Magento vs Shopify: What You Actually Spend — and What You Actually Make

The conversation about Magento versus Shopify usually starts with the wrong question. Most merchants ask "how much does each platform cost?" when the question they should be asking is "which platform makes me more money?"

Those are very different questions, and the answer to the second one is less obvious than it looks.

The Full Picture on Magento Costs

Magento Open Source is technically free to download. What it costs to actually run is another matter. A mid-sized store doing $2–5M in annual revenue typically carries these ongoing expenses:

Server infrastructure runs $400–$1,500 per month depending on your traffic, redundancy requirements, and whether you're self-managing or using managed Magento hosting like Nexcess or Cloudways. On quiet months this feels manageable. On Black Friday, it's the bill that hurts.

Developer retainer is where the real spend hides. Magento 2 development requires specialist knowledge. The average retainer for a UK or US-based agency runs $2,000–$5,000 per month — not for building new features, but for keeping the store stable. Security patches, extension updates, PHP version compatibility, custom module maintenance. The platform demands constant attention.

Extensions add up faster than expected. The typical Magento store runs 20–40 third-party extensions, each costing $50–$500/year with separate renewal licenses. Magento's extension quality is inconsistent, and conflicts between extensions are one of the most common causes of site downtime.

Security and compliance is entirely the merchant's responsibility on Magento. PCI DSS compliance on a self-hosted store requires annual audits, penetration testing, and ongoing security monitoring. Most merchants don't realise they're carrying this liability until they get a PCI compliance letter from their payment processor.

Add it together for a store doing $3M/year: roughly $35,000–$50,000 in annual platform overhead before a single revenue-generating improvement gets made.

The Full Picture on Shopify Costs

Shopify's pricing is transparent and fixed. Shopify Advanced costs $299/month. Shopify Plus starts at $2,300/month but includes unlimited staff accounts, advanced checkout customisation, wholesale features, and a dedicated merchant success manager.

For a $3M/year store on Shopify Advanced: $299/month in plan fees, $200–$400/month in apps (subscriptions, reviews, upsells, loyalty — whatever your stack needs), and $0 in server or security costs. That's roughly $8,000–$10,000/year in platform overhead versus Magento's $35,000–$50,000.

But the cost comparison isn't why most brands make the switch. The revenue side is.

What Brands Actually Earn After Migrating

When your developers stop firefighting Magento and start building growth features, the output looks different. When your checkout switches from a slow, custom-built flow to Shop Pay — which has 100 million registered users and converts up to 50% better on mobile — the revenue impact is immediate.

Here's what typically changes in the first quarter after migrating from Magento to Shopify:

Checkout conversion rates improve. Shopify's checkout is the most tested, optimised checkout flow in eCommerce. Brands migrating from Magento consistently report 15–30% improvement in conversion rate, particularly on mobile. On a $3M/year store, a 20% improvement in mobile conversion is worth $200,000–$400,000 in additional revenue.

New sales channels open. Shopify's native integrations with TikTok Shop, Instagram, Facebook, Google Shopping, and Amazon are one-click setups. On Magento, connecting to any of these required custom development. Most Magento stores we migrate have been leaving channel revenue on the table for years because the integration cost wasn't justified.

International expansion becomes realistic. Shopify Markets handles multi-currency, localised pricing, and international tax rules from your existing store. Expanding to a new country on Magento meant new server instances, custom development, and a months-long project. On Shopify, it's a week's work.

Development velocity improves. Your team — or our team — can build and ship features in days rather than weeks. A/B testing, promotions, new landing pages, new integrations. When you're not managing platform overhead, this is where the time goes.

When Magento Still Makes Sense

Not every brand should migrate. Magento still makes sense if you have genuinely complex B2B requirements that Shopify Plus doesn't yet match natively, multi-store setups with separate inventory pools across many regions, or checkout logic so custom that even Shopify Plus Checkout Extensibility can't accommodate it.

Those situations exist, but they're less common than Magento agencies would have you believe. For the vast majority of D2C brands doing $1M–$20M in revenue, the operational overhead of Magento is costing more than it's delivering in flexibility.

The Migration Investment

A properly executed Magento to Shopify migration costs $8,000–$25,000 depending on catalogue size, custom features, and integration requirements. At the cost savings alone — before accounting for conversion rate improvements or new channel revenue — most brands recover the migration investment within 6–12 months.

The brands that delay migrating because of the upfront cost typically end up spending that same amount on Magento maintenance in the following year anyway, without any of the commercial upside.

If you want to understand what migration would look like for your specific store, our team offers a free audit — we'll tell you honestly what the project involves and what the commercial case looks like before you commit to anything.