Wix vs Shopify: Which Should You Choose to Sell Online?

Pros and Cons

Side-by-Side Comparison

If you’re selling online, time is money. The easier you find running your store, the more time you can spend attracting and serving new customers.

While Wix is extremely beginner-friendly, in user testing, our participants found Shopify 23% easier to use than Wix – making Shopify the winner of this round.

Why Is Shopify Easier to Use?

Shopify is a powerful ecommerce platform designed specifically for creating online stores, and that’s the secret to its success. It helps you set up your store, and pushes you more towards adding inventory than creating a brand first.

Here’s how one user described their experience of creating a store with Shopify vs Wix:

“I can’t imagine Shopify being as simple as Wix’s drag-and-drop interface. But sometimes you just need a more structured block based design for pure ease, and this is where Shopify works better.”

Shopify keeps its editing interface and dashboard separate. You can add products, manage sales, and create email marketing campaigns, all away from the editor. And although Shopify’s editor is more restrictive than Wix’s, the themes are already set up to help you sell.

Creating a storefront with Wix is easier thanks to its simple drag-and-drop editor and intuitive building tools. However, it’s less optimized for merchants who may want to start by adding their stock. As one of our users said:

“I found [Wix] very easy to use, but it was obvious that it doesn’t have the powerful capabilities of a dedicated ecommerce platform.”

You’ll find Shopify has a steeper learning curve than Wix. But, in the long run, that extra structure will actually make the process of creating your entire online store easier. That’s why Shopify earns a 4.1/5 in our research for ease of use, while Wix comes out with a 3.6.

Mobile Responsive Designs

First up, you need to know whether your store will look good on all devices. 39% of online shopping in the US is now done on a mobile, and this number is only going up. Both Shopify and Wix’s themes are mobile responsive, meaning your store will work just as well whatever device your customer is using.

Template Choice and Price

Independent designers ensure Shopify’s 73 themes are up-to-date and cover a range of industries. It’s worth mentioning that most themes come with multiple styling options, so you can pick the version that best suits your brand.

At $180, some of Shopify’s paid themes are on the expensive side, but it’s a one-off payment that you should see as an investment in your store. You get better design choices from paid themes, as one user pointed out after testing Shopify:

“The free themes were a little bit uninspiring, but their upgradable ones were much nicer. Again it just didn’t feel like you had much of an option to change anything beyond the theme itself.” 

Wix, meanwhile, offers 108 ecommerce-specific templates, all of which are free. Wix actually has over 500 templates in total, but not all of them are designed for ecommerce. However, Wix’s templates are so easy to edit, you can turn any of them into an online store pretty easily.

When we conducted a survey to find out what real Wix users thought about Wix, one user, Barbara, told us:

“Wix has a huge selection of website templates and applications – plus there are many site building and editing features that I use to make my website the way I want. I am proud to tell people about my website, and proud of how it looks. I truly enjoy working with the Wix website builder platform.”

Is Wix or Shopify Cheaper?

Wix is the cheaper platform with prices starting at $28 per month, compared to Shopify’s starter price of $29 per month. If you choose an annual plan, then Wix also includes a free domain name for your first year.

Shopify charges transaction fees unless you use its in-house payment processor, Shopify Payments, whereas Wix doesn’t charge any extra fees. Neither platform will show adverts on your store, and both let you sell an unlimited number of products.

We recommend choosing one of Wix’s annual plans to get the most value for your money. This reduces your monthly cost to $23 per month and unlocks features that aren’t available on the monthly plan, such as a free domain and $300 ad vouchers.

Wix Pricing vs Shopify Pricing

Cheapest Plan Features

Overall, Shopify packs more powerful features into its plans, but Wix still wins because of its lower prices. Despite its cheap entry plan, Wix doesn’t hold back on its features, meaning you get great value for money even from its cheapest plan!

Sales features is the area where Shopify flexes its ecommerce muscles, earning an impressive 4.7/5 in our research. Wix isn’t quite as powerful as Shopify, but you still have an impressive range of ecommerce features to work with.

Shopify is the clear winner for sales features, but context is key. Wix includes precisely what you need to sell online. If you don’t want to build a business or sell tons of products, you will enjoy the simplicity of Wix – but for more complex online stores, Shopify is best. As one user explained:

“Ideally, you want automated inventory, restocking, and shipping – you need the entire process so that it can work entirely on its own if you set it up properly. Based on my experience, Shopify seems to cater for just that.”

You can unfold the tabs below to learn about product and inventory features, or skip straight to the sales tools that interest you most:

• Payment options
• Shipping options
• Tax settings

Shopify permits over 100 different payment gateways, but it doesn’t currently support Square. On top of that, you will have to pay transaction fees – unless you use its own gateway, Shopify Payments.

Plus, Shopify now allows merchants to enable tipping during checkout, or customize the text to ask for donations to your business or favorite charity.

Wix supports all the traditional payment options, including PayPal, Stripe, and Square, but doesn’t allow digital wallet payments like Apple Pay and Amazon Pay.

That said, it does have its own in-house payment option called Wix Payments, and doesn’t impose transaction fees no matter which payment gateway you choose. The lack of transaction fees means you get to keep more of your money compared to Shopify.

Shopify is also helping merchants offer more flexible and contact-free shipping options, like curbside pickup and local delivery. In summary, you’re never left stranded when organizing shipping with Shopify.

With Wix, you can track orders, set tax rules for each product, and take advantage of dropshipping. However, you’ll still need apps to help with global shipping payments. That said, Wix also offers an app integration with ShipStation, a shipping solution that streamlines the process of sending products out to ecommerce customers.

As you’d expect, Shopify gives you tons of control over your tax settings – you can even set up Shopify to automatically handle common tax calculations to free up your time and reduce brain-ache.

Shopify Plus customers can also access Avalara AvaTax, which automates both your tax calculations and the tax filing process.

Shopify relies heavily on third party apps for marketing. While this does give you lots of flexibility, it’s hard to compare the two platforms fairly with so many apps flying around.

On the other hand, Wix has changed the ecommerce marketing game with Wix Ascend. An all-in-one marketing solution, Ascend is available as a separate subscription, letting you manage your marketing campaigns easily in one place.

It’s no surprise, then, that Wix wins the marketing features round. When we asked Wix users which features they found most helpful when building their site, marketing tools were the clear winner, with more than one responding with SEO tools.

One user praised Wix’s “blogging tools and SEO tools,” while another said it was Wix’s “social media integrations” they found most helpful.

If you want to read more about how each platform performs in particular areas, unfold the tabs below to see how Wix and Shopify compete for social media integration, email marketing, blogging, and SEO:

Shopify has a lot more apps to choose from than Wix, making it a great resource for scaling up your store.

Shopify’s App Store gives you huge scope to grow your store. Among other things, you can:

• Add a customer wishlist
• Set up dropshipping
• Add product reviews
• Use currency conversion

Plus, the recently added Shop App is a personal shopping app that lets customers view their favorite Shopify stores, get product recommendations, and track orders. It’s already being used by over 16 million users!

Within the Wix App Market, we thoroughly recommend Ecwid for all Wix online stores. Still, for ecommerce-specific apps, the Wix store cannot match Shopify.

The short answer is: yes. Both Wix and Shopify take security very seriously and have plenty of measures in place to protect both you and your visitors, so you can sell safely online.

• SSL security is included on every plan with both Wix and Shopify. This protects your visitors’ data when they submit information on your site (such as login or payment details) – and is also an important ranking factor for Google.
• Both Wix and Shopify are certified Level 1 PCI DSS compliant, which means that your store is automatically PCI compliant too. This is good news, as you must be PCI compliant if you’re selling online and accepting credit or debit card payments.PCI compliance is important for protecting payment information, business details, and reducing fraud.
• Viruses, malware, DDoS attacks, and other nasties are always a risk to any website or online store. Luckily, Wix and Shopify have built-in security measures to help protect their systems and your store.Neither platform lists the details of these protections, as that would make them easier to crack, but safe to say they’re working hard behind the scenes to keep their users safe online.

On paper, Wix and Shopify are pretty much neck and neck when it comes to support. Shopify’s 24/7 phone support and live chat are huge perks, especially for users needing instant, round the clock support.

However, Wix’s Help Center is even better, with hundreds of articles and videos to support you. The layout is clearer than Shopify’s Help Center, which doesn’t include videos.

Another massive point in Wix’s favor is its in-editor help. It can be frustrating having to click back and forth between a guide and your store, but with Wix, you can receive help directly within the editor.

Hover your mouse over the editor’s question marks and you bring up small speech bubbles, which answer common problems. In Shopify, this process is clunkier and requires you to visit a separate page.

You should now know whether Wix or Shopify is a better choice for you.

We recommend Wix for anyone setting up a new, small business who needs an affordable entry plan without sacrificing features. It’s easy to use and gives you tons of creative freedom, making it perfect for brand-conscious entrepreneurs.

We recommend Shopify for larger businesses looking for a more powerful platform that can support long-term growth. You’ll need a larger budget to get started with Shopify, but it’s a worthwhile investment thanks to its impressive sales tools and huge app store.

You Should Use Wix If…

• You’re starting or running a small online store
• You want lots of creative control
• You’re after a larger choice of templates
• You plan to run a blog alongside your store – Wix has better blogging features
• You’re on a budget – Wix has cheaper price plans, and you can start building for free

You Should Use Shopify If…

• You’re running a bigger business
• You need powerful features – Shopify has the best sales tools on the market
• You want a good suite of built-in analytics tools
• Your store needs a wider range of payment gateways