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Shopify vs Wix: Which is Better for Building An Online Store?
During the journey of entrepreneurship, you definitely find yourself making a lot of critical decisions, one of which must be picking the right platform for your online business.
With that thought in mind, we have conducted several comprehensive analyses that compare Shopify to other renowned eCommerce platforms, namely Amazon, Magento, Etsy, and eBay, to assist you in this daunting task.
In this latest installment, the spotlight is on Shopify vs Wix, the two giants in website building and eCommerce solutions. This blog post will unveil the ins and outs of Shopify and Wix in 9 key criteria to help you decide which platform is the perfect fit for your online store.
Shopify vs Wix: An Overview
About Shopify
Built with a strong emphasis on eCommerce, Shopify emerges as a powerhouse in the digital marketplace.
Since its creation in 2006, Shopify has grown into one of the leading platforms for creating and managing online stores.
Shopify provides an all-in-one eCommerce solution for businesses of all sizes.
With Shopify’s intuitive drag-and-drop interface and a wide selection of beautiful and mobile-responsive themes, you can easily create an impressive storefront that aligns with your brand.
The platform also provides a secure and reliable infrastructure and robust eCommerce features, taking care of hosting, performance, and security for you. Its extensive app marketplace, for example, lets you expand the capabilities of your online store in various aspects like SEO, marketing, store design or management.
Pro tip: whether you use Shopify or other platforms, focus on getting a domain name that suits your brand.
Learn more: Is Shopify Legit? An Honest Shopify Review in 2023
About Wix
Founded in 2006, Wix has positioned itself as a versatile website builder that empowers individuals and small businesses to create stunning websites without any coding knowledge.
Whereas Shopify is optimized to be an ultimate eCommerce solution, Wix is more oriented to becoming a user-friendly website builder.
Wix emphasizes on bringing an easy-to-use platform for website creation.
With Wix, you can customize your site the way you want by using its intuitive drag-and-drop editor and its huge catalog of tailor-made templates and design features.
Despite not specializing in eCommerce, Wix does grant access to basic eCommerce features that help you manage your online operations and drive convertible traffic to your site.
Shopify vs Wix: What Are The Key Differences?
|
Area |
Shopify |
Wix |
Winner |
|
Total Live Websites |
Over 4.5 million |
Over 8.5 million |
Wix |
| 3-day free trial; US$1 for the next three months; Three main pricing tiers—$25, $65, and $399/month; Transaction fees from 0.5% to 2% if not using Shopify Payments |
A free plan; Eight paid plans divided into three categories: one from US$4.50 to US$24/month, one from US$17 to US$35/month and one with custom pricing; No transaction fee |
Tie |
|
|
Easy to build a fully-functional online store |
Easy to build a content-rich website |
Tie |
|
|
Advanced and robust eCommerce features |
Basic eCommerce features |
Shopify |
|
|
Highly customizable with a wide range of eCommerce -specific design options |
Highly customizable but with limited eCommerce-specific design options |
Shopify |
|
|
8,000+ apps |
500+ apps |
Shopify |
|
|
100+ payment gateways |
70+ payment gateways |
Shopify |
|
|
Impressive capabilities in eCommerce SEO features |
Limited in eCommerce SEO features |
Shopify |
|
|
Faster loading time |
Slower loading time |
Shopify |
|
| 24/7 support via email, phone, live chat; Guidance via help center and user community |
In-editor help; Support via phone & email during business hours only; Guidance via help center, user community |
Tie |
Pricing
First off, let’s talk pricing – one of the most critical factors when deciding which platform to invest in.
With Shopify, users enjoy more flexible pricing options, each with certain advanced eCommerce functionality. In addition to a three-day free trial and the 3 months for US$1 deal, Shopify offers three main pricing tiers: Basic, Shopify, and Advanced, along with two additional ones: Shopify Starter and Shopify Plus:
- The Shopify Starter plan: US$5/month (but you can only sell products via social media and messaging apps)
- The Basic Shopify plan: US$25/month
- The Shopify plan: US$65/month
- The Advanced Shopify plan: US$399/month
- The Shopify Plus plan: Starting at US$2.000/month (for high-volume businesses).
Learn more: Shopify vs Shopify Plus: Is the Upgrade Worth the Investment?
There will be additional fees of 2%, 1% or 0.5% for the Basic, Shopify, and Advanced Shopify plans, respectively, unless you use Shopify Payments.
Shopify’s pricing plans
Wix, on the contrary, does not offer a free trial but provides an entirely free plan, along with eight paid plans divided into three categories.
- Free plan, at US$0 forever, allows users to build and publish a basic website without cost. However, with this plan, you only get limited features and have adverts displayed on your site.
- The Website plans, from US$4.50 to US$24/month, allow users to build a general website, like a personal blog, portfolio or a short-term site for events, with non-eCommerce features.
Wix’s Website plans
- The Business and eCommerce plans, from US$17 to US$35/month, allows users to launch a functional eCommerce store.
- The Enterprise plans, with custom pricing, are built for larger-scale businesses.
Besides, Wix does not charge you any transaction fees, which is a win for this platform here.
Key takeaway: This round’s winner boils down to your specific needs. With more affordable pricing tiers, Wix is a great choice for new eCommerce users on a tight budget, while Shopify, with higher pricing plans and more robust eCommerce features, is the perfect fit for larger-scale businesses.
Ease of Use
The next consideration during your hunt for the right eCommerce platform is usability.
Both Shopify and Wix are built with user-friendliness in mind, but they differ in terms of the learning curve and technical expertise required.
Tailor-made for eCommerce needs, Shopify simplifies the process of building and managing a full-fledged online store with a user-friendly interface and an intuitive admin dashboard.
Learn more: Shopify Tutorial: Set Up Your Store from Scratch to Finish
The platform features a separate drag-and-drop editor and an extensive library of pre-designed templates and themes, letting you customize your storefront with ease.
Shopify’s drag-and-drop theme editor lets you customize your storefront with ease.
Despite requiring a bit more technical know-how initially, the platform’s comprehensive documentation and active support resources make it accessible to users of all skill levels.
Conversely, Wix prides itself on being a beginner-friendly website builder providing a seamless and straightforward website building experience. With its smart drag-and-drop interface, you can easily customize the elements of your website by simply dragging and dropping them into place without any coding knowledge.
Wix also features a user-friendly drag-and-drop editor allowing you to customize every element of your website.
Our Verdict: Regarding ease of use, both Shopify and Wix excel in their respective domains. Wix is easier if you are building a content-rich website with only basic eCommerce functions, whereas Shopify is more optimal if you plan to build and scale a fully-functional online store with more advanced eCommerce features.
eCommerce Functionality
Shopify should be at the top of your list if your primary goal is to create a robust online store.
As a dedicated eCommerce platform, Shopify offers a great set of tools and features specially made to facilitate online selling. From inventory management, payment gateways, shipping options, order fulfillment and tracking to dropshipping integrations and multi-channel selling, Shopify provides a seamless and scalable solution for online businesses of all sizes.
Learn more: 30 Top Shopify Store Examples That We Love In 2023
Wix also includes eCommerce capabilities in its range of features but only as an additional component of a more general website building experience. Wix’s eCommerce functionality, therefore, is not as extensive or scalable as that of Shopify, making Wix suitable for new or small businesses with simple needs.
Our Verdict: Shopify definitely wins this round for its robust eCommerce functionality.
Design and Customization
Aesthetics play a crucial role in capturing the attention of your target audience and conveying your brand identity. So, make sure you take the design and customization capabilities into account while choosing between Shopify and Wix for your online store.
With Shopify, you gain access to over 130 professionally-designed themes built for commerce, of which 12 are free while the rest cost between US$180 and US$360 and offer better design choices. Each theme, whether free or paid, comes with several different styling options and customizability, allowing you to modify colors, fonts, and layouts to match your brand identity.
Learn more: Change Shopify Theme in 3 Easy Steps (+ Tips)
Shopify offers a variety of customizable eCommerce-specific themes, both free and paid.
The platform’s built-in theme editor provides you with basic customization options to edit your theme's design. If you seek to further customize and tailor the appearance of your online store, you can access Shopify's Liquid templating language which allows you to access and modify the theme's underlying code.
Learn more: Shopify Customization: How to Build Custom Shopify Pages That Sell?
Want more advanced custom functionality, but coding is not your forte? All you need is a Shopify page builder. With GemPages page builder, you can access an extensive suite of tools and features designed to unlock your store's full potential and captivate your audience.
In contrast, Wix is renowned for its vast collection of nearly 900 free website templates across different industries and niches, but only 120 of them are eCommerce-specific.
Wix provides an extensive selection of website templates across different industries, all for free.
If you are new to web design, you can utilize Wix Artificial Design Intelligence (ADI) feature instead, which designs and builds a personalized and fully-designed website for you in no time.
Similar to Shopify, Wix also allows users with coding skills to add greater functionality to their sites with its Velo tool, a full-stack development platform for Wix.
With Wix’s incredibly user-friendly drag-and-drop editor, you get complete design freedom to design a website you’re proud of without the need for coding. However, when major changes are needed, Wix does not offer such great flexibility as Shopify since the process of redesigning is extremely manual and time-consuming.
Our Verdict: We’ve got to give this one to Shopify. Although Wix provides a much greater range of general-purpose design templates at no cost, Shopify takes the crown for its emphasis on dedicated eCommerce themes with greater design functionality and customization options.
App Integrations
The ability to integrate seamlessly with third-party applications and plugins is a plus of an eCommerce platform since those are strong helping hands in your business growth path.
In this department, Shopify seems to take the upper hand over Wix, with a huge marketplace of over 8,000 apps. Covering numerous aspects of eCommerce, including marketing, conversion, analytics, SEO, and more, Shopify’s robust app ecosystem promises to extend your store’s capabilities and better assist you in streamlining your online operations.
Shopify’s App Store contains all kinds of apps and plugins to extend your store’s functionality.
Wix, on the other hand, features a limited selection of over 500 third-party integrations, among which only 48 are eCommerce specialized.
Wix offers a limited selection of third-party apps.
Our Verdict: Shopify beats Wix with its extensive app marketplace.
Payment Options
Having a reliable payment system is crucial to facilitating customer’s transactions and providing a smooth payment experience on your online store.
Both Shopify and Wix have in-house payment solutions, Shopify Payments and Wix Payments, respectively, eliminating transaction fees and the hassle of setting up a separate third-party payment processor. They also provide ‘buy now, pay later’ solutions via Afterpay, giving you more financial freedom.
In addition to their own payment gateways, both platforms offer a variety of external payment options to suit your business needs. Shopify supports more than 100 payment gateways, including PayPal, Apple Pay, Amazon Pay, Stripe, Authorize.net, and many more, whereas Wix falls slightly behind with over 70 payment providers, making Shopify more flexible than Wix.
Learn more: 10 Best Shopify Payment Options for Your Business in 2023
It is worth noting that with Shopify, additional fees of between 0.5% to 2% will be charged for the gateways it supports if you don’t use Shopify Payments, while Wix does NOT charge any additional transaction fees.
However, to accept online payments on Wix, your site needs to upgrade to a Business and eCommerce plan that costs between US$17 and US$35 per month.
Our Verdict: Shopify takes the win for offering its sellers a wider range of payment options.
SEO
Having your online store SEO-optimized is the key to getting found online.
Shopify excels in this area with a wide array of SEO tools and features to improve your store’s visibility and drive organic traffic. While selling on Shopify, you have options for editing meta tags, customizing URLs and site structure, generating sitemaps, and optimizing page loading speed for better search engine rankings. Shopify’s blogging capabilities and mobile optimization further enhance its suitability for your SEO efforts.
Besides, Shopify provides an extensive marketplace of apps and integrations to enhance your SEO efforts. Check out our recommended list of the 7 best SEO apps for Shopify in 2023 for more details.
Wix also has built-in SEO features to let you customize meta tags, title tags and URLs for all your web pages, but it falls short compared to Shopify's comprehensive set of specialized eCommerce SEO tools. Besides these basic SEO features, Wix provides an integrated SEO Wiz tool that contains SEO recommendations to guide you through the process of optimizing your website for search engines.
Our Verdict: Shopify has a slight edge over Wix for its specialization in eCommerce SEO.
Performance
One key question in determining the winner of this Shopify vs Wix debate is: which one is faster?
In terms of loading speed, Shopify is slightly ahead of Wix as the platform is engineered to provide fast loading times on both desktop and mobile devices. Employing a content delivery network (CDN) that distributes your website's content across multiple servers worldwide, Shopify helps reduce latency and ensure quick access for users.
Learn more: Shopify Speed Optimization: 11 Effective Ways (2023)
Also, famous for its robust scalability, Shopify is capable of handling a high volume of traffic and transactions without compromising the site speed.
Despite having made significant improvements to its loading times in recent years, Wix still falls short in this criterion.
Our Verdict: Shopify wins!
Support
A platform with incredible customer support is a reliable partner to support your online store's success and address any issues that may arise along the way.
With Shopify, you get access to round-the-clock customer support via live chat, email, and phone, ensuring you can reach out for assistance whenever needed, regardless of your time zone. Additionally, Shopify offers a vast knowledge base with articles, guides, and tutorials and hosts an active community forum to assist you at every step of your eCommerce journey.
For more advanced assistance or specific customization needs, you can contact Shopify Experts for personalized support tailored to your business requirements.
Wix, contrarily, provides phone and email support but only during business hours. While call-back and email support are provided for all its paid plan users, priority support is only available for those subscribed to Wix VIP plans.
On Wix, you can always get support from its comprehensive support center, great marketing blog and hosts webinars, and active user community.
One selling point of this platform is its in-editor help which gives you support and guidance in real time, right during your website building process.
Our Verdict: In this customer support round, Shopify and Wix are pretty much neck and neck. While Shopify is great for its 24/7 assistance, Wix does deliver higher quality support than Shopify in several areas.
Shopify vs Wix: Which is The Absolute Best?
From our deep research of Shopify vs Wix, Shopify takes the crown when it comes to building a professional online store. Excelling in online selling with robust eCommerce functionality, scalability, and an extensive ecosystem of apps and integrations, Shopify is your complete solution to create a thriving online business.
Wix, despite offering simplicity, ease of use and impressive customization options, falls short of Shopify in dedicated eCommerce features. This makes it an excellent choice for beginners and small businesses looking for a user-friendly website builder to build a captivating online presence.
However, the choice is yours. So, take the time to carefully evaluate your business needs, budget, and long-term objectives, and choose the right platform to propel your business to new heights of success.
FAQs about Shopify vs Wix
