Shopify vs. Salesforce Commerce Cloud

Between conversion, cost, innovation, and simplicity, the data all points to one conclusion: Shopify has replaced Salesforce as the leader in enterprise ecommerce.

Join the mass migration

Hundreds of enterprise brands have switched from Salesforce to Shopify.

  • Bare Minerals logo
  • John Hardy logo
  • Slam Jam logo
  • Anya Hindmarch logo
  • Carrier logo
  • J Lindeberg logo
  • North Sales logo
  • Cambridge Satchel logo
  • Lulu Guinness logo
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Why Shopify

Four reasons brands are switching

  1. 1
    Higher Conversion

    Shopify’s checkout converts 36% better than Salesforce’s.

  2. 2
    Lower TCO, higher ROI

    Shopify helps businesses cut costs and increase ROI.

  3. 3
    Faster innovation

    Shopify keeps brands on the leading edge of commerce.

  4. 4
    Everything simplified

    Shopify dramatically reduces technical debt.

Higher Conversion

Shopify converts better, period

In 2023, a Big Three consulting company released a study of ecommerce conversion rates and found Shopify’s checkout converts 36% better than Salesforce’s. That’s because Shopify has carefully engineered its checkout for throughput, speed, conversion, personalization, familiarity, and extensibility.

+36%

Shopify converts 36% better than Salesforce

Better Conversion

Meet the world’s best-converting checkout

172%

Higher conversion for Mustang Survival after migrating from Salesforce

15%

Higher conversion for Slam Jam after switching from Salesforce

Shopify is built for conversion

It’s no coincidence that Shopify’s checkout converts 36% better. Its success is due to four unique advantages: Shopify’s massive identity network, unmatched scale, consumer trust, and speed of innovation.

Buyers trust Shopify checkout

Hundreds of millions of people use a Shopify Checkout every year. Its look, feel, and flow has become highly recognizable, and therefore immediately trusted.

Integrate digital wallets in clicks, not months

Shopify makes it easy to integrate digital wallets like Apple Pay in a matter of clicks. On Salesforce, customers are often quoted tens of thousands of dollars and months of work.

Shopify has the fastest server speed in commerce

Faster site speed impacts everything—from revenue to operations. Measure your site’s performance to see how it could affect your sales and how it compares to the competition.

Get your custom report
site speed graph

If your checkout doesn’t perform, you’re not making money.

Flexible checkout

All the flexibility you need

Shopify’s checkout is extensible, trackable, and more flexible than ever. It’s loaded with features so you can customize it however you want. Plus, it’s simple and designed for performance—making checkout one of the top reasons that brands switch from Salesforce to Shopify.

Customize how your checkout looks

From fonts and colors to favicons and borders, branding your checkout experience is easy on Shopify. And with the Graph QL branding API, you can push customizations to the next level.

Change how your checkout works

Make your checkout function in surprising and delightful ways with all sorts of UI, post-purchase, discount, and pixel extensions.

Extend or replace the backend

Use Shopify Functions to extend or replace key parts of Shopify Checkout’s backend with custom logic.

Collect rich customer data

Add custom pixels to collect shopper data and track checkout performance. Then marvel at the results.

Lower TCO, higher ROI

Pay less. Get a whole lot more.

Shopify's TCO is 35% better than Salesforce Commerce Cloud

Shopify's TCO is 35% better than Salesforce Commerce Cloud

65%

TCO reduction for NYDJ after switching to Shopify

22%

ROI increase for MZ Wallace after switching to Shopify

Lower TCO

Slash total cost of ownership

Businesses moving from Salesforce to Shopify are often able to lower their costs across all spend categories including licensing fees, developer costs, and ongoing maintenance—all while keeping a best-in-class commerce platform.

Say hello to lower licensing costs

Shopify Plus pricing starts at just $2,300 a month, which includes the core platform and a wide range of native enterprise capabilities. In contrast, Salesforce licensing costs are priced at 1%–3% of gross merchandising value. Our pricing structure is just one reason Salesforce platform fees are 14% higher on average than ours.

Shopify developers are more available, and more affordable

What’s more, Shopify allows business users to be more hands on. And we help brands reduce dependence on Salesforce developers—as well as associated costs.

After a year on Shopify Plus, we’ve been able to reduce our total cost of ownership by 60-65%, and any budget we can save on the tech stack, we can re-invest into marketing that can help drive revenue. It’s a win-win.

Faster implementation

Cut your implementation time in half

Gone are the days where you’ll need months to get your business up to speed. With Shopify, we’re talking weeks or even days. Your business can trim time to launch, go to market sooner, and sell out of products faster when you’re running on the world’s best commerce platform.

<6 months

Time to launch for Decor Steals, 3X faster and $300K less than their SFCC implementation

16 weeks

Time for J.Lindeberg to migrate from Salesforce

Higher ROI

See a bigger return

When Salesforce customers migrate to Shopify, they also dramatically increase their sales. All thanks to revenue driving features like POS, Shop Pay, Shop Pay Installments, and the Shop app.

15%

ROI increase for Slam Jam

22%

Revenue increase for MZ Wallace

Faster innovation

Innovate at the speed of commerce

100%

Focused on commerce, not CRM

200+

Product enhancements and updates in the past year alone

Rapid iteration

Shopify’s pace of innovation is unmatched

Shopify ships hundreds of updates every year

With thousands of engineers, Shopify is shipping hundreds of annual commerce updates—from integrating AI across the platform, to offering omnichannel selling tools. Conversely, commerce innovation at Salesforce has shifted away from B2C (Demandware), forcing a migration decision for customers.

The move to Shopify has been so beneficial to our business. We get so much out of the box, plus a huge pipeline of new features dropping regularly. And the Shopify ecosystem of apps and developers helps us move fast. This has let us shift focus from basic e-commerce feature development and maintenance to high-value areas for our consumers, like content creation and loyalty.

Shopify Editions

All the latest updates, all in one place

We're constantly evolving our powerful global platform to make commerce better for everyone. Now twice a year, we publish a rundown of everything we’ve built in Editions.

The edge of commerce

Innovate before your competitors

Shopify is continually first to market with innovations, integrations, and capabilities—allowing businesses to quickly adapt at a time when consumer expectations are evolving faster than ever. In comparison, brands on Salesforce must wait longer, which can often lead them to give up and build capabilities themselves.

Meet savvy shoppers on the newest platforms

From TikTok and Snap to AR and AI, Shopify enables businesses like Slam Jam to sell in the newest channels that consumers are using.

Shopify keeps businesses moving forward

Because of our commitment to commerce, we make sure our customers are always getting the latest, most relevant capabilities to fuel their businesses. Meanwhile, because Salesforce does not prioritize Commerce Cloud, their customers run the risk of falling behind as they wait longer for fewer updates.

All in on commerce

Shouldn’t your commerce partner be 100% focused on commerce?

We think so too. Our mission is to make commerce better for everyone. That means we’re completely dedicated to delivering the best commerce experiences possible, unlike Salesforce’s continued focus on their flagship CRM offering.

Shopify was built, not bought

True to our mission, we built Shopify from the ground up to make commerce better for everyone. Our solution comes with native tools across B2C, B2B, and retail—all on the same infrastructure. On the flip side, Salesforce acquired their commerce solutions, and the result is a platform that has mixed architectures. This means Salesforce customers end up needing more integrations and developer support to pursue their goals.

Shopify invested $1.7B in commerce R&D in 2023 alone

We’re standing by our mission of making commerce better for everyone. So much so, that in 2023, we invested nearly $1.7B into the future of commerce.

Everything simplified

Shopify’s where simple meets technical

Customising the pages without the developer's help was huge for us. Before, we always wanted to do things, but we didn't or gave up because it took too long. Now, non-technical team members can make updates. So that has opened doors to many other opportunities, especially in marketing, like campaigns and promoting products outside our daily deals.

USER FRIENDLINESS

Empower business users

Rather than forcing our customers to rely on developers for simple tasks, we designed Shopify to enable everyday team members to make simple updates like discounting, theme customization, and app configuration. Cambridge Satchel Company did this, resulting in dramatically lower costs.

ALL KINDS OF CUSTOMIZATIONS

Get efficient composability

Choose out of the box, custom, or both. Innovate fast with Shopify's native capabilities, pre-built apps, and integrations. And tailor components to your unique needs by leveraging APIs and backend customization.

INCREASED AGILITY

Move fast, without friction

Shopify’s pre-built integrations, plug-and-play apps, and strong native functionality allow brands to be more agile than ever before, and do more with less. Compare that to Salesforce, where adding digital wallets like Apple Pay can take months and cost tens of thousands of dollars.

LESS RELIANT ON DEVELOPERS

Affordable developers? Check.

Shopify developers are easy to find and affordable. Brands using Salesforce Commerce Cloud B2C require highly specialized developers who know both Demandware and LWC (Lightning Web Components).

DEVELOPER FOCUS

Focus your developers on what really matters

With Shopify you can shift your development team’s focus away from plumbing, and onto projects that directly affect your business—from meeting key goals, to increasing revenue.

Analyst validation

The experts side with Shopify

2023 Leader in Gartner® Magic Quadrant™
2024 Leader in Gartner® Magic Quadrant™

73%

Shopify’s market share of the top 800 global DTC brands

83%

Number of rising apparel brands on Shopify, according to 2PM

IDC logo

IDC

Shopify named a Leader in IDC MarketScape: Worldwide B2C Digital Commerce Platforms for Mid-market Growth 2023-2024 Vendor Assessment

This is an evaluation of commerce solutions for retailers from $100 million to $500 million and beyond. The report noted that “Shopify will be particularly attractive to buyers looking for a multitenant SaaS digital commerce platform with a proven track record in DTC, a vast 3P ecosystem, low TCO, and built-in payments.”

Read the excerpt 

January 31, 2024

GARTNER® MAGIC QUADRANT™ logo

Gartner® Magic Quadrant™

Shopify is once again a Leader in the 2024 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™

Shopify continues our tradition of excellence and innovation in commerce, being named a Leader for the 2nd consecutive year in the 2024 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™.

Read the report 

August 21, 2023

2PM logo

2PM

2PM reports a surge of brands using Shopify vs. Salesforce

The news outlet 2PM recently audited the technology of 60+ rising apparel brands from around the world. Their finding? 55 of those brands, or 83%, are on Shopify. By contrast, only four of those brands are Salesforce Commerce Cloud customers.

Read the report 

November 2023

Your Basket Is Empty logo

PROMINENT VOICES

Rick Watson says the future of ecommerce is between Shopify and Commercetools

On the Your Basket Is Empty podcast, Rick Watson predicts a two-horse race for commerce platforms, noting that Shopify holds a distinct advantage over multi-cloud companies including Demandware/Salesforce Commerce Cloud. By contrast, Salesforce has been perceived as neglecting the commerce aspect of its offerings, potentially hindering its ability to keep up with the rapidly evolving needs of the industry.

Migration partners

Migrate with the largest commerce partner ecosystem there is

Shopify has 4x the number of global partners as competitors—many of which specialise in helping Salesforce Commerce Cloud customers migrate to Shopify.

10,000+

App and technology partners

100+

Shopify Plus Certified App Partners

Shopify vs. Salesforce Commerce Cloud

Want better results? Switch to Shopify.

From increasing conversion to lowering TCO, customer results and analyst reports show that Shopify’s the clear winner.