Comparing Total Cost of Ownership on Adobe Commerce & Shopify Plus

For enterprise retailers, the economics of digital commerce are coming under increasing scrutiny, with many brands re-evaluating the financial efficiency of their technology stacks. Total cost of ownership (TCO) is a critical metric in determining long-term platform viability.

Adobe Commerce (a self-hosted, enterprise solution rebranded from Magento Commerce) has traditionally been the platform of choice for brands requiring deep customisation and control. However, the financial and operational overhead of maintaining such flexibility is becoming harder to justify – especially when compared to modern SaaS alternatives like Shopify Plus, which offer a lower TCO and increased revenue-driving potential.

From our conversations with enterprise retailers, high and unpredictable TCO is perhaps the biggest driving factor for brands looking to migrate away from Adobe Commerce.

This article explores TCO across both Adobe Commerce and Shopify Plus, drawing from independent research and Swanky’s experience supporting global ecommerce replatforming projects.

What is TCO in ecommerce?

TCO is a financial framework that accounts for all direct and indirect costs associated with operating a platform over time. It is a more holistic approach to evaluating platform ROI than simply comparing licence or subscription fees.

Key components of TCO in ecommerce include:

• platform licensing or subscription costs;
• hosting and infrastructure;
• development and ongoing customisation;
• system maintenance and support;
• security, compliance and risk management;
• upgrade and versioning costs (especially for non-SaaS platforms);
• resourcing (internal and external); and
• time to market and opportunity cost from slow delivery.

Understanding TCO is critical for CFOs because it illuminates where capital is being consumed – often in areas that do not directly drive customer value or revenue growth.

You can read more thoughts on this topic from Swanky’s CEO, Dan Partridge, in his article about TCO in ecommerce.

Adobe Commerce: A complex & costly ownership model

Known for its customisability and enterprise-grade feature set, Adobe Commerce has traditionally been a popular choice for brands with complex technical needs. However, it is typically associated with elevated TCO.

On average, compared to Shopify, it has:

• 42% higher implementation and setup costs;
• 42% higher platform fees; and
• 24% higher operating costs.

We explore this in more detail below.

Licensing costs

Adobe Commerce pricing is volume-based, with licence fees often starting in the low six figures and increasing as gross merchandise volume (GMV) grows. For enterprise retailers, licensing costs alone can quickly spiral, before taking into account infrastructure or development.

Licence fees also scale regardless of operational efficiency, meaning that even brands making strategic improvements elsewhere may find platform costs increasing due to higher GMV.

Hosting & infrastructure

As a self-hosted, on-premise solution, Adobe Commerce puts the burden of infrastructure management on the retailer. This typically requires:

• cloud orchestration and capacity planning;
• DevOps engineers to manage uptime and performance;
• disaster recovery planning; and
• manual patching and security updates.

Annual infrastructure spend depends on peak traffic demands, global deployments, and resilience requirements. For high-volume brands trading on an international scale, with highly-anticipated product launches and sales seasons, this category of costs can quickly mount up.

Development & customisation

Adobe Commerce projects are inherently complex. Feature development often involves backend PHP work, complex data modelling and custom integrations, requiring the skills of experienced developers. Even routine maintenance – such as bug fixes, patching, or adapting to external API changes – can require dedicated developer resources.

The cumulative cost of technical debt, system complexity, and long deployment cycles can materially slow innovation and time-to-value.

Manual upgrades & versioning

Upgrades on Adobe Commerce – even minor ones – often require months of developer time, staging environments, regression testing, and retesting of custom features. These projects can cost tens or even hundreds of thousands annually, and often delay other initiatives.

This creates not only financial cost, but opportunity cost, as new capabilities and optimisations are delayed or deprioritised.

Shopify Plus: Engineered to reduce TCO

Shopify Plus offers enterprise retailers a SaaS-based alternative, optimised for scalability, performance and reduced technical overhead. For CFOs, the benefit lies in cost predictability, operational simplicity and faster return on platform investment.

On average, Shopify’s TCO is 29% lower than that of Adobe Commerce. To give a recent example of how this manifests for a real-life Adobe Commerce brand making the move to Shopify, Swanky calculated cost savings of £600,000 over a three-year period (before any performance uplift) as part of a recent replatforming proposition.

Meanwhile, this Shopify case study reveals how Bombas saved $108,000 in platform costs in just the first year alone after migrating from Adobe Commerce to Shopify Plus.

We explore how Shopify helps reduce TCO below.

Transparent subscription pricing

Shopify Plus uses a transparent pricing model, starting at US$2,300 per month for standard setups and integrations on a 3-year term, or US$2,500 per month for a 1-year term. For more complex, higher volume businesses, a variable platform fee is available based on revenue and business model.

This pricing includes platform access, hosting, security and support – with no additional fees for patching, maintenance, or version upgrades.

Because pricing is more predictable on Shopify, CFOs gain greater clarity in forecasting platform costs relative to revenue.

Fully managed infrastructure

Shopify Plus eliminates the need for self-managed hosting or DevOps by bundling infrastructure and compliance into the platform. This includes:

• 99.99% uptime (proven across Black Friday and peak trading)
• Global content delivery via Shopify’s proprietary network
• Built-in PCI-DSS, SOC 1/2/3 and GDPR compliance
• Automatic scaling based on traffic

These capabilities reduce dependency on internal engineering or third-party infrastructure providers, allowing teams to focus on customer experience and growth.

Development efficiency

Shopify’s architecture encourages efficiency. With a rich app ecosystem, thousands of prebuilt integrations and well-documented APIs, most custom functionality can be implemented rapidly without deep backend customisation.

The platform also increases organisational agility, empowering business users to manage content, merchandising and campaigns independently.

Enterprise brands can significantly reduce development expenditure by migrating, allowing the reallocation of budget toward innovation and marketing.

No versioning or upgrade projects

As a fully versionless platform, Shopify continuously improves without requiring manual intervention. Brands benefit from hundreds of platform updates each year, automatically rolled out with no impact to live operations.

This eliminates the cost, downtime, and risk associated with traditional platform upgrades – freeing up budget and time to focus on value-adding initiatives.

Beyond the cost: Performance gains of migrating to Shopify

Whilst reducing TCO is a key driver for platform migration, it’s only part of the equation. Part of the value of an ecommerce platform lies in its ability to enable revenue growth, support strategic initiatives and deliver superior customer experiences at scale.

Shopify Plus consistently excels compared to legacy platforms like Adobe Commerce in these areas, unlocking significant performance gains:

• Higher conversion rates and checkout performance: On average, Shopify’s checkout converts 5% better than that of Adobe Commerce. Overall, Shopify stores convert up to 36% better overall when matched against like-for-like competitors, demonstrating superior performance across the entire customer journey.

• Faster site speed: Shopify stores load 2x faster than those on Adobe Commerce. With website latency equating to increased bounces and abandoned carts, this superior performance is a compelling pull factor of Shopify.

• Increased order value: Compared to Adobe Commerce, Shopify Plus delivers a 17% increase in average order value (AOV). This is thanks to powerful merchandising, flexible promotions and frictionless checkout options.

These improvements directly impact revenue, customer experience and scalability – further enhancing ROI.

Building a financial case for platform migration

Adobe Commerce continues to serve a segment of the market that requires deep platform customisation and is willing to invest heavily in in-house technical capacity. However, for the majority of enterprise brands – especially those under cost pressure or focused on growth – the economics of Adobe Commerce are increasingly difficult to justify.

Shopify Plus provides a modern alternative with a materially lower TCO, reduced complexity, and greater agility. For CFOs seeking to simplify ecommerce operations, improve cost-efficiency, and accelerate ROI, replatforming to Shopify Plus presents a compelling financial and strategic opportunity.

Swanky works with mid-market and enterprise retailers to assess TCO, model the financial impact of replatforming to Shopify, and support their business case for replatforming. To discuss this with our solutions team, please get in touch via our enquiry form.