Buyers talk about ecommerce platform cost in two registers: what the platform charges — a licence, a plan or a share of sales — and what it takes to run a store on it. In these interviews, buyers often weigh the second alongside the first: buyers moving off Salesforce Commerce Cloud and Adobe Commerce describe the developers, integrators, hosting and time around the platform as part of what it costs. Below are the seven mechanics buyers describe and where moves made on price go. The ratings live on what buyers wish they'd known before replatforming.
Seven things that set the bill
Across the interviews, buyers describe ecommerce platform cost as shaped by the labor around the platform, how its fees are indexed, which plan and add-ons a store needs, where it is hosted, the contract, and what it would cost to leave.
Buyers price the labor around the platform, not only the licence
Buyers describe the people needed to run and change the store as part of what the platform costs. One says of its old platform, “it's not the platform itself, it is the ecosystem around it. Magento, the ecosystem is so much more costly and time intensive than Shopify.” Another calls Magento “very costly on development. It's not an out-of-the-box scenario.” A Salesforce Commerce Cloud customer says “we have to outsource a lot of that dev work to a third party versus being able to, if we were on a Shopify site as an example, we could probably manage all of that internally,” and another that “The teams to develop and maintain are also kind of expensive as they are very specialized profiles.” As one buyer weighing a move puts it, “you have to include the cost of developers.”
Named in this context: Adobe Commerce · Salesforce Commerce Cloud · Shopify
Salesforce Commerce Cloud and Shopify buyers describe fees tied to sales
Buyers on both platforms describe fees that move with sales, in different shapes. On Salesforce Commerce Cloud, one buyer describes “the actual percent of sales that they charge,” and another pre-purchasing years of GMV at renewal (see the stories below). Shopify's fees scale with revenue too: one Shopify Plus customer explains that “its licensing is based on revenue share,” and another says “As you scale, you've got to pay a significant percentage to Shopify, and that's tough.” By contrast, a buyer weighing an open-source platform values that it carries “no sort of GMV-based fee.” And one running several sites says some of them “don't generate nearly enough revenue to support the fees for Shopify.”
Named in this context: Salesforce Commerce Cloud · Shopify
Buyers weigh Shopify Plus against what the higher tier unlocks
Buyers describe Plus as a set of unlocks with a higher price. One “ended up downgrading to just the advanced Shopify. And honestly for us, I've not noticed a single difference,” and adds that “if you're going to be on Shopify Plus you need to be making a ton of money to where the percentage decreases that they offer make sense.” Another considering Plus finds “the value there really is the lower credit card fees and everything else is speculative.” A third notes “You can't personalize or customize checkout until you're paying the Shopify Plus subscription.”
Named in this context: Shopify
Apps and payments sit on top of the base price
Buyers describe the base fee as the start of the bill. One buyer comparing Shopify Plus with BigCommerce says of Shopify, “you have a base price and then you pay for all these apps to get everything you want,” and another that “If they don't have it, you have to pay for it, and it's typically expensive add-on services.” Payment fees add to it: one Shopify customer finds “They trap you in there and they charge an extra fee on top of international orders,” and another that “Shop Pay adds up.” Not every buyer sees payments as a cost — one says “Shopify Payments has lower transaction fees compared to various other platforms.” Which apps Shopify brands typically add is mapped in the Shopify DTC stack.
Named in this context: Shopify · BigCommerce
Architecture changes what sits outside the platform bill
Buyers on Adobe Commerce describe infrastructure costs that Shopify bundles into the platform. A buyer comparing the two says “Shopify has built-in Shopify payments. It's got built-in edge caching for page load. It's got built-in security. All that stuff that we use on the Magento side we have to pay for.” Another left Magento partly because its hosting was “very costly,” and a Shopify Plus customer values that “We don't have to worry about hosting or DevOps.” Separately, buyers using headless storefronts describe higher build or maintenance costs than native Shopify: one says maintaining a headless Hydrogen site “is about four times the cost of what it was to maintain a Shopify Liquid website,” and another found its headless site “very expensive for us to build and maintain.”
Named in this context: Adobe Commerce · Shopify
Contract structure can change what buyers ultimately pay
Buyers describe several contract mechanics. On downgrades, a Salesforce Commerce Cloud customer says “It's not easy to downgrade your license, so you need to pay regardless of the amount. That's really expensive.” On bundles, another describes deals where “you get Service Cloud and this other one basically for free. But if that goes well, all of a sudden, the other costs shoot up.” On price increases, a Shopify customer says “Their costs have gone up over the years.” On negotiation, another names “the limitations to negotiating a contract.” And on winning accounts, one buyer says “Shopify approached us with significant cost savings.”
Named in this context: Salesforce Commerce Cloud · Shopify
Replatforming has its own price — and it keeps some buyers in place
The move itself costs money and time. One buyer weighing a move off Salesforce Commerce Cloud asks, “how much savings are you really going to get? Re-platforming is very expensive.” Another stayed on Magento because “We'd be working on migrating to BigCommerce and not working on making more revenue.” A buyer leaving BigCommerce notes that app vendors “do charge you to integrate with a new platform,” and one that completed a move says “transitioning to Shopify was not a cheap undertaking.”
Named in this context: Salesforce Commerce Cloud · Adobe Commerce · BigCommerce · Shopify
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The counter-current: some buyers find the price worth it
Not every buyer is trading down. One Shopify Plus customer says “There are other solutions that are less expensive and we've looked at them, but Shopify Plus is the best, so that's what it is,” and another that “while their pricing is expensive and transaction rates are high, it does end up paying off.” A Magento customer accepts the cost for what it allows: “But from what it allows you to do and what allows you to build, I like it.” And a Salesforce Commerce Cloud buyer argued against moving to Shopify: “I would rather take those opportunity costs and put them elsewhere, to move the business instead of just repainting my car.”
What this means for your ecommerce platform budget
In these interviews, what an ecommerce platform costs depends on its fees and on the work around it. Buyers describe fees that can scale with revenue, plan tiers and apps that add to the base price, payment fees, infrastructure costs that can sit outside the platform bill, and contract structures that can change what buyers ultimately pay. Buyers on Salesforce Commerce Cloud and Adobe Commerce repeatedly describe developers, integrators, agencies or hosting as part of the platform's cost, and these operating costs also appear in replatforming decisions. In the moves captured here, 25 of 26 completed or under-way price-led moves went to Shopify — while a few Shopify customers are weighing a move away on its fees. One way to read this — ours, not a buyer's — is as four costs: to buy (licence, plan and revenue-based fees), to extend (apps, integrations and headless builds), to operate (developers, agencies, hosting) and to leave (migration, rebuilt integrations and opportunity cost). Our recommendation, not a practice buyers describe: compare total cost of ownership over the contract term rather than the licence — developers, integrators, hosting, apps and payment fees; model revenue-based fees at the growth you expect, not today's sales; and count the migration itself, including the integrations you would have to rebuild.
For how buyers compare two of these platforms head to head, see BigCommerce vs. Adobe Commerce.
Common questions
How much does an ecommerce platform cost?
In these interviews, the platform fee is one part of it. Buyers describe fees that can scale with revenue — a share of sales on Shopify, committed GMV on Salesforce Commerce Cloud — plus plan tiers, apps and payment fees on top, hosting on self-hosted platforms, and the developers, integrators and agencies needed to run and change the store, which many buyers weigh more heavily than the licence.
Is Shopify cheaper than Salesforce Commerce Cloud?
Buyers in these interviews describe it that way, on platform fees and on the development needed to run the site. Salesforce Commerce Cloud is the platform buyers here leave most often on price, and every one of those moves went to Shopify. One buyer who moved reports paying about half the platform fees it paid before.
Is Shopify Plus worth it?
It depends on revenue, in buyers' telling. Buyers describe Plus as unlocking lower card fees, checkout customization and more users. One downgraded to Advanced and noticed no difference; another says Plus makes sense only at a scale where the lower rates pay for the step up; a third wants to step down but cannot because of Advanced's cap on users.
Is Magento (Adobe Commerce) expensive to run?
Buyers describe the cost as mostly around the platform: hosting, security, specialist developers and the time any change takes. Several who moved to Shopify cite that total cost of ownership as the reason; others value the flexibility it pays for.
Is it worth replatforming to save money?
Buyers disagree. Replatforming carries migration, integration and opportunity costs, and one buyer renewed Salesforce Commerce Cloud rather than spend the effort on a move. Others moved and describe lower platform and development costs. Our recommendation, not a practice buyers describe: compare total cost of ownership over the contract term, including the migration itself.
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