Magento vs Shopify for beauty specifically — when does each win?

Honest take. Shopify wins for beauty brands when: catalog is <100 SKUs, single region, no subscription program, no tier-based loyalty, low-volume influencer relationships, ops team is 1–2 people. The Shopify app ecosystem has the best beauty-native apps (Klaviyo, Recharge, Smile, Yotpo) wired together cleanly.

Magento wins when any of these are true: catalog >200 SKUs with shade variants, subscription + loyalty stacked on top of D2C, multi-region compliance (FDA + EU CPNP + India CDSCO), influencer programs with tier rewards, want full data ownership over customer + skin profiles, multi-brand or multi-store on shared inventory, B2B salon supply alongside D2C.

The crossover point I see in practice is around $5M–$10M GMV. Below that, Shopify pays for itself in ops simplicity. Above that, the Shopify app stack starts costing $5k–$15k/mo in app fees + the data-fragmentation tax bites — and Magento + Hyvä comes out cheaper at scale even with the higher dev cost.