Quick answer: Shopify is the better choice for most UK businesses under £10M in annual revenue. Adobe Commerce (Magento) licence fees start at around $22,000 a year with total cost of ownership typically $120,000–$450,000 once you add hosting, development, and extensions. Shopify runs from £25/month, Shopify Plus from around £2,000/month all-in. Adobe Commerce still wins for complex B2B, heavy customisation, or businesses with an in-house development team.
The Short Version
Magento — now sold as Adobe Commerce — and Shopify are both serious enterprise ecommerce platforms. But they represent opposite philosophies. Adobe Commerce is a framework you build on: total flexibility, total responsibility, significant cost. Shopify is a product you configure: opinionated, fast, and the platform handles the infrastructure so you do not have to.
We say this as a Shopify Partner agency that migrates stores off Magento. We see what merchants are actually spending, what they are actually using, and what breaks. This comparison is based on that experience.
Naming: Magento vs Adobe Commerce
Adobe bought Magento in 2018 and rebranded the paid edition as Adobe Commerce. There are now three things people mean when they say "Magento":
Magento Open Source (formerly Magento Community Edition) — free to download, self-hosted, no licence fee. You pay for everything else.
Adobe Commerce (formerly Magento Commerce / Enterprise Edition) — the paid, licensed version with B2B modules, page builder, content staging, and enterprise support.
Adobe Commerce Cloud — Adobe Commerce with hosting bundled in on Adobe-managed AWS infrastructure. In 2026 Adobe also launched a SaaS edition (ACCS) and a modular "Commerce Optimizer" product.
When people compare "Magento vs Shopify" they usually mean Open Source. When they compare "Adobe Commerce vs Shopify Plus" they mean the enterprise editions. This page covers both.
Pricing
Magento Open Source
Licence: £0. But free to download does not mean free to run. You need hosting capable of handling Magento's resource demands (£50–£500+/month for anything serious), a developer or agency on retainer for security patches and updates (£1,000–£5,000/month is typical), extensions for functionality Shopify includes natively (£500–£5,000/year), and someone to manage PCI compliance, SSL, backups, and performance. Realistic all-in cost for a mid-size UK store: £20,000–£60,000 per year.
Adobe Commerce
Licence: from approximately $22,000/year (on-premise) or $40,000/year (Cloud). Adobe does not publish pricing — it is quote-based and scales with your Gross Merchandise Value and Average Order Value. Agency and partner reports for 2026 put on-premise licences at $22,000–$125,000/year and Cloud at $40,000–$200,000/year. Total cost of ownership including implementation, extensions, and maintenance is typically 2–3× the licence: $120,000–$450,000 per year.
Shopify
Basic: £25/month. Standard: £65/month. Advanced: £344/month. No turnover caps. Hosting, security, PCI compliance, CDN, and updates all included.
Shopify Plus: from approximately $2,300/month on a three-year term, or $2,500 month-to-month, scaling with volume above certain thresholds. That is roughly £22,000–£24,000 per year for enterprise-grade infrastructure, checkout customisation, B2B features, and dedicated support — before you add a single developer.
The comparison that matters: a business doing £2M a year on Adobe Commerce Cloud is likely spending £100,000+ annually across licence, hosting, and development. The same business on Shopify Plus spends £22,000–£40,000 including a part-time developer. The difference funds a marketing hire.
Where Adobe Commerce Is Stronger
Complex B2B. Adobe Commerce's native B2B module — company accounts, shared catalogues, negotiated quotes, purchase approvals, requisition lists — is more mature than Shopify B2B. If you sell to businesses with complex procurement workflows, this is a genuine advantage.
Unlimited customisation. You own the code. Any feature, any workflow, any integration is possible if you can build it. Shopify has limits — checkout customisation on non-Plus plans, certain data model constraints — that Adobe Commerce does not.
Multi-store from one backend. Adobe Commerce runs many storefronts with different domains, catalogues, and pricing from a single admin. Shopify's equivalent (Shopify Markets, or multiple stores) is functional but architecturally different.
Data ownership. Self-hosted means your data lives where you put it. For businesses with strict data residency or regulatory requirements, that matters.
No revenue-based fees. Shopify Plus pricing scales with volume above a threshold. Adobe Commerce licence fees also scale with GMV, so this is less of a differentiator than it used to be — but Open Source has no volume-based cost at all.
Where Shopify Is Stronger
Total cost of ownership. Covered above. For the vast majority of businesses under £10M revenue, Shopify is 3–5× cheaper to run once you count everything.
Speed to market. A Shopify store launches in days or weeks. An Adobe Commerce build is 3–6 months and £50,000–£200,000. Every feature change on Adobe Commerce is a development ticket; on Shopify most are a theme setting or an app install.
Security and maintenance. Magento has a long history of critical vulnerabilities. Magento 1 reached end-of-life in June 2020 and thousands of stores still run it unpatched. Adobe Commerce requires disciplined patching; Shopify handles security centrally and you never think about it.
Checkout conversion. Shop Pay converts up to 36% better than guest checkout according to Shopify's data, and Shopify's checkout is the most optimised in the industry across 4 million+ merchants. Adobe Commerce checkout is customisable but starts from a lower baseline.
App ecosystem. 8,000+ apps versus Adobe's marketplace of several thousand extensions — but Shopify apps are vetted, actively maintained, and rarely break on platform updates. Magento extension conflicts are a well-known source of pain.
Performance. Shopify's infrastructure handles Black Friday traffic for the biggest brands in the world without you provisioning anything. Adobe Commerce performance depends entirely on your hosting and how well it was built.
Multi-channel and international. Shopify Markets, native Meta/Google/TikTok/Amazon integrations, and POS are built in. Adobe Commerce can do all of this but each is an integration project.
Market share and momentum. According to 6sense, Shopify holds around 21% of the global ecommerce platform market with over 970,000 customers. Adobe Commerce and Magento combined are under 2% and declining. The developer talent pool, agency ecosystem, and app investment follow the platform with momentum.
Quick Comparison
| Adobe Commerce / Magento | Shopify / Shopify Plus | |
|---|---|---|
| Licence cost | £0 (Open Source) or $22k–$200k/yr (Adobe Commerce) | £25–£344/mo, Plus from ~$2,300/mo |
| Hosting | Self-managed or Adobe Cloud (bundled in Cloud licence) | Included |
| Realistic annual TCO (£2M store) | £100,000–£250,000 | £22,000–£40,000 |
| Time to launch | 3–6 months | Days to weeks |
| Security patching | Your responsibility | Handled by Shopify |
| PCI compliance | Your responsibility | Included |
| B2B features | Mature native module | Shopify B2B (Plus) — improving fast |
| Customisation | Unlimited (you own the code) | Extensive via themes, apps, APIs; some checkout limits on non-Plus |
| Apps / extensions | ~3,000 (variable quality) | 8,000+ (vetted) |
| Accelerated checkout | Third-party | Shop Pay (native) |
| Multi-store | Native, single admin | Shopify Markets or multiple stores |
| International selling | Requires configuration | Shopify Markets (native) |
| POS | Third-party | Shopify POS (native) |
| Developer availability (UK) | Shrinking, expensive | Large, competitive |
| Market share (6sense) | <2% and declining | ~21% and growing |
| Migration to Shopify | Fixed £4,999 — see the finished store before you pay | |
Who Should Stay on Adobe Commerce
If you have complex B2B procurement workflows that Shopify B2B cannot yet handle, an in-house development team that knows the platform, deep custom integrations that would cost more to rebuild than to maintain, or revenue above £20M where the licence cost is a rounding error — stay. Adobe Commerce is a capable enterprise platform when it is properly resourced.
If you are on Magento Open Source with a good developer and a stable store, and you are not fighting it — there is no urgent reason to move. The case for migration is strongest when the platform is costing you money or momentum.
Who Should Move to Shopify
You are on Magento 1. It has been end-of-life since June 2020. No security patches. Every month you stay is a risk to your customers' data and your PCI compliance.
Your development costs are out of proportion to your revenue. If you are spending £3,000+/month on an agency retainer just to keep the lights on, that money is better spent on Shopify Plus plus marketing.
Every change is a project. If updating a homepage banner or adding a payment method takes a developer ticket and a week, the platform is slowing you down.
You cannot find developers. Magento talent is increasingly scarce and expensive in the UK. Shopify developers are plentiful.
You are under £10M revenue and do not need the B2B module. At that scale, Adobe Commerce's cost is almost never justified by capability you actually use.
Your site is slow and you are told it is a hosting problem. It probably is — and it is a problem Shopify does not have.
How We Handle Magento to Shopify Migration
We are a Shopify Partner agency. Our migration covers product data export and restructuring (including complex configurable products and custom attributes), customer data, order history, 301 redirect mapping to preserve your search rankings, a custom Shopify theme build, and go-live with zero downtime.
Fixed price: £4,999. We build your complete Shopify store first — you review the finished result before you pay. Typical timeline is two to three weeks. Our largest single migration moved 6,400 products using an automated pipeline.
Not sure if you need Shopify Plus? Most Magento merchants moving over do not — Shopify Advanced covers the majority of use cases, and Plus is only necessary for checkout customisation, B2B, or very high volume. We will tell you honestly which tier fits.
Last updated: September 2026. Adobe Commerce pricing based on published 2026 partner and agency benchmarks; Shopify pricing verified against shopify.com.
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