Wix vs. Shopify: Which Platform Is Better for You?
Picking the right platform to sell your print-on-demand goods can be tricky. They all offer similar services while each has something different as well. With eCommerce thriving, it’s important to choose the right marketplace for your brand, business, and future.
If you’re having a hard time deciding between these two brilliant platforms, our Wix vs. Shopify comparison will help ease your concerns and answer all the right questions. Read our other article if you are interested in the benefits of Etsy vs. Shopify.
We’ll take a look at the ease of use of each platform, design and eCommerce features, customer support, SEO tools, and everything else concerning selling on Wix vs. Shopify. Which one is better for you? Let’s find out.
Table of Contents
What Is Wix?
Wix came about in 2006 as a drag and drop website builder. What started as a small company is now a go-to platform for more than 180 million people in nearly 190 countries.
Wix provides an effective eCommerce power for small businesses, such as print-on-demand and dropshipping companies. This platform offers shopping and payment optimization and business and finance management tools.
What Is Shopify?
Shopify is a renowned and reliable online store builder, created in 2004 when business founders and entrepreneurs couldn’t find a suitable solution for their problems and issues regarding online stores. Now Shopify fulfills the needs of merchants worldwide. Browse for more Shopify store examples here. There are hundreds of apps and tools that greatly simplify the work with the platform, and offers the opportunity to start a business with minimum or no investments at all such as a Shopify print-on-demand store.
Shopify is a dedicated, robust, and comprehensive eCommerce platform with over 1.75 million online stores. Businesses in 175 countries worldwide have made over $200 billion in sales using Shopify. Even if you’re not tech-savvy, you can design an attractive and engaging storefront with the platform’s built-in tools.
Wix vs. Shopify
| Wix | Shopify | |
|---|---|---|
| Ease of Use | Beginner-friendly platform, does not require tech knowledge. | Easy-to-use platform in all areas. |
| Store Management | Main features for inventory management, cart maintenance, and payment options. | Extra business name generation, stock photos, and more. |
| Pricing | Build a store for free or opt for paid plans starting at $17/month. | Advanced plans starting from $29/month. |
| Technical Features | Supports 100+ languages, good speed, doesn't support multiple currencies. | Fast platform with a multicurrency and multilingual feature. |
| Analytics | Basic in-house analytics with traffic report, visitor behavior report, and sales report. | In-depth review of store activity, visitors, store speed, transactions, and more. |
| Design Features | A selection of beautiful, free, easy-to-customize templates. | Many templates, only a couple of free ones. |
| Marketing and Sales Features | Outstanding email marketing and blogging features, as well as integrations. | Good email marketing and blogging features and integrations, no autosave. |
| SEO | Great set of all the basic SEO tools and features. | Better SEO functionality with all the best tools and features. |
| Apps Market | Huge app store with 250+ apps for all the basic necessities. | Excellent app store with 7000+ apps. |
| Customer Support | Great customer support and helpful tutorial videos. | Excellent customer service 24/7 with a live chat. |
| Ease of Use | |
|---|---|
| Wix | Beginner-friendly platform, does not require tech knowledge. |
| Shopify | Easy-to-use platform in all areas. |
| Store Management | |
| Wix | Main features for inventory management, cart maintenance, and payment options. |
| Shopify | Extra business name generation, stock photos, and more. |
| Pricing | |
| Wix | Build a store for free or opt for paid plans starting at $17/month. |
| Shopify | Advanced plans starting from $29/month. |
| Technical Features | |
| Wix | Supports 100+ languages, good speed, doesn't support multiple currencies. |
| Shopify | Fast platform with a multicurrency and multilingual feature. |
| Analytics | |
| Wix | Basic in-house analytics with traffic report, visitor behavior report, and sales report. |
| Shopify | In-depth review of store activity, visitors, store speed, transactions, and more. |
| Design Features | |
| Wix | A selection of beautiful, free, easy-to-customize templates. |
| Shopify | Many templates, only a couple of free ones. |
| Marketing and Sales Features | |
| Wix | Outstanding email marketing and blogging features, as well as integrations. |
| Shopify | Good email marketing and blogging features and integrations, no autosave. |
| SEO | |
| Wix | Great set of all the basic SEO tools and features. |
| Shopify | Better SEO functionality with all the best tools and features. |
| Apps Market | |
| Wix | Huge app store with 250+ apps for all the basic necessities. |
| Shopify | Excellent app store with 7000+ apps. |
| Customer Support | |
| Wix | Great customer support and helpful tutorial videos. |
| Shopify | Excellent customer service 24/7 with a live chat. |
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10 Essential Differences Between Wix vs. Shopify
Choosing the most suitable backbone for your new online store will likely affect the success of your online store, so you shouldn’t take this decision lightly. Let’s look at some of the key differences between Wix and Shopify.
1. Ease of Use
While both platforms claim to be very beginner-friendly, they are quite different in building an online presence.
Wix is the right platform for those who need a professional-looking store but have little to no design and coding skills. Wix eCommerce features help you create blogs, articles, store descriptions, and About Us pages with top-notch tutorials and helpful step-by-step guides.
Their drag and drop editor allows merchants to create and manage content by simply clicking on a feature, such as an image, logo, or title, and dragging it wherever needed. While the Wix ADI artificial intelligence helps create a template in seconds.
Shopify is the perfect choice for bigger stores and businesses emphasizing product management and selling. While such features as blogs and descriptions are available, they are not the platform’s main focus.
Shopify has a separate dashboard and editing system, making you move back and forth between the preview mode and the final store face. However, Shopify makes up for it with pre-made templates free for optimization and personalization.
Conclusion. When it comes to ease of use, Wix takes the cake. While a Wix store might be more basic and simple than a Shopify one, you can get it up and running in no time without the additional headache that comes with a complex eCommerce functionality.
2. Store Management: eCommerce Tools
Wix comes equipped with such necessities as:
- Cart & Checkout. Streamlined, secure checkout, abandoned cart recovery, express checkouts, and more.
- Inventory Management. Track item count and variations. Inventory is automatically updated after every sale. In and out-of-stock status is up-to-date.
- Easy Payment Options. 50+ secure payment gateways, from their own Wix Payments solution to third-party gateways like PayPal, Stripe, Square, and more.
- Mobile App. Monitor your store, edit pages, process orders, and track business analytics on the go.
Shopify store owners get access to important features as:
- Inventory Management. Similar to Wix, Shopify tracks inventory and automatically updates stock status.
- Burst. This tool gives access to the latest updates in stock photos, allowing merchants to add the latest trends to their product displays.
- Business Name Generator. If low on inspiration, you can add some important keywords and the generator will come up with multiple business names for your store.
- Finance Calculators. Shopify offers calculators to help you manage your store's finances. From ad campaigns to profit margins.
- Shopify App. Same as Wix, manage your store and orders while away from the keyboard.
Conclusion. While most of the basic features are similar, Shopify comes with an extended toolkit for a more diverse, professional look and maintenance.
3. Pricing
Wix and Shopify offer multiple monthly plans for different scale stores and purposes. Let’s see which platform gives you a better deal for the right price.
Wix provides three eCommerce-friendly business plans ranging from $17 to $35.
- Business Basic $17/month. This plan provides beginners with basic features such as a free domain for a year, secure online payments, 20 GB of storage space, and unlimited bandwidth.
- Business Unlimited $25/month. This plan covers all the main features of the basic plan while adding extra storage space (35 GB), a professional logo, tax calculators, multiple currencies, and more.
- Business VIP $35/month. Unlimited video hours, 50 GB of storage, and premium customer support. The VIP plan also includes valuable reports and insights, helping you make data-driven decisions for your brand and business.
Shopify merchants can choose from three different plans ranging from $29 to $299.
- Basic $29/month. Best for new eCommerce businesses that are just getting started. The plan comes with an online store, unlimited listings, abandoned cart recovery, and other fundamental eCommerce features.
- Shopify $79/month. This plan has everything you need to expand your business. It includes all the features of the Basic plan, plus professional standard sales reports, global selling support, higher shipping discounts, and more.
- Advanced $299/month. Best for scaling businesses that require advanced reporting. It includes such extras as third-party calculated shipping rates, eCommerce automation, duties and import taxes, and custom pricing by market.
Conclusion. Wix is the cheaper option but Shopify’s features are more refined.
4. Technical Features
| Wix | Shopify | |
|---|---|---|
| Currencies | You can't offer multiple currencies on your Wix store page. | Set up Shopify Payment for the multicurrency feature and offer prices in different currencies around the world. |
| Multilingual Capabilities | Wix will be your best friend for additional languages. This platform supports 100+ languages. | Every Shopify standard plan comes with a multilingual selling option. Display your store in up to five different languages on separate URLs. |
| Loading Speed | Wix is slower but suggests guidelines for website optimization, providing the possibility to maintain 85% to 90% speed. | According to research, Shopify is one of the fastest eCommerce sites in terms of loading time, which is an average of 1.3 seconds. |
| Currencies | |
|---|---|
| Wix | You can't offer multiple currencies on your Wix store page. |
| Shopify | Set up Shopify Payment for the multicurrency feature and offer prices in different currencies around the world. |
| Multilingual Capabilities | |
| Wix | Wix will be your best friend for additional languages. This platform supports 100+ languages. |
| Shopify | Every Shopify standard plan comes with a multilingual selling option. Display your store in up to five different languages on separate URLs. |
| Loading Speed | |
| Wix | Wix is slower but suggests guidelines for website optimization, providing the possibility to maintain 85% to 90% speed. |
| Shopify | According to research, Shopify is one of the fastest eCommerce sites in terms of loading time, which is an average of 1.3 seconds. |
Conclusion. Shopify offers more possibilities with different currencies, languages, and is a faster platform than Wix.
5. Analytics
Wix allows to customize your report choices and focus on data that interests you the most. Get reports on website traffic, buyer behavior, conversion rates, and more. Access data analysis and make business decisions accordingly.
- Traffic Report. Measures traffic by country, device, region, and landing page. See how people navigate to your website and within it.
- Sales Report. Shows useful information about your sales and revenues, invoices, daily, weekly, monthly sales, and more.
- Behavior Report. Shows how visitors interact with your online store. What page did they go to first, what pages are most viewed, and which ones lack pizzazz?
Depending on your selected plan, Shopify offers quite a selection of reporting features. From basic analysis to deep reviews on store activity, visitors, store speed, transactions, and more.
Conclusion. Both platforms offer useful data reports that can help in business development and decision-making. For those who want a more detailed analysis, Shopify is the better option.
6. Design Features
Wix and Shopify are both well known for their themes and templates. Let’s take a look at their prices, options, customization, and more.
Wix users have access to over 800 designer-made free templates for their websites. Personalize them to your liking, drag and drop, customize, add advanced features, and spruce up the look to match your brand.
Too busy to create or customize? No worries. Wix provides busy store owners with three built-in designer tools to help quickly design the storefront: Wix Editor X, Editor, and Wix ADI.
The Shopify Theme Store includes over 70 professionally designed eCommerce website templates that you can use for your online store. Currently, 17 of them are for free, while others are premium themes ranging from $150 to $350.
While they may seem quite pricey, every premium theme is artistically and functionally cost-effective. Shopify themes are modern, customizable to your liking, and responsive on desktops, tablets, and phones.
Article: The Top 15 Best Free Shopify Themes for Your Online Store
Conclusion. While Wix offers free templates, you can’t change them later. Shopify is more pricey but flexible.
7. Marketing and Sales Features
| Wix | Shopify | |
|---|---|---|
| Email Campaigns | High-quality email marketing tool with pre-made templates. Send three newsletters for free to 5000 subscribers or upgrade your plan for the email marketing tool Wix Ascend. | Recently introduced marketing tool Shopify Email for promoting updates, products, and campaigns. Send 10,000 emails per month for free. |
| Integrations | When it comes to social media, Wix offers integrations to top platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Amazon, eBay, and more. | Shopify offers a greater list of sales channels, including Facebook, Instagram, Amazon, eBay, Messenger, Handshake, and more |
| Content Marketing | Blogging is an easy and simple option for Wix users. Wix also has the upper hand with the autosave feature that prevents you from losing content if the site or computer crashes. | Shopify also has the blogging feature, but no autosave. While Wix allows you to use tags and categories in blog posts, Shopify only has tags. |
| Email Campaigns | |
|---|---|
| Wix | High-quality email marketing tool with pre-made templates. Send three newsletters for free to 5000 subscribers or upgrade your plan for the email marketing tool Wix Ascend. |
| Shopify | Recently introduced marketing tool Shopify Email for promoting updates, products, and campaigns. Send 10,000 emails per month for free. |
| Integrations | |
| Wix | When it comes to social media, Wix offers integrations to top platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Amazon, eBay, and more. |
| Shopify | Shopify offers a greater list of sales channels, including Facebook, Instagram, Amazon, eBay, Messenger, Handshake, and more. |
| Content Marketing | |
| Wix | Blogging is an easy and simple option for Wix users. Wix also has the upper hand with the autosave feature that prevents you from losing content if the site or computer crashes. |
| Shopify | Shopify also has the blogging feature, but no autosave. While Wix allows you to use tags and categories in blog posts, Shopify only has tags. |
Conclusion. When it comes to email marketing and posting content, Wix takes the lead. Although Shopify recently introduced its email marketing tool, Wix is friendlier in marketing content.
8. SEO
Wix has worked hard to up its SEO game. Websites using Wix have no problem ranking on top of search engine results, using such SEO features as:
- Meta title
- Meta description
- Custom URLs
- Headings
- Image alt text
- Page Layout Optimization for mobile use
- Sitemap
- Google Analytics
- Google Search Console
- Canonical tags and more.
When it comes to SEO, Shopify offers most of the same features and solutions as Wix. Some solutions for driving SEO success are:
- XML Sitemap
- 301 redirects
- Mobile-Friendly setup
- Image Optimization
- Meta tags
- Meta title and description
- Canonical tags
- Google Analytics
- Multilingual URLs and more.
Conclusion. Both platforms are well equipped with SEO tools and boosters. However, for those who want to reach a more global audience, Shopify should be your choice.
9. Apps Market
Wix offers a selection of over 250 apps and add-ons to choose from under six main categories.
- Marketing. Grow your customer base with useful marketing tools.
- Sell Online. Manage your online store, payments, inventory, accounting, and shipping.
- Services & Events. Create events and manage your business calendar.
- Communication. Connect with your store visitors using chat, feedback, and more.
- Design Elements. Use tools to customize the layout of your site and get creative.
- Media & Content. Engage your audience by adding music, videos, and articles to your website.
While only some of the apps are free, the paid ones are pretty affordable, ranging from $5 to $30.
The vast selection of apps on the Shopify App Store allows you to browse through 7000+ apps, add-ons, and third-party applications to better your store experience and handling. These apps are divided into nine categories.
- Store Design. From images and media to store pages, navigation, internationalization, and even notifications.
- Conversion. All you need for promotions, customer feedback, cart modifications, store alerts, and more.
- Marketing. Marketing analytics, advertising, email marketing, SEO, content marketing, and direct marketing.
- Fulfillment. Apps for managing orders, inventory, and gathering fulfillment records.
- Store Management. From operations and business insights to store development tools, security and policy, as well as tools for finances.
- Customer Service. A selection of apps for support, post-purchase services, customer accounts, and management.
- Merchandising. Apps for product displays, pricing, gifts, order options, and more.
- Shipping and Delivery. Useful apps for shipping solutions, delivery, and pickups.
- Sourcing and Selling Products. Practical apps for dropshipping, various selling methods, and product sourcing.
Conclusion. Both Wix and Shopify provide useful tools and apps for the ultimate eCommerce growth and experience. But Shopify’s App Store has a much larger selection, allowing you to grow your business to a bigger scope.
10. Customer Support
The Wix support team is always up-to-date and provides professional service to its users. Merchants can submit issue tickets for live support and request a callback on Wix. The support lines are always available in multiple languages, such as English, French, German, and more.
Wix provides very user-friendly and easy-to-understand instruction videos on various topics for the not-so-urgent issues. These will provide quick answers to some of the most common FAQs.
Shopify provides its users with help, guidance, or simple advice 24/7 by chat, email, or phone. The live chat is what brings Shopify to the big league. No need to wait for a callback or email. Hop on to the chat bubble and interact with a support agent right away.
Another great way to share experiences or get advice on how to run a successful business is by using the Shopify Forum. The Shopify community is more than a forum. In their words, it’s “Your place to connect with brands and makers, partners and commerce shakers.”
Conclusion. Both platforms provide great customer support and service for help and problem-solving. However, Shopify offers faster assistance via live chat and a sense of community through the forum.
FAQ
Is Wix or Shopify better for beginners?
Wix is perfect for beginners who want to build an online store but don’t have tech or web design skills. The drag-and-drop builder, combined with a selection of eCommerce tools and features, allow even the least-experienced merchants to achieve their goals. It’s the perfect platform to get started and build your brand.
Can I use a Wix website on Shopify?
You can add a Shopify “Buy Button” on your Wix website and sell online using both platforms. This way you allow customers to buy products from your Wix store through the Shopify payment system. The Shopify “Buy Button” provides all the functionality of Shopify in your online store.
Is Wix cheaper than Shopify?
Wix is cheaper than Shopify when it comes to monthly subscriptions. The lowest monthly fee for a Wix eCommerce site is $17/month, while Shopify’s starts at $29/month. However, it’s worth considering that the offered features and tools differ for both platforms and user plans.
Should I use Shopify or Wix for small businesses?
We recommend Wix for small businesses. It’s inexpensive, easy to use, and beginner-friendly, but still provides all the necessary tools and features for eCommerce success. From marketing and SEO to free themes, and a fully-loaded app store.
The Verdict: Wix vs. Shopify – Which Platform Is Better?
When considering Wix and Shopify, remember that Shopify is a dedicated eCommerce platform and offers a wider range of functionality and flexibility for people with mid to large selling ambitions.
Both platforms have their pros and cons. Shopify is perfect for people serious about growing an online store, particularly those operating in the POD dropshipping niche.
However, Wix is more suitable for influencers and bloggers who like to sell a bit of everything now and then. It’s also an excellent choice for small business owners and beginners. While Wix has fewer customization features, it makes up for it with excellent SEO and marketing efforts.
When choosing the right platform for your online business, keep in mind all the pros and cons, consider everything mentioned above, and pick the one that best suits your needs, plans, and goals. Grow your eCommerce business successfully.
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Written by
Baiba Blain
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