Knowledge is the key, before shopping for a pair of shoes you do compare it in various websites for its quality and price, and the same goes for a application as well, unless you know the pros and cons don’t decide on any application.
A hasty decision may need you to rebuild your website even before you finished it, so think hard.
Shopify vs Magento
Good things first:
1. Takes lesser time to handle things.
With magento you need to spend some time learning it, doesn’t mean that you need to know coding BUT, as I said some time is needed. BUT with shopify you can get started immediately. So time is the key here!
2. Lesser investment if you are OK with free templates
You can get started without a designer if you are OK with the ready made templates and if you don’t need any customization, there are a dozen free templates that come with shopify! The same thing happens with magento BUT thing is that to customise a template in magento you need to be a developer BUT not with shopify.
Bad things next:
1. Magento has hundreds of free extensions BUT that is not the case with Shopify you don’t get much free stuff and even you get then it will Carry the companies logo etc on the extension /app ‘s files so for dozen features which are not that by default in shopify will have some or other companies name on it, so if you are keen on your own brand and don’t like some other companies brand to be displayed on your website then go ahead with magento OR drop those extra features you need!
2. Shopify is a good choice for a small store BUT not for a bigger one, it comes with limited features and for the rest you need to PAY.
3. 100% customisation is not possible BUT with magento it is possible you can do anything you like.
Bottom line a graphic designer can handle a shopify BUT not magento, for magento you will need a good developer.