Waarom verlaten merken Magento / Adobe Commerce voor Shopify?
- Platform onderhoud en feature development zijn te moeilijk, tijdrovend en te duur. Merken hebben developers nodig om de meest basic frontend aanpassingen te doen, nieuwe features uitrollen duurt lang en plannen lopen steevast vertraging op.
- Niet op Shopify zitten is een competitief nadeel. Shopify is het enige e-commerce platform ter wereld dat constant 4.000 engineers aan het werk heeft om het platform te verbeteren en te innoveren - zodat jij dat niet hoeft te doen. Het tempo waarmee nieuwe features gereleased worden is ongeëvenaard, en hun one-page checkout is de best converterende van de wereld.
In de grafiek hierboven is goed te zien dat Shopify de afgelopen jaren hard gegroeid is, terwijl Magento een plateau heeft bereikt. De trendlijnen staan voor het aantal sites dat op de platforms draait, en ze illustreren dat steeds meer merken self-hosted en open-source inruilen voor Shopify's moderne SaaS e-commerce oplossing (bron: Storeleads).
Drie Magento migratiegolven
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! heeft de afgelopen jaren tientallen ex-Magento gebruikers uit heel Europa (Benelux, DACH, Scandinavië, UK) naar Shopify gemigreerd, en we horen steeds weer dezelfde verhalen van merken. In deze blog delen we enkele ervaringen die onze klanten ertoe brachten om van Magento naar Shopify te migreren.
Eerste golf: Magento 1 EOL
De eerste golf migranten zocht ons op toen de End of Life voor Magento 1 aangekondigd werd, gepland voor Juni 2020. Een ideaal moment voor veel e-com merken om de overstap te maken van een self-hosted open source platform naar een moderner, cloud-native SaaS platform als Shopify.
Een van die merken was Veloretti, een ambitieus fietsenmerk dat 18 maanden en 6 cijfers had geïnvesteerd in een Magento 1.9 store - en toen te horen kreeg dat ze binnenkort weer moesten migreren omdat Magento de EOL van versie 1 had aangekondigd. Oprichter Ferry Zonder was er klaar mee, en verhuisde de hele store binnen een paar weken naar Shopify.
Een ander sprekend voorbeeld is de migratie van de webshop van Rosefield Watches. Voor hen was Magento vanaf het allereerste begin een nachtmerrie, en ze hadden geen EOL nodig om te migreren. “We werden gegijzeld door ons platform. We konden niks aanraken zonder iets kapot te maken. Om de functionaliteit te krijgen die we nodig hadden, gingen we dingen met het platform doen waar het helemaal niet voor gemaakt was. We werden compleet geleefd, bleven er maar energie in stoppen, en de kosten rezen de pan uit.” Sinds Rosefield naar Shopify Plus verhuisde heeft het merk de internationale markt voor sieraden en horloges veroverd.
Tweede golf: Magento 2 stelt teleur
We zagen een tweede migratiegolf toen een flink aantal bedrijven zoveel spijt kreeg van hun upgrade naar Magento 2, dat ze het binnen een jaar inruilden voor Shopify. Hun grootste zorg was de kosten: Magento 2 onderhouden bleek extreem duur te zijn, en bracht bij lange na niet de performance die merken nodig hadden.
De koffiebranders van Fascino hadden vrijwel direct spijt van hun beslissing om te upgraden naar Magento 2 en besloten na 18 maanden opnieuw te migreren, dit keer naar Shopify. Medeoprichter Lieke Hanssen vat het samen: “Het platform kostte ons gewoon veel te veel geld. Toen onze developer ons een prijzige offerte gaf voor de volgende Magento release, hadden we geen andere keuze dan migreren.” Wat ze het leukste vindt aan Shopify is, niet verrassend, de afwezigheid van onderhoud. “Met Shopify heb je geen torenhoge onderhoudskosten en onverwachte releases die je bedrijfsvoering onvoorspelbaar maken. Je weet wat er elke maand aankomt qua kosten, dus er is altijd genoeg over voor marketing.”
De kosten waren ook een factor voor McGregor New York, in combinatie met de slechte performance van het platform. “Ons IT landschap was zo zwaar gecustomized dat het regelmatig crashte. De checkout deed het niet, bij elke sale of campagne ging er iets mis, conversie ging totaal onderuit, we konden niks zonder onze Magento development agency, medewerkers moesten in het weekend doorwerken om het platform in de lucht te houden, en een groot deel van het budget ging op aan IT en damage control.” Toen het duidelijk werd dat de nieuwste Magento update evenveel zou gaan kosten als een compleet nieuwe store, besloot McGregor om naar Shopify te migreren. Sindsdien laat hun omzet weer een stijgende lijn zien, zonder crashes en overwerk.
Derde golf: Shopify krijgt meer en meer momentum
Op het moment zien we bij
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! de derde golf: merken die het idee hebben dat Magento / Adobe Commerce het risico loopt achterop te raken. Vergeleken met Shopify is Magento’s benadering simpelweg niet meer up-to-date: de toekomst is SaaS, onvermoeibaar innoveren is een must, en het constante ritme van EOL’s en updates put e-commerce bedrijven uit.
Het Zwitserse merk namuk is een recente migratie klant van
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!. Head of E-commerce Simon Bertschinger was nauwelijks aangetreden of hij besloot het merk naar een SaaS platform te verhuizen: “We waren zo’n 140 uur per maand kwijt aan het onderhoud van onze Magento store - en dat was nog zonder de implementatie van nieuwe features. Onze store had heel veel issues: snelheid, betaalmethoden… en de opties voor personalisatie waren veel te complex.” Sinds de migratie heeft Namuk’s ambitie om internationaal op te schalen een flinke boost gekregen. “Shopify Plus creëert meer mogelijkheden en flexibiliteit, waardoor we ons merk veel sneller kunnen ontwikkelen.”
Op het moment van schrijven (eind 2023) heeft
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! net de migratie afgerond van het Duitse petcare merk MiaCara. Zij draaiden tot voor kort nog op Magento 1, overeind gehouden door uitgebreide third-party support, en de tijd begon te dringen. “We realiseerden ons dat overstappen naar Magento 2 ons niet veel voordeel zou bieden ten opzichte van Magento 1, dat problemen gaf met snelheid, gebruiksvriendelijkheid en de kosten van development. We hebben toen de beschikbare alternatieven bekeken en ontdekten dat Shopify alle andere platforms versloeg, in elke categorie die relevant voor ons was: Total Cost of Ownership, snelheid van ontwikkeling, hoeveelheid relevante gebruikers op het moment, tempo van innovatie en momentum in het algemeen.”
Stel je migratie veilig met
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!
Overweegt jouw merk om bij Magento weg te gaan? Dan is het de moeite waard om Shopify te bekijken. Het afgelopen decennium heeft Shopify zich ontwikkeld van een MKB oplossing met een ‘template reputatie’ tot de meest geavanceerde e-commerce oplossing voor merken van elk formaat: van MKB tot grote, internationale enterprise merken (+150 mio online GMV).
Zoek je een ervaren partner om je te begeleiden tijdens je migratie? Bij
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! zit je goed. Sinds we de eerste officiële Shopify Plus Partner in de EU werden, hebben we honderden Shopify stores gebouwd en opgeschaald. Inmiddels zijn we Shopify Premier Partner en worden we gezien als een van de top Shopify agencies op het Europese vasteland - en we zetten onze expertise graag in voor jouw merk!
Bekijk ons eerdere werk om te zien wat we kunnen, en neem contact met ons op!
