Magento 2 Vs Shopify- A comparison of 7 key features

Magento was rebranded Adobe Commerce in 2021, and the platform landscape has shifted significantly since. For most businesses under roughly $10 million in revenue without complex B2B or catalog needs, current data favors Shopify or Shopify Plus on cost, implementation speed, and ease of maintenance. Adobe Commerce remains the stronger choice for a narrower set of complex-enterprise cases. This guide compares both platforms as they actually stand today, and walks through what a Magento-to-Shopify migration involves if that’s the direction you’re heading. 

If you’re comparing Magento and Shopify, it’s worth knowing upfront: Magento isn’t officially called Magento anymore, and the comparison itself looks meaningfully different than it did even a few years ago. Whether you’re building a new store or evaluating whether to move an existing one, here’s where things actually stand in 2026. 

Adobe acquired Magento in 2018 and rebranded it Adobe Commerce in April 2021. The free, self-hosted edition is Magento Open Source; the paid, Adobe-managed edition is Adobe Commerce (available on-premise or as Adobe Commerce Cloud). Most people in the industry still say “Magento” out of habit, but it’s worth knowing the current names, especially since Adobe’s own long-term investment has increasingly shifted toward positioning Commerce as part of its broader Experience Cloud, rather than as a standalone platform. 

That shift in Adobe’s priorities is part of why the market itself has moved. Adobe Commerce today powers roughly 130,000 live stores, a figure declining by an estimated 11% year over year. Shopify, by contrast, has crossed 2.66 million live stores, continuing double-digit growth. The trend line matters as much as the current snapshot. 

Factor	Adobe Commerce	Shopify
Total cost of ownership	Higher: 5-year TCO for mid-enterprise commonly estimated at $1M–$3M; licensing alone runs $22,000–$200,000+/year	Lower: 5-year TCO for comparable scale commonly estimated at $500K–$1M; core plans run $39–$2,300+/month
B2B capability	Historically the stronger native B2B platform, especially for complex, highly customized pricing and catalog logic	Has closed much of the gap; Shopify Plus B2B is mature, and as of April 2026 core B2B features (company profiles, price lists, net terms) run on Basic, Grow, and Advanced too
Implementation speed	Generally slower: greater flexibility comes with more custom development	Generally faster: per Shopify’s own Time to Value report, migrations to Shopify implement roughly 25% faster and are 53% more likely to land on time
Developer availability	Shrinking talent pool as the ecosystem contracts	Larger, growing developer and partner ecosystem
Flexibility / customization ceiling	Highest: full codebase control, no platform-imposed limits	High but bounded: Shopify Functions and headless (Hydrogen) close much of the gap, but very deep, non-standard customization still favors Adobe Commerce

Implementation-speed and some TCO figures originate from Shopify’s own commissioned research and Time to Value report; they’re widely cited but worth reading as Shopify-sourced rather than fully independent. 

The comparison isn’t a clean sweep in either direction. Adobe Commerce remains the stronger choice for businesses with complex B2B pricing logic that predates what Shopify’s native B2B catalogs support, catalogs above roughly 50,000 SKUs, deeply nested multi-region product structures, and organizations with senior in-house Magento development teams who can absorb the platform’s higher engineering demands. It’s also the more natural fit for businesses already deep in the Adobe Experience Cloud ecosystem (Adobe Experience Manager, Real-Time CDP, and Analytics), where keeping commerce inside that same stack has real integration value. 

The dominant platform migration direction in 2025–2026 is from Adobe Commerce to Shopify Plus: an estimated 520 stores make that move in any given 90-day window. Three forces are driving it: rising Adobe Commerce total cost of ownership as licensing and hosting costs climb, a shrinking supply of experienced Magento developers as the ecosystem contracts, and Shopify’s steadily expanding enterprise and B2B feature set closing the functional gap that used to justify staying on Magento. 

None of that means Magento has become a bad platform overnight; many of the businesses still running it are doing so successfully. It means the calculus has shifted, and for a large share of merchants, the math that used to favor Magento no longer does. 

A full enterprise-level Adobe Commerce to Shopify Plus migration typically takes 6 to 18 months and includes several distinct phases: data migration (products, customers, order history), SEO preservation (redirects, URL structure, metadata), design recreation on Shopify’s architecture, and integration rebuilding for any ERP, PIM, or third-party systems connected to the old store. Cost commonly falls in the $25,000–$150,000+ range for complex stores, varying with catalog size, customization depth, and integration count. 

Smaller, less customized Magento stores can move considerably faster and more affordably. The scope of the migration, not the decision to migrate, is usually what determines timeline and cost. 

A few questions help clarify the right path: 

1. How complex is your current B2B pricing and catalog structure: does it genuinely exceed what Shopify’s native B2B tools now support? 
2. What’s your current Adobe Commerce total cost of ownership, including licensing, hosting, and developer costs, and how does that compare to a realistic Shopify Plus estimate? 
3. How reliably can you find and retain Magento development talent for your team or agency? 
4. Are you deeply invested in the broader Adobe Experience Cloud ecosystem in ways that would be costly to unwind? 

If your answers point toward rising costs, shrinking talent access, and B2B needs Shopify can now meet, migration is very likely worth seriously evaluating. If your business genuinely depends on the flexibility only a fully custom, code-level platform provides, Adobe Commerce may still be the right long-term home. 

i95Dev supports businesses on both platforms (Adobe Commerce development and Shopify development), which means our guidance on this comparison isn’t tied to selling one over the other. If you’re evaluating a migration, our eCommerce Platform Migration & Upgrade services cover the full process: data migration, SEO preservation, design recreation, and integration rebuilding. 

The Magento-vs-Shopify comparison looks very different in 2026 than it did when platform debates like this one were first being written. Adobe Commerce hasn’t disappeared, and it’s still the right platform for a real, if narrower, set of complex-enterprise businesses. But for most companies evaluating a new build or reconsidering an existing one, the trend, and the math, currently favors Shopify.