Wix vs Shopify For Ecommerce – Which Is Better?

Editor’s note: Wix is a great platform to make beautiful websites. However, Shopify was made especially with ecommerce in mind. Small stores with limited features and integrations operate fairly well using Wix, but as they grow, they need a sturdier ecommerce platform that offers better functionality, solid interface, more features, & support. At this point, Shopify migration is what they need. To know more about Shopify and how it can help you grow, contact, EbizON.

Wix or Shopify – which platform is better to use to launch your online store?

The answer is not that simple. It really depends on your needs and preferences (as different things might be more important for you).

That’s why we wanted to take the time to compare Wix and Shopify based on what we thought is most important for an eCommerce platform.

One of the most important things about any eCommerce platform is how it presents your products and what kind of product features it has.

In this Wix vs Shopify comparison, we’ll review the two platforms around their features, themes, ease of use, apps, payment gateway options, loading speed, support, pricing and tax settings.

Let’s get started.

Wix vs Shopify – Features

Wix

Surprisingly, Wix has a few more options when it comes to presenting your wares. You can have up to 6 variants and up to 30 options for products.

You can also create beautiful image galleries with a cool Zoom effect. What’s cool here is you also have the option to use carousel videos.

The one bad thing about Wix is that you can’t really embed a video in your product descriptions.

Shopify

The bad thing about Shopify is that it allows you to have only 3 product attributes – size, color, and material.

You can’t really add any news ones which could such if you’re selling items that you’d like to define by more criteria.

This can also limit your visitors by the way they filter and find products on your store.

You can add pictures and create beautiful image galleries with a cool Zoom effect. However, carousel videos are not available for all themes.

Apps on Shopify App Store can help you get additional features such as reviews, Facebook stores, eBay item importers, etc.

Themes

Wix

So now let’s compare Wix and Shopify when it comes to the themes they offer. As well as the options they give you for customization and improving the design of your website.

Wix has 60 completely free eCommerce themes which puts them way ahead of Shopify.

They are also pretty good looking, modern and styling and would probably do a good job for someone who is just starting out.

The bad news is that these themes are not responsive. So you would need to make some modifications in order to make them look good on mobile.

The other thing is that even though Wix gives you tons of flexibility when it comes to creating your website, in-depth customization by editing CSS/HTML is not as complete as with Shopify.

This is especially true when it comes to product pages.

Related : Best Wix Ecommerce Sites & Templates

Shopify

There are over 100 themes available for Shopify. All of them all mobile-responsive with a modern and sleek design.

Unfortunately, there are only 10 free themes available. Even though they are quite good for beginners.

Besides that, you can purchase premium paid themes. They could be costly though – as you’re likely to pay around $180 for a theme.

You also have full access to edit the HTML and CSS of your store so you can customize the look of your theme the way you want to.

Ease of Use

Wix

When you choose an eCommerce platform, it is essential that it is easy to learn and use.

That’s why we would like to compare both Wix and Shopify when it comes to usability, user-experience and ease of use.

Wix is one of the easiest and intuitive platforms to use. Some of the best websites operate on Wix today. They have excellent user experience and website builder that make it so simple to create your first online store.

In case you have any difficulties figuring things out yourself, then you can check their extensive tutorials and guides. They are really well written and make it super easy to learn how to use the platform.

To create your online store even faster, you can use Wix ADI that employs artificial intelligence to give a ready-made template in seconds.

Related : Wix vs Wordpress

Shopify

The good thing about Shopify is that their platform has been created especially for eCommerce stores.

It is relatively easily and intuitive to use so you can create your very first store within a few minutes.

It’s easy to add products and variants and everything is linked to tutorials that help you learn how to use Shopify.

Keep in mind though that you would probably need a couple of hours to configure your online store fully with Shopify.

Related : Shopify vs Magento

Apps

Wix

The build-in features for most platforms are simply not enough. Most of the time, people want to expand the functionality of their store with third party apps.

That’s why it’s important to compare Wix and Shopify when it comes to the apps developed for both platforms.

Currently there are 250+ apps available for Wix (much less than Shopify).

The other thing is that not all of them are related to eCommerce (as most are not).

These apps will help you enhance your website or blog. A lot of them could be even industry specific – for hotels, restaurants, event planning, etc.

Wix App market is also harder to navigate and find apps what would fit your needs.

Currently, these are the categories that are available – blog, bookings, events, hotel & travel, music, online store, photography, analytics, business tools, chat, design tools, forms, marketing tools, social, and video.

A lot of the apps are free, some are paid and some are have both free and paid features.

Paid apps usually are pretty cheap as pricing starts at $3/month.

Shopify

Shopify currently has one of the biggest app store available out there with 1,400+ apps.

They can help extend the normal functionality of your store and help you do much more.

Currently the apps are divided in the following categories marketing, sales, social media, shipping, inventory, customer service, accounting, reporting, etc.

The good thing about Shopify apps is that they are especially created for eCommerce businesses and are a lot more suitable for online retailers.

A lot of them a free and some of them are paid. Usually the premium apps require a monthly subscription fee. Most of them are not really expensive – around $19/month.

Related : Best Shopify Paid Apps

Payment Gateway

Wix

Let’s talk about Wix eCommerce payment gateway options.

If you’re selling online, you would need ways to collect payments. There is no way around it.

That’s why you would need some payment gateways and payment processing services. Let’s see how Wix and Shopify differ in this field.

Wix is currently way behind Shopify when it comes to payment gateway integrations.

Currently, they give you the option to choose from only 17 payment gateways including PayPal, Stripe, Square, Wirecard, Braintree, and Authorize.Net.

This means that you should also be paying transaction fees based on the policies of chosen payment gateway.

For example: PayPal and Stripe charge you 2.9% + $0.30 USD for each transaction.

Shopify

A huge advantage for Shopify is that they have their own payment gateway – Shopify Payments.

And if you decide to use it, Shopify doesn’t charge you any transaction fees whatsoever.

However, in this case they still charge you credit card rates between 2.7%-2.4% + $0.30 depending on your plan.

Unfortunately, Shopify Payments is only available within the following 7 countries – United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Australia, Ireland, New Zealand, and Singapore.

So if your business doesn’t operate in any of those countries, you would need to use a third-party payment gateway.

Shopify currently integrates with 100+ payment gateways including PayPal, Stripe, Amazon Payments, Authorize.Net, First Data, etc.

The good thing about this is that it gives you a lot of options when it comes to what you want to use.

However, if you decide to use an external gateway, Shopify is going to charge you transaction fees – 2%-0.5% depending on your plan.

Loading Speed

Wix

A website that loads slower has lower conversion rates than a website that loads one second faster.

This is how important it is to have a fast loading online store.

That’s why we wanted to compare Wix and Shopify when it comes to their loading speed so you know which platform does a better job here.

Wix tends to be a bit slower than Shopify when it comes to loading speed.

It has a GTMetrix Test score of 65% (D ranking) and a Pingdom test result scoring 82. In some cases, it took up to 9 seconds to load a page.

Shopify

Shopify is designed to load pages super-fast.

GTmetrix test with a Shopify website showed a A rating (92%) and a score of 85 with a Pingdom test. And all of this with a loading time of between 1 to 4 seconds.

Support

Wix

For every platform you use, you would need some kind of support.

When it comes to building an online store that sells 24/7 having the right support can literally save your business from disasters (loss of revenue, damage to your reputation, etc.).

That’s why it’s super important we compare Wix and Shopify when it comes to the support their offer.

Unfortunately, Wix offers support only by phone or their forums. And this is limited to business hours only. So you won’t get any help during the night or on the weekends.

The good thing though is that the community behind Wix is big enough. So you’re likely to find enough people who would be willing to help you solve your problems.

Wix also has a well-written marketing blog and tutorials to help you learn how to use the platform.

Shopify

Shopify has an incredibly good customer service. They offer you 24/7 support by email, chat and phone.

They also have amazing tutorials, guides and blogs that can teach you anything you need to know when it comes to using their platform and growing your eCommerce business.

Shopify also has an enormous community of people willing to help each other find solutions to problems or just sharing tips for growing their businesses.

Pricing

Wix

By the end of the day, you should also know how much for each platform.

So this is what Shopify vs Wix is going to cost you.

For business and eCommerce, Wix pricing includes three plans:

• Business Basic – $17 per month
• Business Unlimited – $25 per month
• Business VIP – $35 per month

All these plans offer unlimited bandwidth, ability to add your domain, and ad-free interface. The storage you get is different however. 20GB, 30GB and 50GB respectively.

If you simply want to create a website and not a store, they have different plans. Check their pricing page here.

Shopify

Shopify pricing has 3 main plans – Basic Shopify ($29/month), Shopify ($79/month) and Advanced Shopify ($299/month).

There is also a $9/month plan which allows you only sell on existing websites or Facebook. So you can’t really use it to create a full online store.

Besides this, there is also Shopify Plus which is designed for enterprise-level stores (revenue of $1M-$500M). To get the pricing for this plan, you would need to request a quote.

In case you use Shopify Payments, there won’t any transaction fees for you. However, with a third-party payment gateway you would need to pay 2%, 1% or 0.5% on each transaction depending on your plan.

In all cases, you would also need to pay for credit card rates – this could be 2.9% + $0.30, 2.6% + $0.30 or 2.4% + $0.30 depending on your plan.

Tax Settings

Wix

Last but not least, we though it is a good idea to compare Wix and Shopify when it comes the way they deal with taxes.

With Wix you can enable and disable taxes on your prices displayed on your store.

You can also setup different taxes for different regions, countries and states. However, there is no automatic tax settings.

Shopify

With Shopify you have a lot of options to include or exclude taxes from the prices displayed on your store.

They can also calculate taxes automatically based on your country and state. Which is a really good features that can save you a lot of time.

Verdict – Shopify vs Wix For Ecommerce

Are you wondering which one to choose, Shopify or Wix?

It is hard to compare these two platforms. Simply because Wix has eCommerce functionality but it is not build entirely for online retailers (like Shopify is).

In general, Shopify is a better option for dropshippers, people wanting to build a serious eCommerce business and scale it up and sell worldwide.

It is also a better option for those that want more payment gateway options and automatic tax calculators on the items they sell.

On other hand, Wix is a better option for those that want an easier way to build an online store. Especially, when the store is not the main thing about the website.

It is good for those that want more design flexibility and to save money as Wix is cheaper than Shopify.