Which fits your store: Shopify Plus or Magento Open Source
Choose Shopify Plus if you want a hosted platform with published uptime, managed checkout and a fast launch, and your team has limited in-house engineering to run servers. Choose Magento Open Source if your catalog and B2B pricing logic have outgrown the app store, or if you need direct control over where checkout runs and where customer data lives, and you have engineers or a partner to operate it. The decision turns less on features than on who will run hosting, security patching and extensions after launch.
Shopify Plus fits merchants who want the vendor to carry infrastructure. Shopify states 99.99% uptime on average on its Shopify Plus page, and checkout, hosting and platform upgrades sit with Shopify. Magento Open Source fits merchants with deep catalog structures, custom B2B rules such as negotiated price lists or approval flows, or a requirement to keep checkout and payment handling under their own control. In that case you take on the server stack, the caching layer, the search service and the upgrade path. Confirm with your engineering lead whether that work already has an owner.
Magento Open Source source files are licensed under OSL-3.0, so the software itself carries no license fee. It is not free to operate. Hosting, performance tuning, extension selection, security patching and PCI-related controls are paid for in staff time or partner fees, and they recur every year. Adobe Commerce is the paid edition of the same codebase, with commercial support and cloud options. Ask any partner to quote the run costs separately from the build, and ask which Magento release line they will keep you on and who applies its security patches.
Which platform fits which merchant scenario
This table maps six common merchant scenarios to the platform that usually fits better and the condition that would change the answer. Read each row as a starting point for your own requirements, then test the conditions against your catalog, team and compliance obligations. The main takeaway is that Shopify Plus usually wins on speed and managed operations, while Magento Open Source usually wins on control, catalog depth and data placement, at the cost of owning hosting, patching and extensions.
| Scenario | Better fit | Why and what changes the answer |
|---|---|---|
| Fast launch with a small team | Shopify Plus | Hosting, checkout, PCI-scoped infrastructure and uptime are managed by Shopify. Magento Open Source changes the answer only if you already have a partner or in-house team ready to run the stack from day one. |
| Large catalog with complex attributes | Magento Open Source | Magento's EAV-based attribute model and indexing give you more control over large, attribute-heavy catalogs. Confirm indexing and search performance with a load test on your own data before deciding. |
| B2B with custom pricing and approval flows | Magento Open Source | Customer groups, negotiated pricing and custom approval logic can be built as code you own. Shopify Plus fits if your B2B rules stay within its native and app-based options; check each required rule against both platforms. |
| Strict data residency | Magento Open Source | Self-hosting lets you choose the region, data centers and access controls. Shopify Plus can meet some residency needs through its own terms, so confirm the hosting location and data processing terms in writing with Shopify. |
| Merchant with an in-house engineering team | Magento Open Source | Your engineers can own upgrades, extensions and custom modules. The answer changes if the team cannot commit to ongoing patching, PHP and dependency upgrades, and on-call coverage. |
| Merchant that needs managed, PCI-friendly hosted checkout | Shopify Plus | Hosted checkout keeps much of the card data flow with the provider, which narrows your PCI scope. Magento Open Source can also reach a reduced scope with a hosted payment integration, but the server, scripts and configuration remain your responsibility to assess. |
Who controls data, hosting and uptime on each side
Shopify Plus keeps hosting and uptime with Shopify, which states 99.99% uptime on average on its Shopify Plus page. Your team does not run servers, patch the platform core, or decide where the storefront is served from. The trade-off is that your control over data location, network boundaries and the platform's release timing is limited to what Shopify exposes. Before you decide, ask Shopify in writing which data residency and hosting regions apply to your store, and which of its security attestations cover the services you use. Magento Open Source reverses this arrangement: the availability target, backups, disaster recovery, PCI DSS scope and the security patch schedule belong to you or your partner. Uptime is whatever your architecture, hosting contract and on-call process deliver, so put a documented availability target and a tested restore procedure into the project plan.
Self-hosting gives you direct control over where data lives, including the database, search index, media storage and logs, and which cloud account or data center holds them. It also means you own identity and access: administrator accounts, role assignments in the Magento admin, API integration tokens, and the hosting provider's console access should each be tied to named owners and reviewed on a schedule. A concrete example of a control you own is Content Security Policy. Adobe's developer documentation says Magento Open Source supports CSP headers from 2.3.5, and from 2.4.7 CSP runs in restrict mode by default on storefront and admin payment pages. Your team must test that policy against every payment iframe, analytics tag and third-party script before go-live, because a restrictive policy can break checkout silently.
DeployOpen plans, implements, hardens and documents these controls in your own infrastructure, and prepares the evidence an assessor will ask for, such as configuration baselines, access reviews and backup test records. DeployOpen does not issue audit reports, attestations or certifications. Independent auditors and certification bodies perform those assessments, so confirm early which assessor and which framework your organization needs, and agree the evidence list with them before the build starts.
Operating models: in-house team or partner-run store
An in-house model keeps every role on your payroll or on contractors you manage directly. The team owns the Magento codebase, the hosting estate and the release calendar, so it also owns the quality of each upgrade. Magento Open Source 2.4.9 is documented against a specific stack: PHP 8.5, MySQL 8.4 or MariaDB 12.3 (recommended) or 11.8, OpenSearch 3, Redis or Valkey 9, RabbitMQ 4.3, Composer 2.10 and nginx 1.30 on Linux x86-64. Adobe supports only the listed combinations, so each platform component that moves forces a test cycle.
- Core skills: PHP and Magento architecture, including modules, plugins, observers and the service contract layer.
- DevOps and infrastructure: Linux administration, container or VM builds, search, cache, queue and database tuning, and monitoring.
- Security and PCI: patch management, Content Security Policy tuning, access control and evidence for PCI DSS scope.
- One-time work: hiring or onboarding, the initial build, the migration and the first hardening pass.
- Recurring work: minor and patch releases, the annual LTS patch cycle, extension compatibility checks and on-call coverage.
Confirm with Adobe's lifecycle and schedule pages which 2.4.x line you will run and when its regular support ends, then size the team against that calendar rather than against a single launch date.",
A retained partner model contracts an implementation firm for the build and then keeps it on a service agreement for upgrades, patching, monitoring and incident support. Your internal staff remain the product owners who decide priorities. The partner brings the platform skills and the testing routine, while you keep control over the budget and the scope of each change. DeployOpen offers this kind of ongoing support as a retainer, with scope agreed in writing.
- Fixed build scope: a written statement of work covering the migration, theme or headless storefront, integrations and go-live.
- Recurring retainer: patch and minor upgrades, stack compatibility testing, backup verification and security reviews.
- Partner-held skills: PHP and Magento architecture, DevOps and hardening, with PCI evidence support.
- Retained knowledge: runbooks and architecture records that let your staff take the work back if the contract ends.
- Internal role: a product owner and a technical contact who approve releases and own business decisions.
Ask each prospective partner how it tests against the full 2.4.9 stack, who is on call, and who owns the PCI evidence. Confirm exit terms, including code and documentation handover.",
A hybrid model splits the work by layer. Your in-house team keeps custom modules, the storefront and business logic, while a partner runs the platform layer: the servers, search, cache, queue, database, CSP configuration and upgrade rehearsals. This suits organizations that want deep product knowledge in-house but do not want to hire the full DevOps and security bench. The boundary between the two groups must be written down, or incidents fall between them.
- Split by layer: define which team owns the application code, the infrastructure, the security baseline and the release gate.
- Shared runbooks: one incident process, one change calendar and one owner for each dependency, such as OpenSearch or RabbitMQ.
- Upgrade workload: the partner rehearses each stack move in a staging copy, while the in-house team fixes custom module breakage.
- Skills to keep internal: Magento architecture and PHP for custom code, plus product and checkout knowledge.
- Cost pattern: the build is partly one-time, and the recurring cost is a smaller retainer plus internal payroll.
Check who signs off on PCI evidence and who approves a production upgrade, because those two decisions should never sit with only one side.
Cost components on each side and what drives them
Shopify Plus bundles hosting, checkout and platform upkeep into a recurring subscription, while self-hosted Magento Open Source moves those costs to your own team or partner. The cards below separate one-time build work from recurring operating costs, and name the drivers that move each line up or down.
Platform licence or subscription
Shopify Plus is a recurring subscription that covers the hosted platform. Magento Open Source has no licence fee for the source files, which are licensed under OSL-3.0 and AFL 3.0, but Adobe Commerce is a separate paid edition with cloud hosting and AI merchandising. Ask whether your business case needs any Adobe Commerce features, because that changes this line entirely. Recurring cost is then mostly labor and infrastructure.
Hosting, CDN and page caching
On self-hosted Magento you pay for compute, database, search, Redis or Valkey, RabbitMQ and a full-page cache, and you size them yourself. Adobe documents Varnish for self-managed installations, while cloud-hosted Adobe Commerce uses Fastly. Traffic peaks, catalog size and the number of storefront and admin nodes drive this line. Shopify Plus includes hosting in the subscription, so compare it with your infrastructure bill plus the people who run it.
Build and migration
This is largely one-time work: theme or storefront build, catalog and customer import, URL redirects, and integration rebuilds. Shopify's product CSV excludes images, so budget for re-importing images from public URLs before you retire the live store. Catalog depth, custom pricing, B2B logic and the number of Shopify apps you replace all raise this cost. Ask any partner for a fixed-scope quote with named deliverables.
Extensions and themes
Shopify apps carry monthly fees that recur for as long as you use them. On Magento, many capabilities come from extensions or custom modules, which may be paid, free or built in-house. Each extension adds a recurring compatibility and upgrade task, because it must be retested against every Magento release you adopt. Count the apps you use today and the custom work each one would need.
Payment fees and PCI scope
Card processing fees are charged by the payment provider on either platform, so compare the same rates on both sides. The difference is PCI scope: a hosted checkout narrows what your systems handle, while a self-hosted store that touches payment pages or scripts keeps more of the assessment with you. Magento 2.4.7 runs Content Security Policy in restrict mode on payment pages by default, which you should test against your provider's scripts. Confirm the responsibility split with your assessor before you set the budget.
Security patching and upgrades
This recurring cost is the one most often missed. Adobe gives each 2.4.x release three years of standard support from general availability, and security patches ship at least annually across supported lines, so plan an upgrade cycle on that rhythm. Each cycle means testing PHP, database, search and cache versions together. Your team or partner owns this work for the life of the store.
Support and in-house skills
Shopify Plus includes vendor support in the subscription. With Magento, support comes from your in-house team, a partner retainer, or a community ecosystem, and you pay for each. Ask any provider what hours, response targets and escalation paths the retainer includes, and who holds the on-call duty. Multi-year modeling of these recurring lines is covered on the sibling cost page.
What a move from Shopify Plus to Magento involves
The sequence turns a hosted Shopify Plus store into a self-hosted Magento Open Source store that you can test, launch and run without losing catalog, customer or order continuity. Each step ends with a check that tells you whether the next one can start.
Inventory catalog, apps and integrations
Your team, with the implementation partner if one is engaged, lists every product type, variant rule, collection, customer segment, discount, app, theme customization, and external system such as ERP, shipping or tax. Each Shopify app is marked as needing a Magento extension, a custom module, or no longer being required. The output is a written inventory signed off by the business owner, which becomes the scope baseline for the build.
Export products, customers and orders
Export products, customers and orders from the Shopify admin and, where the CSV falls short, through the Admin API. Shopify's product CSV does not include product images, so keep the original store live until a new store has imported images from their public URLs. The customer CSV is limited to 15 MB, so large customer bases need to be split into multiple exports. The check is a row-count reconciliation between Shopify and the staging import for each file.
Map apps to Magento extensions or custom modules
For each app on the inventory, decide whether a maintained Magento extension covers the need, whether a custom module is required, or whether the feature should be dropped. Review licensing and support status of every extension before purchase or adoption, and confirm compatibility with the Magento version you will run. The output is a decision register with one owner and one acceptance test per capability, which your architects and QA can rely on.
Rebuild checkout, payments and tax setup
Configure the checkout flow, payment gateways, tax rules and shipping methods in the Magento environment, and confirm with your payment provider which integration model and PCI responsibilities apply to a self-hosted store. Shopify Checkout behavior, including its hosted payment pages, does not transfer automatically. The check is a set of end-to-end test transactions across each payment method, currency and region, with results recorded for audit.
Set URL redirects and SEO continuity
Build a mapping of every Shopify product, collection, page and blog URL to its Magento equivalent, and implement permanent redirects in the new store. Compare the mapping against search console data and the top landing pages to confirm nothing important is left unmapped. Done means a crawl of the old URL list returns the expected redirect or page for every entry.
Load test and harden the platform
Run load tests against a production-like environment that matches the Magento system requirements for the version you deploy, including the cache, search and queue services. Validate Varnish or your chosen full-page cache, the Content Security Policy configuration, backups and restore, and monitoring alerts. Load testing is complete when the agreed peak traffic scenario meets the response targets set in the scope, and the findings have been fixed or accepted in writing.
Run the new store in parallel
Keep Shopify live while the Magento store receives test orders, staff trials and a limited set of real customers if the business chooses that path. Reconcile orders, inventory and customer accounts daily between the two systems, and confirm that fulfillment, returns and accounting work end to end. The parallel period ends when reconciliation shows no unexplained gaps and operations sign off.
Cut over and operate the new store
Freeze the Shopify catalog and customer data, run the final delta export and import, switch DNS and payment webhooks, and confirm the storefront and checkout are live. Hand operations to the team that will patch Magento, monitor the stack and run backups, and keep the Shopify store available for a documented rollback window. The cutover is complete when the runbook, on-call rota and patch calendar are in place and the first live orders are reconciled.
Questions buyers ask before choosing Magento over Shopify Plus
What does a Magento build cost to run compared with Shopify Plus?
The honest answer depends on which costs you compare, because the two models split them differently. Shopify Plus bundles hosting, platform upkeep and a hosted checkout into a subscription, then adds app fees and payment fees on top. A self-hosted Magento Open Source store has no license fee for the core code, but you pay for hosting and CDN, search and cache services, build and migration work, extensions, PCI scope, security patching and support. Ask any partner for a written breakdown that separates one-time work from recurring items, and ask what drives each line up or down, such as order volume, catalog size and the number of integrations. Use the supplied figures for Shopify's stated 99.99% average uptime as a reference point when you assess who carries uptime risk after migration.
How long does a Magento migration from Shopify Plus take?
Duration depends mainly on catalog size, the number of apps you need to replace, custom checkout logic, the number of integrations, and how much of the storefront is redesigned. Shopify's export tools move products, customers and orders as CSV files, but product images are not in the CSV, so images must be re-imported from their public URLs and the original store should stay live until that is done. Customer exports are capped at 15 MB per file, which adds splitting work for large databases. Apps must be rebuilt as Magento extensions or custom modules, and URL redirects must be planned to protect search traffic. Request a written scope with phases and acceptance criteria before work starts, since no figure for duration is established here.
Can our team run Magento Open Source without an outside partner?
Yes, some teams do, but only if they already have the platform engineering and PHP skills to operate it, and they accept the full operating load. A self-hosted Magento store needs staff who can manage the release train, test patches, keep the supported stack current and respond to incidents. The supported stack is specific: Adobe lists exact combinations of PHP, MySQL or MariaDB, OpenSearch, Redis or Valkey, RabbitMQ, Composer and nginx for each release, and supports only those listed combinations. Many organizations split the work, keeping day-to-day operations in house and bringing in an outside team for the migration, hardening and periodic upgrades. DeployOpen plans, implements, hardens, backs up, upgrades and supports self-hosted platforms in your own infrastructure, with ongoing support available as a retainer.
What skills and roles does a self-hosted Magento store need?
A self-hosted store usually needs a product owner for the catalog and checkout, a backend developer who knows the Magento codebase and its module system, a frontend developer for the storefront theme, a platform or DevOps engineer for hosting, caching and deployment, and a security owner for patching and PCI scope. Adobe's documentation shows the platform is built on PHP with a set of supporting services, so operations skills matter as much as storefront skills. Contributors to the open-source project must also sign the Adobe Contributor License Agreement before submitting code, which matters if you plan to upstream fixes. Ask any partner which of these roles they fill, which you must fill, and how knowledge transfer is documented.
Does Magento Open Source support B2B selling?
Magento Open Source provides basic ecommerce capabilities for building an online store, and Adobe's commercial edition, Adobe Commerce, adds further features. Before choosing Magento for a B2B model, confirm in the Adobe documentation which company accounts, negotiated pricing, quote workflows and approval features are included in the Open Source distribution and which require Adobe Commerce or a third-party extension. Map each B2B requirement from your current Shopify Plus setup to a named feature, a custom module or an extension, and estimate the rebuild work from that map. Do not assume parity from the marketing name alone.
Which Magento version should a new build target?
A new build should target a version that Adobe still supports for the full life of the project. Adobe gives each 2.4.x release three years of standard support from general availability. Magento Open Source 2.4.9 was released in May 2026 and supports PHP 8.5, and Adobe's lifecycle policy lists its end of regular support as May 31, 2029. Version 2.4.8 ends regular support on May 31, 2028, and 2.4.6 on August 11, 2026. Adobe also lists 2.4.10-alpha1 as released on October 13, 2026, but alpha builds are not for production. Confirm the exact target with your partner against the current system requirements and release schedule before you commit.
How do security headers and caching change after a move to self-hosted Magento?
After a move, you own the cache layer and the security headers that Shopify previously handled. Adobe documents Varnish as the full-page cache accelerator for self-managed installations, while cloud-hosted Adobe Commerce uses Fastly instead, so the choice of hosting model changes what you configure. Magento Open Source supports Content Security Policy headers from version 2.3.5, and from 2.4.7 the policy runs in restrict mode by default on storefront and admin payment pages, which can break third-party scripts if they are not allowed. Ask your team or partner to test checkout and payment pages against the policy before launch.
How DeployOpen works on this
DeployOpen plans, implements, customizes, integrates, hardens, backs up, upgrades, documents and supports self-hosted open-source platforms inside your own infrastructure. For a Shopify Plus to Magento Open Source evaluation, we start from your catalog, B2B rules, checkout and payment setup, then build and hand over a store you run yourself.
How we scope
- Engagements are fixed-scope, with scope, deliverables and timelines agreed in writing before work starts.
- We inventory catalog depth, B2B pricing, checkout flows and installed Shopify apps against Magento extension options.
- We confirm the hosting target, PHP, MySQL or MariaDB, OpenSearch, Redis or Valkey and cache design against Adobe's current requirements.
How we build
- We install and configure Magento Open Source in your cloud account, data center or air-gapped network.
- We map Shopify product, customer and order exports to Magento data, and test image re-import from public URLs.
- We set up redirects, payment integrations, Content Security Policy settings and security testing before launch.
How we hand over
- You receive architecture, runbooks, configuration records and the evidence needed for your own compliance assessments.
- We document patching steps for each Magento release line so your team knows what to apply and when.
- Handover covers backup and restore procedures, with restore tests run and recorded before the store goes live.
How we support
- Ongoing support, upgrades and continuous security testing are available as retainers after handover.
- Retainers can cover Magento patch releases, extension updates and infrastructure changes as your catalog grows.
- DeployOpen prepares systems and evidence for assessments but does not issue audit reports or certifications.
