The choice between Shopify Plus or Adobe Commerce is not that easy but in eCommerce, the best platform is the one that works for your vision.
Are you a business leader trying to combat the demand to grow your eCommerce business fast but maintaining affordable costs and simplicity?
When your online store grows, you will have to:
- Deal with changes
- Keep your inventory smooth
- Give the same experience to your customers
- Enter new markets
- Keep it agile
The selection of the appropriate eCommerce system at this level is a move to make a strategic decision and not a technical one.
Shopify Plus and Adobe Commerce (formerly Magento Enterprise) are two competitors with strong features of their own that address the priorities of different businesses. Shopify Plus offers a streamlined setup, rapid go-to-market capabilities, and a fully managed backend environment. As compared, Adobe Commerce is flexible and offers deep levels of customization of business requirements.
As the global eCommerce sales are predicted to reach the mark of $8.09 trillion by 2028, picking the right platform is not a matter of importance. But it has actually become a necessity to grow in the long term.
This detailed blog will help you make a well-informed decision between Shopify Plus or Adobe Commerce. We’ll discuss their features, pricing, and application to make a long-term choice with the help of real industry experience.
A Brief Insight into Shopify Plus or Adobe Commerce
Shopify Plus
Shopify Plus is a premium version of Shopify; Shopify Plus is a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) cloud-based eCommerce enterprise e-commerce platform intended to be used by high-growth companies. It is focused on simplicity, fast deployment, and easy scalability. It powered more than 8,338 enterprise businesses worldwide and commanded a 0.83% share of the ecommerce market in 2024.
Adobe Commerce (Magento Enterprise)
Adobe Commerce formerly Magento Enterprise is a high-end eCommerce platform which was purchased by Adobe in 2018 at the cost of $1.68 billion. In 2024, it became the provider of 1,462 enterprise stores (0.15% market share). You can find it as a cloud-hosted or an on-premises platform, so it best suits business requirements in which companies have complex workflows that require specific solutions.
Important Comparison Variables
1. Ease of Use & Setup
Ease of use is expensive in business enterprises whose goal is to roll out in a short time.
Shopify Plus: Its user-friendly interface and the fully hosted solution makes it a favorite of businesses that do not have much technical resources. There is a set up time of weeks and a drag-and drop editor and pre-built themes that need little code. The dashboard on Shopify system makes it easy to handle products, orders and analytics to the non-technical teams.
Adobe Commerce: The high level of technical skills is required because of the open-source and complicated structure. It may require months to set up which includes server configuration, custom development, and required maintenance. It is applicable in firms that have IT departments.
2. Custodiality and Adaptability
Customization identifies the degree of compliance of a platform with individual business requirements.
Shopify Plus: Good customisation features through App Store (more than 8,000 Apps), Liquid Template, APIs. It enables headless commerce on a custom frontend, but its SaaS based model constrains back end customization.
Adobe Commerce: Offers great flexibility, with access to all source code, to customize the frontend, backend and integrations. It is perfect with complicated B2B/B2C structures, multi-store systems, and special workflows and needs experienced developers.
Unique Insight: Adobe commerce segmentation of customers and multi-source inventory cannot be matched by any B2B business that has a need to manage price or warehouses in multiple locations across the globe. Shopify Plus has also improved its capabilities with essential B2B features.
3. Scalability
Scalability makes a platform capable of managing both growth at the traffic level to worldwide presence.
Shopify Plus: Automatically scales through AWS and Google Cloud, offering 99.99% uptime and unlimited bandwidth. It deals with major load activities such as Black Friday without human-made server changes.
Adobe Commerce: Licensed per site, extremely scalable with large catalogs (up to 2,500 variants per product) and multi-store, but the businesses are left to manage hosting and server resources, a burden. Cloud mitigates this but increases costs.
4. Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)
Cost remains one of the most influential factors in business choices.
Shopify Plus: It starts at USD 2,000 per month (depending on the sales volume, it is negotiable) with confident costs that can be covered such as security, updates, and hosting. There can be additional expenses in terms of lucrative applications or development. The TCO is reduced because little maintenance is carried out.
Adobe Commerce: It costs 24,000-40,000 dollars per year to get a license to use on-premises versions of the software or cloud-based, with pricing increasing with revenue. The extra expenses are warm hosting ($1,000 to $3,333/month), development ($10,000-100,000), and maintenance that drive TCO up.
5. Performance and Speed
The loading speed of the website affects the conversion rate among the users as well as the position in the search engine.
Shopify Plus: It has been fast-tracked by ensuring global CDN and as such loading any page is easy and prompt irrespective of your location. Its managed infrastructure requires minimal performance optimization from users.
Adobe Commerce: Good performance with correct optimization (e.g. caching, tuning the servers), but involves a continued developer workload. With massive inventories, unoptimized stores can slow down.
6. Support and Ecosystem
The success of the product should be sustainable based on the quality of products and the strength of the ecosystem.
Shopify Plus: It has 24 hours support, a high number of applications, and Shopify Plus Partners to enable the sale of multi-channel. Its apps are plug-and-play.
Adobe Commerce: Offers enterprise-level support to the Cloud and an open-source user community of robust supporters. It depends significantly on developers for customizations and ongoing maintenance.
7. SEO and Marketing
SEO and marketing tools that work attract traffic and sales.
Shopify Plus: Integrates with MailChimp and has a built-in SEO (meta titles, description, sitemap and 301 redirect). It has metafields and metaobjects which contribute to improved content management.
Adobe Commerce: Provides more complex SEO, as the page builder and WYSIWYG editor is available, but this solution needs to be configured. Its marketing power is strong in the B2B, but not as intuitive as Shopify app-based systems.
Further Context: The2023 checkout upgrades of Shopify Plus increased the conversion rates by up to 15%. Customer segmentation is a top choice of personalized marketing but requires more configuration.
Real-World Case Studies
Shopify Plus
Fashion Nova
Fashion Nova is a fast fashion store that efficiently handles its large product catalog, large traffic variability during drops, and influencer led campaigns with a smooth high-converting shopping experience.
Victoria Beckham
The luxury fashion company Victoria Beckham relies on the headless commerce features to provide a fully-tailored and worldwide-accessible storefront. That performs quicker with multi-currency support and individually-curated shopping experiences in line with its high-end fashion branding.
Steve Madden
Shopify Plus has allowed Steve Madden to unify online and store-based businesses, provide shipping to 80+ countries worldwide, and automate the process of stocking and receiving orders by improving efficiency and customer happiness in all markets.
Bombs
Bombas is a socially responsible and comfort-oriented clothing company that allows it to handle massive inbound orders, sustain the one-to-one donation approach, provide the subscription service, and trigger a repeat purchase through targeted and individualized promotional campaigns.
Rebecca Minkoff
Rebecca Minkoff is a modern street fashion brand that uses Shopify Plus to create a visually rich online store experience, quick and easy checkout through the Shopify Payments service, and strong social commerce integrations, allowing those influencing purchases to sell and establishing greater connections with them.
KITH
Streetwear and lifestyle brand KITH has the custom storefront, automated product releases, and loyalty programs powered by Shopify Plus. The business hit an all-time high in exclusive releases and top-notch customer retention, with stability under millions of visitors a day on major drops.
Nicee
Nicce, a UK-based casual wear retailer, is powered by Shopify Plus to expand its international operations through a sleek, modern storefront, streamlined logistics, and targeted email marketing campaigns. This approach has reduced overheads through automation and third-party integrations.
Adobe Commerce (Formerly known as Magento Enterprise)
An online retailer of food and food service products that has been in business since 1992. They have maintained a large product catalog and simplified order processing and customer services.
HP
The technology giant, offering hardware and software, leverages this robust eCommerce platform to enable seamless online sales and global customer engagement.
Liebherr
Manufacturer of construction and refrigeration equipment; uses it as a B2B eCommerce system, as well as includes the integration with Baan ERP which tracks orders in an efficient manner.
Shoebacca
Sport and casual footwear store; Adobe Commerce helps it to maintain over 700,000 SKUs, enhance multi-channel sales, and increase sales by 25%.
Rossignol
Winter sports equipment company; uses Adobe Commerce to consolidate sub-brands, grow online sales by 25 percent and improve user experience.
Helly Hansen
Outdoor apparel company leverages Adobe Commerce for a global eCommerce platform, improving mobile conversions by 60% since 2016.
SCUF Gaming
Video game controller manufacturer; Multilingual eCommerce with Adobe commerce, automates product imports and improves the user experience.
SalonCentric
Distributor of beauty supplies; uses Adobe Commerce as a B2B store with each location having a separate site with shared design.
Zumiez
Youth culture clothing company; operates on Adobe commerce to help facilitate eCommerce, which allows a smooth customer experience when shopping online and interacting with its brand.
Nike
The world leader of sportswear uses Adobe Commerce as an easy-to-scale eCommerce platform, with a view of generating online sales and customer personalization.
Choosing the Right Platform
Choose Shopify Plus if:
- You value rapid deployment and user-friendly functionality.
- Your business is mid-to-large with straightforward workflows (e.g., DTC retail).
- You want predictable costs and minimal technical overhead.
Example: Growing brands like Gymshark or fashion retailers needing multi-channel selling.
Choose Adobe Commerce if:
- You need extensive customization for complex B2B/B2C operations or multi-store setups.
- You have a dedicated IT team and budget for development.
Example: Global enterprises like Nespresso with intricate supply chains or custom requirements.
Want to Establish Your eCommerce Business Using Shopify Plus?
We know how much of an obstacle slow site performance, integration challenges, and inability to scale platforms as quickly as you can expand to new horizons can be to eCommerce leaders. This is why we are Shopify development experts, and our mission is to help brands to achieve rapid growth and customer experience as well as operational excellence.
Our team not only has solutions that are customizable per individual need but also provide optimized solutions that can be used to migrate to a different platform. We even optimize whatever is already being used on Shopify Plus.
FAQs
Q1. Which is quicker to install and duration to the market?
The SaaS-model of Shopify Plus, in-defined CDN and drag-and-drop allows it to handle deployments within about 40% less time compared to Adobe commerce.
The type of software Adobe Commerce has includes self-hosting and suitability to change, but at the same time it is characterized by much longer implementation periods
Q2. What is the comparison between customization and flexibility?
Adobe Commerce: Full backend management, code based customisations, seamless checkout process, complex B2B functionality best suited to highly organized, extensive operations.
Shopify Plus: Good APIs, more than 8,000 apps, and Shopify Functions, no lockdown to base code, and checkout is editable with limitations.
Q3. Which scales and performs better when traffic is heavy?
Shopify Plus has cloud-scalable auto-scaling, CDN built into it, and 99.99 percent uptime, made to withstand flash sale and thousands of checkouts every minute and remain stable.
Adobe Commerce: supports 250 million SKUs and 200 000 orders per hour to scale the enterprise and with at least hosting and caching configuration will be able to scale; the technical team would need to optimize.
Q4. Which is better for B2B and multi‑store setups?
Adobe Commerce offers mature native B2B capabilities like custom catalogs, pricing, quotes, PO management, multi-storefront configurations.
Shopify Plus supports B2B through apps, company profiles, and headless APIs but can require workarounds for complex B2B logic.
