The Ultimate Multi-Brand eCommerce Showdown

Comparing Shopify, BigCommerce, and Adobe Commerce—What Actually Works When You’re Running Multiple Brands

How to Pick the Right Platform When You’re Managing Multiple Brands Under One Roof

The concept sounds simple enough: One business, multiple brands, one platform.

But in reality? It’s a strategic and architectural decision that will ripple across everything—from how you manage inventory and configure promotions to how your team collaborates behind the scenes.

Get it right, and you streamline operations, unify data, and create a seamless experience for customers. Get it wrong, and you’re stuck duct-taping platforms together, firefighting oversells, and battling internal inefficiencies every day.

This guide walks through how the three dominant eCommerce platforms—Shopify, BigCommerce, and Adobe Commerce—approach multi-brand setups. We’ve spent years helping merchants architect these decisions. What follows isn’t just a feature checklist. It’s a hard-earned, nuanced look at where each platform shines and where it struggles—especially when you’re running multiple brands from a central system.

🎥 Prefer a side-by-side visual breakdown? Watch the video instead.

What Powers This (And Why It’s Different)

This isn’t just fancy UI.

It’s powered by:

Google Gemini for natural language processing
Google Drive for content management
BigCommerce for real-time product data
SwiftOtter integration to securely connect customer and order data

Unlike other AI tools, there’s no custom training required, no long onboarding, and no steep learning curve. It just works.

What Matters Most in a Multi-Brand Platform Setup?

The right answer will vary based on your business model—whether you’re selling direct-to-consumer (D2C), business-to-business (B2B), or managing distinct consumer brands under one umbrella. But some needs are universal:

The ability to maintain separate catalogs across sites or brands
The flexibility to present unique product descriptions, categories, imagery, and metadata (especially for SEO)
Display unique pricing and promotions per site, customer group, or brand—without duplicate content issues tanking your SEO
Inventory architecture that supports reserve or segmented inventory management, even if it’s technically coming from the same source
Customize the checkout experience with store-specific shipping, tax, and payment configurations
Clear admin permission control across teams, roles, and business units

And ideally, you get all of that with a single backend, centralized integration points, and a unified operational view.

If your platform can’t do these things (or makes them harder than they need to be), you’ll feel it every single day.

Let’s walk through how the top three platforms: Shopify, BigCommerce, and Adobe Commerce—stack up.

Shopify: Great for Growth, Tough for Complexity

Shopify Plus is the gold standard for simplicity. It’s fast, scalable, easy to use, and has a deep ecosystem of apps and integrations.

But once you try to run multiple brands or websites under one roof, things get clunky—fast.

Each Shopify store is a completely separate instance. There’s no true multi-store framework. No shared product data. No unified inventory or customer records. You’re essentially maintaining parallel universes.

Shopify’s “Markets” feature helps with international expansion, but it doesn’t support fully separate brand sites with distinct catalogs and content. You can do it, sure—but only by spinning up multiple stores, syncing data manually or with a middleware platform, and managing every integration twice (or more).

Yes, there’s a store switcher to move between brands inside the admin. But there’s no way to manage them together in any meaningful sense.

Our Verdict: If your brands need to share data, workflows, or inventory, Shopify will work against you more than with you. Shopify is a great platform, but they haven’t yet made multi-brand a priority. When they do, it’ll be a 5/5 rating... But we'd give it a 2/5 for multi-brand functionality today—not because it’s a bad platform, but because this simply isn’t what it was built for.

BigCommerce: Designed for Multi-Storefront from Day One

BigCommerce took a different approach. Instead of asking merchants to maintain multiple backends, they built Multi-Storefront (MSF) right into the core product.

That means one backend. One set of integrations. And the ability to run multiple frontends—each with their own products, designs, domains, and rules.

Here’s where it shines:

You can assign products to specific storefronts, and even adjust names, descriptions, and imagery between them. You can offer different prices on each site, show or hide payment methods, and control promotions per brand.

Inventory is shared across storefronts, which simplifies fulfillment. But you can’t segment or reserve stock per site. That’s one of the biggest tradeoffs—you get a single source of truth, but not full control over how stock is allocated between brands.

There are also limits on admin permissions. Right now, every admin has visibility into all storefronts—so if you want to limit brand access, you’ll have to rely on process and training (or wait for roadmap improvements).

Our Verdict: Overall? BigCommerce is the most well-balanced platform for managing multi-brand eCommerce if you don’t need deep customization or completely separate backends. You get most of the flexibility of Adobe without the open-source overhead. We give it a 4/5.

Adobe Commerce: Total Control, at a Cost

Adobe Commerce (formerly Magento) was built for this.

It’s always had a native multi-store hierarchy. You can spin up separate websites, stores, or even store views—all tied to one backend—and configure nearly everything independently.

That includes:

Different product catalogs
Custom attributes per store
Unique pricing and discount rules
Per-store inventory mapping using Multi-Source Inventory (MSI)
Store-specific checkout flows, tax rules, payment options, and shipping methods
Granular user permissions per brand or role

And if you’re running B2B operations? Adobe’s paid B2B module unlocks even more—like shared catalogs, company accounts, and custom pricing workflows.

Our Verdict: It’s the most powerful option by far. But with that power comes cost. Adobe Commerce takes longer to implement, requires experienced devs or partners, and demands ongoing upkeep. You’ll need clear processes, strong internal ownership, and budget to match.

But if your brand structure is complex—and your needs go beyond what Shopify or BigCommerce can offer—Adobe delivers. It’s a 4.6/5 for multi-brand capability. The only deduction is complexity, not capability.

So Which Platform Wins?

There’s no one-size-fits-all winner—only what fits your current structure, budget, and goals.

Go with Shopify if you’re okay with separate systems and want a simpler admin experience across brands. You’ll likely need integrations or apps to unify operations.
Choose BigCommerce if you want centralized inventory and strong storefront control, but can tolerate a few permission limitations.
Pick Adobe Commerce if you need full customization, granular control, and a future-proof foundation for serious growth.

Choosing the Right Platform

Your Architecture Should Reflect Your Business Model

There’s no one right answer, but there is a right fit for how your business operates today (and where it’s going next). This isn’t just a tech decision, either. It’s a business model decision.

Ask yourself:

Will each brand have a separate marketing and operations team?
Do all brands share the same fulfillment process?
How important is unified data and customer insights?
How much autonomy do your brands need?
What’s your tolerance for complexity vs control?

If you’re unsure, that’s exactly where we can help. We’ve architected dozens of multi-brand environments. If you’re wrestling with this decision, fill out the form below to chat with our team. Sometimes all it takes is a 30-minute conversation to make the right call and avoid months of friction down the line.

Still Debating Platforms? Let’s Talk It Through.

This isn’t an easy call—and you don't have to make it alone. If you’re wrestling with platform architecture or looking for a second opinion, we’d be happy to chat.