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Both Shopify and Wix are highly popular ecommerce website builders for good reason. Their user-friendly designs and comprehensive features make them easy to use, even if you’ve never built an ecommerce store before. With its excellent customer support and advanced features, Shopify is a great choice for business owners looking for extra help along the way. Wix is a slightly more basic option that’s highly user-friendly for brand-new site owners building smaller ecommerce stores.
Shopify Compared to Wix
Shopify is an easy-to-use ecommerce store builder known for its excellent customer support. With support available 24/7 by phone, chat, and email, you’ll have peace of mind knowing that help is always available when you need it. Shopify even offers the option to work with one of their experts when it comes to design, marketing, copywriting, and more, so you can get the professional-quality store you need. Shopify offers a 14-day free trial with no credit card required.
Wix’s easy-to-use drag-and-drop editor paired with hundreds of templates makes it easy to create a professional ecommerce store. While Wix lacks the level of customer support that Shopify provides, it has other benefits, including no transaction fees and a free domain name. Other features like automated sales tax and super simple product upload options make Wix an ideal choice for new site builders. Wix offers a money-back guarantee during the first 14 days of your plan.
More Top Ecommerce Website Builders
In addition to Shopify and Wix, there are many other quality ecommerce website builders. We researched and reviewed the best ecommerce site builders and highlighted the essential information you need to know about each. Whether you’re building a large-scale online store or need a smaller website to sell your artistic work, our review can help you to narrow down your choices and decide which builder is right for your needs. See all of our top picks.
Where Shopify Shines
Drag-and-Drop Editor: Shopify’s drag-and-drop editor means you don’t need any design or coding experience. Shopify offers more than 70 store themes to help you get started, saving you time. The result is a clean and professional-looking storefront, even if you’ve never designed one before.
Plenty of Customization Options: With Shopify, you can easily customize templates, so your storefront is unique. You’ll also have access to the HTML and CSS codes for your store, so if you do know how to code, you can make more customizations that way, too.
Mobile Responsive Themes: Shopify themes are all optimized for mobile, and they’re fully responsive. This means that you don’t have to worry about compatibility and user experience issues, increasing the chances that phone users will successfully browse your site and complete purchases.
Shopify Mobile App: The Shopify Mobile app makes it easy to run your store even when you’re on the go. A good-quality app is important when running a business, and things need your attention when away from the office.
Versatile App Store: The Shopify App Store is equipped with more than 6,000 apps that can help you to enhance your business. Apps include dropshipping, calendar, email marketing, upselling apps, and more. These apps can increase your store’s versatility and allow you to tailor your store so that it performs exactly as you want.
Automatic Sales Taxes: Shopify will automatically calculate country and state tax rates, saving you from having to track this manually. This can be a significant time-saver. The tax calculations are based on your location, so you’ll want to verify that this feature is available before setting up your store.
Unlimited Bandwidth: Shopify won’t charge you when your store receives higher traffic. This makes Shopify a practical choice for larger-scale operations that plan to do significant amounts of sales. It is also a benefit if your store receives publicity or participates in events that generate large amounts of web traffic in short times.
Customer Support Availability: Shopify customer support is available 24/7. Support is offered by email, live chat, and phone, so you can promptly address any problems you might encounter. You can also choose to work with a Shopify expert designer, developer, or marketer if you’d like extra help with your store.
Where Shopify Falls Short
No Domain Included: You can use your own domain or buy one through Shopify, but Shopify plans don’t include a domain. You’ll need to purchase one in addition to the Shopify costs.
Transaction Fees: Basic Shopify, Shopify, and Advanced Shopify plans carry transaction fees when you use an external payment gateway. These fees range from 0.5% to 2%, and they’re charged in addition to your payment processor fee. When dealing with transaction fees, you’ll face varying bills each month based on the value of your total sales. You’ll need to build these fees into your business expenses.
Limited Product Options: When you create products in your store, you’ll be limited to three options per product. Options can be size, color, finish, material, and other qualities. If you want to increase the number of variants or options available, you’ll need to use a Shopify app to get this option.
Higher Pricing: If you want access to all Shopify features, including the advanced report builder and up to 15 staff accounts, then you’ll need the Advanced Shopify plan. At $299 per month, this plan is steep, and the pricing might make it impractical for smaller businesses looking to grow.
Where Wix Shines
Drag-and-Drop Design: With Wix, you don’t have to be a professional designer to get a professional-looking website. Wix’s top strength lies in its user-friendly drag-and-drop site editor. There’s no need to know any coding or advanced design techniques, and the Wix editor will help you get that clean, professional site look that can help drive sales. If you don’t want to build your site from scratch, you can use one of the more than 500 templates available to save some time.
No Transaction Fees: With no transaction fees to worry about, you only have to worry about your monthly plan costs. All plans also include a custom domain and a free domain for one year, increasing its value.
Tax Automation: Wix’s integration with Avalara means you can get automated sales tax calculations for every transaction. This can save you from costly tax errors and minimizes the time you have to invest in calculating and tracking sales tax.
Logo Maker: Wix gives you everything you need to launch your online store, including the ability to make a logo. The Wix Logo Maker is free to use and lets you design your custom business logo. You can incorporate that logo into your website, download social media files, and print the logo on brand merchandise. It’s a one-stop solution for your store’s branding and startup needs.
Many Platform Integrations: Wix integrates with other top-selling platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, Amazon, and eBay. Once your Wix shop is set up, this integration makes it easy to sell your products on these additional platforms, too. This simple step can help to drive sales and save you time.
Wix Owner App: The Wix Owner app lets you easily manage your site while on the go. The app offers almost all of the functionality you enjoy with the web-based site editor, including the ability to chat live with site visitors, manage inventory, create special discounts, and take payments.
Where Wix Falls Short
Limited Storage Space: All Wix ecommerce plans have storage limitations, with the Business Basic plan being limited to 20 GB of storage. While this is enough storage for smaller stores, you might find that you outgrow these storage restrictions and need to upgrade your plan. With a 50 GB storage limit on the Business VIP plan, Wix isn’t an ideal choice for large-scale businesses with lots of products.
Limited Customization: Because Wix has a drag-and-drop editor, it’s easy to use, but that comes with limited customization options. Web designers and business owners well-versed in coding may find the editor restrictive.
Slow Loading Speeds: Wix is known for having slow loading speeds, which could cost your business potential customers. Optimizing and sizing images before uploading them can help to boost speeds, but be prepared to deal with some slower speeds than you might see with other platforms.
No Hosting Choices: When you use Wix, you also have to host your site through the platform. This means you have less control of your site, and you’ll be subjected to any downtime or speed issues present with the Wix platform.
Limited Support: While the Wix Support Center offers a broad selection of how-to articles, live support is limited. Wix doesn’t offer live chat. The platform does offer a callback service in response to a ticket request that’s available in English 24/7. Callback availability for other languages is more limited.
The Final Verdict on Shopify Compared to Wix
Both Shopify and Wix make the process of setting up and managing an ecommerce store easy, even if you don’t have designing or coding experience. Suitable for first-time store owners as well as long-time entrepreneurs, the platforms are both versatile. While Shopify and Wix are both equipped with features that allow you to create a professional online storefront, some key differences make each platform ideal for different situations.
Shopify is more expensive than Wix, but the specialized features justify that expense that the platform provides. Options like advanced reporting, more thorough customization choices, and an array of Shopify apps give you more control over your site’s performance than you’ll see with Wix.
Shopify offers three ecommerce plans. While the Advanced Shopify plan offers some increased functionality, the main difference between the plans is in the number of staff accounts and the number of locations you can assign inventory to. The Basic Shopify account costs just $29 per month but still has valuable features like a free SSL certificate, abandoned cart recovery, and the ability to sell in 133 countries. Moving into the upper plan tiers brings additional perks like professional reports and customized pricing for international countries.
Shopify does charge transaction fees, which are in addition to the plan costs. Depending on the store’s sales volume, these fees could add substantial amounts to the plan costs.
Not only does Shopify offer all of the standard features and functions that you would want from a professional storefront, but it also offers some perks. The ability to work with a Shopify expert is one key advantage to the platform, giving you professional-level assistance to make the most of your store.
Shopify is also known for its excellent customer support. With support available 24/7, you can potentially avoid store downtime and lost sales that would result if you couldn’t access support.
Wix doesn’t offer quite the same professional-grade features as Shopify, but it’s an ideal user-friendly option if you’re getting started with your first ecommerce business. Its clean dashboard is intuitive, and the drag-and-drop editor offers customization options without any need for coding or design knowledge.
With its lack of transaction fees, Wix’s pricing structure is slightly less complicated than Shopify’s. Its Business Basic and Business Unlimited plans are well-suited for smaller stores, and all plans come with most of the features that make this platform ideal for new store owners. Storage space is the primary differentiator between the plans, and only the Business Unlimited and Business VIP plans come with the automated sales tax option.
Wix includes all of the features and functionality an ecommerce store needs. Options like dropshipping services and integrated shipping solutions save time and increase the options you can explore with your business. Features like automated sales tax take some of the complexity out of running a business, and business automation ensure you can get your store running efficiently.
While Shopify and Wix are both user-friendly, they’re best for different situations. Shopify offers greater reporting and analysis tools, making it a top choice for medium-sized or larger businesses looking to scale.
Wix is more user-friendly than Shopify. It’s best-suited to new business owners looking to launch smaller ecommerce stores. While Wix does offer customization options, they’re more limited than what you’ll enjoy with Shopify. This helps to avoid overwhelming store owners as they build their sites, but a more ambitious owner of a larger site might find this restrictive.
Shopify and Wix are just two of the many ecommerce website builders available. Be sure to read our full in-depth review of the best ecommerce website builders to explore all of your options. Here are the other top builders we identified:
- Wix – Best website builder for most users
- Shopify – Best for anyone needing extra support
- Squarespace – Best for artists, photographers, and creatives
- Weebly – Best for small stores that want to stay small
- BigCommerce – Best for rapid scaling
- Shift4Shop – Best for limitless customization
This article was written by today’s Daily Eggspert.
