Die Gründe dieser Brands? Im Kern laufen sie alle auf die folgenden Punkte hinaus:
- Die Wartung der Plattform und die Entwicklung neuer Funktionen sind bei Magento/Adobe Commerce zu schwierig, zeitaufwendig und teuer. Marken benötigen Entwickler:innen, um grundlegende Front-end-Änderungen vorzunehmen. Darüber hinaus dauert die Implementierung neuer Funktionen ewig, was sie letztlich ausbremst.
2. Shopify nicht zu nutzen, ist ein Wettbewerbsnachteil. Shopify ist weltweit die einzige E-Commerce-Plattform mit 4.000 Ingenieur:innen, die die Plattform ständig verbessern und sie an der Spitze des E-Commerce halten – damit Sie das nicht tun müssen. Die Geschwindigkeit, mit der neue Funktionen veröffentlicht werden, ist beispiellos, und der One-Page-Checkout ist der am besten konvertierende der Welt.
Man sieht deutlich, dass Shopify in den letzten Jahren rasant gewachsen ist, während Magento auf der Stelle getreten ist. Anhand der Trendkurven, die die Anzahl der Websites zeigen, die beide nutzen, können wir erkennen, dass immer mehr Marken selbst gehostete Lösungen und Open-Source zugunsten von Shopify als moderne SaaS-E-Commerce-Lösung verlassen (Quelle: Storeleads).
Drei Wellen von Magento-Migrationen
Im Laufe der Jahre hat
The reasons why brands leave Shopify for Magento? They all boil down to this:
- Platform maintenance and feature development are too difficult, time-consuming, and expensive on Magento / Adobe Commerce. Brands need developers to make basic front-end changes, and implementing new features takes ages which is ultimately slowing them down.
- Not being on Shopify is a competitive disadvantage. Shopify is the only e-commerce platform on our planet that has 4.000 engineers constantly improving the platform and keeping it at the forefront of e-commerce - so you don’t have to. Its pace of new feature releases is unparalleled and their one-page checkout is the best converting in the world.
It’s clear to see that Shopify has grown rapidly in recent years, whereas Magento plateaued. Trend lines, showing the number of sites using each, tell us that more and more brands are leaving self-hosted and open-source for Shopify as a modern SaaS e-commerce solution (source: Storeleads).
Three waves of Magento migrations
Over the years Domaine Europe has migrated tens of ex-Magento merchants to Shopify throughout Europe (Benelux, DACH, Nordics, UK), and we heared similar stories from all brands. In this blog, we share some of the experiences that prompted our clients to migrate from Magento to Shopify.
First wave: Magento 1 EOL
The first wave of replatformers came to us when Magento 1 reached its End of Life, scheduled for June 2020. An ideal moment for many e-commerce brands to switch from a self-hosted open source platform to a more modern, cloud-native SaaS platform like Shopify.
One of those brands was Veloretti, an ambitious bike brand that had invested 18 months and 6 figures in a Magento 1.9 store, only to learn that they would have to replatform soon because Magento announced the EOL of version 1. Their founder Ferry Zonder was done with it, however, and moved the entire store to Shopify in a matter of weeks.
And then there was the case of Rosefield Watches. For them, Magento was a nightmare from the start and they didn’t even make it to the EOL before replatforming.
“We were held hostage by our platform. We couldn’t touch anything without breaking things. To get the functionality we needed, we started doing things with the platform that it was never designed for. Our lives were completely dictated by it, we kept spending tons of energy on it, and the costs kept soaring.”
Since Rosefield moved to Shopify Plus they went on to conquer the international market of jewelry and watches.
Second wave: Magento 2 disappoints
We saw a second wave when a number of businesses regretted their upgrade to Magento 2 so much that they abandoned it within a year and moved to Shopify. Their main concern was often cost: maintaining Magento 2 turned out to be extremely expensive, while not delivering the performance clients needed.
The coffee roasters at Fascino came away from their 18 months with Magento 2 slightly traumatized. Co-founder Lieke Hanssen summed it up at the time: “The platform simply cost us way too much money. When our developer agency handed us a pricy estimate for the next Magento release, we had no other choice than to replatform.” Not surprisingly, the thing she liked most about Shopify was the absence of platform maintenance. “With Shopify, you don’t have towering maintenance costs and unexpected releases that make your business operations unpredictable. You know what every month will bring in terms of costs, so there’s enough budget left for marketing.”
Cost was definitely a factor in the case of McGregor New York, too, in combination with the platform performing poorly. “Our IT landscape was so heavily customised that it crashed regularly. The checkout often didn’t work, every time there was a sale or campaign something went wrong, conversion was plummeting, we needed our Magento development agency for everything, people had to work weekends to keep the platform in the air, and a lot of the budget went to IT and damage control.” On top of that, it turned out that a new Magento update would cost as much as building a new store. McGregor decided to switch to Shopify and saw its revenue go up again, without crashes and overwork.
Third wave: Shopify builds more and more momentum
Currently, we are witnessing a third wave: brands who feel Magento - correction: since 2021 the commercial version is called Adobe Commerce - runs the risk of getting out of touch. Compared to Shopify, the platform’s approach is simply not up-to-date anymore: the future is SaaS, relentless innovation is key, and the constant rhythm of EOL’s and updates is wearing them out.
Swiss brand namuk is a recent migration client of Domaine Europe. Head of E-commerce Simon Bertschinger wasted no time moving the brand to a SaaS platform when he started: "Maintaining our Magento webshop took us around 140 hours per month - and that was even without the implementation of new features. Our store had many issues: speed, payment systems… and the options for personalization were way too complex." Since the migration, the brand’s ambition to scale internationally has gained unprecedented momentum. “Shopify Plus creates more possibilities and flexibility, allowing us to develop our brand much faster."
At the moment of writing this blog (Fall 2023), Domaine Europe just finished migrating German pet brand MiaCara to Shopify. They were still on Magento 1, crutched by extensive third-party support, and time was running out. “We realized that moving to Magento 2 wouldn't give us much of an advantage over Magento 1, where speed, user-friendliness and cost of development were a problem. So we assessed the available alternatives and found that Shopify beat the other contenders in almost every category that was relevant to us: Total Cost of Ownership, speed of development, amount of relevant users at the moment, pace of innovation and momentum in general.”
Secure your migration with Domaine Europe
Is your brand considering to move away from Magento? Then it’s worthwhile to look into Shopify. Over the years, Shopify has evolved from a small business solution with a ‘template reputation’ into the most cutting-edge e-commerce solution available for brands of all sizes: from small, to mid market all the way up to enterprise (+150 mio GMV).
Are you looking for an experienced agency partner to embark on your migration? Make sure to check out Domaine Europe. From the moment we became the first official Shopify Plus Partner in the EU, we’ve been building and scaling hundreds of Shopify stores and we are now named Shopify Premier Partner and considered one of the top Shopify agencies on the European mainland.
Check out our previous work to see what we can do, and get in touch! Dutzende von ehemaligen Magento-Händlern in ganz Europa (Benelux, DACH, Skandinavien, UK) zu Shopify migriert. Wir haben von allen Marken ähnliche Geschichten gehört. In diesem Blogartikel teilen wir einige der Erfahrungen, die unsere Kunden veranlasst haben, von Magento zu Shopify zu migrieren.
Erste Welle: Das Betriebsende von Magento 1
Die erste Welle von Brands kam zu uns, als Magento 1 sein Betriebsende erreichte, das für Juni 2020 geplant war. Ein idealer Zeitpunkt für viele E-Commerce-Marken, um von einer selbst gehosteten Open-Source-Plattform auf eine modernere, Cloud-native SaaS-Plattform wie Shopify zu wechseln.
Eine dieser Marken war Veloretti, eine ehrgeizige Fahrradmarke, die 18 Monate und einen sechsstelligen Betrag in einen Magento 1.9-Shop investiert hatte, nur um dann festzustellen, dass sie bald auf eine neue Plattform umsteigen müssen, weil Magento das Auslaufen der Version 1 angekündigt hat. Gründer Ferry Zonder hatte die Nase voll und zog den gesamten Shop innerhalb weniger Wochen zu Shopify um.
Für Rosefield Watches war Magento von Anfang an ein Albtraum. Sie schafften es nicht einmal bis zum Ende der Laufzeit, sondern stellten die Plattform schon vorher um. „Wir waren gefangen von unserer Plattform. Wir konnten nichts anfassen, ohne etwas kaputt zu machen. Um die benötigten Funktionen zu erhalten, begannen wir, Sachen mit der Plattform zu machen, für die sie nie gedacht war. Unser Geschäft wurde komplett von der Plattform diktiert, wir haben viel Energie darauf verwendet und die Kosten sind in die Höhe geschossen.” Seit Rosefield auf Shopify Plus umgestiegen ist, erobern sie den internationalen Markt für Schmuck und Uhren.
„Wir waren gefangen von unserer Plattform. Wir konnten nichts anfassen, ohne etwas kaputt zu machen. Um die benötigten Funktionen zu erhalten, begannen wir, Sachen mit der Plattform zu machen, für die sie nie gedacht war. Unser Geschäft wurde komplett von der Plattform diktiert, wir haben viel Energie darauf verwendet und die Kosten sind in die Höhe geschossen.” – Rosefield
Zweite Welle: Von Magento 2 enttäuscht
Die zweite Welle begann, als eine Reihe von Unternehmen ihren Umstieg auf Magento 2 so sehr bereuten, dass sie die Plattform innerhalb eines Jahres wieder verließen und zu Shopify wechselten. Ihre größte Sorge waren meist die Kosten: Die Wartung von Magento 2 erwies sich als äußerst kostspielig und bot nicht die von den Kunden gewünschte Leistung.
Die Kaffeerösterei Fascino verließ Magento 2 nach 18 Monaten deutlich gezeichnet. Mitgründerin Lieke Hanssen brachte es damals auf den Punkt: „Die Plattform hat uns einfach viel zu viel Geld gekostet. Als uns unsere Entwickleragentur einen teuren Kostenvoranschlag für die nächste Magento-Version vorlegte, blieb uns nichts anderes übrig, als die Plattform zu wechseln.” Daher ist es nicht verwunderlich, dass sie an Shopify am meisten schätzt, dass die Plattform nicht gewartet werden muss. „Bei Shopify gibt es keine horrenden Wartungskosten und unerwarteten Releases, die den Geschäftsbetrieb unberechenbar machen. Man weiß, was jeder Monat an Kosten mit sich bringt, sodass genug Budget für das Marketing übrig bleibt.”
Auch bei McGregor New York spielten die Kosten in Verbindung mit der schwachen Leistung der Plattform eine Rolle. „Unsere IT-Landschaft war so stark individualisiert, dass sie regelmäßig abstürzte. Der Checkout funktionierte oft nicht, bei jedem Sale oder jeder Kampagne ging etwas schief, die Conversion sank rapide, wir brauchten unsere Magento-Entwicklungsagentur für alles, die Leute mussten an Wochenenden arbeiten, um die Plattform am Laufen zu halten, und ein Großteil des Budgets ging für IT und Schadensbegrenzung drauf.” Darüber hinaus stellte sich heraus, dass ein neues Magento-Update so viel kosten würde wie der Aufbau eines neuen Shops. McGregor beschloss, zu Shopify zu wechseln, und sah, wie sein Umsatz wieder anstieg – ohne Abstürze und Überstunden.
Dritte Welle: Shopify gewinnt immer mehr an Schwung
Derzeit erleben wir eine dritte Welle: Marken, die das Gefühl haben, dass Magento – Pardon, Adobe Commerce, wie die kommerzielle Version seit 2021 heißt – den Anschluss zu verlieren droht. Im Vergleich zu Shopify ist der Ansatz der Plattform einfach nicht mehr zeitgemäß: Die Zukunft ist SaaS, unablässige Innovation ist entscheidend und der ständige Rhythmus von auslaufenden Produkten und Updates zehrt an den Nerven.
Die Schweizer Marke namuk ist ein neuer Migrationskunde von
The reasons why brands leave Shopify for Magento? They all boil down to this:
- Platform maintenance and feature development are too difficult, time-consuming, and expensive on Magento / Adobe Commerce. Brands need developers to make basic front-end changes, and implementing new features takes ages which is ultimately slowing them down.
- Not being on Shopify is a competitive disadvantage. Shopify is the only e-commerce platform on our planet that has 4.000 engineers constantly improving the platform and keeping it at the forefront of e-commerce - so you don’t have to. Its pace of new feature releases is unparalleled and their one-page checkout is the best converting in the world.
It’s clear to see that Shopify has grown rapidly in recent years, whereas Magento plateaued. Trend lines, showing the number of sites using each, tell us that more and more brands are leaving self-hosted and open-source for Shopify as a modern SaaS e-commerce solution (source: Storeleads).
Three waves of Magento migrations
Over the years Domaine Europe has migrated tens of ex-Magento merchants to Shopify throughout Europe (Benelux, DACH, Nordics, UK), and we heared similar stories from all brands. In this blog, we share some of the experiences that prompted our clients to migrate from Magento to Shopify.
First wave: Magento 1 EOL
The first wave of replatformers came to us when Magento 1 reached its End of Life, scheduled for June 2020. An ideal moment for many e-commerce brands to switch from a self-hosted open source platform to a more modern, cloud-native SaaS platform like Shopify.
One of those brands was Veloretti, an ambitious bike brand that had invested 18 months and 6 figures in a Magento 1.9 store, only to learn that they would have to replatform soon because Magento announced the EOL of version 1. Their founder Ferry Zonder was done with it, however, and moved the entire store to Shopify in a matter of weeks.
And then there was the case of Rosefield Watches. For them, Magento was a nightmare from the start and they didn’t even make it to the EOL before replatforming.
“We were held hostage by our platform. We couldn’t touch anything without breaking things. To get the functionality we needed, we started doing things with the platform that it was never designed for. Our lives were completely dictated by it, we kept spending tons of energy on it, and the costs kept soaring.”
Since Rosefield moved to Shopify Plus they went on to conquer the international market of jewelry and watches.
Second wave: Magento 2 disappoints
We saw a second wave when a number of businesses regretted their upgrade to Magento 2 so much that they abandoned it within a year and moved to Shopify. Their main concern was often cost: maintaining Magento 2 turned out to be extremely expensive, while not delivering the performance clients needed.
The coffee roasters at Fascino came away from their 18 months with Magento 2 slightly traumatized. Co-founder Lieke Hanssen summed it up at the time: “The platform simply cost us way too much money. When our developer agency handed us a pricy estimate for the next Magento release, we had no other choice than to replatform.” Not surprisingly, the thing she liked most about Shopify was the absence of platform maintenance. “With Shopify, you don’t have towering maintenance costs and unexpected releases that make your business operations unpredictable. You know what every month will bring in terms of costs, so there’s enough budget left for marketing.”
Cost was definitely a factor in the case of McGregor New York, too, in combination with the platform performing poorly. “Our IT landscape was so heavily customised that it crashed regularly. The checkout often didn’t work, every time there was a sale or campaign something went wrong, conversion was plummeting, we needed our Magento development agency for everything, people had to work weekends to keep the platform in the air, and a lot of the budget went to IT and damage control.” On top of that, it turned out that a new Magento update would cost as much as building a new store. McGregor decided to switch to Shopify and saw its revenue go up again, without crashes and overwork.
Third wave: Shopify builds more and more momentum
Currently, we are witnessing a third wave: brands who feel Magento - correction: since 2021 the commercial version is called Adobe Commerce - runs the risk of getting out of touch. Compared to Shopify, the platform’s approach is simply not up-to-date anymore: the future is SaaS, relentless innovation is key, and the constant rhythm of EOL’s and updates is wearing them out.
Swiss brand namuk is a recent migration client of Domaine Europe. Head of E-commerce Simon Bertschinger wasted no time moving the brand to a SaaS platform when he started: "Maintaining our Magento webshop took us around 140 hours per month - and that was even without the implementation of new features. Our store had many issues: speed, payment systems… and the options for personalization were way too complex." Since the migration, the brand’s ambition to scale internationally has gained unprecedented momentum. “Shopify Plus creates more possibilities and flexibility, allowing us to develop our brand much faster."
At the moment of writing this blog (Fall 2023), Domaine Europe just finished migrating German pet brand MiaCara to Shopify. They were still on Magento 1, crutched by extensive third-party support, and time was running out. “We realized that moving to Magento 2 wouldn't give us much of an advantage over Magento 1, where speed, user-friendliness and cost of development were a problem. So we assessed the available alternatives and found that Shopify beat the other contenders in almost every category that was relevant to us: Total Cost of Ownership, speed of development, amount of relevant users at the moment, pace of innovation and momentum in general.”
Secure your migration with Domaine Europe
Is your brand considering to move away from Magento? Then it’s worthwhile to look into Shopify. Over the years, Shopify has evolved from a small business solution with a ‘template reputation’ into the most cutting-edge e-commerce solution available for brands of all sizes: from small, to mid market all the way up to enterprise (+150 mio GMV).
Are you looking for an experienced agency partner to embark on your migration? Make sure to check out Domaine Europe. From the moment we became the first official Shopify Plus Partner in the EU, we’ve been building and scaling hundreds of Shopify stores and we are now named Shopify Premier Partner and considered one of the top Shopify agencies on the European mainland.
Check out our previous work to see what we can do, and get in touch!. Simon Bertschinger, Head of E-Commerce, verlor keine Zeit mit der Umstellung auf eine SaaS-Plattform, als er seine Arbeit aufnahm: „Die Pflege unseres Magento-Webshops hat uns rund 140 Stunden pro Monat gekostet – und das sogar ohne die Implementierung neuer Funktionen. Unser Shop hatte viele Probleme: Geschwindigkeit, Zahlungssysteme... und die Möglichkeiten zur Personalisierung waren viel zu komplex.” Seit der Migration haben die Ambitionen der Marke, international zu skalieren, einen beispiellosen Auftrieb erhalten. „Shopify Plus schafft mehr Möglichkeiten und Flexibilität und ermöglicht es uns, unsere Marke viel schneller zu entwickeln.”
Zum Zeitpunkt der Erstellung dieses Blogartikels (Herbst 2023) hat
The reasons why brands leave Shopify for Magento? They all boil down to this:
- Platform maintenance and feature development are too difficult, time-consuming, and expensive on Magento / Adobe Commerce. Brands need developers to make basic front-end changes, and implementing new features takes ages which is ultimately slowing them down.
- Not being on Shopify is a competitive disadvantage. Shopify is the only e-commerce platform on our planet that has 4.000 engineers constantly improving the platform and keeping it at the forefront of e-commerce - so you don’t have to. Its pace of new feature releases is unparalleled and their one-page checkout is the best converting in the world.
It’s clear to see that Shopify has grown rapidly in recent years, whereas Magento plateaued. Trend lines, showing the number of sites using each, tell us that more and more brands are leaving self-hosted and open-source for Shopify as a modern SaaS e-commerce solution (source: Storeleads).
Three waves of Magento migrations
Over the years Domaine Europe has migrated tens of ex-Magento merchants to Shopify throughout Europe (Benelux, DACH, Nordics, UK), and we heared similar stories from all brands. In this blog, we share some of the experiences that prompted our clients to migrate from Magento to Shopify.
First wave: Magento 1 EOL
The first wave of replatformers came to us when Magento 1 reached its End of Life, scheduled for June 2020. An ideal moment for many e-commerce brands to switch from a self-hosted open source platform to a more modern, cloud-native SaaS platform like Shopify.
One of those brands was Veloretti, an ambitious bike brand that had invested 18 months and 6 figures in a Magento 1.9 store, only to learn that they would have to replatform soon because Magento announced the EOL of version 1. Their founder Ferry Zonder was done with it, however, and moved the entire store to Shopify in a matter of weeks.
And then there was the case of Rosefield Watches. For them, Magento was a nightmare from the start and they didn’t even make it to the EOL before replatforming.
“We were held hostage by our platform. We couldn’t touch anything without breaking things. To get the functionality we needed, we started doing things with the platform that it was never designed for. Our lives were completely dictated by it, we kept spending tons of energy on it, and the costs kept soaring.”
Since Rosefield moved to Shopify Plus they went on to conquer the international market of jewelry and watches.
Second wave: Magento 2 disappoints
We saw a second wave when a number of businesses regretted their upgrade to Magento 2 so much that they abandoned it within a year and moved to Shopify. Their main concern was often cost: maintaining Magento 2 turned out to be extremely expensive, while not delivering the performance clients needed.
The coffee roasters at Fascino came away from their 18 months with Magento 2 slightly traumatized. Co-founder Lieke Hanssen summed it up at the time: “The platform simply cost us way too much money. When our developer agency handed us a pricy estimate for the next Magento release, we had no other choice than to replatform.” Not surprisingly, the thing she liked most about Shopify was the absence of platform maintenance. “With Shopify, you don’t have towering maintenance costs and unexpected releases that make your business operations unpredictable. You know what every month will bring in terms of costs, so there’s enough budget left for marketing.”
Cost was definitely a factor in the case of McGregor New York, too, in combination with the platform performing poorly. “Our IT landscape was so heavily customised that it crashed regularly. The checkout often didn’t work, every time there was a sale or campaign something went wrong, conversion was plummeting, we needed our Magento development agency for everything, people had to work weekends to keep the platform in the air, and a lot of the budget went to IT and damage control.” On top of that, it turned out that a new Magento update would cost as much as building a new store. McGregor decided to switch to Shopify and saw its revenue go up again, without crashes and overwork.
Third wave: Shopify builds more and more momentum
Currently, we are witnessing a third wave: brands who feel Magento - correction: since 2021 the commercial version is called Adobe Commerce - runs the risk of getting out of touch. Compared to Shopify, the platform’s approach is simply not up-to-date anymore: the future is SaaS, relentless innovation is key, and the constant rhythm of EOL’s and updates is wearing them out.
Swiss brand namuk is a recent migration client of Domaine Europe. Head of E-commerce Simon Bertschinger wasted no time moving the brand to a SaaS platform when he started: "Maintaining our Magento webshop took us around 140 hours per month - and that was even without the implementation of new features. Our store had many issues: speed, payment systems… and the options for personalization were way too complex." Since the migration, the brand’s ambition to scale internationally has gained unprecedented momentum. “Shopify Plus creates more possibilities and flexibility, allowing us to develop our brand much faster."
At the moment of writing this blog (Fall 2023), Domaine Europe just finished migrating German pet brand MiaCara to Shopify. They were still on Magento 1, crutched by extensive third-party support, and time was running out. “We realized that moving to Magento 2 wouldn't give us much of an advantage over Magento 1, where speed, user-friendliness and cost of development were a problem. So we assessed the available alternatives and found that Shopify beat the other contenders in almost every category that was relevant to us: Total Cost of Ownership, speed of development, amount of relevant users at the moment, pace of innovation and momentum in general.”
Secure your migration with Domaine Europe
Is your brand considering to move away from Magento? Then it’s worthwhile to look into Shopify. Over the years, Shopify has evolved from a small business solution with a ‘template reputation’ into the most cutting-edge e-commerce solution available for brands of all sizes: from small, to mid market all the way up to enterprise (+150 mio GMV).
Are you looking for an experienced agency partner to embark on your migration? Make sure to check out Domaine Europe. From the moment we became the first official Shopify Plus Partner in the EU, we’ve been building and scaling hundreds of Shopify stores and we are now named Shopify Premier Partner and considered one of the top Shopify agencies on the European mainland.
Check out our previous work to see what we can do, and get in touch! gerade die Migration der deutschen Haustiermarke MiaCara zu Shopify abgeschlossen. Sie waren noch auf Magento 1, durch umfangreiche Drittanbieter-Support gelähmt und die Zeit lief ab. „Wir erkannten, dass der Wechsel zu Magento 2 uns keinen großen Vorteil gegenüber Magento 1 bringen würde, wo Geschwindigkeit, Benutzerfreundlichkeit und Entwicklungskosten ein Problem darstellten. Also haben wir die verfügbaren Alternativen geprüft und festgestellt, dass Shopify die anderen Mitbewerber in fast jeder für uns relevanten Kategorie schlägt: Total Cost of Ownership, Entwicklungsgeschwindigkeit, Anzahl der derzeit relevanten Nutzer, Innovationstempo und Schwung im Allgemeinen.”, so die Marke.
Migrieren auch Sie mit
The reasons why brands leave Shopify for Magento? They all boil down to this:
- Platform maintenance and feature development are too difficult, time-consuming, and expensive on Magento / Adobe Commerce. Brands need developers to make basic front-end changes, and implementing new features takes ages which is ultimately slowing them down.
- Not being on Shopify is a competitive disadvantage. Shopify is the only e-commerce platform on our planet that has 4.000 engineers constantly improving the platform and keeping it at the forefront of e-commerce - so you don’t have to. Its pace of new feature releases is unparalleled and their one-page checkout is the best converting in the world.
It’s clear to see that Shopify has grown rapidly in recent years, whereas Magento plateaued. Trend lines, showing the number of sites using each, tell us that more and more brands are leaving self-hosted and open-source for Shopify as a modern SaaS e-commerce solution (source: Storeleads).
Three waves of Magento migrations
Over the years Domaine Europe has migrated tens of ex-Magento merchants to Shopify throughout Europe (Benelux, DACH, Nordics, UK), and we heared similar stories from all brands. In this blog, we share some of the experiences that prompted our clients to migrate from Magento to Shopify.
First wave: Magento 1 EOL
The first wave of replatformers came to us when Magento 1 reached its End of Life, scheduled for June 2020. An ideal moment for many e-commerce brands to switch from a self-hosted open source platform to a more modern, cloud-native SaaS platform like Shopify.
One of those brands was Veloretti, an ambitious bike brand that had invested 18 months and 6 figures in a Magento 1.9 store, only to learn that they would have to replatform soon because Magento announced the EOL of version 1. Their founder Ferry Zonder was done with it, however, and moved the entire store to Shopify in a matter of weeks.
And then there was the case of Rosefield Watches. For them, Magento was a nightmare from the start and they didn’t even make it to the EOL before replatforming.
“We were held hostage by our platform. We couldn’t touch anything without breaking things. To get the functionality we needed, we started doing things with the platform that it was never designed for. Our lives were completely dictated by it, we kept spending tons of energy on it, and the costs kept soaring.”
Since Rosefield moved to Shopify Plus they went on to conquer the international market of jewelry and watches.
Second wave: Magento 2 disappoints
We saw a second wave when a number of businesses regretted their upgrade to Magento 2 so much that they abandoned it within a year and moved to Shopify. Their main concern was often cost: maintaining Magento 2 turned out to be extremely expensive, while not delivering the performance clients needed.
The coffee roasters at Fascino came away from their 18 months with Magento 2 slightly traumatized. Co-founder Lieke Hanssen summed it up at the time: “The platform simply cost us way too much money. When our developer agency handed us a pricy estimate for the next Magento release, we had no other choice than to replatform.” Not surprisingly, the thing she liked most about Shopify was the absence of platform maintenance. “With Shopify, you don’t have towering maintenance costs and unexpected releases that make your business operations unpredictable. You know what every month will bring in terms of costs, so there’s enough budget left for marketing.”
Cost was definitely a factor in the case of McGregor New York, too, in combination with the platform performing poorly. “Our IT landscape was so heavily customised that it crashed regularly. The checkout often didn’t work, every time there was a sale or campaign something went wrong, conversion was plummeting, we needed our Magento development agency for everything, people had to work weekends to keep the platform in the air, and a lot of the budget went to IT and damage control.” On top of that, it turned out that a new Magento update would cost as much as building a new store. McGregor decided to switch to Shopify and saw its revenue go up again, without crashes and overwork.
Third wave: Shopify builds more and more momentum
Currently, we are witnessing a third wave: brands who feel Magento - correction: since 2021 the commercial version is called Adobe Commerce - runs the risk of getting out of touch. Compared to Shopify, the platform’s approach is simply not up-to-date anymore: the future is SaaS, relentless innovation is key, and the constant rhythm of EOL’s and updates is wearing them out.
Swiss brand namuk is a recent migration client of Domaine Europe. Head of E-commerce Simon Bertschinger wasted no time moving the brand to a SaaS platform when he started: "Maintaining our Magento webshop took us around 140 hours per month - and that was even without the implementation of new features. Our store had many issues: speed, payment systems… and the options for personalization were way too complex." Since the migration, the brand’s ambition to scale internationally has gained unprecedented momentum. “Shopify Plus creates more possibilities and flexibility, allowing us to develop our brand much faster."
At the moment of writing this blog (Fall 2023), Domaine Europe just finished migrating German pet brand MiaCara to Shopify. They were still on Magento 1, crutched by extensive third-party support, and time was running out. “We realized that moving to Magento 2 wouldn't give us much of an advantage over Magento 1, where speed, user-friendliness and cost of development were a problem. So we assessed the available alternatives and found that Shopify beat the other contenders in almost every category that was relevant to us: Total Cost of Ownership, speed of development, amount of relevant users at the moment, pace of innovation and momentum in general.”
Secure your migration with Domaine Europe
Is your brand considering to move away from Magento? Then it’s worthwhile to look into Shopify. Over the years, Shopify has evolved from a small business solution with a ‘template reputation’ into the most cutting-edge e-commerce solution available for brands of all sizes: from small, to mid market all the way up to enterprise (+150 mio GMV).
Are you looking for an experienced agency partner to embark on your migration? Make sure to check out Domaine Europe. From the moment we became the first official Shopify Plus Partner in the EU, we’ve been building and scaling hundreds of Shopify stores and we are now named Shopify Premier Partner and considered one of the top Shopify agencies on the European mainland.
Check out our previous work to see what we can do, and get in touch!
Denken Sie darüber nach, Magento zu verlassen? Dann lohnt es sich, einen Blick auf Shopify zu werfen. Im Laufe der Jahre hat sich Shopify von einer Lösung für kleine Unternehmen mit einem „Template-Ruf” zur modernsten E-Commerce-Lösung für Marken aller Größen entwickelt: von kleinen über mittlere bis hin zu großen Unternehmen (+150 Mio. GMV).
Sind Sie auf der Suche nach einem erfahrenen Agenturpartner, der Sie bei Ihrer Migration unterstützt?
The reasons why brands leave Shopify for Magento? They all boil down to this:
- Platform maintenance and feature development are too difficult, time-consuming, and expensive on Magento / Adobe Commerce. Brands need developers to make basic front-end changes, and implementing new features takes ages which is ultimately slowing them down.
- Not being on Shopify is a competitive disadvantage. Shopify is the only e-commerce platform on our planet that has 4.000 engineers constantly improving the platform and keeping it at the forefront of e-commerce - so you don’t have to. Its pace of new feature releases is unparalleled and their one-page checkout is the best converting in the world.
It’s clear to see that Shopify has grown rapidly in recent years, whereas Magento plateaued. Trend lines, showing the number of sites using each, tell us that more and more brands are leaving self-hosted and open-source for Shopify as a modern SaaS e-commerce solution (source: Storeleads).
Three waves of Magento migrations
Over the years Domaine Europe has migrated tens of ex-Magento merchants to Shopify throughout Europe (Benelux, DACH, Nordics, UK), and we heared similar stories from all brands. In this blog, we share some of the experiences that prompted our clients to migrate from Magento to Shopify.
First wave: Magento 1 EOL
The first wave of replatformers came to us when Magento 1 reached its End of Life, scheduled for June 2020. An ideal moment for many e-commerce brands to switch from a self-hosted open source platform to a more modern, cloud-native SaaS platform like Shopify.
One of those brands was Veloretti, an ambitious bike brand that had invested 18 months and 6 figures in a Magento 1.9 store, only to learn that they would have to replatform soon because Magento announced the EOL of version 1. Their founder Ferry Zonder was done with it, however, and moved the entire store to Shopify in a matter of weeks.
And then there was the case of Rosefield Watches. For them, Magento was a nightmare from the start and they didn’t even make it to the EOL before replatforming.
“We were held hostage by our platform. We couldn’t touch anything without breaking things. To get the functionality we needed, we started doing things with the platform that it was never designed for. Our lives were completely dictated by it, we kept spending tons of energy on it, and the costs kept soaring.”
Since Rosefield moved to Shopify Plus they went on to conquer the international market of jewelry and watches.
Second wave: Magento 2 disappoints
We saw a second wave when a number of businesses regretted their upgrade to Magento 2 so much that they abandoned it within a year and moved to Shopify. Their main concern was often cost: maintaining Magento 2 turned out to be extremely expensive, while not delivering the performance clients needed.
The coffee roasters at Fascino came away from their 18 months with Magento 2 slightly traumatized. Co-founder Lieke Hanssen summed it up at the time: “The platform simply cost us way too much money. When our developer agency handed us a pricy estimate for the next Magento release, we had no other choice than to replatform.” Not surprisingly, the thing she liked most about Shopify was the absence of platform maintenance. “With Shopify, you don’t have towering maintenance costs and unexpected releases that make your business operations unpredictable. You know what every month will bring in terms of costs, so there’s enough budget left for marketing.”
Cost was definitely a factor in the case of McGregor New York, too, in combination with the platform performing poorly. “Our IT landscape was so heavily customised that it crashed regularly. The checkout often didn’t work, every time there was a sale or campaign something went wrong, conversion was plummeting, we needed our Magento development agency for everything, people had to work weekends to keep the platform in the air, and a lot of the budget went to IT and damage control.” On top of that, it turned out that a new Magento update would cost as much as building a new store. McGregor decided to switch to Shopify and saw its revenue go up again, without crashes and overwork.
Third wave: Shopify builds more and more momentum
Currently, we are witnessing a third wave: brands who feel Magento - correction: since 2021 the commercial version is called Adobe Commerce - runs the risk of getting out of touch. Compared to Shopify, the platform’s approach is simply not up-to-date anymore: the future is SaaS, relentless innovation is key, and the constant rhythm of EOL’s and updates is wearing them out.
Swiss brand namuk is a recent migration client of Domaine Europe. Head of E-commerce Simon Bertschinger wasted no time moving the brand to a SaaS platform when he started: "Maintaining our Magento webshop took us around 140 hours per month - and that was even without the implementation of new features. Our store had many issues: speed, payment systems… and the options for personalization were way too complex." Since the migration, the brand’s ambition to scale internationally has gained unprecedented momentum. “Shopify Plus creates more possibilities and flexibility, allowing us to develop our brand much faster."
At the moment of writing this blog (Fall 2023), Domaine Europe just finished migrating German pet brand MiaCara to Shopify. They were still on Magento 1, crutched by extensive third-party support, and time was running out. “We realized that moving to Magento 2 wouldn't give us much of an advantage over Magento 1, where speed, user-friendliness and cost of development were a problem. So we assessed the available alternatives and found that Shopify beat the other contenders in almost every category that was relevant to us: Total Cost of Ownership, speed of development, amount of relevant users at the moment, pace of innovation and momentum in general.”
Secure your migration with Domaine Europe
Is your brand considering to move away from Magento? Then it’s worthwhile to look into Shopify. Over the years, Shopify has evolved from a small business solution with a ‘template reputation’ into the most cutting-edge e-commerce solution available for brands of all sizes: from small, to mid market all the way up to enterprise (+150 mio GMV).
Are you looking for an experienced agency partner to embark on your migration? Make sure to check out Domaine Europe. From the moment we became the first official Shopify Plus Partner in the EU, we’ve been building and scaling hundreds of Shopify stores and we are now named Shopify Premier Partner and considered one of the top Shopify agencies on the European mainland.
Check out our previous work to see what we can do, and get in touch! kann Ihnen helfen. Als erster offizieller Shopify Plus-Partner in der EU haben wir Hunderte von Shopify-Shops aufgebaut und skaliert. Heute gelten wir als eine der besten Shopify-Agenturen in Europa.
Schauen Sie sich unsere bisherigen Projekte an, um einen Eindruck zu bekommen. Kontaktieren Sie uns gern.
