Wix vs Shopify: Just 12 Factors To Decide Which Is Better For Your Online Store

Introduction

Imagine you have a brilliant online business idea or are looking to have a stronger online presence for your current store (offline or online,) so you search online to find the best website builder for your eCommerce business and hit a dead end! Well, more than just imagination it could be pretty much reality to most of you, as after all, the digital market is filled with so many web building options which make it quite a hefty deal to pick a suitable builder, especially between --- Shopify or Wix. At one go, you can’t decide which one is better: Wix vs Shopify eCommerce. Every other informational resource on the internet tirelessly raves about Shopify while negating Wix or vice versa, which makes decision-making even more biased.

But you don’t have to compare Wix vs Shopify to find the difference between these two eCommerce platforms --- Shopify vs Wix eCommerce platform on your own. So chill, in this blog, we will do this for you and let you know out of these two website builders with different features and functionalities, which one is a highly recommended option to design a website or online store!

Please do remember this blog is not about highlighting one website builder or eCommerce platform over another. It’s about stating the facts as they are and will try to give you an unbiased and neutral comparison between Wix and Shopify. To make a Wix and Shopify comparison, we will focus on the factors like Wix vs Shopify for:

• Online store pricing
• Ease of use
• SEO
• Customer Support
• Customization, 
• And more essential factors (read on to find out). 

So hopefully by the end of this blog, you not only understand what is the difference between Wix and Shopify but also know Wix or Shopify--which website builder will suit your business type or idea better.

As a brownie point, additionally, in this blog we’ll cover:

• What are Wix and its features?
• What are Shopify and its features?
• What is the difference between Wix and Shopify?
• To compare Wix and Shopify and give an unbiased opinion.
• What are the elements you should be looking for while selecting a website builder?

Gear up for the Wix vs Shopify eCommerce platform battle, folks! 

Wix vs Shopify For eCommerce: What Are They? Their Features and Interesting Facts to Know!

Before we start with comparing Wix vs Shopify for eCommerce, let’s first get to know both the website builders, their features, and pros and cons.

What is Wix, Its Features & Trivia: An Overview

Back in 2006, out of a desire to have a website builder that doesn't require any technical know-how and can be built quite easily with a drag-and-drop builder, Wix was born. According to Wix, they provide “a world-class platform to over 200 million users worldwide, empowering anyone to express themselves and build their online presence”. Whether you’re an entrepreneur, designer, developer, musician, photographer, or restaurant owner, you’ll find specialized features to create a professional website and manage your business.”

Key Reasons You Might Want to Use Wix

• 500 designer-made templates
• Drag and Drop usability & customization
• Mobile-friendly UI
• Personal domains
• 200+ apps (in place of plugins)
• Lets you sell on multiple platforms
• Equipped with conversion-optimization shopping cart checkout
• It lets you modify the URL of each page 

Pros and Cons of  Wix

Positives	Negatives
Intuitive & useful interface	No unlimited bandwidth or storage on any plan
Free plan for building an ad-supported website	Poor SEO practices
Heightened security measures	Site transfer not available
Customizable and flexible designs
Free domain availability

What is Shopify, Its Features & Trivia: An Overview

According to Shopify, “it is an eCommerce platform that anyone can use to build their store both online and offline”. Like Bloggers use Wix and Store owners use Shopify. It allows you to sell both online with your own website and/or in-person with Shopify POS.

What started as an online store to sell snowboards in June 2006, soon turned into an eCommerce platform, to great fanfare. 

Key Reasons you Might Want to Use Shopify

• It is a completely customizable website, online store, and blog.
• It has 70+ professional themes.
• It is equipped with advanced marketing tools like SEO, content marketing, and integrating with social media platforms, discounts, and gift cards.
• It comes with unlimited bandwidth, product inventory, and customer data.
• It lets you sell on sales channels like Pinterest and Amazon.
• Supported by popular payment gateways.
• You can convert your Shopify store into a feature-rich mobile app for both Android & iOS.
• 24/7 award-winning customer support.
• Team of “Shopify Experts” to program, design, market, or even conduct photography for your online store.

Looking for a Shopify Website Design Development Company? We can help you!

Shopify Pros and Cons

Positives	Negatives
Lighting fast load time	Rated poorly in SEO in many studies.
Quite easy to set up	Unable to customize the checkout process
Hoard of certified partners to help/guide you	Apps can add up and might turn out to be costly
1-Click selling available	Need a developer for advanced features
Allows multiple channels & social media selling

Wix vs Shopify eCommerce Platform: Understanding The Difference To Choose The Suitable One

Let’s show you a detailed table to compare Wix vs Shopify for eCommerce and to help you understand “which is better Wix vs Shopify eCommerce platform” or “what is the difference between Wix and Shopify,” based on your business needs:

Let’s Discuss these Factors in Detail:

Pricing: Wix vs Shopify

• Shopify is an open-source platform that doesn’t offer any free plans. While building a basic Wix website is completely free.
• However, Shopify with its fixed price plans isn’t that inclusive and you’ve to pay for additional charges that are relatively expensive with software installation costs or transaction fees, etc.
• Similarly, if you wish to create a Wix website with a custom domain name for your blog or eCommerce along with more professional themes, you need to buy their “Combo” or “Business VIP” plans. 

Set-up Ease: Wix vs Shopify 

• To use Shopify you’re not required to have the prior technical knowledge and can easily learn to use the platform. 
• You don’t need any prior knowledge from the domain name, hosting to any security certificates, Shopify manages it all on its own. 
• Wix already gets brownie points for its drag and drop interface. The platform lets you build your own custom website by dragging & dropping the required elements into the WYSIWYG interface.
• Wix allows you to easily rearrange your web, add media, text, theme, layout, colors, without having to dive deep into a heavy codebase.

Customization and Control: Wix vs Shopify

• Shopify makes it easier to run an online business with easy-to-use tools removing the technical aspects and complications but you don’t get enough control over your site and you can’t just build anything on it. 
• Wix doesn’t allow 100% customization, meaning once you install templates or themes, you cannot alter them as per your needs. 

Design Themes & Templates: Wix vs Shopify

• Wix has over 500+ templates for every industry type. There are two ways through which you can have your website designed:
  • Via ADI - Where its AI automatically prepares the design theme based on certain questions you answer.
  • Manually - You can manually design the theme by choosing your options from 700 pre-made designs, which Wix Catalog offers.
• Though all the Wix templates are good in terms of look, colors, and optimization, the only drawback is you cannot customize them or play with them. 
• Shopify comes with 100+ different themes, which are up-to-date and also cover almost every industry. The themes are highly easy to apply and customize by just clicking “Edit HTML/CSS” on the Admin Page”.
• But, it’s not a cost-effective step as it will cost you nearly $180 for some themes, so it can be off-putting for small businesses or startups. 

Blogging: Wix vs Shopify

• Shopify has not much to offer when it comes to blogging, you can do basic blog writing & post with it.  But it has no built-in analytics, search feature, or even bookmarking.
• Wix is quite suitable for bloggers with a classic editor, 57 blog themes, and other needful features like comments, tags, media embedding. You can even customize your blog by adjusting the color of borders, fonts, buttons and you don’t even have to go to 3rd party image galleries to embed videos & images, as you get a free gallery in Wix only.

eCommerce Platform: Wix vs Shopify

• Shopify is an eCommerce platform with its easy-to-use available tool that makes it easier to start, run and grow your online eCommerce business from scratch without having any technical background. 
• If you want to go with Wix for eCommerce, it offers you literally everything to sell online such as secure payment gateways, easy-to-build online stores, inventory management, or business and financial management tools.
• However, if you want a complete, out-the-box eCommerce solution that requires no hosting and saves resources with an easier learning curve than in Wix vs Shopify for an online store, Shopify is for you.

Security and Privacy: Wix vs Shopify 

• This is around what works in Shopify’s favor. Since Shopify handles software updates, recovery, and backup, additionally every plan comes with a free SSL certificate, so your website is secured. 
• Shopify is PCI compliant which means all payments processed through its cart are secure and you don’t have to worry about any cyber threats, the team at Shopify manages it well-off. 
• This is something missing with Wix since you own the websites, you’ve to install plugins from third parties. It all comes down to you or your client on what steps they took to secure their website and how timely they’re implementing the updates.

SEO & Extra Functionality: Wix vs Shopify

• Shopify does offer a variety of SEO plugins that offer quick fixes for problems that hinder your site performance. 
• But SEO functionalities don’t come cheap. As all of its features come in its paid plans. For example, third-party shipping rates and advanced report building are only available in the Shopify Advanced plan at $299 per month. 
• Wix has basic on-page elements that are alright if you have a small business website, blog, or personal website with few competitors in your niche. With Wix, you get SSL, 301 redirects, custom tags, meta content, URL, alt tags, sitemaps, social media tools.

Domain/Hosting: Wix vs Shopify

• Wix offers you free web hosting with a bandwidth of 500 MB, where you can easily manage and transfer any content or multimedia safely & securely.
• However, if you wish to go more than a basic website with free hosting, with more storage, personalized domains with no Wix extension, an online store, and without any Wix ads, you will have to choose their premium hosting plans.
• Shopify can be your ideal choice if you are looking for unlimited bandwidth, automatic backups, and PCI Compliant website hosting.
• All advanced and high functional features of web hosting and domain only are available through paid plans so it may deter you from using it.

Customer Support & Help: Wix vs Shopify 

• Both Wix and Shopify provide great customer support, how-to guides, tutorials, and forums to help you with any technical issues or customization issues, or any other support you need. 
• Shopify provides you with professionals to guide you through in the most effective way possible via live chat, phone, mail, or even Twitter. 
• This is something missing with Wix, as it’s hosted by you, you need to hire or seek out professionals for guidance or help, online customer support is also missing with Wix. 
• However, unlike Shopify where you can’t get support regarding 3rd-party applications, Wix offers you help and support.

Data Ownership/Portability: Wix vs Shopify

• Shopify gives you full ownership over your data, be it of shop or domain name on that site whether you bought your domain from Shopify or a third-party company. 
• However, you can’t port or migrate your data from Shopify to another platform.
• With Wix, you don’t have full ownership of the data you create and produce over your Wix web. It is very difficult to migrate the Wix content to other sources. 
• However, you can migrate your blog posts in XML format, but to migrate other pages, media, content, video, images, you will have to do it manually --- which is very complex & time-consuming.

Plugins & Apps: Wix vs Shopify

• Shopify offers over 4000+ different plugins in the app store & 1500 of them are completely free, making it a great resource for scaling up your online store.
• Wix offers close to 200+ apps for integrations and most of them come under paid plans and don’t cater to eCommerce.
• The Wix app store is concerned with apps that can add additional features to your site while the Shopify app store is about integrations like email marketing apps or CRM apps as well as about add-ons.

Still, Want to Know What Platform is Best For Your Business?

Go With Wix If:

• When you are looking for an affordable but feature-rich platform to launch your online store as Wix eCommerce plan starts from $14 per month, while Shopify starts with $29 per month.
• When you're looking to launch an eCommerce business or online store without much technical know-how.
• When you want to conduct multi-channel selling across social media platforms especially Twitter or Facebook, among others.
• When you want an easier learning curve and simple usability to run your online store.
• When you fancy using videos to highlight your products. With its built-in video function, your customer can see the product live!

Go With Shopify If:

• You want to get the benefit of eCommerce features like inventory management tools, payment gateways or third-party platform integrations, and many more.
• You are looking to use a diverse range of apps (5k+, including third-party apps) for selling online.
• You fancy using top-notch analytics for your site or store as Shopify offers access to Google Analytics and other advanced in-house analytics, unlike Wix that has simple, basic in-house analytics tools. 
• You need extensively fluid themes & greater customization. 
• You want custom domain names and free unlimited bandwidth.

7 Things to Consider Before Choosing A Website Builder For A Smooth & Safe Selection!

We know you just wanted to know between Wix and Shopify which is better? And we hope the above-mentioned table has given you some clarity. But before you decide to choose any of them, we recommend you to go through the pointers and checklist to ensure that not only you are getting the best website builder for your business but it’s also the best choice for your budget. So now let’s see what these 7 pointers are:

• Your Business Goals & Intentions: Many businesses straight away go into searching for website builders as soon as they decide to go online or start an eCommerce business without counting in the factors what exactly they want to do with it or what their business or expansion goals are. It’s very essential for you to map out a plan that will help you find a website builder that is meeting your requirements, be it selling products or services online, for blogging purposes, or for boosting your brand awareness. For example, not every website builder is for eCommerce or suitable for blogging, you should select a website builder according to it regardless of how cost-effective or popular other options are. 
• Ease of Use: This should be given utmost importance. Whatever site builder you opt for, never compromise on the fact of how easily you can use it, it’ll come in handy especially if you’ve no technical background, tight on the budget that you can’t seek expert help. We suggest you look out for web builders that offer drag-and-drop options, powerful editing tools, and full customization features.
• Pricing: Though we always stress about how at times you need to focus on quality over quantity but when it comes to pricing of the website builder & its features, we beg to differ. You need to be able to figure out different pricing options and premium subscriptions that might dig a hole in your pocket. So before you select any website builder, make sure you know if they are offering a free domain or not, additional features such as free SSL, business email or free eCommerce features, etc. And if they are not then ask on point how much you are needed to pay for them and be careful about any hidden costs involved.
• Design & Features: Well, it’s not rocket science to understand that when you put a hoopla amount of money on your eCommerce platform, you expect tons of eCommerce, online store, and other professionals feature that smoothens the process of running an online business easier, safer and simpler. So never forget to mention the design or features you expect them to deliver and know if they are free of cost or not.
• Customer Support: With or without technical knowledge, it’s a fact that you can’t manage your website or eCommerce store on your own. You ought to have some helping hand when you run into any bugging, techno-functional or cyber issues. We suggest you go for website builders that offer intuitive & easy to use interfaces, 24/7 customer support all without a hassle.
• Data Ownership & Portability: Your data is yours, no matter what and you should be able to easily transport it if the need ever comes. But most of the website builders rarely allow complete data ownership and easy data migration to other platforms (even Shopify and Wix don’t offer it!) So, be extra careful when you are looking out for the best website builder options and make a point to go through the terms of service of the website builder regarding data ownership or portability. Ensure that you’ll face no complexity or problem if you even want to port your data.
• Security: After spending so much time, effort, and money on choosing a website builder, you can’t miss out on this. Safe and secured transactions or exploration of your online store is something you owe to your users, just the way safety and security of your eCommerce business is the responsibility of your website builder. So, be clear about whether your website builders will be providing you security measures or letting you integrate plugins or extensions to ensure your website data is protected and you have a secured and reliable digital presence.

Conclusion

No doubt, Wix vs Shopify for eCommerce are the best platforms but we do have to pick one in the battle of website builders: Wix vs Shopify, right? Well not necessarily! First, to compare Wix and Shopify, we already know both have their own features, high-performing functionalities, and pros & cons. Secondly, before you finalize a winner between Wix and Shopify, it’s important that you evaluate your business requirements and goals to find the one site builder that suits your goals and needs. 

Hopefully, this blog has given you the insight into understanding Wix and Shopify a lot better and this comparison of Wix vs Shopify has helped you to make up your mind about which platform will meet your eCommerce business needs & goals. Do your research thoroughly, jot down your options and carefully evaluate each of them based on your own unique business requirements. Remember you’ve built this eCommerce store or have thought about owning an online store after months or years of blood, sweat, and tears so don’t make a decision in haste and take your time.

But if you’re still wondering between these two platforms, you can always consult a professional CMS Development agency, and we will surely guide you in making a choice between Wix and Shopify and help you choose the best platform to bring a tangible difference to your business!

Drop us a comment and let us know if you have a favorite or not? We’d love to hear from you!