Wix vs Shopify: Which Is the Best Ecommerce Platform?

After testing both Wix and Shopify, we can confidently say that Wix is a better ecommerce platform for the average small business. That’s because Wix caters to a wider range of businesses than Shopify (which caters heavily to product retailers), is slightly cheaper and is easier to use than Shopify.

That said, Wix might not be the best option for everyone. For example, Shopify is a better option for ambitious online retailers looking to scale up their operations. It offers more advanced ecommerce tools than Wix and can accommodate up to enterprise-level businesses.

We’ll compare Wix and Shopify’s features in more detail in our review, looking at pricing, ecommerce features, website design tools and ease of use.

For a detailed review of each ecommerce platform, check out our Wix review and Shopify review.

Wix vs Shopify: Which Is Better Value For Money?

Winner: Wix

Wix offers slightly better value for money than Shopify since its price increases are less steep, and it’s cheaper overall, all while still providing core ecommerce functions. That said, both providers allow users to start selling products from $29 per month.

Here’s a side-by-side comparison of each provider’s pricing plans:

If you’re running a large business or looking to scale, Shopify is worth the money since it can handle complex operations better than Wix. By the time you’re integrating inventory management systems, such as asset tracking software, having chosen Shopify as your ecommerce platform from the start means you won’t have to go through the trouble of migrating your website.

What about transaction fees?

Shopify charges cheaper card processing fees than Wix.

Both ecommerce platforms offer their own payment processing service, Wix Payments and Shopify Payments. However, Wix Payments’ processing fees are fixed at 2.9% + $0.30, regardless of what plan you’re on, whereas Shopify Payments’ processing fees range from 2.9% + $0.30 to 2.5% + $0.30, decreasing with each more expensive plan. Shopify also offers competitive custom card processing rates on its Plus plan.

That said, Shopify charges an extra transaction fee, ranging from 2% to 0.6%, for using third-party payment processors. Wix does not do this, giving businesses more flexibility when it comes to payment processing.

This means that if you don’t want to use Shopify Payments to process payments through your Shopify ecommerce store, you’ll pay transaction fees to Shopify on top of the processing fees you’ll pay to the third-party provider.

Wix vs Shopify: Which Has the Best Ecommerce Features?

Winner: Shopify

Shopify offers more powerful ecommerce features than Wix on all its plans, making it a better option for businesses looking to grow their ecommerce operation.

Here are some ecommerce features that Shopify offers that Wix is missing:

• Unlimited products (Wix has a 50,000 product limit)
• Upload products from CSV
• Amazon payments
• Built-in feature for offering product bundles (Wix requires an add-on to do this)
• Set shipping options for individual products/categories
• Create shipping labels

Features such as these, especially advanced shipping management and generous product allowances, make Shopify better suited to larger businesses managing a high volume of either products or sales.

That said, Wix has enough ecommerce features to meet the needs of most small businesses. Its 50,000 product limit is still quite generous, and its plans include core ecommerce features, such as abandoned cart recovery, integration with social media channels, invoice creation, numerous discount options, and a customizable checkout page.

The main difference is that Shopify offers these features and more.

That said, Wix is a better option than Shopify if you sell something other than physical products, such as courses, services or experiences. That’s because Wix has specialized features for a variety of industries, including ticket sales, online food ordering, hotel room reservation and management, and online course/class bookings and reservations management.

It’s possible to use Shopify for these kinds of businesses too, but doing so will require integrating third-party apps into your Shopify website (luckily, Shopify has a massive app store), since it doesn’t have as many niche built-in sales features as Wix.

Which is better for combining in-person and online sales?

Shopify is a better option than Wix if you’re a business that sells both online and in-person and is looking for a unified platform to manage cross-channel sales.

While both providers now offer a POS system, Wix’s is quite new and not quite as refined as Shopify’s POS system, which has been around for several years and has gradually been perfected. For example, in Shopify’s backend you can assign products to specific sales channels, so for example, an item can be available online or in-store only, or both.

Shopify offers a fully-fledged POS software platform that can be managed from the same backend you use to manage your ecommerce site. It also sells a range of POS hardware options much cheaper than Wix – Shopify’s most expensive POS countertop register kit costs $999 while Wix’s cheapest kit costs $1,199.

Wix vs Shopify: Which Has Better Tools For Designing a Website?

Winner: Wix

Wix has a slight edge over Shopify in terms of website design features, making it easier to create an attractive and unique-looking website with Wix. That said, the difference is minimal, and both ecommerce platforms offer good creative tools.

Templates: Wix has a wider variety than Shopify

Wix has more prebuilt templates than Shopify. In fact, Wix has the most template designs of any website builder we’ve tested, with over 900 templates to choose from, spanning a very wide range of topics.

Shopify is, however, a close second, with over 800 templates. That said, most are highly focused on online retail, whereas Wix has templates for anything, from real estate agents to medical clinics, making it easy for businesses to find the right fit.

Of course, quantity doesn’t equal quality, but in the case of Wix and Shopify, we found that they are evenly matched for quality. Both ecommerce platforms offer templates that are modern-looking, attractive and generally well-organized.

However, neither is on the level of Squarespace, which offers the most aesthetically pleasing template designs. You can read more about them in our Squarespace review.

Design customization: Shopify allows for slightly more flexibility

Shopify allows for slightly more flexibility than Wix when it comes to design changes, since with Shopify, users can completely change their templates even after publishing their website. With Wix, this is only possible before publishing, which makes rebranding harder for businesses.

That said, since both Wix and Shopify allow users to fully edit and customize their website layout, moving elements and changing color palettes as they wish. It’s still possible to change the design of your Wix website post-publishing it, the process will just be more time-consuming.

We also found Wix’s editor easier to use than Shopify’s during our testing, and Wix has more built-in tools for image editing than Shopify does. With Wix, you can easily remove backgrounds or objects from images, whereas with Shopify you’re limited to basic changes, such as resizing and cropping.

AI tools: Wix has more AI features than Shopify

Wix has more AI features than Shopify, most of which are aimed at making the process of designing a website easier and quicker.

Both providers now offer an AI website builder. However, Wix’s has been around a few years longer than Shopify’s, and this has given Wix time to perfect the prompt process. This means that Wix’s AI website builder often produces more unique and relevant results than Shopify’s.

Unlike Shopify, Wix also has an AI image generator and editor. However, while we liked the use of AI for image editing, since it made more advanced edits, such as object removal, easy, we don’t recommend using AI-generated images, especially if you sell physical products. Doing so could make you seem untrustworthy to customers.

Wix vs Shopify: Which Has Better Marketing Tools?

Winner: Wix

Wix offers better marketing tools than Shopify, since it has more built-in tools for email and social media marketing, whereas Shopify relies on add-on apps for the most part.

Email marketing: Wix offers a built-in tool, while Shopify offers an app

Wix offers better email marketing features than Shopify, since its email marketing tools are built into the Wix platform by default, whereas Shopify requires users to integrate an additional app, Shopify Email.

With the Shopify Email app, both Wix and Shopify offer similar email marketing tools, including a library of pre-built templates, campaign scheduling and automated sends.

However, Wix also offers AI-powered email campaign creation, while Shopify doesn’t. With Wix, businesses can use AI to craft copy and design a template layout for email marketing campaigns, speeding up work.

Social media marketing: Wix offers built-in tools, while Shopify offers app integration

Wix offers better social media marketing tools, since it has built-in social media marketing content creation and campaign scheduling features. Shopify doesn’t, but it offers integrations with apps that can do the job, such as Outfy, for social media campaign scheduling, and Canva, for content creation and editing.

Like for email marketing, Wix offers AI tools to help with social media content creation. Businesses can use AI to help them design social posts and copy, and Wix also offers an AI logo maker for easy brand design.

Wix vs Shopify: Which Is Easiest to Use?

Winner: Wix

We found Wix easier to use than Shopify during our testing.

In general, the layout of Wix’s backend was easier to navigate than Shopify’s, with tabs more clearly labelled, making finding features a breeze. Shopify’s backend was by no means cluttered, but features were often hidden in subtabs, and tab grouping wasn’t intuitive.

Additionally, we found Wix’s editor easier to use than Shopify’s. Different edit actions were much more clearly labelled in Wix’s editor compared to Shopify’s, with most core functions laid out in the sidebar menu. We had to do a little more digging to find edit actions in Shopify’s editor.

Wix’s editor has gone through cycles of being easy and difficult to use, but the editor’s latest iteration is one of the most user-friendly ones.

However, if you’re a total beginner or bad with tech, there are even easier website builders to use. We rated Hostinger and Squarespace as the most user-friendly platforms in our latest round of testing.

Wix vs Shopify: Which Offers the Best Customer Support?

Winner: Shopify

Shopify offers better customer support than Wix, although both providers offer a good level of support resources and channels.

What gives Shopify an edge over Wix is the fact that it offers an email support channel on top of phone and live chat, while Wix only offers phone and live chat support.

Additionally, Shopify offers more self-help mediums than Wix, with its gamut of guides including podcasts, on top of video tutorials and online courses. That said, both providers have comprehensive knowledge centers where users can find a variety of up-to-date guides.

Both ecommerce platforms also make a network of website-building experts available to customers. This includes specialists on topics such as SEO, marketing, web design and even branding.

How We Compared Wix and Shopify