Magento vs Shopify: Which Ecommerce Platform Is Right for You?

Magento, now sold by Adobe as Adobe Commerce, and Shopify can both run large, successful stores. The difference is who does the work. On Magento you, or your developers, run the platform: hosting, security patches, upgrades and every dependency underneath. On Shopify, Shopify runs the platform and you run the business.

In 2026 that difference has a deadline attached. Adobe has published end of support dates for every Magento 2.4 release line, and from 1 June 2027 it will stop maintaining Adobe Commerce on Cloud stores still running unsupported versions. This guide compares the two platforms honestly, with those dates front and centre.

Quick Answer

Shopify is the better choice for most brands, because it removes hosting, patching and upgrade work and costs far less to run. Magento (Adobe Commerce) still suits large businesses with in house developers and needs Shopify cannot meet. Before choosing Magento, check Adobe's support dates: 2.4.6 left standard support on 11 August 2026, and Adobe begins switching off unsupported Cloud stores on 1 June 2027.

Key Takeaways

• Magento means running the platform yourself. Hosting, security patches, upgrades, PHP and other dependencies are your responsibility.
• Adobe's deadlines are real. Cloud stores on 2.4.4 or 2.4.5 face enforcement from 1 June 2027, and 2.4.6 or 2.4.7 from 1 June 2028; after that, Adobe can take storefronts offline.
• Open Source support ends sooner. Extended support is for Adobe Commerce customers, so Magento Open Source stores lose support when standard support ends.
• Shopify now offers B2B on every plan. Company accounts, catalogues, quantity rules and payment terms are no longer limited to Shopify Plus.
• Cost is the biggest gap. Shopify starts at £19 a month with hosting and security included; Magento's licence may be free, but running it is not.
• Magento still wins on raw control. For unusual business logic and deep customisation, full source code access remains its strength.
• Why merchants switch. Most of the merchants we have helped move from Magento to Shopify wanted lower maintenance costs, less reliance on developers and better site performance.

Table of Contents

1. Magento vs Shopify at a glance
2. What Magento means in 2026
3. Adobe's support deadlines
4. Cost of ownership
5. Ease of use
6. Features, B2B and international selling
7. SEO and site speed
8. Extensions and apps
9. Security and maintenance
10. When Magento is the better choice
11. When Shopify is the better choice
12. Moving from Magento to Shopify
13. The Why Matters Perspective
14. FAQ
15. Final Thoughts
16. Related Articles

Magento vs Shopify at a Glance

What Magento Means in 2026

"Magento" now covers several products, and the differences matter:

• Magento Open Source is the free, self hosted version. You pay nothing for the licence but everything for hosting, development and maintenance.
• Adobe Commerce is the paid version, run on your own servers or on Adobe's managed cloud (Adobe Commerce on Cloud). It adds features such as B2B tools, content staging and customer segments. Adobe does not publish a price list; licences are quoted.
• Adobe Commerce as a Cloud Service is Adobe's newer fully hosted product, where Adobe manages infrastructure, patching and upgrades. Adobe calls it the recommended long term destination for its cloud customers.

If you are comparing Shopify with Magento, be clear which of these you mean, because the cost, effort and support position are very different.

Adobe's Support Deadlines

Adobe gives each Magento 2.4 release line three years of standard support from its release date, with quality and security fixes. Adobe Commerce customers on 2.4.6 and 2.4.7 also get a further year of extended support at no extra cost, and 2.4.4 to 2.4.6 have a one time period of limited security fixes that Adobe says should be treated as migration time.

Source: the Adobe Commerce lifecycle policy, updated 19 August 2026. What the dates mean in practice:

• Cloud stores can be switched off. On the enforcement date, Adobe stops maintaining Adobe Commerce on Cloud environments still on that release and can suspend their traffic, which takes the storefront offline. Adobe promises advance notice and a window to export your data, but environments that stay non compliant can be decommissioned, and their data is then permanently deleted. The enforcement policy applies to Adobe's cloud only.
• Open Source has less runway. Extended support is for Adobe Commerce customers, so Magento Open Source stores on 2.4.5 or 2.4.6 no longer receive fixes, and 2.4.7 loses support on 31 May 2027.
• PHP is its own deadline. Adobe notes that PHP 8.1 reached end of life on 31 December 2025 and PHP 8.2 does so on 31 December 2026, which puts PCI compliance at risk for stores still using them.
• Dependencies are your job. Adobe does not fix third party software such as MariaDB, OpenSearch or Redis when it reaches end of life; keeping those current is the merchant's responsibility.

Self hosted stores are not switched off by Adobe, but running an unsupported version without security fixes carries the same risk.

Cost of Ownership

Magento Open Source is free to download, but not free to run. The real comparison is between everything each platform needs, not the licence alone.

Shopify's plans cost £19 (Basic), £49 (Grow) and £259 (Advanced) a month billed yearly, and Shopify Plus starts from £1,800 a month, according to Shopify's UK pricing page. Card rates and apps come on top. On Magento, the biggest costs are people and infrastructure, and they recur with every upgrade cycle. For Shopify budgets, see our guides to the cost of building a Shopify store and what a Shopify migration costs.

In our migration quotes, bespoke functionality and complex international shipping are the most common reasons a project moves to a custom pricing tier. Magento stores often carry both, so list every custom feature before you compare costs.

Ease of Use

Shopify is built for non technical teams. You can add products, set up payments and shipping, and launch without code, and Shopify handles everything underneath.

Magento is developer first. Its admin is capable but complex, and most changes beyond day to day catalogue work need a developer. That is not a flaw for businesses with an engineering team, but it is a real ongoing cost for everyone else.

Features, B2B and International Selling

Both platforms are feature rich, but the gap has narrowed in Shopify's favour.

• B2B. Adobe Commerce has long had strong B2B tools. Shopify now offers B2B on Basic, Grow and Advanced as well as Plus, including company accounts, catalogues, quantity rules and price breaks, net payment terms and customer specific pricing, with more options on Plus.
• Catalogue. Shopify supports up to 2,048 variants per product on every plan. Magento's flexible attributes still suit unusually complex product configuration.
• Several countries and brands. Magento can run many sites from one installation. Shopify Markets sells into several countries, currencies and languages from one store, and larger groups can run separate stores on Shopify Plus.
• Selling across channels. Shopify includes sales channel apps for social platforms, Google and marketplaces, plus Shopify POS for in person selling.
• Custom logic. Magento lets developers change almost anything. Shopify extends through apps and platform extensions, which covers most needs but not every edge case.

For enterprise requirements, Shopify Plus adds automation, more checkout control and dedicated support. Subscription brands can also use our guide to adding subscriptions to Shopify.

SEO and Site Speed

Magento offers deep technical SEO control, including server level configuration, which helps large, complex catalogues. Shopify covers what most stores need: editable titles and descriptions, clean URLs, XML sitemaps, redirects, canonical tags, structured data through themes and an editable robots.txt file.

Speed depends on build quality on both platforms. Ignore headline load time averages without a published source and measure your own Core Web Vitals, the loading, responsiveness and layout stability scores Google uses. Our article on why the Shopify speed score misleads explains what to track, and our Shopify SEO guide covers the rest.

Extensions and Apps

Magento has a large extension marketplace, but extensions are installed into your codebase, so they can conflict with each other and often need developer work after upgrades.

Shopify apps connect to the platform rather than changing its core, so Shopify's own updates rarely break them. Most specialist ecommerce tools build for Shopify first. We are a Klaviyo Partner and a Recharge Partner, and both integrate deeply with Shopify for email, SMS and subscriptions.

Security and Maintenance

Shopify handles platform security, PCI compliance, SSL and updates for every store. Your responsibilities are mostly your own accounts, staff access and the apps you install.

On Magento, you apply Adobe's security patches, keep PHP and other dependencies supported, maintain PCI compliance and manage backups. Adobe's own policy puts third party dependencies squarely on the merchant, and missing a patch leaves a known vulnerability open. For a business without a security team, that is the most underestimated cost of Magento.

When Magento Is the Better Choice

Magento (Adobe Commerce) is usually the stronger option when:

• You have an in house development team experienced with Magento and PHP.
• Your business logic is genuinely unusual, beyond what Shopify apps and extensions can handle.
• You need complex B2B workflows that Adobe Commerce already handles and Shopify would need to replicate.
• You run many brands or sites that must share one installation and codebase.
• You have the budget and plan to keep every release line supported before Adobe's dates.

When Shopify Is the Better Choice

Shopify is usually the stronger option when:

• You want your budget spent on growth, not hosting, patching and upgrades.
• You do not have, or do not want, a Magento development team.
• You need predictable costs and faster launches.
• You sell B2B and B2C, since Shopify's B2B tools now run on every plan.
• Your Magento version is approaching or past Adobe's support dates and an upgrade would cost as much as a move.

For a wider view, see why we build on Shopify and our comparisons of WooCommerce and BigCommerce with Shopify.

Moving from Magento to Shopify

A Magento move covers products and variants, customers and order history, URL redirects, theme build, app replacements for extensions, and full testing of checkout, payments, shipping and email before launch. Our step by step Magento to Shopify migration guide walks through each stage, and our migration checklist covers the details.

Work back from Adobe's dates. If your store runs on Adobe Commerce on Cloud with 2.4.4 or 2.4.5, the enforcement date is 1 June 2027, so a migration should be planned, built and tested well before then rather than started in the final months.

The Why Matters Perspective

Magento is a powerful platform, and the businesses that run it well usually have strong development teams and requirements that justify the investment. For most brands, though, the money spent on hosting, patches, upgrades and developer retainers would do more for growth if it went into marketing, product and customer experience.

Our clients say the same. Most of the merchants we have helped migrate from Magento to Shopify told us they were looking for three things: lower maintenance costs, an end to their heavy reliance on developers, and better site performance.

Adobe's published dates make that decision more urgent. Every Magento store now has a support deadline, and some Cloud stores have a date after which they can be taken offline. We would rather help merchants make the move as a planned project than as an emergency.

As a Shopify Select partner, we have moved stores from Magento to Shopify while protecting their rankings and data. Our pricing is published on our website, retainer clients are not tied into long contracts, and every development project carries our three month guarantee.

FAQ

Is Magento still supported in 2026?

Yes, but only for current release lines. Adobe's lifecycle policy gives 2.4.7 standard support until 31 May 2027, 2.4.8 until 31 May 2028 and 2.4.9 until 31 May 2029. Standard support for 2.4.6 ended on 11 August 2026, and Magento Open Source stores lose support when standard support ends.

When will Adobe switch off Magento stores on its cloud?

Adobe's first enforcement date is 1 June 2027, for Adobe Commerce on Cloud stores still on 2.4.4 or 2.4.5; for 2.4.6 and 2.4.7 it is 1 June 2028. Adobe can then suspend traffic, taking the storefront offline, and may later decommission the environment. Self hosted stores are not switched off.

Is Magento really free?

Magento Open Source has no licence fee, but you pay for hosting, development, security patches, upgrades and dependency maintenance. Adobe Commerce adds a licence that Adobe quotes rather than publishes. Shopify starts at £19 a month billed yearly, with hosting and security included.

Does Shopify support B2B?

Yes. Shopify's B2B features now run on Basic, Grow and Advanced as well as Plus, including company accounts, catalogues, quantity rules, price breaks and net payment terms. Shopify Plus adds further options for more complex wholesale operations.

Can I move from Magento to Shopify without losing rankings?

Yes, if every old Magento URL is redirected with a 301 to its closest Shopify equivalent before launch. Keep page content and metadata where possible, test the redirects, and monitor Search Console closely for the first few weeks.

Is Shopify Plus an alternative to Adobe Commerce?

For most enterprise brands, yes. Shopify Plus adds automation, more checkout control and dedicated support on top of Shopify's managed platform. Businesses with highly unusual logic or large shared multi site setups may still prefer Adobe Commerce.

Final Thoughts

The Magento vs Shopify decision is about where you want to spend your effort. Magento rewards businesses that can invest in developers and infrastructure, and it now comes with firm support deadlines. Shopify removes that work so the budget can go into growth. If your Magento version is nearing Adobe's dates, treat the choice between upgrading and moving as a planned project, not a last minute scramble.

Related Articles

• How to Migrate from Magento to Shopify: A Step by Step Guide
• How Much Does a Shopify Migration Cost? A Transparent Pricing Guide
• The Complete Shopify Migration Checklist: Before, During and After
• WooCommerce vs Shopify: An Honest Comparison
• Squarespace vs Shopify: Which Platform Is Right for You?
• BigCommerce vs Shopify: Which Ecommerce Platform Is Better?