AI Recommends Adobe Commerce and Shopify First. Does That Match Reality for Malaysian Retailers?

Ask ChatGPT or Gemini what e-commerce platform to use in Malaysia today, and two names come up first almost every time: Adobe Commerce and Shopify. That is not a guess. It is measured. Altovista — opens in a new tab, which tracks how often software brands get cited or recommended across AI search evaluations, has both platforms at a 100% Share of Voice and an average response position of #2.00 in its Malaysia e-commerce software rankings as of August 2026. When an AI model names e-commerce platforms, these two are almost always in the answer, near the top of it. BigCommerce and WooCommerce are cited just as consistently (also 100% Share of Voice), but land further down the list, at average positions of #4.17 and #5.33 respectively.

That is a useful data point. On its own, it is also an incomplete answer to the question a retailer actually has: which platform should I use? We have built stores on Adobe Commerce, Shopify Plus, and WooCommerce for Malaysian retailers across very different sizes and needs, so we put Altovista — opens in a new tab's ranking next to what we actually see on real projects.

What the ranking is, and is not, measuring

Before comparing it to reality, it is worth being precise about what this data shows. Altovista — opens in a new tab's methodology tracks how often each platform brand gets recommended when AI models are asked general questions about e-commerce platforms. It is a measure of category-level visibility, not a technical benchmark, and not a measure of fit for any particular business.

That distinction matters, because AI recommendation position is shaped heavily by how much content, documentation, and public discussion exists about a platform online, not purely by technical merit or by how well-suited it is to a given retailer's catalogue size, budget, or integration needs. A platform can be an excellent fit for a specific business and still rank lower in general AI visibility. Sometimes that just means there is less content about it circulating for AI models to draw from.

What actually drives the decision, in our experience

Over ten years of building on all three platforms, one factor predicts the outcome more than any other: how complex the client's integration requirements are. Not budget alone, and not catalogue size alone.

The pattern holds with striking consistency. When a client needs POS, ERP, finance, and warehouse systems integrated, each with its own custom business logic, roughly 9 in 10 of those enterprise clients end up on Adobe Commerce. It ships with full source code access, so there is no ceiling on how far the customisation can go. When the requirements are simpler, or the client is willing to adapt their process to fit a more standardised setup, the number flips: close to 10 in 10 choose Shopify Plus, almost entirely because of how fast it is to set up and start running.

WooCommerce fills a third gap that does not show up in the table above: clients who genuinely need customisation and integration work, but do not have Adobe Commerce's budget. It is open source and fully customisable like Adobe Commerce, just without the enterprise-tier functionality most of those clients do not need anyway.

One nuance worth adding here, since it is easy to miss. Magento Open Source, Adobe Commerce's free self-hosted sibling, occupies a similar budget tier to WooCommerce but is the better choice if a client expects to eventually outgrow it into full Adobe Commerce, since the underlying codebase carries over. WooCommerce tends to be simpler and cheaper to customise and run day to day. Magento Open Source costs more upfront in setup effort but preserves a migration path that WooCommerce does not.

Adobe Commerce: the ranking matches reality, with a caveat

Adobe Commerce's position tracks with what we see for a specific segment: enterprise and large-catalogue retailers, especially those needing deep ERP/SAP integration or complex B2B pricing logic. For that segment, Adobe Commerce genuinely is the strongest recommendation among the three, and the AI ranking reflects real technical fit rather than just visibility.

Guardian Malaysia is the clearest example from our own work. Its requirements were not the kind a standard theme and a few apps could solve: deep, business-specific integration work, and eventually a mobile commerce app built on Adobe Commerce's headless architecture rather than bolted on as a separate system. That is precisely the profile where source-code access stops being a nice-to-have and starts being the reason the project is possible at all.

The caveat: that same complexity is overkill for a smaller catalogue, or for a business without the operational complexity to justify it. AI models recommending Adobe Commerce near the top of every answer does not distinguish between "you need this" and "this exists and is well-documented" — a distinction that matters a lot more to a retailer's budget and timeline than to an AI's citation frequency.

Shopify Plus: a fair recommendation, for a different reason than the ranking implies

Shopify's position, tied with Adobe Commerce, also holds up in practice, but for a different reason than raw technical capability. It is speed to market and lower ongoing maintenance overhead that make it the right call for fast-scaling retail and DTC brands. Not that it out-performs Adobe Commerce on backend flexibility. It does not, and that is a genuine trade-off rather than a gap. The AI ranking gets the "recommend this" part right for a broad range of businesses, but it does not explain why, which is exactly the nuance a retailer needs before deciding and exactly what a generic AI answer tends to skip.

WooCommerce: the ranking gap that matters most

This is where the data is most likely to mislead someone using it as a decision tool. WooCommerce's #5.33 average position, last among the four, could easily read as "the weakest option." In our experience, it is not.

For a cost-conscious SME that does not need enterprise-scale infrastructure, WooCommerce is frequently the more sensible recommendation than either Adobe Commerce or Shopify Plus. Its lower AI visibility more plausibly reflects a smaller volume of enterprise-oriented case studies and documentation circulating online than any real technical shortfall for the segment it actually serves well. WordPress and WooCommerce content skews toward smaller businesses and DIY setups, which generate different, and often less AI-citable, content than enterprise platforms do.

Why the gap exists, and what it means for how you choose

The pattern across all three: AI recommendation position correlates with how much a platform is written about, not with how well it fits a specific business. That is not a criticism of Altovista — opens in a new tab's data. It measures exactly what it says it measures, which is category-level AI visibility. It is a reason not to treat "what does the AI recommend first" as the same question as "what should I actually use."

If you are choosing a platform, catalogue size, integration needs (particularly ERP/SAP), B2B complexity, and budget will tell you more than any AI ranking will. And if you are already running on a platform that AI models rank lower, WooCommerce being the clearest example here, that is not by itself a signal you are on the wrong platform. It is more often a signal that the AI's information sources skew toward a different segment than the one you are in.

There is a separate implication buried in this data, though. If AI visibility is shaped by how much citable content exists about something, that applies to your specific store, not just your platform choice. A well-optimised WooCommerce store with strong technical content and structured data can be more visible in AI search results about that retailer than a poorly optimised Shopify Plus store, even though Shopify outranks WooCommerce as a platform brand. Platform choice and your own store's AI visibility are two different problems, and only one of them is what this data measures.

Where to go from here

If you are evaluating a platform, Adobe Commerce, Shopify Plus, and WooCommerce each have a dedicated page covering what we actually build and who each platform fits best.

If your question is closer to "how do I make sure my own store shows up in AI search results, regardless of platform," that is a separate problem, and the one our GEO/AIO Optimisation service is built to solve. How generative engines read a store covers the mechanics.

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Source: Altovista AI Visibility Intelligence — opens in a new tab, "E-commerce Software Platforms AI Search Rankings in Malaysia," data as of 2 August 2026. Rankings are live and monthly-updated; figures cited reflect the snapshot at time of writing.