- How Do Wix and Shopify Compare?
- Is Wix or Shopify’s Pricing Better Value?
- Is Wix or Shopify Better for Selling Products?
- Which Builder Has the Best Marketing Features?
- Is Wix or Shopify Easier for Beginners?
- Which Builder Has the Best Online Store Templates?
- How Do Wix and Shopify Support Your Business?
- Which Ecommerce Builder Has the Better AI Assistant?
- How We Test Ecommerce Website Builders
- Final Verdict: Do I Recommend Wix or Shopify?
- FAQs
When comparing 12 online store builders across seven ecommerce-focused criteria, Shopify and Wix came out on top, but for different reasons. Shopify is superior for high-volume, scalable stores, while Wix is better suited for smaller stores that want more creative control.
Below, I’ve compared both builders for you, using our in-house research and hands-on testing to give you a balanced, informed view.
- Wix’s pricing plans are more affordable, ranging between $17-$159 per month (billed annually), but you need the $29 per month plan to sell
- Shopify’s sales features are superior, especially for stores selling a high volume of products
- Wix is best for marketing, since it’s home to a versatile marketing suite fit for SEO, email marketing, and social media campaigns
- Wix is the easiest builder to use due to its intuitive drag-and-drop editor and beginner-friendly dashboard
- Shopify’s templates are most optimized for online stores, but only 24 of them are free to use
- Shopify’s help and support lines are more reliable than Wix’s, offering an AI assistant and thorough Help Center
To fairly compare Wix and Shopify, we relied on our user-led testing, 300+ hours of data collection, and my personal experience using each platform to build an online store.
We put Wix and Shopify head-to-head across seven key research areas: sales features (30%), design features (15%), help and support (15%), website functionality (15%), pricing (10%), user experience (10%), and reputation (5%). With each category, I focused on the benefits and pain points for small businesses, such as the scalability of plans and product management tools.
Read our full methodology to see how we test ecommerce website builders.
I’ve reviewed the content of this page so it’s up to date, as of March 2025. This includes making sure that the information and pricing is correct, mentioning the latest AI ecommerce tools, and adding more valuable data to the comparisons table to help you make your decision.
How Do Wix and Shopify Compare?
For a quick comparison of Wix and Shopify, refer to the table below:
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Starting price
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Transaction fees
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Free plan or free trial
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Free custom domain
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AI website builder
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AI features
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Multi-currency
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POS features
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Dropshipping
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SEO tools
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Recommended for
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Best for Selling Online
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Best All-in-One
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Shopify |
Wix |
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2.9% + $0.30 |
2.9% + $0.30 |
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3-day free trial |
Free plan |
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Can sell in multiple currencies via Shopify Payments and international sales tools |
Can’t sell products in multiple currencies (must pick one) |
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Can set up dropping via Shopify apps, Shopify Collective, or setting up via third-party suppliers. |
Can set up dropshipping via Wix apps (standard products and print-on-demand) |
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Businesses who want to easily scale their store as they grow |
Businesses promoting their online presence |
Is Wix or Shopify’s Pricing Better Value?
Wix is better value than Shopify in the long term, with Wix’s most expensive plan ($159 per month) costing roughly half of Shopify’s ($299 per month). However, neither builder’s entry-level commerce plans (both $29 per month) are budget-friendly, so consider Hostinger or Square Online to save money.
How Much Does Wix Cost?
Wix’s pricing costs $17 to $159 per month (billed annually), though you’ll need the $29 per month Core plan or above to sell online.
- Light – $17 per month (no ecommerce functionality)
- Core – $29 per month
- Business – $39 per month
- Business Elite – $159 per month
Wix also offers a free plan that you can stay on forever, but it comes with ads and limited storage space. This isn’t ideal for a small business looking to build a professional brand.
How Much Does Shopify Cost?
Shopify’s pricing costs $29 to $299 per month (billed annually) and is generally more expensive than Wix, although ecommerce is included in every Shopify plan, making it more flexible for small businesses. Here’s a breakdown of Shopify’s plans:
- Basic – $29 per month
- Grow – $79 per month
- Advanced – $299 per month
Shopify doesn’t offer a free plan like Wix, but you can get a three-day free trial and your first three months for just $1 per month, softening the initial cost. Even so, this short timeframe isn’t long enough to get familiar with Shopify, so I’d argue that it’s not a very effective trial period.
Shopify’s $29 per month Basic plan is good for businesses finding their feet. It includes unlimited products and up to 10 inventory locations. However, I recommend using the Grow plan ($79 per month) if you run a larger business because of its additional staff accounts, so you can delegate work to multiple people, and its reduced processing fees with Shopify Payments.
Is Wix or Shopify Better for Selling Products?
Shopify is our top-rated ecommerce website builder and is best for selling. On every plan, it comes with:
- Unlimited products
- Multiple sales channels (e.g. TikTok and Amazon)
- Abandoned cart recovery
- Discount codes
- Localized selling tools
This makes Shopify ideal for online stores with growing or substantial inventories, whereas Wix is better suited for managing a business with a handful of products.
What Multichannel Selling Options Are There?
Shopify has the best multichannel integration options, allowing you to connect your store with marketplaces and social media channels. This is a great way to target customers on platforms that they’re already engaged with and broaden your reach beyond your website.
Wix and Shopify are at the forefront of agentic commerce developments, both integrating Stripe’s Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP) to allow their merchants to sell directly in answer engines, such as ChatGPT and Perplexity.Agentic commerce – the process whereby AI agents can research, compare, and purchase products directly on behalf of a customer – is the new standard for selling in 2026. By integrating the ACP, merchants using Wix and Shopify will be in able to appear on these channels and secure sales through AI agents.
Wix offers fewer multichannel selling options than Shopify. You can sell on marketplaces like Amazon, but fewer social media platforms. Wix sticks with the classics like Facebook and Instagram and you’ll need to connect your Wix store to TikTok if you want to sell there.
Shopify has a cheap Shopify Starter plan, which costs $5 per month. This plan is designed to help you start selling across social media and messaging apps. If you want to start selling quickly and don’t need a fully polished storefront, the plan is a good alternative to Shopify’s more expensive website builder packages.
How Do Wix and Shopify Handle Dropshipping?
Shopify has the best dropshipping capabilities, having 700+ dropshipping apps compared to Wix’s 20+, making it a much more flexible option for businesses selling niche products. Plus, Wix’s 50,000 product limit caps dropshipping growth, while Shopify allows users to sell unlimited products.
How Much Inventory Space Do I Get?
Shopify allows you to sell unlimited products on all plans, whereas Wix limits users to a maximum of 50,000 products, as well as an additional allowance of between 25 to 50,000 products if you dropship with Modalyst. This might sound like a lot, but it could be a decisive factor, especially for large businesses wanting the extra room to grow and the reassurance of unlimited inventory space.
Wix’s plans provide between 2GB and 100GB of space, whereas Shopify’s plans start with 100GB and raise to 500GB, giving you more room from the start. However, Wix is the only option that offers an unlimited storage option if you choose the Business Elite plan.
What Payment Options Are There?
This is how Shopify and Wix’s payment methods compare:
- Shopify has 100+ payment methods, while Wix only has 80+
- Shopify and Wix have their own native solutions that make it easier to collect payments in one place
- Both platforms come with a free SSL certificate with all plans as well as full PCI compliance, meaning customer credit card information is handled with the highest level of security possible
If you use Wix Payments, you’ll be charged a fixed processing fee of 2.9% + $0.30 per online transaction in the US.With Shopify Payments, all third-party transaction fees will be erased. However, you’ll be charged a processing fee, starting at 2.9% + $0.30 per payment. This figure will decrease as you upgrade your Shopify plan – the Advanced plan only charges 2.5% + $0.30.
Which Platform Is Better for International Selling?
Shopify is the best option for international selling, with a plethora of tools to support global expansion found in Shopify Markets. While Wix has tools to translate text and currencies, this doesn’t follow through to checkout for a fully localized experience. Shopify Markets includes:
- Multi-currency checkouts: Allow customers to pay for products in their local currency (Wix localizes currency while browsing the site but reverts this back to your store’s default at checkout)
- Market-specific inventories: Tailor your inventory for each market, controlling product visibility and pricing in each location
What’s the Difference Between Wix’s and Shopify’s App Markets?
Wix’s app market has 800+ third-party apps, while Shopify has 16,000+, including Linkpop which lets you add ecommerce links to your social media bios.
That said, Wix has more built-in features than Shopify, so you don’t need to waste additional time searching for the right apps to install. For example, Wix has a built-in scheduling tool, but Shopify doesn’t – meaning you’ll have to find an app for this functionality.
Which Builder Has the Best Marketing Features?
Wix has the best website features to help improve your site’s visibility, increase traffic, and encourage customers to shop with you, from email marketing tools to custom SEO support.
I recommend watching our detailed Wix review video to learn more about Wix’s high-quality features:
What Marketing Tools Are Available?
Wix’s Light marketing suite is available on Wix’s cheapest plan, which includes marketing tools like:
- Google Ads with Wix integration
- Four lead-capture forms on your website you could use for quizzes or registration forms
- Up to 10 fields in forms for contact details, payment information, or other data
While this is already robust, Wix’s marketing suite improves more as you upgrade plans. For example, on the Core plan and above, customers can create an account on your website for faster checkouts.Shopify also lets you seamlessly integrate marketing features into your store through apps like Facebook and Instagram, helping you identify and reach your target audience.
That said, both Wix and Shopify offer great email marketing tools. With diverse templates, customization options, and automations, you can easily set up email campaigns to reach out to your market or re-engage customers with abandoned cart recovery emails. You can also connect your store to popular email marketing solutions, such as Mailchimp.
Are There Effective SEO Features?
Wix and Shopify excel when it comes to the SEO basics. Their scope includes sitemaps, metadata, mobile optimization, and other staple SEO features.
When testing Wix’s SEO, I loved the personalized SEO checklist it created for my website. This is a really useful tool to get real-time feedback on your site’s content and settings. And the AI meta tag creator (available for premium plan owners only) helps businesses optimize their pages by automatically generating meta titles and descriptions for you.
Wix is also the best SEO website builder we’ve tested this year, with Shopify following shortly behind, so I recommend reading our full guide to see how they compare in this area.
Is Wix or Shopify Easier for Beginners?
It’s easier to build an online store with Wix than Shopify, thanks to Wix’s helpful AI tools, drag-and-drop editor, and beginner-friendly dashboard.
I’d recommend Wix if you’re looking for an easy-to-use builder to set up your online store. One of its standout setup features is its chatbot-style website creation. Not only does this create your site for you, but it also creates a fully customized business dashboard based on what features you tell Wix you need!
I loved that the chatbot gave the creation process a more friendly feel and felt like I was talking to a designer. I could even then ask it to reconfigure more granular parts, such as the layout, color scheme, or page structure. But don’t worry, you still get full control of customization of your site to easily create what you want.
How Do I Build a Site With Wix?
With Wix, I was presented with a couple of setup options – an AI chatbot (Wix’s AI website builder) or choosing a template. I recommend using Wix’s AI chatbot to get a customized website for your business needs – it gave me a polished and personalized website within minutes.
When testing it myself, I was impressed by how it picked up on my fake slime company’s target audience, just from my answers about the brand.
Once you’ve got through the setup process for Wix, you can start designing your website. Wix uses an easy drag-and-drop editor, which is incredibly beginner-friendly – you get total creative freedom, since you can drag elements anywhere you’d like on the page. Wix has also recently introduced an AI theme assistant to support you at the design stage and share suggestions.
As you set up your website, you can use voice interactions to speak with Wix’s AI assistant tool, Aria, and receive responses to your questions in real time. This is useful as you set up, since you’ll have your own virtual assistant who can help you every step of the way.
How Do I Build a Site With Shopify?
Setting up with Shopify used to be a slower, more manual process than Wix. That said, its ease of use has improved in recent years due to additional tools, like its AI store builder.
To get started with Shopify, the builder asks you key questions about your business, such as where you’d like to sell and what you’re planning to sell. Once you’ve made your account, you can choose a pre-made theme, or use the AI store builder to generate a design based on a short prompt.
Shopify takes a different approach to designing with its section-based editor. This is slightly more restrictive, but it’s straightforward to add and reorder sections on top of one another. Unlike Wix, I couldn’t just drag an element to a position on the page.
For the Shopify Editions Winter ’26 update, the ecommerce builder added the following design features:
- Ability to generate your store theme via mobile
- Shopify’s virtual assistant, Sidekick, can tweak your theme according to your needs
- Sidekick can also generate custom blocks for your theme
- A/B test theme changes
- Improved theme discovery with better industry filters
Shopify also recommended I add products first, before editing my template. From my experience with Shopify, this makes complete sense since you’ll benefit from having the products in the backend to display on your website’s pages. Plus, you can use AI tools like Shopify Magic to generate product descriptions and simplify the process of adding new items or variants to your inventory.
Which Builder Has the Best Online Store Templates?
Shopify’s 1,000+ modern and stylish templates are better suited to online stores, although Wix has a wider range (over 2,000) to choose from.
Unfortunately, Shopify has only 24 free templates, compared to all 2,000+ of Wix’s being free of charge. Shopify’s premium templates range from $100 to $500 – an additional one-time cost on top of your core plan. However, Shopify’s 1,000+ themes are aesthetically pleasing, professionally designed, and cater to different stores and industry needs.
Shopify’s AI store setup option gives business owners the choice to generate a custom template using AI. It’s not as advanced as Wix’s AI website builder, but Shopify creates three personalized design options based on a brief prompt, for example “sustainable shampoo brand.”
How Do Wix and Shopify Support Your Business?
Shopify has a better range of customer help options for online stores, especially with its fast-replying AI assistant. Key Shopify help and support you can access includes:
- An AI assistant – available in the Help Center, 24/7 (in my experience, the AI assistant responds instantly with a helpful answer or link to additional resources)
- Email support (Shopify Plus accounts only)
- Phone support (Shopify Plus accounts only)
- Community forum
- Shopify Academy – an online training program for businesses
- Shopify Help Center – full of guides, video tutorials, courses, and more
In comparison, Wix offers the same or its own version of these support options (for example, a Wix SEO Learning Hub instead of the Shopify Academy), but Wix’s AI in the Help Center isn’t as responsive or as conversational as Shopify’s, so I’d recommend Shopify’s customer service over Wix’s.
Which Ecommerce Builder Has the Better AI Assistant?
For serious ecommerce growth, Shopify Sidekick is the better AI assistant since it can support you throughout each stage of building an online store. For example, it can:
- Support you during the onboarding process
- Analyze your sales data and suggest ecommerce strategies
- Generate custom images for your website
Though I found Wix’s AI assistant, Wix Aria, less powerful, it is better suited for marketing purposes than Shopify Sidekick. You can have Aria evaluate your website’s SEO performance, or generate blog posts or event pages for your website.
How We Test Ecommerce Website Builders
When comparing Wix and Shopify, we want our recommendations to be fair and reflective of the platforms in their current state. This is why we carry out regular testing and data collection, involving over 300 hours of analysis, 54 user tests, and 283 individual areas of investigation.
Our research process assesses Wix’s and Shopify’s ability to support your online store – we test them against seven core categories:
- Sales Features (30%): Testing the ecommerce tools offered, such as POS, shipping, inventory management, and payment providers
- Design Features (15%): How high-quality the templates and AI builder results are, and the editing tools that are provided
- Help and Support (15%): We look into the available support options and test the quality of responses to common queries
- Website Functionality (15%): Assessing built-in tools, such as AI, SEO, marketing, scheduling, and blogging, as well third-party plugins
- Pricing (10%): Looking at the price of each plan, what’s included, the jump between plans, and whether free plans or trials are offered
- User Experience (10%): We conduct tests with users to establish how easy it is to carry out tasks on the platform
- Reputation (5%): Searching reviews of the builder online to understand the general online sentiment and asking our testers how likely they are to recommend it to a friend
Myself and the rest of the Website Builder Expert team have all carried out hands-on testing with these platforms. So, when I talk about what Wix and Shopify are like to use in this comparison, you know it’s based on real experiences.
Final Verdict: Do I Recommend Wix or Shopify?
After comparing the two website builders in areas like sales features, pricing, and ease of use, Shopify is our top choice for scaling online stores because of its unbeatable ecommerce capabilities, including an extensive app store and over 100 payment options.
That said, Wix is better for small businesses looking to take their first step online with an all-in-one platform.
FAQs
Transferring your store from one website builder to another is a difficult process. You can manually copy and paste content from Wix to Shopify, which is a very time-consuming process, and you run the risk of missing data. Alternatively, you can export your data into CSV files and import the information into the new platform.
However, you can’t simply click a button and have everything switch over to the new builder. You’ll lose your site’s design, URL structures, and settings – you’ll need to start from scratch again in most areas.
Both Wix and Shopify customers are at risk of account freezes or takedowns due to payment checks, compliance concerns, or complaints. Your website won’t be immune to these risks, regardless of which website builder you choose. The best way to minimize potential freezes or takedowns is to ensure your business follows your website builder’s policies and guidelines.
Shopify relies on third-party plugins more than Wix, but you can pick and choose what your business needs from Shopify’s 8,000+ app market. While this does require additional research and potential budget, Shopify gives you a lot of flexibility and scalability through its available plugins.
In comparison, Wix’s built-in tools cover the business essentials, such as email marketing and SEO. You can also integrate plugins with Wix’s app market if your Wix plan is missing a feature.
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