Adobe Commerce or Shopify Plus: how to decide

The short answer

Choose Shopify Plus if you want a hosted platform with predictable costs, fast launches and far less technical upkeep. Choose Adobe Commerce if you need deep customization, complex B2B workflows or many brands and sites on one system, and you have a development team or partner to maintain it. For most mid-market brands selling standard products direct to consumers, Shopify Plus costs less to own over three years. Adobe Commerce earns its cost when your business rules do not fit a standard platform.

If you are on Magento or Adobe Commerce today, the deciding question is often your version. Adobe’s support windows are fixed, and an upgrade project is a natural point to compare a replatform.

Adobe Commerce vs Shopify Plus at a glance

Total cost of ownership

Compare three years, not the first invoice. The license is rarely the largest line.

Shopify Plus, as of 2026: starts at $2,300 a month on a three-year term or $2,500 a month on a one-year term, according to Shopify. Higher-volume or more complex businesses move to a variable platform fee based on revenue and business model. Add payment processing, apps and agency or developer time.

Adobe Commerce: Adobe does not publish a standard price list; licenses are quoted through Adobe or a solution partner. Beyond the license, budget for:

• Hosting and infrastructure if you run it yourself. Adobe Commerce 2.4.8 requires a stack that includes PHP, MariaDB or MySQL, OpenSearch, Valkey caching, RabbitMQ and, on premises, Varnish, all of which need managing.
• Upgrades. Each version gets a fixed support window, and moving between versions is a project, not a button.
• Security patching and monitoring.
• Ongoing development: custom modules and extensions must be tested against every upgrade.
• Performance tuning as catalog and traffic grow.

How to compare: list every cost for both options over 36 months, including license, hosting, apps or extensions, payment processing at your expected volume, development retainer, upgrade projects and internal staff time. Run it at today’s revenue and at double.

Upgrade cycles and support dates

Adobe’s lifecycle policy gives each Adobe Commerce release three years of standard support from general availability. As of 2026, the published dates include:

• 2.4.6: standard support ended August 11, 2026, with extended support to August 31, 2027 and a security-only period to May 31, 2028.
• 2.4.7: standard support to May 31, 2027, extended support to May 31, 2028.
• 2.4.8: standard support to May 31, 2028.
• 2.4.9: released May 12, 2026, with standard support to May 31, 2029.

Adobe also says that from June 1, 2027 it will no longer maintain cloud environments running unsupported versions. If your store is on 2.4.6 or earlier, plan now: either upgrade, or use the upgrade budget to evaluate a move. Shopify has no version upgrades for merchants; the platform is updated continuously.

Flexibility and features

• Customization. Adobe Commerce lets developers change almost anything, including core checkout, pricing and catalog logic. Shopify Plus is customized through apps, Shopify Functions, checkout extensions and APIs. Most requirements fit; truly unusual logic may not.
• B2B. Adobe Commerce’s B2B module includes company accounts and hierarchies, shared catalogs with custom prices, negotiable quotes, purchase order approvals, requisition lists, quick order and pay-on-account credit. Shopify B2B covers companies, catalogs, net terms, quantity rules and volume pricing, with Plus adding unlimited catalogs, direct company assignment and deposits. Formal quote negotiation is stronger on Adobe.
• Multi-store. Adobe runs many websites, stores and views from one installation. Shopify Plus handles multiple stores and markets, typically as separate stores under one organization.
• Hosting and scaling. Shopify handles traffic spikes for you. Adobe performance depends on your infrastructure and code quality.
• Ecosystem. Shopify’s app store is large and fast to deploy. Adobe has a mature extension marketplace, but each extension adds upgrade and compatibility work.

Weighing an upgrade or a replatform?

Book a free 30-minute call. We look at your current store, version and integrations with you and tell you which path we would take and what we would do first. No obligation. Pick a time.

Questions to ask before you commit

• Which of our custom modules exist because of a real business rule, and which were workarounds for an old version?
• What did our last upgrade cost, in agency fees and staff time, and how long did it take?
• How many hours a month does our team spend keeping the platform running rather than improving the store?
• Which integrations would have to be rebuilt on a new platform, and who owns each one today?
• If we stayed, what would it take to reach a supported version before the next support date passes?
• If we moved, which features would we lose, and do customers actually use them?

Write down the answers before you talk to vendors. They turn a sales conversation into a comparison you control, and they often settle the decision on their own.

Decision rules

Shopify Plus usually wins when:

• You sell mainly direct to consumers with standard product options.
• Your team spends more time maintaining the platform than improving it.
• You want faster launches and fewer moving parts.
• Your B2B needs fit catalogs, terms and quantity rules.

Adobe Commerce usually wins when:

• Complex B2B is core: negotiated quotes, approval chains, credit lines and large account hierarchies.
• You run many brands, regions and storefronts from one catalog with heavy shared logic.
• You have in-house developers or a long-term partner and a budget for upgrades.
• Integrations with ERP, PIM and custom systems require deep control of data and checkout.

Replatforming from Adobe Commerce to Shopify

1. Audit what you have. Every extension and custom module, what it does, and whether Shopify covers it natively, through an app or not at all.
2. Map data. Products, variants, customers, order history, reviews, gift cards and B2B companies. Decide what moves and what stays archived.
3. Rebuild integrations. ERP, inventory, tax, shipping and email connections, tested with real orders.
4. Plan redirects. Map every product, category and CMS URL to its new address so rankings carry over.
5. Test and launch in a quiet period, with a rollback plan and close monitoring of search traffic and conversion for the following weeks.

Our Magento to Shopify migration checklist covers this in detail. Our web design team builds and migrates stores on Shopify Plus and Magento, and our systems integration team connects them to ERP and accounting systems.

Related services

• Web design and e-commerce
• Magento to Shopify migration checklist
• Systems integration