What’s the difference between Magento, Drupal Commerce, and Shopify?

What’s the difference between Magento, Drupal Commerce, and Shopify?

Leigh Anderson
Thought byLeigh Anderson
August 07, 2018
Header of Magento, Drupal Commerce and Shopify blog

Magento, Drupal Commerce, and Shopify are all excellent eCommerce solutions for a Drupal platform. Each solution is better equipped to deal with specific problems, which is why at FFW we recommend evaluating eCommerce needs on a case-by-case basis.

Magento, Drupal Commerce, and Shopify: A quick guide to each

Magento is an enterprise eCommerce software that offers both free (open source) and proprietary licensing models. Magento Inc., and its enterprise platform, Magento Commerce, was recently acquired by Adobe, but Magento Open Source remains free to install on an OS license.

For organizations looking for a platform rich in strong commerce tools, Magento is an industry standard. However, even though it's a very powerful platform, Magento can sometimes lack in flexibility. There's a large technical overhead in terms of resources required to build and maintain a Magento site, but for organizations with complex or advanced eCommerce needs, Magento can be a great choice.

Drupal Commerce (also called Commerce 2) is Drupal’s native eCommerce system, which means that it’s a suite of eCommerce modules that developers can easily install on top of a Drupal platform. It’s a great option when an organization is building a commerce site from the ground up, and because it’s a Drupal distribution, it means that it can be built and managed by a single team. Drupal Commerce doesn’t focus as much on what comes out of the box, but what you can build with it.

In comparison to Magento, Drupal Commerce offers fewer advanced commerce management features. However, its code base is as extensible as Drupal itself, which makes it an excellent choice for organizations that want to have a highly integrated, highly flexible CMS and eCommerce platform.

Shopify is a leading Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) eCommerce platform with excellent support for brick-and-mortar stores, Shopify can be an excellent choice. Shopify provides its own payment gateway (Shopify Payments), and provides tools so that organizations can implement a mobile-based register with Shopify POS.

Since Shopify is fully proprietary and is self-hosted, it’s not an ideal platform for organizations that need to retain total control over all of their data. However, for organizations that need to integrate an eCommerce system with a pre-existing platform, Shopify can be an excellent choice for managing all commerce functionality

Which is best?

When it comes to eCommerce for Drupal, there is no single, one-size-fits-all solution. If you’re trying to choose an eCommerce platform for your Drupal site, check out our new eBook: Comparing Magento, Drupal Commerce, and Shopify for Drupal

For help evaluating which eCommerce platform is right for you, contact us. Our team is here to help you identify your needs and design a platform that will help you accelerate your business.