I am just planning to launch my online store and for now I am thinking about an e-commerce platform I'd be comfortable with. A lot of people recommend Shopify. I'm still leaning more towards Magento 2. Any real tips and experiences on why Magento is better or vice versa?

In reality, it's quite individual, and in my opinion, both platforms work excellently for launching an online store. As for me, I currently work on Magento, and recently I've used various services from amasty site for optimization and performance improvement. At the moment, I wouldn't change anything and switch to Shopify or another platform.