Wix vs Shopify – different platforms, similar goals

Wix and Shopify are two rather different platforms. Wix is a website builder with eCommerce capabilities. And Shopify’s the opposite – an eCommerce platform, with a decent website builder on the side. And so, when choosing between the two, you got to know which features you value more.

Both Wix and Shopify are the undisputed leaders of their respective markets. In many ways, they barely overlap.

Shopify is a great eCommerce platform, used by a lot of serious brands to sell online and scale their businesses. It’s a platform focused on increasing your sales and offering an easy way to build a customized website that’ll help do just that.

Meanwhile, Wix is an excellent website builder, offering hundreds of various themes, plenty of excellent apps, and two drastically different website editors. This way, everyone can use Wix however they want, to build anything they want.

But oh, they do overlap – that’s because thanks to Wix’s versatility, you can absolutely use it to make a brilliant online shop as well. But is it as good as Shopify’s? Can you get the best of both worlds – combining Wix’s versatility and Shopify’s powerful eCommerce features?

If only someone did a comparison like tha- Oh, right.

In this Wix vs Shopify comparison, I built test sites for both of these platforms (which I’ll happily show later!). This way, I was able to get a good grip, on how they compare on pricing, ease of use, eCommerce and other business features, and overall performance.

This is a big comparison – so just click here to jump to the conclusion, if that’s your thing. Or check out the table with all the main information just below (psst – by clicking on the titles, you’ll be able to read about each topic in-depth!)

Wix vs. Shopify – pricing

Wix offers a massive array of plans: one free one, as well as 7 paid ones. However, only 3 of these plans include eCommerce features.

Shopify has 3 paid plans: obviously, all of them are heavily focused on eCommerce. There is no free plan available, however, there’s a 14-day free trial which you can use to the platform’s features.

Let’s have a deeper look into both of the platforms and their prices to see, which one suits your wallet better.

Wix plans

These are the 5 plans on Wix, focused on regular, non-eCommerce websites.

And these right here are the three plans, focused on eCommerce.

When it comes to the 5 website plans, Shopify gradually increases the features as you pay more. The Free plan will include Wix’s ads on your website, only give 500MB of bandwidth and storage, and limit you only to using its own “wixsite.com” subdomain.

The Combo, Unlimited, and Pro plans will remove those restrictions. And also, will add other business features – like SEO apps and analytics. The VIP plan will also drop in priority support.

But we know where we are, right? It’s a Wix vs Shopify comparison, so let’s talk about the main event – the eCommerce plans.

Business Basic

This plan costs $23 a month, and includes all of the basic eCommerce features, making it an excellent choice for beginner users.

• There are no transaction fees on the products,
• You can add and sell as many products as you like
• You can sell through social media
• There is also abandoned cart recovery, allowing you to contact prospective buyers who left your store without purchasing

It’s a simple, no-frills solution.

Business Unlimited

Just at a few dollars more – $27 a month – the Business Unlimited plan adds some additional selling features. On top of what’s available on the Basic plan, Business Unlimited will also…

• Allow selling subscriptions
• Allow selling using dropshipping
• Include product reviews
• Automate the counting of sales tax

At just a few extra dollars, this plan is my favorite out of the bunch. There’s a lot of extra value offered at a pretty modest additional price.

Business VIP

Finally, Business VIP steps up its price by a lot – it costs nearly double the previous plan, at $49 a month. It calls itself the Ultimate plan, and oh, there’s are reasons for it. This plan includes everything Wix has to offer, such as:

• Priority customer support
• Feature for you to set up a loyalty program
• Extended item review and sales tax calculation features

Is this worth the price? Well – it depends. It’d probably be difficult to assume that a loyalty program feature alone would be enough to justify the price. Personally, I would recommend signing up for the Business Unlimited plan, and upgrading to VIP, should you decide that it’s necessary.

Wix allows you to easily upgrade from your existing Premium plan. So, you can always pick an entry-level plan and go up further in the future.

Wix transaction fees

Such is the nature of the financial business – if you want to accept payments, you need to pay for it. And so, when planning to build you online store with either Wix or Shopify, you’ll need to be vary of transaction fees. These are the fees that you’ll have to pay for each transaction coming in to your account,

Wix offers several payment gateways for you to choose from – and we’ll talk about them later. The most popular and the most convenient option, however, is Wix’s own Wix Payments, which will take 2.9%+30¢ from each transaction that you make.

So, when planning your online shop, consider this as an additional expense.

Shopify plans

Shopify includes only 3 plans – and they’re very varied in their pricing. Here’s what they are:

Let’s have a look at them all in detail:

Basic Shopify

This is the plan to use if you’re a beginner. Right from the bat, you get the opportunity to add staff members, and assign several real-world locations for warehouses for better shipping management. There are also some of the core eCommerce features, such as:

• Abandoned cart recovery
• Gift cards
• Discount codes
• Multilanguage website capabilities
• Point-of-sale capabilities, letting you sell in-person

However, there’s a little caveat: Basic Shopify will include a 2.9% + 30¢ USD transaction fee, if you’re using Shopify Payments, and 2% if you’re using a different payment gateway (which will also take extra itself).

So, prepare for this plan to take a portion from each of your sales. $29 a month won’t be enough.

Shopify

This plan will cost $79 a month. And while that’s a major increase in monthly price, this plan also reduces the transaction fee to 2.6% + 30¢, and reduces the external payment gateway fee to 1%.

As for the eCommerce features, you get a chance to:

• Assign international pricing, with percentage increases/decreases for each locale
• Get additional shipping discounts from DHL, UPS, and USPS
• Up to 5 staff accounts and 5 warehouse locations.

Advanced Shopify

This plan offers the lowest transactions fees here, at 2.4%+30¢ a transaction, plus only a 0.5% fee for using a third-party payment processor. There are also some additional eCommerce features, such as:

• International pricing, allowing to set up specific pricing for each product in each locale
• Calculated third-party shipping rates, letting your clients pick out custom shipping options
• Advanced report builder and increased analytics
• Up to 15 staff accounts and 8 warehouse locations.

How, which one of these 3 plans is best for you? Well, aside from the available features, a lot of financial logic will depend on your planned sales. Allow me to take out a calculator and demonstrate:

If you sell 100 items a month, averaging $50 a sale, and use Shopify Payments:

• Shopify Basic will take $175 in fees (total = $204/month)
• Shopify will take $160 in fees (total = $239/month)
• Advanced Shopify will take $150 in fees (total = $449/month)

However, if you sell 1,000 items at $100, and use Shopify Payments:

• Shopify Basic will take $3,200 in fees (total = $3229/month)
• Shopify will take $2,900 in fees (total = $2979/month)
• Shopify Advanced will take $2,700 in fees (total = $2,999/month)

And just like that, the difference between Shopify and Shopify Advanced evaporates, and Shopify Basic becomes unsustainable for small businesses.

Same way, Wix’s flat rate of 2.9%+30¢ will be fine if you’re not selling much, but will become a bit of a pain if you try to scale the business.

Choose a Wix plan, depending on what features do you need, and Shopify plan – depending on how much do you sell. And don’t forget that it’s the transaction fees that will eat up most of your budget.

Wix vs Shopify – a case study

Every website builder and every eCommerce platform can truly be tested in one and the same way – by actually using them! So, go figure, that’s exactly what I’ve done on this Wix vs Shopify comparison.

I built a website with each of the platforms, and here, I’ll show you some of my highlight experiences, so you know what to expect.

Here’s a Wix website builder website:

And here’s a Shopify eCommerce platform site:

Here’s how everything went down:

Ease of use – two simple approaches

• Signing up with both platforms was pretty easy. Both streamline their onboarding as much a possible.
• Wix offers two website builder options: a super-streamlined Wix ADI, and a highly-editable Wix Editor.
• Shopify has only one website editing interface, which is quite limited on the surface.

Platforms such as Shopify and Wix are defined by how they make difficult things easy. Well, then – let’s take a look at how easy it was to do the core task, setting up, editing, and publishing my test sites.

Using Wix

After signing up to Wix using Google, Facebook, or my own email, I was quickly asked to pick out my preferred site type. No payments, no card details, nothing – just a quick expressway into building a website.

Then, I was asked to make the first major decision, and pick out the website editor I’ll be using:

The differences between the two options are pretty major:

• Wix ADI will ask you several questions and then automatically generate a website based on your answers, business information, and design preferences. It’s a quick way to get a website: but it seriously limits the customization options.
• Wix Editor will give you full freedom to edit absolutely anything about your site. The only option you’ll choose is your starting template.

I enjoyed them both, in their own special way. The entire ADI setup process took just a couple of minutes, during which I simply answered a few questions and picked out a few preferred looks. Not exactly challenging design work, you know?

And just like that – that was it! My website was nice and ready, and I was into the ADI Editor!

Now, this editor is actually pretty limiting. You can merely pick out from a few different section layouts, change their order, and do other, similarly tiny changes. I suppose that’s the price you pay for ease of use.

However, at any time, your ADI website can be converted into a Wix Editor website.

If you decide to choose the Editor from the get go, your setup process will be much easier – just pick out the theme, and you’re good to go.

And here, you’re on expressway to Editing Freedom (population: you!).

This is a full-throttle website editor, letting you build and edit absolutely everything about the website. With hundreds of sections available, there’s enough selection even for the pickiest of reviewers.

As you probably figured though, Wix Editor is substantially more difficult to use. Luckily for everyone included, Wix also includes the Editor Help Center, which includes a lot of helpful text and video tutorials, as well as an option to literally pay someone else to edit the website for you.

As for adding products and setting up the online store, Wix won’t leave you hanging. There’s a pretty helpful checklist that will guide you throughout the entire process.

And then, the products could be added anywhere on the site: as they come as a design element on the Wix Editor.

Truth is, I didn’t have any genuine issues with either of the editors: but it did take a couple hours of testing, tinkering, editing, and breaking in order for me to get comfortable with Wix Editor.

If that’s too much of a hassle for you, Wix ADI is always an option, making things as straightforward as it gets. Therefore, for ease of use, Wix gets full marks. You get to pick your own poison and choose your own adventure. No complaints.

Using Shopify

Shopify uses a very streamlined approach for all of its users. Similarly to Wix, no credit card details are required to get started. Instead, you get to automatically start a 14-day free trial.

As I started, I was asked for a few fundamental questions, that will determine my Shopify setup experience:

A teeny bit of personal information later, I was good to go: here’s the Shopify dashboard.

The intro section here reflects the answers to the setup questions. Since I was raring to go, Shopify offered me a simple way to quickly add products, customize the theme, and connect a custom domain.

The beginner users will also be given some good tutorials, covering both the basics for using Shopify and selling online.

Everything about the online store can be managed from the menu on the left. By clicking the “Online Store” option, I was quickly transferred to the website editor.

Which was rather…minimalist.

The experience here was actually surprisingly similar to Wix ADI: I was given section options to mix and match together. But there was no drag-and-drop customizability, similar to the one on Wix Editor.

However, I could choose from several options, and then edit them, by adding different blocks, that could include text, images, videos, and more.

In order to do any deeper changes, you have to either get a different theme, or use your HTML/CSS skill on the Shopify code editor.

At their core, both Shopify and Wix are easy to use and can help you set up a decent online store in minutes. However, if you wish to do more intricate design changes, Wix will give you much more freedom.

Templates – excellent premium picks and good free options

• Wix has over 700 templates to pick from: they’re all free and cover a massive range of topics.
• Shopify has only around 70 templates: also, only 9 of them are free, and others cost around $100-200.
• Each Shopify theme is modern and focused entirely on maximizing your online sales.
• Wix is all over the place: with both excellent store themes and outdated options.

A good theme is an excellent starting point for your website: which is very useful if you’re not exactly the world’s next design superstar. Let’s have a deeper look into the theme options for both Wix and Shopify.

Shopify templates

Shopify has only 73 options to pick from. Also, only 9 of them are free.

That’s not to say that the free options look bad – far from that, they’re modern, well-optimized, and cover the main layouts, commonly used for stores.

That being said, the premium themes go above and beyond what’s offered here. They cost around $100-200, but it can be a very worthy investment. I loved this one: a clean, mobile-first theme, optimized for sales on all devices.

Or if you wish to make the new Amazon, but don’t have Jeff Bezos’ limitless wallet laying around, there’s a theme for that, too!

But there’s also a secret third option. If you were to visit the theme library section (and you’ll have to, if you want to change the theme!), you’ll spot the options on the left, letting you to upload a theme of your choice.

And those themes can be found all over the Internet – often, at a fraction of the cost.

The premium third-party themes are much cheaper, starting from as low as $19 a piece. And there are thousands of them available, from places like TemplateMonster or ThemeForest. Since there are so many picks, you can actually get a theme that’s extremely close to your vision of the shop.

Wix templates

Wix has a massive selection of templates: with over 700 options, it’s one of the biggest such libraries in the entire market. The themes are separated into 5 main categories, branching out into dozens of different topics.

Obviously, I was mostly interested in “Store” options. There were nearly 120 of those, separated into 12 different categories: some as broad as “Electronics”, other much more niche, such as “CBD”.

Here’s how some of the themes look like:

And really, some options are genuinely excellent.

Others don’t look as modern: but are still fully serviceable picks.

I went through each and every Wix template and found no genuinely bad Wix store templates. There were some awful ones – but they, thankfully, were not made for online shops.

All in all, prepare to seriously browse before you choose a Wix template. Especially considering that once you pick a template, you can’t change it without losing all of your content. If you pick a theme, you stick with it: through everything.

At least the Editor lets you change absolutely everything, huh?

Shopify doesn’t have many options: but they look good, and are fully optimized for all things eCommerce. Wix, meanwhile, has a massive number of available options – and you’ll need to pay a lot of time to find the right pick.

Wix vs. Shopify – eCommerce comparison

• Wix eCommerce is pretty powerful – but it’s not the core focus of this platform.
• Shopify focused heavily on all things eCommerce and is a pure all-in-one selling solution.

Spoiler alert: Shopify wins this one. Of course! It’s a massive, all-encompassing platform for online & offline selling, a proper Swiss-army-knife.

The real question is, can Wix eCommerce put on a bit of a fight and serve as a capable replacement? Let’s take a deeper look:

Basic eCommerce features

Shopify uses its main dashboard to do some of the basic stuff, like adding products and managing inventory.

This is also where you can make use of features like Abandoned Cart Recovery for recovering lost sales.

And also, you can do all of your selling in-person as well, thanks to Shopify POS. All of the payments, tax calculations, and updates to the inventory will be done automatically, meaning that you can use one system for all of your sales.

The base version is free – but a Pro version with no limitations, separate analytics, and smart inventory management costs an extra $89 a month on all plans.

Wix does pretty well, too: offering a very simple item management interface, letting anyone to add and manage both physical and digital products.

It has reliable, in-house eCommerce tools that allow you to create products, fulfill orders, manage inventory, offer subscriptions, and even do dropshipping. 

And overall, Wix is focused purely on the beginner user, with the dashboard including a lot of helpful guides and suggestions on how to progress with building and managing your business.

But if, for example, you look to sell in-person, Wix is an inferior option. Wix POS is still in its early stage, and is only available for select US-based stores after passing a scheduled call with a Wix representative.

Too much of a hassle, really.

Payment options

Shopify boasts a solid payment gateway of its own — Shopify Payments — which lets you sell in 10 major international currencies (including US Dollar, Canadian Dollar, Pound Sterling, and Euro).

However, Shopify Payments doesn’t work worldwide. It’s great if you’re in US – not so much if you’re based elsewhere. In that case, you’ll need to pick out an alternative payment gateway, and pay an additional 0.5% to 2% to Shopify for each of the transaction.

Luckily, there are more than 100 alternative payment gateways, so you’re going to be juuuuust fine.

Wix also has its own payment gateway – called Wix Payments.

It covers your traditional payment processors like PayPal, Stripe, and Square. But compatibility with digital payment wallets like Apple Pay and Amazon Pay is absent – which is something Shopify Payments has.

Wix Payments has the same transaction fee as Shopify Payments on the Basic Plan – 2.9% + 30¢ USD.

However, just like Shopify has its secret weapon with hundreds of payment gateways and Apple Pay, Wix has one too.

Wix Payments is available in more countries. For example, many European countries have no issues with getting Wix Payments, but there are no options for Shopify.

So, it’s less of a blow that Wix offers fewer (around 50) external payment gateways.

Shipping options

Next comes shipping, and it’s covered pretty well by Shopify.

You can manage your shipping rates, locations, and labels all in-house while using carriers — like DHL, UPS, and Canada/US Post. Plus, the higher plan you’re on, the better discounts you get on your parcels.

There are also contact-free shipping options, like curbside pickup and local delivery, that you can use to your advantage.

There’s also a counter for the costs of shipping a parcel to a specific location:

Wix, in contrast, offers three types of shipping: free, flat-rate, and weight-based. But, you can create custom, region-based shipping rules, which’s a significant plus.

Having said that, Wix’s print & buy label and real-time shipping options are pretty limited compared to Shopify. And, you might need a third-party app in case you’ve got advanced needs.

Which brings me to…

App stores

Shopify’s app store is gigantic, with over 5,000 apps. And it’s important to remember, that all of the apps here are focused on eCommerce, making this number all the more impressive.

The apps are great when trying to improve on Shopify’s stock options.

One of my favorite examples is dropshipping: for that, Shopify showcases a structured, detailed, and actionable guide on dropshipping. And on top of that, it provides a free app called Oberlo – an essential app for making your store dropship-able.

And sometimes, Shopify has an app of their own, which doesn’t do all that well – like their own Digital Downloads app.

This is where the extended Shopify community comes in, offering an alternative options. And it’s incredibly well-received.

Sadly, it also costs extra if you wish to sell more than 3 products or have more than 100MB storage.

And so, with a few apps, your costs may increase a fair bit. Make sure to do your research!

Wix has a smaller App Market. It has a few hundred options, but they’re pretty extensive, and include both first and third-party selections.

Similarly to Shopify, Wix offers some first-party tools, but it absolutely doesn’t mean that they’ll be the preferred options. For instance, Wix Forms & Payments has a seriously low rating of 2.7/5.

While the third-party 123 Form Builder boasts a solid 4.5/5.

But the rules are the same: Wix developers need to eat as much as the Shopify ones. So if you want something good, you’ll need to pay for it.

Shopify eCommerce options are undoubtedly better, and more extensive. However, Wix does a decent job keeping up: and if you want a simple online store with no bells, whistles, or in-person shopping, it can match Shopify punch-for-punch.

Wix vs. Shopify – other business features

• Wix focuses more on its internal features, offering a solid SEO suite, and its own email marketing service.
• Shopify gets most of its marketing features thanks to a very extensive app market – just beware, most apps will cost extra.

But of course, there’s more to business than just selling: so let’s have a look at how Wix and Shopify compare in other business features.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Wix is pretty good when it comes to SEO. For beginners, it offers the SEO Wiz tool, that guides you through the very basics of SEO, helping to index the site on search engines, and add keywords to titles and descriptions.

For more serious tinkering, there are also possibilities to edit the site’s robots.txt and sitemap files, as well as set up redirects.

Shopify, actually, isn’t all that advanced. You can absolutely change and edit everything, but it’s certainly not as straightforward.

There will still be options for editing page titles and descriptions.

As well as seeing how certains pages or products will look on Google’s results.

Of course, not to worry – as with most things, Shopify has an app for SEO as well. It’s called SEO Optimizer, and it’s by far the most popular SEO app for Shopify.

Just beware – the premium version is going to cost a hefty $30 a month.

Email marketing

Both Wix and Shopify both have an in-house email marketing solution.

And both are going to cost you extra.

Wix Ascend is a marketing tool that helps anyone easily build and send out impressive-looking emails and newsletters.

It’s rather excellent – I really liked the templates (Wix’s specialty!) which get you excellent starter content to work with.

There is a free version, too – but it’s very limited, and for serious work, I suggest going premium. Prices start at $5 a month.

Shopify has a built-in email marketing tool, too.

It costs virtually the same, and does virtually the same stuff. However, Wix Ascend is certainly better, especially when considering the excellent email builder and pre-made templates.

Luckily, Shopify’s third-parties are here to stay – and you might be interested in an excellent third-party option, Klaviyo.

Shopify relies on third-party options to bring in solid business features. Wix also has an online store – but its strengths come mostly from in-house options. Both platforms are alright: but don’t forget to keep track of how much you spend. Shopify can help you do a whole lot – but that’ll cost ya.

Wix vs Shopify – performance compared

• Both Wix and Shopify return rather average performance results.
• Shopify is better than Wix on the majority of the metrics.
• Both builders offer decent real-life performance.

Now, let’s take a look at the performance of these two platforms. After all – a fast website means a highly converting website. Visitors won’t wait for ages with wallets in their hands just to give you their card details.

In order to see which of these platforms make faster websites, I tested both of their test sites on GTMetrix. This platform measures the overall site and platform as speed, as well as optimization.

So, how is this, final part of the Wix vs Shopify comparison going to end up? Let’s take a look.

These are the results for Wix:

These are the results for Shopify:

One thing jumps out pretty much immediately: none of these platforms are very good. Shopify gets a C, while Wix gets a D.

What’s more, it takes 3.7 seconds to fully load a Shopify site – and a massive 8.4 seconds to load Wix. Both are worse that Google’s recommended 3-second threshold for best online experience.

However, not all is doom and gloom. It takes 2 seconds for a Shopify website to load its major details and become interactive. For Wix, it takes around 3. And so, in real-life performance, both platforms do pretty well. A lot of that time is spent doing the backgrounds tasks, which your visitors simply won’t notice.

You can reduce your website’s load time by removing the unnecessary files and compressing all the media to the smallest size. But even with uncompressed stock footage, offered by the platforms, both Wix and Shopify offer decent real-life performance.

Wix vs. Shopify – a side-by-side comparison

Both Wix and Shopify rule – in their own special way.

Really, I found Wix to be a very suitable option for an eCommerce store. All the main features are there, and everything is super foolproof, that even a complete beginner would have no issues setting everything up.

With a massive number of great free templates and two different editors, it really is Everyone’s Builder. And even though I missed an eCommerce feature there or there, Wix is going to be entirely serviceable for 90% of online shops.

Shopify tries something very similar, but with a different approach. Instead of being given a lot of website editing options, you’re given very few: so really, you can’t mess anything up. You’re just not given the freedom.

That being said, excellent point-of-sale options, great shipping management, and over 100 payment gateways just make Shopify a more advanced option when it comes to eCommerce. If you want something serious, that focuses on sales, and not website design – go with Shopify.

Overall, my verdict here is pretty clear:

The platforms are different in their approaches. Use Wix if you want a highly customizable website that does online shopping. Use Shopify, if you want an online shop for a serious business.

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