Magento vs Shopify vs BigCommerce

Shopify is the easiest platform to launch on and has the largest app ecosystem; BigCommerce is a hosted (SaaS) platform with more features built in and no transaction fees when you use a supported payment provider; Magento (Adobe Commerce) gives you the most control because you host and code it yourself, but it needs a developer. The right choice depends on whether you value speed, built-in depth, or total control. Shopify holds roughly 29% of the US ecommerce platform market and about 10% globally as of 2025, according to Statista’s US ecommerce platform data and BuiltWith trends, while Magento and BigCommerce trail well behind Shopify on store count across the BuiltWith ecommerce technology trends.

Key Takeaways: Shopify leads on ease of launch and app selection and runs about 29% of the US ecommerce market (Statista, 2025). BigCommerce is hosted like Shopify but charges no fee on supported gateways and bundles in more features. Magento Open Source is free, self-hosted, and endlessly customisable, but you pay for hosting, development, and upkeep. Pick by your constraint: time, budget, or control.

How do Magento, Shopify, and BigCommerce compare at a glance?

The core split is hosting model: Shopify and BigCommerce host your store for you (SaaS), while Magento makes you find your own hosting and manage the software. That single difference drives most of the cost, security, and skill-level differences below.

Sources: Shopify pricing, BigCommerce pricing, Adobe Commerce release notes. Pricing changes often; verify the live pages before quoting figures to a client.

What is the difference between SaaS and self-hosted ecommerce?

SaaS means the platform runs your store on its own servers and handles updates, security patches, and uptime; self-hosted means you install the software on hosting you rent and you own every one of those jobs. Shopify and BigCommerce are SaaS. Magento Open Source is self-hosted (Adobe Commerce adds a paid managed-cloud option on top).

This is the decision underneath all the others. With SaaS, you trade some control for not having to think about server load, PCI compliance scans, or applying the next security release the week it ships. With self-hosted Magento, you get full control of the code and database, but you (or your agency) are responsible for hosting that can handle traffic spikes, for applying security patches promptly, and for keeping PHP and the database on supported versions.

The clearest predictor of which model fits is not company size but who will own the store day to day. If that person writes code or you have an agency on retainer, Magento’s control becomes an asset. If the owner is a founder or marketer who needs to ship a sale this afternoon, SaaS removes the work that would otherwise sit unfinished.

How much does each platform actually cost?

Published subscription prices only tell part of the story, because the real cost includes payment fees, apps, and, for Magento, hosting and development. Shopify’s plans run Basic $29, Grow $99, and Advanced $399 a month, with Shopify Plus starting near $2,300 a month (Shopify pricing). BigCommerce rebranded its plans to Core $39, Growth $105, and Scale $399, with a Performance/Enterprise tier from about $1,499 a month (BigCommerce pricing).

Magento Open Source has no licence fee, but that “free” is the software only. A production Magento store typically carries managed hosting, a developer or agency to build and maintain it, and extension costs. Adobe Commerce, the paid tier, is quoted per business and commonly lands in five to six figures a year for mid-market and enterprise sellers.

The honest framing: Shopify and BigCommerce are cheaper to start and predictable to budget; Magento can be cheaper at very large scale once you have an in-house team, but it’s rarely the low-cost option for a small store.

Which platform charges transaction fees?

Shopify charges an extra platform fee, on top of normal card-processing rates, when you use a third-party payment gateway instead of Shopify Payments: 2% on Basic, 1% on Grow, 0.6% on Advanced, and 0.2% on Plus (Shopify pricing). Use Shopify Payments and that extra fee disappears, which is why most Shopify merchants do.

BigCommerce historically marketed “no transaction fees” as a headline advantage, and it still charges no platform fee when you use a supported (embedded) gateway such as Stripe, PayPal, or Klarna (BigCommerce pricing). Worth flagging for 2026: BigCommerce now applies “open payment provider” fees (around 2%/1%/0.6% by plan) when you use a non-embedded processor outside its supported list, so the old blanket “zero transaction fees” claim no longer holds in every case. Verify your specific gateway against the supported list before assuming zero.

Magento takes no cut at all. You connect whatever gateway you want and pay only that provider’s processing rate. For high-volume sellers, removing a platform percentage from every order is one of the strongest arguments for self-hosted Magento.

Which is easiest to set up and use?

Shopify is the easiest, by a clear margin. You can sign up, pick a theme, add products, and take a real payment the same day with no code. BigCommerce is close behind; it’s a hosted platform with a similarly guided setup, though its admin exposes more settings, which can feel busier to a first-time user. Both let a non-technical owner run the store.

Magento sits at the other end. Even a basic Magento Open Source install needs server provisioning, command-line setup, and familiarity with PHP, Composer, and a database. The reward for that effort is control, not convenience. Magento 2.4.8 requires PHP 8.3 or 8.4, MariaDB 11.4 or MySQL 8.4, and OpenSearch, so keeping a store current is ongoing engineering work, not a one-off.

For a side-by-side on the two-way version of this decision, see our guides to Magento vs Shopify and the pros and cons of Magento.

How well does each platform scale?

All three scale to serious volume, but they get there differently. Shopify scales by moving you up its plans and ultimately to Shopify Plus, which handles high-traffic flash sales and large catalogues on Shopify’s own infrastructure. You never touch a server.

BigCommerce scales similarly and ties plan tiers to your trailing-twelve-month sales: a Core store automatically upgrades toward Growth as you cross roughly $30,000 in annual sales, and Growth toward Scale near $100,000 (BigCommerce pricing). That keeps the platform matched to your size, though it also means revenue growth raises your subscription automatically.

Magento’s ceiling is the highest in raw terms, because you control the hosting. A well-architected Magento store on strong infrastructure can run very large catalogues and complex B2B logic. The catch is that the scaling work is yours: you size the servers, tune caching, and fix the bottlenecks. Scale is available, but it isn’t automatic.

Which platform is best for SEO and customisation?

For day-to-day SEO, all three cover the essentials: editable titles and meta descriptions, clean URLs, sitemaps, and mobile-responsive themes. The difference is how much you can change. Shopify and BigCommerce give you strong, guided SEO controls, but Shopify imposes some fixed URL structures (for example, the /products/ and /collections/ path segments) that you cannot remove.

Magento gives you full control over every element: URL structure, server-level redirects, page templates, structured data, and Core Web Vitals optimisation down to the code. If your SEO strategy depends on bespoke URL architecture or heavy technical tuning, that control matters. For most stores, though, Shopify’s and BigCommerce’s built-in tools are enough, and the technical SEO basics matter more than the platform. See our notes on why a site might not show up on Google for the fundamentals that apply on any platform.

On customisation, the order mirrors hosting: Magento offers the most (you can change anything in the code), BigCommerce offers more native settings and open APIs, and Shopify relies on its theme language plus its large app store for anything beyond the defaults.

Who handles security and PCI compliance?

On Shopify and BigCommerce, the platform handles security: PCI DSS compliance, SSL, server patching, and uptime are theirs to manage, included in the subscription. That’s a real advantage for a small team with no security staff. If a vulnerability is found in the platform, they patch it for every store at once.

On Magento, security is your responsibility. You apply Adobe’s security releases, keep PHP and the database on supported versions, harden the server, and maintain PCI compliance for your hosting environment. Magento publishes patches promptly, but an unpatched Magento store is a known target. This is the most underestimated cost of self-hosting: the work doesn’t end at launch. Budgeting for a maintenance retainer is part of choosing Magento honestly, not an optional extra.

How big is each platform’s app and extension ecosystem?

Shopify has the largest ecosystem, with over 8,000 apps in its App Store covering everything from reviews to subscriptions to shipping, which is a major reason non-technical owners pick it: most gaps are filled by installing an app rather than writing code. BigCommerce has a smaller but growing marketplace, and because it exposes more functionality natively, you often need fewer add-ons to reach the same result.

Magento’s Marketplace offers a large library of free and paid extensions, plus the option to build anything custom because you control the code. The trade-off repeats: Shopify’s ecosystem is broader and easier to use; Magento’s is deeper and more flexible but assumes development capability. For migration planning between systems, our Magento website migration guide covers what carries over and what has to be rebuilt.