Shopify is a hosted, all-in-one platform, and honestly, that’s its superpower. In plain English, it means Shopify handles all the technical headaches for you. Hosting, security, and maintenance are all part of your monthly plan. You don’t have to lie awake at night worrying about your site crashing during a flash sale or staying on top of security updates.

It’s known for being incredibly simple to use, and for good reason. It’s built for entrepreneurs who want to get a store online fast, without needing to be a coding whiz. With a massive library of professional themes and plug-and-play apps, you can have a beautiful, working store up in just a few days. And it’s not just for small shops; with plans that scale up to Shopify Plus, it powers some of the biggest names out there.

Shopify vs. Magento: What is Adobe Commerce (formerly Magento)?

On the other side of the coin, you have Adobe Commerce, which most people still call Magento. It’s a self-hosted, open-source platform, giving you total, granular control over every single pixel and process on your site. You own the code, you pick the hosting, and if you can dream up a feature, you can build it.

This limitless flexibility makes it a favorite for large, established companies with very specific, often complex, needs. We’re talking about businesses with massive product catalogs, unique B2B pricing rules, or deep integrations with other corporate systems. But all that power comes with a steep price tag and requires a dedicated team of developers to build, manage, and keep everything running smoothly.

Shopify vs. Magento: a head-to-head comparison

So, let’s get down to the nitty-gritty. While both platforms help you sell online, they take very different roads to get you there. Here’s a quick look at how they stack up on the things that matter most.

Feature	Shopify	Magento (Adobe Commerce)
Ease of Use	⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ (Very user-friendly)	⭐⭐ (Requires developers)
Hosting	Included (Hosted SaaS)	Self-Hosted / Cloud options
Pricing Model	Monthly Subscription + Transaction Fees	License Fee (Commerce) / Free (Open Source) + Development & Hosting Costs
Customization	Good (via themes & apps)	⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ (Unlimited)
Scalability	High (especially with Shopify Plus)	Very High (built for enterprise)
App Ecosystem	Excellent (Over 8,000+ apps)	Good (Adobe Commerce Marketplace)
Support	24/7 support included	Community forums; Paid support for Commerce
Best For	Startups, SMBs, and enterprises prioritizing speed and ease of use.	Large enterprises with complex needs and technical resources.

Ease of use and setup

This is where you’ll see the biggest difference between the two. Shopify is built for merchants, not programmers. Its drag-and-drop editor, clean admin dashboard, and step-by-step setup guide mean you can launch a great-looking store in days, not months. You can add products, handle orders, and create landing pages without ever touching a line of code.

Magento, however, is a developer’s tool. All that power demands serious technical skill. The setup alone means finding your own hosting, installing the software, and configuring the server, a job that almost always means hiring a specialized agency. Daily tasks like updates and troubleshooting also need ongoing technical help. For any business without an in-house IT team, the learning curve is more like a cliff.

Pricing and total cost of ownership

Shopify’s pricing is pretty straightforward. You pay a set monthly fee (from around $39/month for Basic to over $2,300/month for Shopify Plus) and a small fee per transaction. You can even skip those transaction fees by using their own Shopify Payments gateway. While costs for extra apps can add up, you generally have a clear idea of what you’ll be spending each month.

With Magento, the pricing is a different beast altogether. The Open Source version is technically free to download, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. The real costs pile up quickly: high-performance hosting (which can cost thousands a month), security certificates, developer salaries or agency fees, paid extensions, and maintenance. The budget needed to get a Magento store off the ground and keep it running is usually much higher and harder to predict than Shopify’s.

Customization and flexibility

While Shopify is easy to use, you do trade some control for that convenience. Customization mainly happens through its theme editor and the thousands of apps in the Shopify App Store. You can definitely create a unique storefront, but you can’t, for instance, go in and rewrite how the checkout works from scratch (though Shopify Plus does give you more flexibility there).

This is where Magento earns its reputation. Since it’s open-source, developers can change absolutely anything. From custom business logic on the backend to a completely unique checkout experience, the sky’s the limit. This is a huge deal for businesses with one-of-a-kind operational needs or complex sales models that just don’t fit into a standard box.

The Shopify vs. Magento challenge every store faces: Scaling customer support

Okay, let’s get real for a second. No matter which platform you pick, as your business grows, you’re going to run into the same problem: your customer support will struggle to keep up. A gorgeous website doesn’t mean much if your customer service is slow or unhelpful.

For any e-commerce store, the growing pains look pretty similar:

• The endless stream of repetitive questions: Your inbox gets buried under "Where is my order?" (WISMO) requests, questions about your return policy, and other basic inquiries. They all need answers, but they suck up your team’s valuable time.

• Customers expect 24/7 help: People shop at all hours, and they want answers right away. Staffing a support team around the clock is incredibly difficult and expensive.

• Agent burnout is real and costly: Just throwing more people at the problem is a losing game. It’s expensive, leads to high turnover, and doesn’t fix the underlying issue of repetitive work.

The built-in tools on Shopify and Magento, like contact forms or FAQ pages, are fine to start with, but they can’t automate support at scale. They can’t look up an order, figure out the problem, and solve it all on their own.

Shopify vs. Magento: How AI support agents can help

This is where AI support platforms completely change the game. Instead of being stuck with your platform’s basic tools, you can add an intelligent automation layer that works perfectly with either Shopify or Magento.

Bringing all your knowledge together for smart answers

The first step to great automated support is teaching an AI about your business. A smart AI platform doesn’t just read a single FAQ page and call it a day.

For example, eesel AI connects to all the places your company knowledge lives. It learns from your official help center, sure, but it also pulls context from past support tickets and your internal guides in places like Confluence or Google Docs. For e-commerce stores, it can even learn directly from your product catalog. This builds a complete brain that knows your products and policies inside and out, ready to give customers accurate, instant help.

Handling common e-commerce questions automatically

The single biggest time-waster for any e-commerce team is looking up order statuses. A truly helpful AI can do more than just repeat your shipping policy; it can find the live information.

With features like eesel AI’s Actions and API integrations, the AI agent can connect directly to your store’s backend systems. A customer asks, "Where’s my package?" The AI agent uses its Shopify integration to look up the order in real-time, finds the tracking number, and gives the customer a personalized update. The ticket is closed without a human ever having to touch it. This same powerful setup can be configured for a Magento store using its APIs, getting you the exact same result.

Add AI without the migration headache

The best part of this approach is that you don’t have to change your core tools. An AI platform like eesel AI works with the help desk you already use, whether that’s Zendesk, Gorgias, or Freshdesk.

This makes your initial choice in the Shopify vs. Magento debate a little less stressful from a support angle. You can have fantastic, automated customer service on either platform without the pain of switching systems. You get the best of both worlds: the e-commerce platform that fits your business, and an intelligent support system that grows with you.

The final verdict in the Shopify vs. Magento debate

So, who’s the winner? The honest answer is: it depends entirely on your business’s needs, budget, and technical comfort level.

Choose Shopify if: You value speed, simplicity, and predictable costs. It’s the right choice for most businesses, from new startups to growing brands, that want to focus on marketing and selling, not managing technology.

Choose Magento if: You need absolute control and have complex, unique requirements that a standard solution can’t handle. You just have to be sure you have the budget and the technical team to support it.

Which platform do you think is better?

The Shopify vs. Magento decision is a trade-off between ease of use and total control. But whichever platform you build on, the real way to win in today’s market is by creating an amazing customer experience. That’s where your focus should be once your store is live.

Don’t let repetitive support questions slow your growth. An intelligent AI layer can handle the routine tasks, freeing up your team to focus on the conversations that build customer loyalty and bring in more revenue.

See how eesel AI can automate your frontline support and make your customers happier. You can start a free trial here.