Wix or Shopify – it is a topic most debated. These are two popular site builders that have a large user base globally. However, if you’re just starting out and want to choose the best site builder for your online store, it can be confusing to pick one. While both platforms share some similar features, they have a lot of differences that set them apart.
For example, Wix is an easy-to-use site builder that is widely used by bloggers, creators, and business owners alike. While Wix isn’t primarily an online store builder, it offers some amazing features that are geared toward small business owners.
Shopify, on the other hand, is an advanced site builder that is suitable for large business owners who want to sell and manage thousands of products online.
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I have used both platforms to build websites for my clients, so I know these platforms inside and out. In fact, Wix was my first choice when I was starting out as a full-time freelancer, and wanted to build my portfolio online.
In this Wix vs Shopify review, I will do a head-to-head comparison of both platforms. Along with this, I’ll also share the pros and cons of each of the site builders and tell you about my experience using them.
Wix & Shopify: An Overview
Wix is an easy-to-use, beginner-friendly, drag-and-drop website builder. It is an unstructured web editorial tool that allows you to build a website by dropping elements anywhere you want on the page. With Wix’s assistance, the entire website-building process becomes quite simple, smooth, and fast. This builder helps you build an online store in the easiest way possible. Read our in-depth Wix review here.
Shopify is one of the best website builders available out there if you want to build an online store. This website builder tool has been rapidly growing and now offers services to more than 800,000 online shops. It also provides you with a free 3-day trial that you can use to understand how Shopify works.
Premium Plan Starting: $15/month
Free plan: Yes
Premium Plan Starting: $29/month
Free Plan: No
This tool is an all-in-one e-commerce solution, which is designed to help your products and services online. It is one of the easy-to-use online store builders, allowing you to add unlimited products directly from the dashboard.
This is the Google Trends report for Wix vs Shopify comparison:
Both platforms already have a huge customer base that is increasing rapidly. While Shopify tries to build its network by introducing more businesses and services, Wix focuses on customer retention with its witty marketing strategies. This article will look at some of the key points that affect this website’s developing business and what both platforms have to offer!
Wix – Pros, Cons
Pros
- Smooth Interface
- Low-cost website curation
- Provides templated website.
- No Coding Website Development
- Drag and drop feature.
- Built-in design services for a premium membership
- Easy front-end design
- Smart Alignment feature
- A large number of queries are added to FAQs
Cons
- No live chat feature for support
- Slightly costly
- Difficult to transfer to another host.
Shopify – Pros, Cons
Pros
- Best for e-commerce stores
- Clean & Smooth Interface
- Simple frontend layout designing
- Easy Customization
- Fit for both small and large businesses.
- Multiple built-in features
- Amazing inventory system
- Mobile-friendly themes, free of cost
- Easy payment processing
Cons
- Transaction fee if you are not using Shopify’s payment features.
- No live chat support for some regions.
Wix Vs Shopify: Key Differences
- Wix is a website builder primarily, whereas Shopify is designed to help people set up their online stores.
- Wix is considered best for small businesses, individual sellers, and freelancers, whereas Shopify is better for larger businesses looking to grow themselves.
- Wix gives more creative freedom, but Shopify has better sales tools.
- Wix is cheaper than Shopify. Wix’s e-commerce plan starts from $23/month whereas Shopify’s starts from $29/month.
- Wix has an easier and quicker interface to build your online store, whereas Shopify has a more powerful interface.
Let’s move on to a more in-depth comparison of both tools on multiple bases.
Wix Vs Shopify: Ease of Use
Time is money, and the easier it is for you to run a store – the more time you have to get more traffic and attract more customers. To sell more. Even though Wix has a beginner-friendly interface, almost 23% of people have agreed that Shopify is easier to use.
Shopify’s user experience is so well-designed that all it takes is a few clicks to create your store in a minute. It keeps its dashboard and the editing interface separate. Adding products and their variants is a breeze, and you have to love linking to their tutorials, which is quite useful for all first-time users. These links and tutorials are quite helpful as it is quite a lengthy process to set up your account on Shopify completely.
However, creating a storefront is much easier with Wix – thanks to their simple drag-and-drop editor along with very intuitive building tools. However, it seems that it is much less optimized for the merchants who might want to start their stores by adding their stock.
Ease of Use Verdict
It is difficult to beat Wix when it comes to ease of use, but you get much less control over the backend here than with Shopify. Shopify has a steeper learning curve; it is the better platform for building an advanced online store.
Wix Vs Shopify: Template Design & Customization
Mobile Optimized Design
Since a good amount of online shopping happens on mobile these days, it is imperative to know whether your online store is designed to respond well to a mobile phone or not. Both Wix and Shopify have mobile-optimized themes, which means that your store will be responsive no matter which device.
Template Choices & Pricing
Shopify has 73 themes, which are up-to-date and cover a large range of industries! It is also worth knowing that many of these themes come with different styling options, which helps you pick the version that best suits your brand.
However, some of these themes from Shopify are on the expensive side costing $180; but it is usually a one-time payment, which neutralizes the argument a bit.
Wix has a total of 108 e-commerce-specific templates – all of them are free of cost. Wix has 500 templates, but not all of them are designed for e-commerce stores. However, again, Wix’s themes are quite easy to use and edit.
Design and Customization Verdict
Wix is one step ahead of Shopify when it comes to design. If you are a small business owner or have just started, Wix’s templates are packaged to help you straight away. However, Shopify templates give you a more sales optimized approach to your online store.
Wix Vs Shopify: Payment Options
Shopify allows over 100 different payment getaways, except Square at the moment. However, you have to pay a transaction fee until and without using their payment getaway – Shopify Payments. Shopify also allows traders to enable ‘tipping’ during the checkout; or maybe customize the tasks to ask for donations for your business or maybe charity.
On the other hand, Wix supports all the traditional payment methods, PayPal, and Stripe but does not promote or support digital wallet payments like Amazon Pay. Wix also has its payment getaway called Wix payments; however, unlike Shopify, it does not impose any transaction fee.
Payment Options Verdict
While Shopify beats Wix with several payment getaways, Wix not only supports Square but also imposes no transaction fees for other payment getaways!
Wix Vs Shopify: Shipping Cost Settings and Carrier Integration
Shipping is a complicated process. Putting an effective shipping strategy in place is one of the most difficult obstacles to tackle for an online business.
While both Shopify and Wix take care of the free shipping and rates, Shopify is more flexible regarding curbside pickup and local delivery. It has some extensive shipping features and takes care of international shipping as well. On the other hand, Wix offers app integration with shippo or ship station to make product delivery.
Shipping Cost Settings & Carrier Integration Verdict
Shopify surely takes the lead here. While Wix relies more on apps and takes a simplistic approach to shipping, Shopify has some added shipping options that make it more accessible to global customers.
Tax Settings
Although both the developers give well-defined options to include or exclude tax from their respective price tags, Shopify has a less time-consuming process as it allows a setup that automatically does all the tax calculations which saves the seller’s time and energy.
With its Avalara app, Wix also possesses an automated tax calculation software program, which the customers feel is quite satisfactory. You can also define special taxes for special products on the same portal.
Tax Settings Verdict
Talking about customer satisfaction, both the creators provide well-defined tax setting services, and they both share the same level in this arena.
Wix Vs Shopify: Multilingual Capabilities
According to Statista, almost 70% of the people on the web prefer their native language when buying products. Customers love buying if the product description is in their language. Therefore, being multilingual becomes important if you want to cater to a global audience.
Unfortunately, Shopify has still not developed much in this regard. Although there are apps that allow you to present your store in multiple languages, Shopify does not give the option to include different languages in its layout.
On the other hand, Wix does offer a multilingual feature, but it is not as SEO-friendly and is not the top recommendation by marketing experts.
Multilingual Capabilities Verdict
Both the creators are not the top choices in this field. However, Shopify, with its few bilingual themes, might attract some customers.
SSL
It is the standard security technology for protecting encrypted communication between a seller and a buyer. Both Wix and Shopify take security very seriously and give many safety measures that protect the privacy and make online selling safe.
SSL security is included in all the plans provided by Wix and Shopify. It is an important factor that protects the details from the buyer’s end: login details or payment details, shipping address, etc.
Both the builders are certified level 1 PCI DSS compliant. It stands for payment card industry data security standard. Online stores mostly deal with transactions that are executed through credit and debit cards, and by being PCI compliant, your card information is completely secured.
Wix and Shopify have built-in security measures to protect the systems from any virus, malware, and other such attacks.
SSL Verdict
If safety and security are concerned, both are providers of A-level security, and choosing either of them would keep all your data safe. Hence, it is a draw in this game!
Wix Vs Shopify: SEO Capabilities
According to your needs, both Wix and Shopify give options to modify the texts, descriptions, headings, page titles, etc. Sitemaps are also available at youdomain.com/sitemaps, so you easily see everything that is listed on your website. You can also add a Facebook pixel code that will enable you to track your e-commerce conversions on social media.
SEO Capabilities Verdict
Both have done fairly well under this field, and we can again declare a draw over here.
Wix Vs Shopify: Pagespeed
To check who runs faster, different speed tests – GTmetrix and Pingdom were conducted. While Shopify stands with an excellent rating of 92% on the first test, Wix just managed a test score of 65%. In the Pingdom test, while Wix scored 82, Shopify again took the lead with 85.
The load time varies from 1-4 seconds to almost 9 seconds for Shopify and Wix, respectively.
Pagespeed Verdict
Clearly, Shopify leads in all respects and gives better insights to analyze and improve website performance. Wix, although has a less score, is no less when it comes to optimization of the website.
Wix Vs Shopify: Customer Support
Shopify offers 24/7 live support through chat, email, or phone; with the exception of some regions. On the other hand, Wix does not offer live chat; it supports it through email and phone.
Both platforms provide interesting marketing blogs and tutorials that are helpful and informative.
Besides all this, there is a bonus that only Wix possesses. It provides you with the option of in-editor help. While Shopify supports through live chat, Wix answers the questions side-by-side through its editor help option.
Support Verdict
If you go through both the platforms, both have their plus points. It will not be fair to rank one above another. If Shopify is available around the clock, Wix has a more easy-going and flexible help center. Draw-Yet Again!
Wix Vs Shopify: Market Place/App Store
Marketing indeed plays a vital role in a business to progress. Shopify tends to rely on third-party apps for its marketing campaigns. However, Wix has made a mark in the marketing game with Wix Ascend. It manages all its marketing campaigns in one place!
Shopify has 5327 e-commerce websites. Shopify app store provides other features such as adding customer wishlists, setting up dropshipping, using currency conversions, etc. All this helps businesses to attain growth easily.
App Store Verdict
Shopify wins as far as app engagement and the number of websites is considered. It is flexible with lots of attractive features. However, in marketing, I believe Wix ascend takes all the limelight and is enough to give itself an edge over Shopify.
Wix Vs Shopify: Prices
Shopify offers more detailed and extensive plans, whereas Wix’s plans are moderately defined. The most basic Shopify plan starts at $26 per month, and for Wix, the basic business plan starts at $23 per month. Shopify also charges separate fees for offline sales; there are no such charges for Wix.
Prices Verdict
A deep analysis of all the plans that both the companies have to offer, one thing can be assured that Shopify has a more refined plan as compared to Wix, allowing more flexibility. Wix’s plans are less detailed and cheaper than Shopify’s.
Wix vs Shopify: Final Takeaway
Wix seems like a novice player in this business, which is less complex and uses a more simplistic approach – easy to understand for people who are to start a new venture. It is recommended for anyone setting up a small business who is not likely to take big financial risks.
Affordable entry and creative freedom are all that Wix has in it to offer. Shopify seems a powerful platform for a business that requires support for the long term. It initially takes a lot of investment, but it is all worth it, thanks to its excellent features and huge app store.
