What is the Difference Between Magento 2 Website, Store, and Store View?

Magento is a powerful e-commerce CMS which facilitates its users to manage multiple sites and stores within just one installation. Magento has 4 levels of hierarchies: Global, Website, Store and Store-View.

  • Global: The topmost level of Magento’s Hierarchy Pyramid is “Global”. Unlike other levels there is only one global view within the Magento hierarchy pyramid and for the newly installed Magento Website, global view’s default settings are applied. Whatever we set on “Global”, remains the same for all other levels of the pyramid. Below options can be configured through the global which will be remain same for all the stores:
    1. Stock: We can configure the main product settings as “Global”.
    2. Pricing: We can define the same price for products in all stores.
    3. Buyers: We can combine all the customer’s data from websites and stores into one database.
  • Website: “Website” is the subset of “Global” and superset of “Store”. Within the new Magento setup, by default we have only one website called “Main Website”, but we can create multiple websites within a single magento setup. Below options can be configured per Website:
    1. We can set separate system configurations. By default, most of the configurations are configured at this level.
    2. We can assign different products to all the websites and products can have different prices / currencies / attribute values etc. also for all the websites.
    3. We can set a separate customer base.
    4. We can set separate tax classes.
    5. We can set separate (base) currencies.
    6. We can set separate payment methods for all the websites.
    7. We can set separate shipping methods for all the websites.
  • Store: “Store” is the subset of “Website” and superset of “Store-view”. Within the new Magento setup, by default we have only one Store called “Default Store” under the “Main Website” but we can create multiple stores within the “main website” or other custom Magento websites. Below options can be configured per store:
    1. We can set separate-separate Root Categories to all stores. It means we can set different catalogues to all the stores.
    2. Below options can be configured can’t be configured per Store:
    3. We can’t set different “product stock” for all the stores.
    4. We can’t set different “product prices” for all the stores
    5. All the stores within a website have the same customers.
    6. We can’t set different “tax rates” for all the stores.
    7. We can’t set different “shipping methods” for all the stores.
    8. We can’t set different “currencies” for all the stores.
  • Store-View: This is the bottom most level of the magento hierarchy pyramid. “Store-View” is the subset of “Store”, and we can create multiple store views within a single store. It is mostly used for various Languages and Currencies. Below options can be configured per Store View:
    1. We can set different languages.
    2. We can set different currencies.
    3. We can set different design themes
    4. Some of the product EAV attributes (name etc.) can be different for all the store views.
    5. Some of the Category EAV attributes (name, url etc) can be different for all the store views.
    6. System configurations can also vary for all the store views.
    7. Below options can’t be configured per Store View:
    8. All store views within one website have the same customers.
    9. All store views have the same “shipping methods”.
    10. All store views have the same “tax rates”.
    11. All store views have the same “product stock”.
    12. All store views have the same “product prices”.
    13. All store views share the same catalogues.