This is my in-depth Wix vs Shopify comparison.
This post is not just a summary of other articles. Everything you’ll find here is mostly based on my own experience since I’m actively using both platforms for my own online business.
Let’s dive right in.
- 1. Wix vs. Shopify At A Glance
- 2. Who Is Wix Best For?
- 3. Who Is Shopify Best For?
- 4. A Close Look At The Features Of Wix and Shopify
- 5 Key Features of Wix
- 5 Key Features Of Shopify
- 5. Wix vs. Shopify – Pros And Cons
- 6. Where Do I Get The Most For My Money?
- 7. Conclusion – Which Is Better: Wix Or Shopify?
- 8. Wix vs. Shopify – FAQ
1. Wix vs. Shopify At A Glance
Now that you know how much-unbiased information you’ll get from this comparison, let’s get started with the most important facts at a glance.
   4.8 |   4.5 |
| Best Overall. Great for beginners. Features that power 50-150 products. Free domain Starts at $4.50/month. | Best for building complete online stores. App integrations and multilingual functionalities. Starts at $26/month. |
| Try Wix | Try Shopify |
Burkhard Berger
Everything you’ll find here is based on my own experience and state of affairs today, more than 81 hours of deep research. I do not want to waste your time with false and useless information.
2. Who Is Wix Best For?
Wix is best suitable for creating visually appealing websites. It’s best for individuals, small businesses, marketplaces, restaurants, musicians, photographers, and small online retailers.
3. Who Is Shopify Best For?
Shopify is best for building out more robust online stores, integrating with third-party tools, selling and managing products in one place, inventory management, and developing custom applications for your eCommerce website.
Shopify is for online businesses, digital marketers, established retail brands, dropshipping, and other eCommerce merchants.
4. A Close Look At The Features Of Wix and Shopify
Let’s take a look at how Wix compares with Shopify based on the important features they both offer.
| Features | | |
| Free domain name for one year |  |  |
| Allows adding product variants (size and color) | | |
| Allow users to add reviews | | |
| Sell merchandise without inventory | | |
| Set tax in the invoice to sell products | | |
| Has 24/7 customer support | | |
| Comes with SEO options | | |
| Have checking out features | | |
| Translates store in multiple languages | | |
| Allows selling of products anywhere in the world | | |
| Get started | Try Wix | Try Shopify |
5 Key Features of Wix
What key features make Wix stand out from the crowd? Of course, Wix offers several features for starting your website and growing your online influence — but we’ll pay attention to the key functionalities.
Let’s dive right in.
#1 Wix Editor
Wix Editor is intuitive and has ease of use. It gives you a ton of control over your design so that you can start from scratch or choose a template from the huge library of over 500 pre-made templates.
The Wix Editor uses a drag and drop builder. This makes it extremely easy to design a website. If you can use Microsoft Word to write and format text, you can pretty much use Wix Editor.
The Wix Editor is Mobile Optimized, which means your website will automatically display well on any device.
You gain access to unlimited fonts, use 100 designer-ready fonts or upload your own.
With the Editor, you can also add scroll effects, add dimensions to your website using parallax, zoom in, reveal, or fade-in scrolling.
Whether you’re designing a site from scratch or customizing a designer-ready template, you can take advantage of the industry-leading SEO functionalities to optimize your pages for search engines.
Add some advanced features such as animations, video backgrounds, and scroll effects. Bring your images, videos, and text to life by utilizing the beautiful gallery layout.
#2 Wix ADI
Wix ADI is the first Artificial Design Intelligence that instantly designs a professional and mobile-friendly website for you.
If you want to get your site online quickly, the Wix ADI is the ideal feature/tool for you. You simply answer a few questions and Wix ADI will instantly design, layout, and optimize a brand new website for you – no backend customization needed.
This Artificial Intelligence system also scours the web to collect relevant information about your business.
The Wix ADI is most suited for people and businesses that have no technical design skills or hate tweaking templates. Although this is fun with Wix Editor.
The Wix ADI delivers tailor-made content with beautiful and relevant images. You’ll get an original design that’s mobile-friendly, search engine optimized, easy-to-customize colors and fonts, and get helpful tips along the way.
Burkhard Berger
The Wix Artificial Design Intelligence (ADI) beats Shopify. Shopify doesn’t even come close. It makes designing a brand new website or online store fun. The first time I used it, I was amazed because all it requires is a few answers to common questions. The ADI will create a site from scratch for you, and you can easily customize it.
#3 Corvid by Wix
Corvid by Wix (formerly referred to as Wix Code) is the ideal feature for developers who wish to create database collections. These can be as simple as spreadsheets that you layout with relevant data.
With Corvid, you can easily create a ton of web pages instantly using the spreadsheet you’ve earlier populated with data. You can also add Javascript, customer page behaviors, and Application Program Interfaces (APIs).
i). Intuitive Visual Front-End Design: You can quickly accelerate your front-end development with the visual builder. You can also modify over 100 of UI elements without messing with your code. This can make payment options much easier for your customers.
ii). Production-Grade Routine: Gain instant access to Wix Cloud, where you can securely run your application using a serverless Node.js. Perform all sorts of scheduled jobs, and install npm packages.
iii). Open Platform: Corvid by Wix opens up endless possibilities via the open platform. This allows you to connect to 3rd-party APIs and data sources outside your control, to intuitively integrate telemetry into your system.
iv). Unified Database Management: There’s no need to worry about maintaining your content because there’s a unified management system that makes it easy.
If you hate messing around with codes and all that stuff, then Corvid by Wix is definitely not for you. Although if you decide to use this feature, you’ll discover a lot of possibilities that your web developer can leverage down the line.
#4 Professional Features For Your Website
Wix offers a lot of professional features to help you bring your site to life. Let’s quickly go through these important features:
1). Domain name registration: Wix allows you to register a new domain name. If you already have an existing domain name, you can also connect and use it when designing a site on Wix.
Most Wix paid-for plans come with a 1-year free domain name registration voucher.
So it’s free. In subsequent years, you can renew your domain name at the same cost that other registrars (e.g., Name.com) charge. Better yet, transfer the domain name to another registrar at no cost.
Remember that when you register your domain name with Wix, you’re putting all your eggs in one basket. If you lose access to your Wix account, you’d lose both your site and domain name.
But this doesn’t happen all the time, Wix has a secure backup for you.
i). Hosting: You get free hosting with Wix. Although the company assures 99.8% uptime, it’d have been better if you can host your site elsewhere, just like Squarespace and Shopify allows. That way, you can restore your site if anything goes wrong with Wix.
ii). Email Address: Wix gives you a personalized and customized email address that matches your domain name and branding. This is important for B2B marketing. The feature comes with the Wix paid plans, so you don’t have to pay additional fees.
iii). Wix Analytics: This is robust and gives you a complete overview of how well your website is doing. Hence, you can tell how well or worse your website is doing over a period of time.
iv). SSL Certificate: Wix gives you an SSL certificate, this real-time security for your website which helps build confidence for customers. Security is usually the main concern for people buying and selling online.
v). Member Login: It’s easy to create password-protected pages. These pages will not be accessed by everyone — but only users you want. For example, email subscribers or online course students.
vi). Contact Management: If you want to capture your visitors’ email addresses, Wix makes it fun. Beyond that, you can manage and send messages from one central place.
vii). Wix Chat: Integrate live chat into your site using the Wix Chat feature. Your visitors will appreciate this, as they get to ask questions and get answers on time.
ix). Social tools: You could reach tens of thousands of people on social media networks. Wix lets you connect all your social accounts in one place, and even customize icons to suit your site theme and branding.
#5 Manage and Grow Your Business Online
Wix is serious about helping people with their e-commerce site and the design flexibility of creating a Wix website.
That’s why you see a lot of tools and features designed to help you start, manage, and grow your business online.
No matter your profession — chef, dancer, teacher, designer, Amazon seller, fitness coach, or consultant — Wix empowers you to create a stunning website and manage your business in one place. The brand aims to be an e-commerce solution.
Here are some of the tools from Wix for growing and managing your business:
i). Wix Stores: If you have a digital or physical product to sell, Wix Stores allows you to create a beautiful online store to display your goods. This is where Wix measures up with Shopify, with its powerful eCommerce tools.
Just like Shopify, Volusion, and BigCommerce, Wix Stores makes it easy to track orders and manage inventory — from your desktop or mobile. This makes you sell online no matter where you are in the world.
Accept multiple payment methods from credit cards, offline payments, and of course PayPal. There’s a 0% charge.
When you run your online retail store with Wix, you can offer Coupons and Discounts. This allows you to boost sales by taking advantage of seasonality.
Pick from the pre-made online store templates to layout your product pages and in-stock inventory in a beautiful manner.
When it comes to worldwide shipping rates & tax, Wix handles that for you. You can set customized tax and shipping rules, based on the buyer’s destination.
ii). Wix Bookings: If you’re a service provider, Wix Bookings will come in handy for you. This tool enables coaches, consultants, and service providers to get booked via desktop or mobile — 24/7.
It syncs with Google Calendar, helping you to stay organized and never miss your appointments.
You can get booked for your services and get paid as well. Easily accept online payments or depositions, there’s zero commission.
Schedule and send reminders to your clients, and offer appointments, classes, and courses from your website. More importantly, accept bookings and scale your business with the Wix Mobile App.
iii). Wix Blog: B2B companies that blog consistently get 75% more leads. More so, search engines (especially Google) love beautiful and content-rich blogs.
Wix Blog is a feature that allows you to create and publish helpful blog posts, engage readers via comments, and share your posts on social media.
With the Wix Mobile App, you can also manage your blog, write and publish new posts, view and reply to comments, and promote your blog easily.
If you want to scale your content production, you can add multiple contributing writers and manage their posts from one central dashboard. Yes, Wix Blog is that powerful.
iv). Wix Music: If you’re into music, you’ll love the flexibility that Wix Music brings to the table.
Don’t let your songs die without getting attention. Sell your music directly from your site, there’s no fee attached to it.
Customize music players to suit your branding and site theme.
Showcase your album, share your playlists, and get advanced stats to see which of your songs are getting played most, which ones are shared, how much sales you’ve sold, and the downloaded tracks.
v). Wix Photography & Wix Video: These tools let you create, have content management, and customize different marketing features. Choose a template from the collection and start showcasing your photos and videos.
Add images and videos from anywhere, your computer, YouTube, Facebook, Vimeo, protect your images with watermark and password, and sell directly from your site, or offer monthly subscriptions to your video channels.
5 Key Features Of Shopify
The truth be told, Shopify is without a doubt the most powerful online store builder and eCommerce management system in the world.
Unlike Wix which helps you build websites to sell services and run your online business, Shopify is PRIMARILY for eCommerce brands.
In this section, we’ll dive into the key features and showcase everything you need to start, grow, manage, and scale your online store.
Here are the key features of Shopify:
#1 Shopify Storefront Builder
The Shopify Storefront Builder is the most important feature and tool that it offers.
This enables you to easily build an online store to sell your products. To get started with the storefront builder, simply click on the “Customize theme” button to get redirected:
Next, choose a free template from the list you want to use.
To customize your chosen template, simply on any section to edit the text or add an image.
Let’s explore all of the features & tools available when you’re building a storefront:
i). Custom Domain Name: With Shopify storefront builder, you can register a new domain name through Shopify or use an existing one.
ii). Professional Premade Themes: Some of the world-renowned designers like Pixel Union, Happy Cog, and Clearleft have created some outstanding themes that you can use when building your online store.
Using one of these 70+ premade templates will beam a light on your storefront, making it look exciting, attractive, and converting.
Once you pick a theme, you can brand and customize your online store using intuitive settings. You’ll love how your storefront looks.
iii). Edit HTML and CSS: If you want to add more functionality to your online store, you have full access to the HTML and CSS of your site. So you can quickly customize how it looks and feels.
iv). Mobile Responsive Online Stores: There’s a built-in mobile shopping cart. This allows your customers to buy products using their Smartphones, Tablets, or any mobile phone.
v). Web-based Website Builder: You have the chance to host your online store with Shopify or host elsewhere. Hosting comes with unlimited bandwidth, email forwarding, Level-1 PCI compliant, SSL certificate, and instant upgrades.
vi). Full Blogging Platform: Easily launch your professional blog, add categories for your posts, create lookbooks, engage readers in the comments, and encourage discussion.
#2 Shopping Cart and Ecommerce Tools
Shopify is popularly known for its powerful shopping cart. Did you know that most successful online stores are powered by Shopify?
That tells you how robust and easy it can be, not just for beginners but for advanced eCommerce marketers.
Here’s the breakdown of the shopping cart features and tools that Shopify offers:
i). Free SSL Certificate: Do you want online shoppers to be confident that their credit card and personal information is secured?
Then you need to use a Free 256-bit SSL certificate. This applies to all pages, content, credit card, and transaction that happens in your store.
A high level of security; the same used by banks is what you get with Shopify’s free SSL certificate.
ii). Accept All Credit Cards: From your online store, accept Mastercard, Visa, Discover, and American Express. The credit card rate is low and there are no hidden fees.
iii). Payment Gateways: There are over 100 external payment gateways you can accept, ranging from PayPal to other popular gateways from around the world.
iv). Automatic Carrier Shipping Rates: Major shipping carriers such as FedEx, UPS, and USPS offer automatic shipping rates on your online store.
v). Recover Abandoned Checkout: This is an amazing feature that lets you recover lost sales. Buyers who left off without completing an order automatically receive an email with a link to their abandoned shopping carts, nudging them to complete their purchase.
vi). Flexible Shipping Rates: Shopify shopping cart allows you to set up flexible shipping rates on your store. You can set it up by fixed price, tiered pricing, located-based, or weight-based.
#3 Shopify Point of Sale (POS)
One of the striking features that make Shopify stand out from its competitors is the robust Point of Sale (POS) functionality and hardware.
When you create an online store via Shopify and activate this POS hardware, it means you’ll be able to sell not just online but in physical locations too, by leveraging on your iOS or Android device.
Some of the hardware you can purchase includes barcode readers, receipt printers, tills, etc., to help you set up your complete POS.
Shopify merchants who live in the US, Canada, the UK, or Ireland can purchase these items online directly from Shopify. Otherwise, you’ll need to connect with an authorized reseller to get the items.
Point of Sale (POS) tools integrate with a variety of applications. This allows you to sell:
- Products from the market stall
- At a live or virtual event
- In a retail store
- In a pop-up shop
You can do all of these and ensure that your inventory and stock count are automatically synced.
Bear in mind, though, that in October 2020, you’re required to pay for a “Shopify POS Pro” addon, to get the most upgraded features of the POS. The pricing begins at $89/Month.
This built-in POS is essential if you want to facilitate exchanges, provide printed receipts, sell in multiple locations at once, integrate “buy online, collect in store” features, define staff roles and permissions, and more.
#4 Store Management Features & Tools
Using Shopify to create an online store is easy but there’s more. The Store management tools help you manage every aspect of your storefront.
Here are some aspects of your storefront that you can manage with Shopify:
i). Customer Profiles: Get insights about your customers and their shopping behaviors. You can view their contact details and order history at a glance.
ii). Customer Groups: Now you can segment the customer list based on purchase history and location and export easily.
iii). Refunds: If a customer isn’t satisfied, you can quickly refund an order to their chosen payment method. Your inventory will be updated automatically.
iv). Dropshipping: To dropship effectively, you can integrate your Shopify online store with dropshipping apps like eCommHub, Ordoro, Inventory Source, which gives you the ample opportunity to start a dropping business.
#5 Shopify Marketing & SEO Features
It’s not enough to create a storefront in Shopify. Getting customers and convincing them to buy your product is very important.
Hence, Shopify offers a ton of marketing & SEO features and tools to help you rank better in the organic search results, generate traffic/customers to your online storefront, and constantly increase sales.
i). Search Optimized Pages: Your product pages are optimized to rank in Google. If you target long-tail product keywords, you’ll start ranking in no time.
With Shopify, you can customize H1, title tags, and meta descriptions.
ii). Product Reviews: Online reviews are important, especially for eCommerce stores. Make it easier for customers to leave honest reviews about your product on your site.
iii). Generated Sitemap.xml: Help search engines find your product pages through the sitemap, which is automatically generated when you create new product pages, blog posts, and standalone pages. There are a lot of tutorials for this feature.
iv). Google Ads Credits: To attract customers online, paid advertising is critical. If you’re tight on budget, Shopify gives you a $100 Google Ads credit — when you spend $25 with Google.
v). Sell on Facebook: Make it easy for your Facebook fans and followers to see the new collections you’ve got without leaving Facebook. A great way to increase sales.
vi). Gift Cards: Online shoppers love gift cards. Shopify allows you to sell gift cards — so that customers can buy them to gift friends and family members from your store.
5. Wix vs. Shopify – Pros And Cons
Here’s a list of the pros and cons of Wix to help you decide if it’s the ideal website builder for you.
Wix:
| Pros | Cons |
| Easy to use drag-and-drop interface | The eCommerce tools are basic (not for advanced users) |
| A collection of 500+ premade templates | Lacks multi-currency options |
| The built-in email marketing tool is fun to use | Once you’ve launched a site, you can’t switch templates |
| A large collection of high-quality images for designing your site | Digital products can’t be exported |
| The Wix ADI is easy, fast, and reliable | Sites are not mobile responsive (except you use an addon) |
| A free domain name for your first 12 months | Only blog posts have the AMP functionality |
| Wix offers a completely free version | You can’t export blog content |
| Excellent phone support | It’s hard to create a GDPR consent banner, except you use a 3rd party tool. |
| Handy SEO tools for your site |
Let’s summarize the pros and cons of Shopify to help you make smarter decisions on the right eCommerce platform for you.
Shopify:
| Pros | Cons |
| Easily set up an online store. Start selling in 15 minutes | Although the store builder is easy, but it’s not drag-and-drop |
| Wix integrates well with a lot of third-party apps | The Abandoned cart feature is only accessible in the higher plans |
| Sell offline with Shopify POS | Setting up multilingual stores could be easier |
| Leverage the API to develop custom applications for your online store | Extra transaction fees (for those who don’t use Shopify Payments) |
| Excellent 24/7 customer support | No free plan (basic plan starts at $29/Month) |
6. Where Do I Get The Most For My Money?
Does Wix or Shopify offer the most value for your money? Let’s break down the pricing structure and plans to help you make informed decisions.
Wix Pricing Plans
Wix plans are in two categories:
- Website
- Business & Ecommerce
Wix Paid Website plans
The Wix “Website” Plans come in 4 distinct packages:
- Connect Domain ($4.50/Month): This is the most basic ‘Website’ plan for beginners. It displays the ‘Wix’ brand ads, offers 1GB bandwidth, 500 MB storage, and you can connect your domain.
- Combo ($8.50/Month): This ‘Website’ plan is most suited for personal use. It comes with 2GB bandwidth, 3GB storage, free domain name for 1 year, and you can connect your domain. Also, you can remove Wix ads.
- Unlimited ($12.50/Month): This upgraded “Website” plan is recommended for Entrepreneurs & Freelancers. It offers unlimited bandwidth, ability to remove Wix ads, 10GB storage, free domain for 1 year, 1 video hour, and more.
- VIP ($24.50/Month): This VIP plan includes everything in “Unlimited” plan and more, such as 2 video hours, 20GB storage space, professional logo worth $60, priority response, VIP support, etc.
Wix Business & Ecommerce Plan
The Wix “Business & Ecommerce” Plans have 4 distinct pricing structures:
- Business Basic ($17/Month): For businesses that want to accept online payments, this plan with unlimited bandwidth, 20GB storage, 4 video hours, ability to remove Wix ads, and more, is most ideal.
- Business Unlimited ($25/Month): This is the most popular plan for eCommerce brands that want to grow their businesses. It includes everything in Business Basic, plus 35GB storage, 10 video hours, site booster app worth $60, etc.
- Business VIP ($35/Month): If you’re looking to get the full suite, this Business VIP plan is most suited for your established eCommerce store. It comes with 50GB storage, Pro eCommerce features, priority response, sales analytics & reports, and more.
Shopify Pricing Plans
Shopify has 3 different plans to suit your online store needs. No matter the level you are at, there’s a suitable plan you can go with.
Let’s go through each of the plans:
- Basic Shopify ($29/Month): You get all the basic features and tools for starting a new online store. You can add unlimited products, create 2 staff accounts, add an online store and blog, connect and sell on social media, abandoned cart recovery, discount codes, free SSL, gift cards, and more.
- Shopify ($79/Month): Once you’re ready to grow your eCommerce business, it’s time to go beyond the basic features. In this Shopify plan, you can create 5 staff accounts, get 24/7 support, create manual orders, get professional reports, in addition to all of the features you get on the Basic Shopify plan.
- Advanced Shopify ($299/Month): This advanced plan is suitable for eCommerce brands that want to scale and do more. It’s best for large teams, where you can create up to 15 staff accounts, add 8 locations, recover abandoned carts, get both professional and advanced reports, Shopify POS, use international domains, and sell in more than 5 languages. It’s not for every eCommerce business out there, it’s for those who wish to get all that Shopify has to offer.
7. Conclusion – Which Is Better: Wix Or Shopify?
We’ve almost come to the end of the battle between Wix vs. Shopify. But which one is better?
Well, if you’re looking to start, grow, and scale your eCommerce business with the best shopping cart solution, Shopify wins.
Shopify knows eCommerce inside out. Start selling in 15 minutes or less. You can set up and accept a ton of payment methods, activate multilingual stores, etc.
Although Shopify is most suitable for a sizable online store, Wix also offers some amazing eCommerce tools for many use cases.
If you want a more affordable and cheaper way to build an online store, use Wix. If you don’t want your online store to be the main focus of your business, but to complement it, then I highly recommend Wix.
8. Wix vs. Shopify – FAQ
Is Wix better than Shopify?
Yes and No. Wix is better when you want to build a stunning website and also start an online store by the side. But Wix is limited in its eCommerce functionalities, hence, Shopify is for more advanced eCommerce marketers and businesses.
What about Wix vs. Shopify transaction fees?
Wix charges transaction fees based on the payment method you’re using and the region. Here’s a breakdown:
Credit/Debit Card with Wix Payments:
- USA: 2.9% of the transaction amount + $0.30 USD
- EU Countries: 1.9% of the transaction amount + 0.30 EUR
- United Kingdom: 2.1% of the transaction amount + 0.30 GBP
- Switzerland: 2.3% of the transaction amount + 0.30 CHF
Shopify doesn’t charge transaction fees on orders if you’re using Shopify Payments, especially if you’re located in the US. and UK.
Also, transaction fees are waived for manual payment methods, which include bank deposits, Cash on Delivery (COD), draft orders, and test orders. And transaction fees don’t apply for POS orders as well.
Aside from those, there are transaction fees for orders outside of Shopify Payments and manual payments.
Here’s how to calculate it:
[(cost of products – discounts) + tax + shipping charges] x rate
Is Wix cheaper than Shopify?
Yes, Wix is cheaper than Shopify. The basic plan starts at $4.50/Month, while Shopify’s basic plan costs $29/Month. More so, Wix has a completely free plan, Shopify only offers a 14-day free trial, but no free plan.
Is Wix easier than Shopify?
Yes, Wix is easier to use than Shopify. Wix uses a drag and drop builder, which makes it pretty easy to create a new website from scratch.
Alternatively, the Wix ADI can create a stunning website once the user answers a few questions. Although Shopify has an intuitive design interface, it requires a bit of a learning curve to master.