- Strategy
Leaving Visualsoft? Why Shopify isn’t the only answer
Moving off Visualsoft? Before you sign for Shopify, compare the three-year cost and flexibility of Magento Open Source and Adobe Commerce.
If you run your online store on Visualsoft’s own platform, the chances are you have already had the conversation about moving to Shopify. Since Visualsoft became a Shopify partner in 2026, it has been migrating its platform clients across, and for many retailers Shopify now feels like the default next step.
It is not the only option, and for many growing retailers it is not the best one. Before you sign a multi-year contract, it is worth asking one question: over the next three years, which platform will cost you less and let you do more?
For many retailers, the answer is Magento Open Source or Adobe Commerce. Here is why.
“Shopify is cheaper” only holds until you add the apps you need
Shopify’s headline price is real, but it is the smallest part of the bill. In the UK, Shopify Plus starts at £1,800 a month on a three-year contract, or £1,950 on a one-year term. That buys the platform. Most of the features a serious retailer needs come from paid apps.
A mid-complexity Plus store typically runs 10 to 20 of them, adding £500 to £1,500 a month. Many apps price by order volume, so a record month makes the whole stack more expensive. Every app is also another supplier, another bill and another place your customer data lives.
Then there are the fees linked to your revenue:
- Variable platform fee. Higher-volume merchants move to a fee based on revenue. Shopify does not publish the rate or the threshold.
- Payment provider fee. If you keep your own payment provider rather than Shopify Payments, Shopify takes an extra 0.20% of every transaction.
Magento Open Source has no licence fee and takes no share of your revenue. You pay for hosting, typically £300 to £800 a month on a managed provider, and for a development partner. The features you add are paid for once and kept, not rented month after month.
Built in, not bolted on
Much of what costs extra on Shopify comes as standard with Magento. The difference shows most for retailers with complex products, several brands or trade customers.
| What you need | Shopify | Magento |
|---|---|---|
| Products with many options (size, colour, finish, fabric) | Up to 2,048 variants, but only three options per product | Unlimited attributes, plus configurable, bundled and custom-option products |
| Several brands or websites | A separate Plus contract for each brand | Many brands and websites from one admin and one catalogue |
| Customer-group pricing, tier pricing and promotion rules | Partly native; advanced rules often need apps | Included |
| B2B: company accounts, quotes, shared catalogues, requisition lists | Native B2B, with catalogue limits below Plus | Included in Adobe Commerce |
If you sell furniture, flooring, lighting, technical products or anything made to order, the three-option limit alone can mean splitting products into separate listings or paying for another app.
AI has changed what custom development costs
For years, the argument for a hosted platform was that custom development was slow and expensive. AI-assisted development has changed that. Code that used to take weeks can now be written, tested and reviewed far faster.
That helps in two ways. Moving platforms takes less time than it used to, so the switch is less disruptive. And a feature built specifically for your store, such as your own pricing logic, a product configurator, a checkout step or an integration with your warehouse system, is now quick and affordable to develop.
But faster development only helps if your platform lets you use it. On Magento and Adobe Commerce you have the full source code, so almost anything your business needs can be built. On Shopify, custom work is limited to what Shopify’s APIs and extension points allow. Anything beyond that means waiting for Shopify’s roadmap or for a third-party app.
Own your platform this time
If you are leaving Visualsoft, you already know the cost of lock-in: your data, your features and your agency all tied to one supplier, and a move that means rebuilding from scratch. Moving to Shopify trades one proprietary platform for another.
With Magento you own the code and the data. You choose where it is hosted. You can change agency without rebuilding your site. And your roadmap is set by your business, not by a platform’s pricing changes or contract terms.
So which platform is right for you?
There is no single right answer, and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something. As a rule of thumb:
- Magento Open Source suits growing retailers with a large or complex catalogue, or more than one website, who want full control without a licence fee.
- Adobe Commerce suits larger businesses that sell to trade as well as consumers, or that want enterprise support and Adobe’s cloud hosting. It is licensed, so its case rests on what it can do, not on being cheap.
- Shopify can genuinely suit a small brand with a simple catalogue, selling only direct to consumers, with no technical partner.
Magento does need a good partner for hosting, security updates and ongoing development. That is what we do at objectsource.
Before you sign
If you are weighing up a move from Visualsoft, talk to us before you commit to a multi-year contract. We will compare the full three-year cost for your business, side by side: licence, apps, fees, hosting and build. If Shopify turns out to be the right answer, we will tell you.
Get in touch with objectsource
Sources
Figures checked October 2026. Your own costs will depend on your contract and setup.
