Magento vs Shopify Plus + ReCharge for men’s grooming DTC, honest cut?

Both work. The question is what you optimise for.

Shopify Plus + ReCharge wins for men’s grooming if: catalog under 200 SKUs, sub-only model, single-region (US-only), no telehealth on roadmap, ops team is 1-2 people, comfortable with $1.5k, $4k/mo app spend (ReCharge alone is $499, $2k+/mo above 1,000 active subs). Harry’s and Dollar Shave Club initially built on custom stacks but most of today’s sub-2 brands (Hawthorne, Tiege Hanley, Lumin, Disco) run Shopify + ReCharge or Skio.

Magento wins for men’s grooming if: subscription is >40% of revenue and you need deep custom flows (build-a-box with conditional rules, swap mid-cycle, tier-based pricing visibility), telehealth crossover is on the roadmap (Magento + a prescriber-network API is far more flexible than Shopify+app), multi-region (US + UK + EU + AU with state-by-state laws), full-line grooming with 500+ SKUs across razor + beard + body + skincare. Manscaped is on Shopify Plus + heavily customised; Hims is on a custom stack with a Shopify-ish front because telehealth needs custom flow control.

Specific Shopify ceilings for men’s grooming: limited build-a-box flexibility (Skio fixes most of it for $349, $799/mo), per-tx fees (2.4-2.9% on third-party gateways) eating $90k+/yr at $4M GMV, telehealth integration gaps (no native prescriber-network flow). At >$5M GMV with telehealth on the roadmap, Magento is usually the better long-term call.