Sylius vs Shopify, WooCommerce and Magento compared

In a Sylius vs Shopify, WooCommerce and Magento comparison, the deciding factor is who carries the technical work. Shopify carries it for you and charges a subscription, WooCommerce keeps it simple inside WordPress, Magento brings a very large feature set with heavy operations, and Sylius gives developers a clean framework for custom rules. Each ecommerce platform has real strengths and weaknesses, so pick from your process, not from a feature count.

A disclosure first: I build and maintain Sylius and custom shops, so I have an interest in this comparison. I have linked the source of each fact so you can check it.

The comparison at a glance

The weaknesses in this table are my professional judgement. The prices, licences and dates that follow come from each vendor.

What each platform actually costs to run

Shopify's pricing page, as displayed in euros with yearly billing, lists Basic at €27 a month, Grow at €79, Advanced at €289 and Plus from €2,100. If you do not use Shopify Payments, it adds a transaction fee that runs from 2% on Basic down to 0.2% on Plus. On a shop doing serious volume, that line can outweigh the subscription, so run the sum with your own figures.

WooCommerce states that its core has no monthly subscription and no revenue share. The same page puts hosting at $25 to $350 a month for most stores and optional extensions at $29 to $299 a year each, plus payment processing. Ten extensions can add up quickly, and each one is another update to test.

Magento's open source code is licensed under OSL 3.0, while Adobe Commerce is the commercial product. I did not find a public Adobe Commerce price in the pages I read, so ask Adobe directly. Sylius has an MIT licensed core, and Sylius Plus is listed as starting from €800 a year, with pricing tied to online sales volume and to the chosen modules. For both open source options, the larger costs are development, hosting and maintenance, which vary too much for a single honest number.

Strengths and weaknesses on B2B

If you sell to companies, the gap between platforms becomes concrete. Shopify offers company accounts, quantity rules and net payment terms from Basic upward, but limits lower plans to three active catalogue assignments and keeps deposits and partial payments for Plus. Adobe Commerce has a B2B extension covering company accounts, shared catalogues, requisition lists, negotiable quotes, purchase orders and payment on account. Sylius covers organisations and price lists through its B2B Suite, a proprietary Plus module, with quotes in a separate module. In the free core, you would build or source these yourself.

Adobe therefore has the broadest native B2B set of the three on paper, and Shopify has the quickest to activate. Sylius is the one to consider when your B2B rules do not fit any of those models and must be coded anyway. I go into detail in the article on Sylius B2B features.

Maintenance: the cost that comparison tables forget

On Shopify, the platform is patched for you. Everywhere else, that work is yours or your supplier's. Magento 2.4.9 came out on 12 May 2026, and the support table shows older branches ending on fixed dates, with 2.4.6 listed to August 2027 under Adobe Commerce extended support. Sylius 1.14 loses security support on 31 December 2026, and 2.2 on 31 March 2027. Each platform you host means a plan, a budget and a named person. If nobody can name that person, the risk is a shop that keeps taking orders on unpatched software.

How to choose, honestly

Choose Shopify when your process is standard and speed matters most. Most small retailers should start there, even though my own work is on Sylius and custom shops. Choose WooCommerce when your site is driven by content, you already use WordPress and your order volume is modest. Choose Magento or Adobe Commerce when you need its native feature breadth and have, or can fund, a team that knows it well. Choose Sylius when your margins depend on rules that off the shelf tools cannot express, such as unusual pricing, complex checkouts or deep ERP links, and when you accept that a developer stays part of the picture.

Whichever you lean towards, ask each supplier the same questions. Who owns the code and the data? What does exit look like if we part ways? What is the three year cost including updates? A supplier who answers these clearly is usually a safer choice than one with a better sales deck.

Next step

If you are comparing options for a real project, send me your catalogue size, your integrations and what your current tool cannot do. My ecommerce service page explains how I work, and you will deal directly with the person writing the code. If Shopify is the better answer for you, I will tell you so.