Why Enterprise Brands Migrate from Adobe Commerce to Shopify Plus

Recently Shopify shared a case study of a very famous skincare brand - Pilgrim, that chose to Migrate from Adobe Commerce to Shopify Plus. Why? We are going to explore that in this blog. 

Pilgrim is a fast-growing Indian beauty brand that sells clean, vegan personal care products. Since launching in 2019, they’ve expanded steadily, crossing 200 SKUs and opening four physical stores, while continuing to focus on DTC as a core growth channel.

Their online store was originally built on a custom headless setup using Adobe Commerce (formerly Magento). It gave them control and flexibility in the early stages, but as the business scaled, some limitations began to surface.

They started facing issues with site stability, especially during flash sales, which happen multiple times a year and drive a significant share of revenue. The store would slow down or crash under peak traffic. Managing and updating the storefront also required constant involvement from developers. And while the system was built to be robust, it increasingly felt rigid and hard to move quickly with.

Eventually, Pilgrim migrated to Shopify.

And they’re not alone.
More enterprise brands, especially those that began with Adobe Commerce, are re-evaluating their setups. They’re not necessarily looking for a “better” platform in absolute terms. They’re looking for something that matches how they operate today, and how fast they want to move.

This article explores that shift - why it’s happening, what’s driving it, and what to consider if you are also planning to switch from Adobe Commerce to Shopify Plus.
So, let’s jump right into it.

Why brands are looking for Adobe Commerce (Magento) alternatives

Adobe Commerce promises a highly customizable platform and the scalability that comes with support from its premier parent company, Adobe. The potential of partnering with such a well-known, trustworthy brand can be compelling, but many companies find that the longer they build on Adobe Commerce, the more they’re investing, despite less than satisfactory outcomes.

High total cost of ownership (TCO)

When migrating to Shopify Plus from Adobe Commerce, the factor which isn’t immediately visible but serves as a biggest differentiator is the total cost of ownership (TCO).

TCO includes everything it takes to run your ecommerce infrastructure:

→ One-time costs like implementation and setup

→ Ongoing platform fees and costs of the supporting tech stack

→ Operational and support costs that add up month after month

On paper, Adobe Commerce offers a high degree of flexibility and control. But in practice, maintaining that setup can become expensive, both in terms of money and team resources.

According to Shopify’s research, here’s how the numbers typically compare:

• Adobe’s platform and tech stack costs are 42% higher

• Implementation costs are also 42% higher

• Operational and support costs come in at 24% higher

Shopify’s overall platform costs, on average, are about 23% lower than its competitors.

For some businesses, those figures might not seem massive at first. But as a Shopify Platinum Partner who have worked with more than 10k brands, they affect everything; from how quickly you can experiment with new products or channels to how much budget is left for growth-focused initiatives. And more often than not, they reveal whether your platform is supporting your agility or quietly becoming a bottleneck.

Development & Maintenance Complexities

One of Adobe Commerce’s biggest strengths, its open-source architecture, can also become one of its biggest challenges.

Yes, it allows for deep customizations. But that level of control comes with technical complexity. Even routine updates or small changes often require a developer who understands the platform inside out.

For many brands, this means hiring or retaining a dedicated Magento development team just to handle ongoing maintenance, updates, and new feature builds. Over time, those costs can add up, not just financially, but also in terms of speed.

The bigger concern is agility.

When every change depends on developer bandwidth, timelines start to stretch. That might be manageable in steady periods, but during peak seasons or when trying to enter new markets, delays can become blockers.

For enterprise brands especially, the ability to move quickly, whether it’s launching a new campaign, testing a new storefront, or adapting to customer behavior, is essential. And that agility becomes harder to maintain when the underlying system demands constant technical support to evolve. Whereas, when you are on Shopify Plus most of things can be done by your team itself with the AI capabilities introduced by Shopify in its recent Shopify Summer Edition 2025.

Security and site reliability concerns

As of March 31, 2025, PCI DSS v4 is officially in effect, and with it, stricter requirements for handling payment security, particularly around anti-skimming protections.

For businesses managing their own ecommerce infrastructure, this isn’t just a checkbox to tick. It means additional configurations, more frequent audits, and added responsibility to stay compliant with a constantly evolving set of security standards.

As a Shopify Plus agency with 10 years of experience in Ecommerce, We've seen many enterprise teams, especially those on Adobe Commerce, struggle to keep up. Whether it’s applying security patches, managing third-party code, or simply ensuring uptime during peak periods, the pressure falls heavily on internal teams or external dev partners. And in fast-growing businesses, that pressure compounds quickly.

On Adobe Commerce, security and reliability often sit squarely on the merchant’s side of the fence. It’s flexible, yes, but with flexibility comes responsibility. And that means teams need to proactively stay on top of:

• Hosting environment security

• SSL certificates

• Data encryption practices

• Patch cycles

• PCI updates

• DDOS protections

And more...

It’s a lot, especially when your business needs to stay focused on growth.

With Shopify Plus, security is built into the platform. From PCI compliance to uptime monitoring, Shopify handles infrastructure-level protections as part of the offering. The average uptime of 99.98% is not just a stat, it’s peace of mind, especially when flash sales or traffic surges hit without warning.

The key difference isn’t just about meeting compliance requirements. It’s about who carries the load.

For enterprise teams, not having to dedicate resources to infrastructure security or patching cycles can mean one thing: more time to focus on product, customer experience, and growth.

Stability & Performance

For enterprise brands, performance isn’t just about speed, it’s about reliability when it matters most.

Pilgrim’s case is a familiar one. Their headless Adobe Commerce setup gave them flexibility early on, but as traffic surged, especially during high-stakes flash sales, cracks began to show. Site slowdowns and outages during those peaks created real risks. For brands that rely on time-sensitive campaigns to drive revenue, that kind of instability becomes more than just a tech issue, it’s a business one. And it’s not just Pilgrim.

Adobe Commerce typically relies on custom infrastructure: third-party hosting, complex caching layers like Varnish, and manual scaling strategies. While this setup gives teams a high level of control, it also leaves room for performance issues, especially during unpredictable spikes. Many brands spend weeks preparing for events, stress testing their environment and putting fail-safes in place, just to make sure nothing breaks when it matters most.

When you migrate to Shopify Plus, you see they approach this differently. As a cloud-native, fully managed platform, it’s built to scale automatically as traffic grows, without teams needing to adjust infrastructure or add new layers of support. During Black Friday Cyber Monday in 2023, Shopify processed $9.3 billion in sales globally, with peak moments reaching $4.2 million per minute, without reported slowdowns or outages. This isn’t just about marketing claims, it’s about system-level design. Uptime, handled. Scaling, handled. Traffic spikes, expected.

For brands, this shift means not having to plan around limitations. When teams don’t need to hold back out of fear the site won’t keep up, they can focus on campaigns, launches, and growth, not failover plans or patching cycles. It’s about being able to trust your tech stack to do its job, especially when your revenue depends on it.

If your business runs large-scale campaigns or sees sharp traffic swings, stability isn’t a bonus, it’s foundational. And for more and more brands, that foundation is being rebuilt on platforms where performance doesn’t depend on constant intervention.

Our Two Cents

For any business, especially one that’s growing, what matters most is a platform that offers low total cost, ease of management, stability, and scalability.

You don’t just need software. You need a foundation that supports your team, adapts as you scale, and frees you to focus on what actually drives growth: better products, better customer experience, and faster go-to-market.

That’s the difference. A platform like Shopify Plus doesn’t just keep up with your business, it helps power what comes next. If your current setup feels like it’s slowing you down, maybe it’s time to rethink what you’re building on.