Magento Alternatives: Four Frustrations Why Brands Switch From Adobe

Discover why businesses are migrating from Adobe Commerce to Shopify, gaining lower costs, better conversion rates, and faster site speeds

Maine Lobster Now is a gourmet lobster company that ships fresh lobsters directly to consumers. Like many ecommerce businesses, they faced the upward pressure of growth and the downward pressure of an ecommerce platform that wasn’t serving their needs.

Julian Klenda, founder and CEO of Maine Lobster Now, had first turned to Magento (now Adobe Commerce), but its limitations quickly became apparent. Adobe Commerce customization required expensive development resources, and the flexibility they required from their ecommerce site meant they had to bring developers on for almost every change. 

The situation Maine Lobster Now found themselves in isn’t rare. Adobe Commerce is a well-known platform, but companies that commit to it often face more challenges down the road that eventually hinder growth and agility. In this article, we’ll dive into why businesses are increasingly migrating from Adobe Commerce to other platforms, including Shopify.

Why brands are looking for Adobe Commerce (Magento) alternatives

Adobe Commerce promises a highly customizable platform and the scalability that comes with support from its premier parent company, Adobe. The potential of partnering with such a well-known, trustworthy brand can be compelling, but many companies find that the longer they build on Adobe Commerce, the more they’re investing, despite less than satisfactory outcomes. 

High total cost of ownership (TCO)

Maine Lobster Now found that when they shifted from Adobe Commerce to Shopify, they were able to:

• Increase overall conversion rates by 69% and by 97% on mobile
• Reduce chargebacks due to fraud by 93%
• Build their Shopify store for about 90% less than their Adobe Commerce store

Despite needing fewer resources to get started, Maine Lobster Now ended up with a more fully featured platform. “We had fewer features than we have on Shopify now,” Julian says. “The numbers are staggering.”

But Maine Lobster Now’s experience isn’t unique. This same pattern repeats across numerous companies in several different industries and niches. Overall, Adobe Commerce has a higher total cost of ownership (TCO) than Shopify, on average:

• Implementation and setup costs are 42% higher.
• Platform fees and ecommerce stack costs are 42% higher.
• Operational and support costs are 24% higher.

Having already invested in the platform, companies using Adobe Commerce should be wary of the sunk cost fallacy. Although it might have been the right choice long ago, and it might seem counterintuitive to reinvest time and money into a totally different solution now, the long-term savings outweigh the short-term costs of switching. 

Shopify, in contrast, removes infrastructure cost elements like hosting, monitoring, disaster recovery, and security – allowing companies to save more and more over time. 

Lack of agility and usability

Gresham Blake, a design-focused tailoring brand, recognized they needed to adapt to rapid changes in the ecommerce industry, but their platform, Adobe Commerce, wasn’t agile enough to keep up. 

“I was building a brand, and the website built on Magento just didn't have the functionality I needed to make any changes,” explains cofounder Fal Blake. “I always had to go to developers.”

This double-bind creates a problem for many ecommerce businesses: Adobe Commerce doesn’t provide the features they need, but it doesn’t offer affordable, user-friendly customization options either. Agility can slow to a crawl. 

The primary issue is that Adobe Commerce is primarily built for developers, making it challenging for non-technical users. This is troublesome even for companies that have developers on staff. 

Maintenance and upgrades consume significant time and resources, diverting developers from the innovation work that makes them most valuable. Meanwhile, the teams in charge of adapting the platform are stuck filing requests and waiting instead of making the changes themselves, learning from the results, and iterating. 

In contrast, Shopify provides operational leverage and flexibility without forcing companies to take on technical debt, empowering both technical and business users to focus on their goals.

And the result of switching from Adobe Commerce to Shopify? Gresham Blake reported a 68% increase in online sales in the first four months of 2024 compared to the same period in 2023 when the website was run on Adobe Commerce.

Slowed innovation and lack of commerce focus

The primary draw to Adobe Commerce is the backing of Adobe, a massive, long-standing brand that communicates strength and support. But when the rubber meets the road and the unique challenges of ecommerce rise to the fore, many companies find Adobe Commerce is missing something crucial: focus. 

Adobe is indeed a big brand, but the downside is similar to its upside: Adobe has a broad range of products, and commerce isn’t its primary focus. Commerce accounts for only 2 of the approximately 90 products under the Adobe umbrella. This lack of focus results in relatively little R&D investment.

Take LAKOR, a Danish wholesaler of coastal-inspired apparel. LAKOR found Adobe Commerce too fragile to sustain the challenges of ecommerce. “It’s that sinking feeling that at any moment, you might need to open your laptop and fix something that broke,” says Jesper Unna, LAKOR cofounder and CTO. 

The lack of commerce focus really came to light when LAKOR wanted to expand. Adobe Commerce made that kind of growth intimidating when it should have been exciting. 

With Shopify, the focus on commerce carries through to these decisions. “Now when my cofounders bring up the idea to sell in a new market,” Jesper says, “Instead of being overwhelmed like I would have been on Magento, I can say ‘Sure, why not!’”

Plus, given Adobe’s unclear commerce trajectory, limited innovation becomes a natural result. Shopify maintains an engineering-led focus on commerce, which results in all its engineers remaining dedicated to seeing around the corners ecommerce presents. In contrast, features on Adobe Commerce’s roadmap are almost all features that Shopify already offers. 

This contrast is most clear when you compare checkout experiences. Shopify offers a checkout experience that:

• Outperforms Adobe Commerce with a conversion rate that's an average of 5% better
• Provides a 60% faster checkout
• Offers best-in-class built-in solutions with proprietary technology

Meanwhile, Adobe Commerce provided limited out-of-box offerings across gateways, buy now, pay later (BNPL), and express pay. 

Security and site reliability concerns

On March 31, 2025, Version 4 of the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) goes into effect, and with it, a new set of anti-skimming requirements that protect customers from payment data fraud—but it also requires new compliance work from ecommerce businesses. 

Changes like these are worrisome for many businesses because their platforms often leave them to bear the responsibility of site security, site reliability, and compliance. These businesses are stuck managing security patches, implementing updates, and monitoring new standards. 

As a result, the basics of managing a site—including maintaining uptime, performance, and scalability—can consume significant amounts of time and effort. 

Shopify, in contrast, owns platform security, provides data protection, and offers high uptime and reliability. Shopify has an average uptime of 99.98% and can handle traffic surges whenever they come, ensuring unexpected virality is an exciting surprise instead of an anxiety-provoking incident. 

And with PCI compliance in particular, Shopify is already prepared to support our customers. We absorb all the complexity of compliance, freeing businesses to grow their brands—comfortable and confident knowing that we’re taking care of compliance for them, even when new standards emerge.

In contrast, Adobe Commerce leaves its users to face the brunt of this work. We make it easy for businesses to follow these requirements, ensuring they can focus on growth instead of following a requirements checklist. 

Adobe Commerce Cloud alternatives: How do they stack up?

There are numerous alternatives to Adobe Commerce—including WooCommerce, BigCommerce, and Salesforce—but Shopify stands out even when you include other competitors.

TCO of ecommerce platforms

TCO measures the overall cost of a product or service throughout its entire life cycle, including initial purchase, installation, and ongoing operation. To see how four of the most popular ecommerce platforms stacked up in terms of TCO, we commissioned research from a leading independent consulting firm. 

According to the study, no other ecommerce platform could match Shopify’s TCO: 

• Adobe Commerce users experienced 42% higher platform costs on average, primarily due to inflexible pricing. 
• WooCommerce users experienced 32% higher platform costs on average, primarily due to an increased need for support and version upgrades. 
• BigCommerce users experienced 32% higher platform costs on average, primarily due to limited native functionalities. 
• Salesforce users experienced 14% higher platform costs on average, primarily due—as with Adobe Commerce—to inflexible pricing. 

Overall, Shopify’s TCO is up to 36% better than any of our competitors. 

Conversion of ecommerce platforms

Every ecommerce company wants to convert more customers, but your choice of ecommerce platform can make a big difference in conversion rates. To see how big the difference can be, we partnered with a Big Three global management consulting company to complete a study examining conversion rates from some of the biggest ecommerce platforms. 

On average, Shopify’s checkout converts:

• 5% better than Adobe Commerce’s checkout, which results in a 0.5% TCO offset 
• 17% better than WooCommerce’s checkout, which results in a 1.7% TCO offset 
• 12% better than BigCommerce’s checkout, which results in a 1.2% TCO offset 
• 36% better than Salesforce, which results in a 3.6% TCO offset

Each result assumes a 10% margin on goods sold, and in every result, Shopify outperforms our competitors. 

Site speed of ecommerce platforms

Site speed can be a major differentiator between a site a user visits and bounces from and a site that a user visits and converts from. To see how different ecommerce platforms stack up, we collected a representative sample of sites and captured speed data from Google Core Web Vitals. These metrics showed that 93% of Shopify stores are fast, and every other platform lagged behind. 

• Only 53% of Adobe Commerce stores are fast, and Shopify stores render 2x faster than Adobe stores.
• Only 34% of WooCommerce stores are fast, and Shopify stores render 2.4x faster than WooCommerce stores.
• Only 80% of BigCommerce stores are fast, and Shopify stores render 1.4x faster than BigCommerce stores.
• Only 65% of Salesforce stores are fast, and Shopify stores render 1.5x faster than Salesforce stores.

Shopify research indicates that even fractional improvements to site speed—as tiny as half a second—can significantly increase conversion rates and lower bounce rates. 

Shopify offers all of the benefits and none of the baggage 

Overall, Shopify offers a simpler, more agile, and more robust solution for modern ecommerce businesses than Adobe Commerce. 

Over time, Shopify and Adobe Commerce are only likely to divert further. Because commerce is a relatively small portion of Adobe’s portfolio, and commerce is Shopify’s primary focus, businesses that invest in Shopify will always have access to best-in-class commerce functionalities before anyone else.

If your use case is more niche or needs more functionality, Shopify has the extensibility to keep you covered. Shopify provides a unified platform for managing all sales channels, including POS, B2B, and DTC, and offers an ecosystem of apps that simplifies adding new features.

When businesses stick with Adobe Commerce, they’re often left with higher-than-expected TCO, disappointing conversion rates, and lagging site speed metrics. 

When Julian Klenda of Maine Lobster Now used Adobe Commerce, he felt stuck rather than empowered. Julian estimates they spent about a million dollars on Adobe Commerce. Even then, he says, “We still couldn't get descriptions to work. We couldn’t get checkout to work. It was just a money pit.”

When he switched to Shopify, he found that everything that “used to be so difficult” is now “turnkey.”