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Is it time to drop Shopify?

Trying to decide between Shopify and open source? Explore the drawbacks of Shopify and the benefits of managed Magento hosting.

High heels and sneakers are sold in an online store, a chart shows $40,568 in sales today, and other fashion items for sale

Why Shopify is losing to open source

Fees for everything
Shallow support
Sneaky limitations
Codependent for life
Development challenges

Compare ecommerce features and benefits

See the difference between Shopify and open source managed Magento hosting
Key features

Nexcess

Starting at
$21/mo
Unlimited products
App development
Mobile-responsive stores
10+ stores
Transparent infrastructure
Elasticsearch included
Custom checkout experience
Use any framework
Caching control
You own your store 100%
Refunds
Use the same domain
Unlimited subdomains
Complete design customization
Free migrations
Post-cancellation fees
Use any CDN
Free emails
Dedicated hosting options
Free premium support
Open source CMS
Free

Shopify

Starting at
$39/mo
Unlimited products
App development
Mobile-responsive stores
10+ stores
$250 each after 10 stores
Transparent infrastructure
Elasticsearch included
Custom checkout experience
$2,000/mo
Use any framework
Caching control
You own your store 100%
Refunds
Use the same domain
Unlimited subdomains
Complete design customization
$2,000/mo
Free migrations
Post-cancellation fees
Use any CDN
Free emails
Dedicated hosting options
Free premium support
$2,000/mo
Open source CMS
$2,000/mo
A graph shows a 500% increase in monthly cost, totaling $6243

Shopify’s nickel and dime strategy

As the third-largest ecommerce platform, Shopify has plenty to offer. But, there are hidden fees — especially if you sell more than 100 products.
Paid apps can balloon to $6,000/mo. Customizable themes cost up to $350. If you sell in one of the 172 countries Shopify Payments doesn’t support, there’s an extra 2% transaction fee.
With managed Magento hosting, you control your operating costs. Thousands of free themes and global payment extensions are at your fingertips, so you spend less and sell more.
Shop managed Magento hosting
A man smiles at his open cubicle, he types on his laptop computer that he’s here to help with anything they might need

When you need them most, they outsource

Shopify support often starts with a chatbot. If you want to talk to a human, you have to keep pushing until your request is escalated.
For a complex problem, they will suggest a Shopify Expert. These third-party developers and agencies charge by the hour — even if fixing your site takes two minutes.
At Nexcess, Magento experts are standing by 24/7/365 by phone, email, and chat to resolve problems fast. Always free, always human, never automated.
Browser window shows a panel with load times and speed over time, and an overall performance score

They don’t advertise their limits

Shopify touts unlimited bandwidth, storage, and concurrent users. That’s not true. They actually limit API requests and queries per second.
Ecommerce generates a higher number of queries and requests due to cart, checkout, and product pages. When limited, the result is slow speeds and unnecessary upgrades.
There are no query or request limits at Nexcess. PHP workers auto-scale with traffic to keep ecommerce experiences fast, so you don’t have to upgrade.

Is Magento the best Shopify alternative?

Compare both platforms in-depth with pros, cons, statistics, and tools
A suede shoe, sunglasses, and a watch are for sale in an online store, a cursor shows a user customizing their store

Shopify + your store = forever

Because Shopify is proprietary software, you don’t own 100% of your store. Your design, code, and settings belong to them.
If you move to another ecommerce platform, you have to rebuild. Depending on your store, this can take days, weeks, or even months.
With managed Magento, you migrate to almost any host without the risk of losing it all. Because you own your site, you can customize and optimize without limits.
A code sequence for head and body copy is customized with css stylesheets, charset size, and javascript

Developer roadblocks at every turn

Shopify is a solid choice for beginners. But for those with development expertise, Shopify’s language and frameworks are restrictive.
You run code their way, even if your way is better. You sacrifice workflow and deployment control. Basic features like effective staging, backups, and API dependencies aren’t automatic.
Managed Magento hosting offers unmatched flexibility for developers. Run your code your way, use any framework, and keep your workflow. No guardrails, no runaround.

Shopify doesn’t want you to see these

I am so over Shopify

I am so over Shopify. This is not a first bad experience but like the 15th. Their customer service is terrible. It takes forever and they know less than you do. If you can google, you can find an answer better than they can. The company nickel and dimes you for everything. There is no way to move your data from another platform to Shopify without spending hundreds of dollars on an app. What the heck?

- Amana on Trustpilot

We decided to close our Shopify store

We decided to close our Shopify store. Apparently, it's not possible to cancel your subscription cycle without talking to a customer service rep. Cancelling a subscription should be as easy as signing up for it. But Shopify makes you jump through hoops. The rep deactivated our store, which was not what we wanted. We'd hoped to use the rest of our current billing cycle to transition our store closure. Instead, what we got was an instant closure, which is not going to reflect well with our customers. Just a truly onerous and nonsensical experience.

- Rob Stemmler on Trustpilot

poor support. more expensive than you think.

I use Shopify but in hindsight I would steer clear. They do have great ideas. Shopify pay etc. inbuilt checkout. very convenient but they constantly make changes that totally mess with your website. its all the time. I'm constantly being told by a customer that my website is down always because of something they have done. I've probably lost thousands. They made a large update to there theme editor. My theme is no longer supported apparently (No Warning) so the £2000 I spent on one of their Shopify Experts was pointless. there response was just pay another one. Nice idea but the cost of running a website with these guys is far too much in both hassle and currency.

- Matthew Felton on Trustpilot

Shopify open source alternative FAQ

Shopify is not an open-source platform. An open-source platform makes source code available to every user — Shopify does not share their source code. This means that you can’t customize, troubleshoot, or modify platform code in a way that improves your store. While they have their template language they share with users, there are still strict limitations on what you can do with it. And you cannot use that code on any other platform except Shopify.

Learn more about hosting on an open source platform

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