The following article is a guest contribution to the Magento Association blog. We’re grateful for the time and expertise shared by members of the Magento ecosystem, and we’re pleased to publish this piece, which was created with the support of our Silver member Zero-1 Ltd.)

World of Power migrated to Magento 1 (Enterprise) in 2010 from Actinic Catalog (there’s a blast from the past). They have multiple brands in a very competitive sector so platform flexibility was always key, however with all the SaaS hype in the last couple of years they thought it diligent to review alternative platforms, the results were surprising. 

For those interested, it’s possible to cost-check many SaaS platforms by running your previous financial year figures through their pricing model to see what the costs would be. 

Here’s how:

• Obtain the following from your previous financial years accounts

  • Website turnover (A)

  • Number of orders (B)

  • Average Order Value (A divided by B)

  • Merchant Bank/Transaction Charges (typically a % + fee per order)

• Select a SaaS platform - in this example we are using Shopify Advanced (£344 per month plus transaction fee’s of 1.5% + £0.25 per order)

  • Multiply A by 0.015 to find the % transaction charge

  • Multiple B by 0.25 to find the £ transaction charge

  • Annualise the Shopify monthly cost of £344 to get £4,128

  • Add these 3 figures together

• You can then compare your existing figures/fees with those that you would have paid had you been on Shopify, taking into account all your agency support/development and hosting costs. 

World of Power were astonished to discover they would have been paying £11,613 MORE with Shopify and that’s without any Shopify apps, add-ons, consultancy, support. 

It’s very easy to listen to the SaaS hype, however World of Power remain on a platform which continues to deliver and what’s more, further platform consolidation and innovation will deliver over £40k in savings in 2025 compared to Shopify. 

World of Power has recently undergone further front-end improvements and migration of multiple stores to Hyvä, taking advantage of Hyvä’s massive reduction in development time, all for an investment far less than Shopify’s transaction fee’s alone!!

 “We did a detailed cost-analysis with our web-agency, totalling up transaction fee’s maintenance/development/support and all hosting charges. Magento came out the clear winner.”
— Angela Stokes, World Of Power

The business is now positioned to take full advantage of Hyvä Commerce to further improve content-managed pages for customers, whilst streamlining and removing extensions to bring costs even further down.

If you're a merchant feeling like Magento has cost too much and delivered to little:

• Double-check your costs against other SaaS platforms

• If Magento is costing you way more, you could be with the wrong agency.