Starting an eCommerce store has never been easier and affordable, but there are many decisions that need to be made before your site can launch. To help eliminate any confusion, we’re going to break down all the key differences between Shopify and Wix to help you decide which platform is best for your business.
What Is Shopify?
Launched in 2004, Shopify is an eCommerce platform that currently has over one million active online stores. Simplicity, customizability, and scalability are three pillars on which Shopify has built its reputation; and because it takes little technical know-how to run a successful Shopify business, the platform has maintained its position as the industry leader.
What Is Wix?
Wix has effectively branded itself as the ultimate beginner-friendly, easy-to-use website builder, allowing users to create a website by dragging and dropping elements onto each page. No coding skills are needed to use the Wix platform.
Unlike Shopify, which focuses solely on eCommerce, Wix can help you build your site to fit whatever needs you have. This flexibility has gained the platform over 180 million users across 190 countries.
Shopify vs. Wix: Features and Functionalities
Both Shopify and Wix are equally popular options for eCommerce startups, but they have different strengths and weaknesses. Here is a comparison of the basic features and functions of both platforms; there are many similarities, but enough differences to prefer one over the other.
| Shopify | Wix | |
| Summary | An eCommerce-focused platform that gives you almost everything you need to start your online business | A drag-and-drop site builder that offers optional eCommerce functionality |
| Difficulty | With more capabilities comes slightly more difficult setup and site management | Intuitively designed for beginners, which makes site setup extremely easy |
| Domain & Hosting | Hosting included | Domain & Hosting included |
| Themes | +70 eCommerce options | +100 eCommerce options |
| SEO | Basic optimizations are included with options to improve SEO through apps | Basic optimizations are included with options to improve SEO through apps |
| Social Media | Apps required | Apps required |
| Blog | Included | Included |
| Customer Support | Full support provided | Full support provided |
Difficulty
Winner: Wix
Shopify provides all the necessary tools to customize a theme, add products and functions, and detailed tutorials to make your job easy, yet it can’t be denied that the process will at some point require troubleshooting or researching answers through one of its many support channels.
Wix, on the other hand, is known for its absolute simplicity. No technical knowledge is necessary to build a Wix site — even adding eCommerce functionality is a simple drag and drop. The platform also provides you the option of using the Wix ADI tool that utilizes AI technology to make all of the decisions for you.
While Wix is easy to use, bear in mind that the eCommerce features and functions it offers are best suited for beginners who want a very simple store with basic options for customizations.
Domain and Hosting
Winner: Shopify
Shopify’s plans don’t come with a free domain, but you can easily buy one through your account at a reasonable price. If you sign up for a Wix Business plan, you are provided with a free domain for one year (around a $10 value). Both platforms provide you with an SSL certificate to add another level of security to the checkout process.
Read more: Shopify Domains: Creating, Changing, and Migrating Domains
Both platforms take care of your hosting needs as part of the monthly fee. Each also utilizes a content delivery network (CDN) that gives your site fast loading speeds to customers wherever they’re located in the world. Unlimited bandwidth and reliable uptime guarantees (99.7% for Shopify and 99.9% for Wix) are also worth mentioning.
The major difference between the two is that Shopify offers unlimited storage across all plans, while Wix limits storage based on the plan you choose.
| Plan Level | Shopify Storage | Wix Storage |
|---|---|---|
| Basic | Unlimited | 20 GB |
| Standard | Unlimited | 35 GB |
| Advanced | Unlimited | 50 GB |
Themes
Winner: Shopify
On Shopify, creating your virtual storefront is easy. The platform offers more than 70 responsive eCommerce themes that are modern, sleek, and visually stunning. They are designed to captivate the visitor’s attention and appeal to Google’s search algorithm. While themes are fully functional out of the box, it’s possible to further customize them by tweaking the Liquid language code.
Wix has more than 100 eCommerce-friendly themes available. Its catalog is larger but isn’t as good as Shopify. Moreover, many of Wix’s themes aren’t responsive. While the themes are easy to make basic changes to, the platform doesn’t allow for in-depth customizations like Shopify.
Search Engine Optimization
Winner: Tie
Shopify and Wix match evenly in SEO best practices. Both platforms allow you to modify titles, headings, descriptions, redirects, and alt texts. They also both auto-generate an XML sitemap that can be submitted to search engines for indexing.
A drawback that’s found with both platforms is the issue with store URLs. Wix automatically includes “/product-page/” while Shopify includes “/products/” or “/collections/” within URLs. This issue effectively removes the ability to customize page URLs to be more SEO-friendly.
To help improve SEO, both platforms provide optional third-party apps with monthly payments.
Read More: Shopify SEO: Actions You Can Take to Make Your Site Rank
Social Media
Winner: Shopify
Both Shopify and Wix provide apps and widgets to link social media accounts to your store and enable tracking of eCommerce conversions by installing a Facebook Pixel. However, Shopify goes a step further by letting store owners integrate their stores directly into Facebook and Instagram posts, which makes it even easier and faster for customers to complete the checkout process.
Blogging
Winner: Wix
Shopify lets you add multiple blogs to your store and segment them based on your target audiences, customer interests, or other criteria. Shopify also allows you to integrate popular blogging platforms such as WordPress through third-party apps.
It must be mentioned that Shopify’s blog functionality isn’t one of the platform’s best features. It lacks blog-specific search, social bookmarking, and built-in analytics, among other limitations.
Wix is more blog-friendly. It covers all the basic functions needed to create professional-looking content and provides an easy drag-and-drop method for building an article. Wix also makes blogging easy by offering a special app that enables you to manage your blog on the go.
Read More: Shopify Blog: How to Grow Sales Through Organic Traffic
Customer Support
Winner: Shopify
Shopify’s customer support is one of the platform’s strongest benefits. The tutorials are clear, the community forum is large and ready to offer help, and the official blog provides expert advice. If you still don’t have answers, you can turn to the 24/7 customer support that Shopify provides to all plan levels via email, chat, or phone.
Wix also has a large user base, which translates to a fairly large community ready to answer your questions. The platform also maintains well-written tutorials, a marketing blog, and 24/7 customer support. It’s important to note that chat support is currently not provided, which is an important difference between the two.
Read More: Shopify Support: 11 Best Resources for Troubleshooting Shopify
Pricing
It’s important to understand that you will likely need additional apps to make your store function the way you want it to. Both platforms offer free and paid apps, so this will make a difference in how much you finally end up spending on developing and maintaining your store.
| Shopify | Wix | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Plan | Monthly Price | Plan | Monthly Price |
| Basic Shopify | $29 | Business Basic | $23 |
| Shopify | $79 | Business Unlimited | $27 |
| Advanced Shopify | $299 | Business VIP | $49 |
Clearly, there is a difference in pricing between the two platforms. To help you get a better idea of whether or not Shopify is worth the additional cost, the following is a side-by-side comparison of the two intermediate-level plans.
| Features | Shopify (Standard) | Wix Business Unlimited |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly price | $79 | $27 |
| Staff accounts | Up to 5 | 1 |
| Free Domain | – | ✓ |
| Free Hosting | ✓ | ✓ |
| Free SSL certificate | ✓ | ✓ |
| Guaranteed uptime | 99.7% | 99.9% |
| Storage space | Unlimited | 35 GB |
| Maximum image size | 19 MB | 25 MB |
| Sales channels | Online, Facebook, Instagram | Online |
| Products | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Discount codes | ✓ | ✓ |
| Gift cards | ✓ | – |
| Payment processor options | +100 | +30 |
| Online credit card rates | 2.6% + 30¢ USD | 2.9% + 30¢ USD |
| Discounted shipping | Up to 72% (DHL Express, UPS, or USPS) | Up to 60% (USPS) |
| Print shipping labels | ✓ | ✓ |
| eCommerce analytics | ✓ | Requires app |
| Dropshipping | Requires app | Up to 250 products |
| eCommerce themes | +70 | +100 |
| 24/7 Customer support | ✓ | ✓ |
Shopify vs. Wix: Which Is Best?
When comparing Shopify vs. Wix, you can see that the core features are similar but each platform is designed for different types of users.
Shopify costs more but with it comes all of the functionality that is necessary for a sustainable eCommerce business. While it’s a strong platform out of the box, its true power comes from the extensive app store that allows you to customize your store’s functionality to its maximum potential.
However, there is something to be said about Wix. While flexibility is replaced with ease of use, it’s eCommerce functionality can get the job done for simple sites looking to sell a few products as part of a larger digital strategy. Where you are likely run into issues is when you’re ready to grow your business and become limited by the tools and options that Wix provides.
We are partial to Shopify, but it’s not the only option that can work. We hope this side-by-side comparison helps you with making the best decision for your business.
