%20(2)%20(1).jpg?height=2000&name=Code_240516_Alyssa%20van%20Heyst_378%20(1)%20(2)%20(1).jpg)
The disadvantages of Salesforce Commerce Cloud
High cost
All aspects of the Salesforce Commerce platform costs are very high. On average, the SFCC license fee is about 1-3% of your revenue. Development agencies are more expensive, bigger teams are required, and ongoing maintenance costs for new deployments and integrations are much higher than with Shopify (Plus).
→ Curious about the cost of a Shopify Plus store? Read our blog on Shopify pricing
Limited agility
Integrations are difficult with SFCC because it doesn’t offer a unified, integrated solution like Shopify, which has D2C, B2B, POS, and omnichannel functionality built-in and easily integrates with third-party solutions. Paul Rogers emphasizes the agility of Shopify: "Shopify is unrivalled in this area due to how they’ve architected the front-end and back-end of their platform, but Salesforce scores poorly here. In my experience, a feature that could be delivered in days in Shopify could cost hundreds of thousands in SFCC and you would need to assign a lot of internal resources to managing and testing."
For example, implementing Apple Pay with SFCC can take weeks or even months and cost thousands of dollars. This slower pace of development and high customization costs contribute to SFCC's overall lack of agility.
Slow pace of innovation
In contrast to Shopify, which has been fully focused on e-commerce from its inception, Salesforce started as a CRM solutions company, which remains their main product. When they acquired Demandware in 2016 and renamed it SFCC, innovation on the platform dropped. Instead, Salesforce focuses on integrating SFCC with their other products, like Sales & Marketing Cloud.
Paul Rogers notes, "Shopify constantly reduces barriers to users and allows for faster and easier feature development and optimization through their low-code route to market. This trend is driving commerce, and Shopify is leading the way."
Salesforce Commerce Cloud vs Shopify Plus: a brief comparison
Comparing SFCC and Shopify Plus is tricky due to their different approaches in functionality and pricing. Here are a few main differences and resources for in-depth comparisons.
The main differences between SFCC and Shopify Plus
As Paul Rogers summarizes it in his in-depth comparison for Vervaunt: SFCC is a platform with lots of native functionality but a limited ecosystem, making customization time-consuming and expensive. With Shopify, it’s the other way around: a relatively lean core can be endlessly and easily extended with state-of-the-art third-party features and apps from Shopify’s huge ecosystem.
"SFCC have a very small partner ecosystem, which is primarily with enterprise vendors," Rogers explains, "Shopify’s app ecosystem has been a big part of their lure, allowing users to introduce new features and functionality quickly, at a low cost and also receive solid support and progression around feature-set."
This is reflected in their pricing policies. Brands on Salesforce Commerce Cloud will pay a large licensing fee, while brands on Shopify Plus will have a small license fee and need to factor in costs for the third-party features in their tech stack. In general, however, SFCC is known for its high TCO compared to other platforms: up to 35% higher than Shopify Plus, on average, as a study revealed recently.
→ Read how to calculate E-commerce TCO
→ Read more on Shopify pricing
Pros and cons of Salesforce Commerce Cloud
SFCC is a strong platform that is only now starting to lose clients to other platforms, after having been pretty much the only enterprise-ready, fully managed SaaS platform for a long time.
Like Shopify, Salesforce Commerce Cloud has a reputation for scalability. Rogers identifies some other strong points:
- Strong visual merchandising functionality
- Capable of handling large, complex product catalogs
- Rich merchandising and personalization capabilities
- Native multi-store architecture
However, Salesforce Commerce Cloud is increasingly also getting a reputation for being expensive and cumbersome. Although it is much more open to customisation, this comes at a high cost. Because of its limited ecosystem and relative lack of readymade extensions, the need for time-consuming custom work slows SFCC users down.
Paul Rogers states, "The real plus for SFCC would be they’re slightly more flexible in places, they have some good omnichannel features and Shopify are still catching up in some feature areas (e.g. scheduling, promotions, segmentation)."
Pros and cons of Shopify Plus
Rogers concludes that Shopify Plus is currently enjoying more momentum than SFCC. It keeps winning new clients and introducing new features, while SFCC is lagging behind in both respects.
Rogers points to several brands who willingly compromised on features and came up with workarounds so they could be on Shopify Plus - which offered them far lower cost and increased agility. Discussing the pros of Shopify Plus, compared to SFCC, Key selling points of Shopify Plus compared to SFCC include:
- Significantly lower TCO / cost of ownership
- Lower technical and maintenance overheads
- Unrivaled agility
- Huge ecosystem (huge amount of pre-existing integrations and third-party extensions, and a good network of integration partners)
- Fast Time-to-Market
- Unrivaled customer happiness
What brands are on Salesforce Commerce Cloud?
Salesforce Commerce Cloud still powers a lot more enterprise brands than Shopify Plus, among them Adidas, New Balance, L’Oréal, Clarins, GoPro, Rituals, Acne Studios, Kate Spade, Puma and Lacoste. In the Netherlands, too, big brands such as HEMA, Blokker, Wehkamp and Coolblue are on Salesforce Commerce Cloud.
What brands are on Shopify Plus?
Shopify Plus counts a number of enterprise and high growth brands among its clients, among them Gymshark, Kylie Cosmetics, Rebecca Minkoff, AllBirds, Sephora, Steve Madden, Alpinestars, Decathlon and Red Bull. In the Netherlands, some of the biggest brands on Shopify Plus are Mr Marvis, O’Neill, Ekster, Agradi and Stoov.
What Shopify Plus has to offer
For e-commerce brands looking for the best platform to stay up-to-date, Shopify’s agility, low TCO and fast Time-to-Market are big factors. SFCC cannot match this flexibility due to its high costs, development-heavy nature, and limited ecosystem
Paul Rogers concludes, "We’ve worked on 10-15 Salesforce to Shopify Plus migrations and, today (not historically), I find it very difficult to understand how you could justify selecting SFCC over Shopify Plus. You’ll compromise in some areas with Shopify (things like promotions, scheduling, service-levels aren’t as strong), but you’ll be working with a modern architecture, save significant levels of time and money, get maybe 10x the level of features out the door for the same budget and scale into new markets faster."
What other benefits do brands on Shopify Plus report?
Best-converting checkout in the world
When an independent consulting company monitored Shopify's overall conversion rate for several months, they discovered that it surpasses competitors by an average of 15%. Except for Salesforce Commerce Cloud: Shopify’s checkout turned out to be 36% better at conversion than that of SFCC.
.png?width=800&height=451&name=Image%20SFCC%20blog%20CR%20(1).png)
Relentless innovation
Shopify’s innovation power is unprecedented. With its army of 4000+ developers, Shopify is a force to be reckoned with in the e-commerce industry. It ships a mind-blowing number of new features every six months, and is often the first to adopt new technologies.
→ Read our summary of Shopify Editions - Summer 2024 here
High quality ecosystem
Over the years Shopify has created a worldwide landscape of partners, third-party apps, and agencies building on the platform. With thousands of pre-built apps and integrations, users can extend and customize Shopify without having to reinvent the wheel. Through rigorous monitoring, Shopify ensures the high quality of their ecosystem.
→ Read Shopify’s take on why Shopify has replaced Salesforce Commerce Cloud as the leading platform in enterprise e-commerce
Secure your Shopify migration with Code
Is your brand considering migrating from SFCC, and is Shopify on your shortlist? We’d be happy to discuss how a move to Shopify could benefit your business.
→ Read more about migrating with Code here
Are you already convinced Shopify is the platform for you, and are you looking for an experienced partner to guide your migration? Our team is here to help. From the moment we became the first official Shopify Plus Partner in the EU, we’ve been building and scaling Shopify stores and we are now considered one of the top Shopify agencies on the European mainland.
Check out our previous work to see what we can do, and get in touch!
-1.png)
