Wix and Shopify were put up only two years apart. Wix was founded in 2006 while Shopify was built in 2004. Both offer a way to create a website, and many people now have to make a choice.
Is Wix better than Shopify, or is it the other way around?
Here, we will review the features and benefits of both platforms, and then help you decide which one is the best choice for you what you need.
Online Store
Shopify was built to do this. While Wix offers a similar service, the strength of Wix lies on website building, which is primarily focused on bloggers and brand personalities.
Shopify is meant for people who want an all-in-one platform where they can create an online store, upload products, create discounts and promotion, charge payments, and so much more.
The Basic Shopify plan can be purchased at $29 per month. Wix, however, charges $17 per month.
Fees and Plans
Shopify charges a fee of 2% for every transaction made, provided that you use Shopify as your payment processor. Wix does not charge any fee.
If you look at the different plans, you can also see differences in the features that you get.
Here are the highlights of the differences between the basic plans:
Storage – there is no limit in Shopify, but Wix has a 20GB storage.
- Fee – Wix does not charge a commission or sales fee, but Shopify charges at least 2%.
- Staff Account – you can have up to two staff accounts in Shopify but only one admin in Wix.
- Free – no free trial in Wix but it offers a money-back guarantee in 14 days. In Shopify, you can experiment on the platform for free for 14 days.
- Shipping – no discounted rates from shipping companies if you use Wix. In Shopify, you can enjoy up to 64% discount from DHL Express, USPS, UPS and others.
- Email campaign – Wix allows you to create up to ten email campaigns. Shopify does not have this feature. If you want to create an email campaign on Shopify, you need to add an app that does this, such as MailChimp or GetResponse.
If you will notice, Wix is still leaning towards website building and not an online business store.
Payment Processors
Shopify works with at least 100 payment processors globally. This includes credit card payment processors. With Shopify, you can choose from so many third-party payment gateways like PayPal, Skrill, 2Checkout, and others.
Wix, however, only has 17.
Wix accepts credit cards, PayPal, and manual payments. The manual payment, however, only works if you get the premium plans.
With only 17 payment processors, there is little that a business person can do with Wix. The issue here is that PayPal may be operating in the UK and US and some countries, but it does not mean people from all countries can use it.
With Shopify, there are hundreds of payment processors, and you can surely pick at least one that services your country.
Themes and Templates
All the themes found in Shopify are for online stores only. What this means is that they all require that you put a product in there. In Shopify, you can find themes for stores that only have one product, a few products, or thousands of them.
Shopify themes can be edited in two ways. You can do it by checking and unchecking boxes in the settings or preferences areas, or tinker with the code of the theme if you know how to do computer programming.
With Wix, you can do pretty much the same things, and you can also start from a blank slate. The thing is that Wix does not have as many themes as Shopify does, but it has more categories for themes depending on your store’s niche.
For example, you can choose themes in Wix that have something to do with Arts & Crafts, Food, Fashion, Books, Pets, and others.
On Shopify, the themes are shown not by category, but by style.
Most Shopify templates are free, but the premium ones will cost you hundreds of dollars. Wix offers free themes, as they focus mainly on charging you with the internet or website service itself, like bandwidth and domain names.
Apps Market
Shopify has thousands of cool apps in the Shopify App Market. While some are free, there are many that charge a monthly subscription. The same thing applies to Wix.
Since Shopify is an online store platform, the majority of the apps that you can find here are all developed to help make a sale, process a sale, or improve sales.
With Shopify, you can find apps where customers can spin a wheel to win a prize or apps that will help you create tabs in your store.
In addition to this, Shopify has a lot of support from other marketplaces to make your store management easy. For example, you can find apps like Oberlo and AliExpress in Shopify, both of which will make it easy for you to search for winning products that you can sell online.
Wix, however, has apps that are mostly useful to make your website beautiful and engaging.
For example, Wix offers apps that will boost your site’s search engine performance or apps that allow you to create forms that your customers will fill out.
Most apps in Shopify help you attract customers, or reach out to them, or post banners and create discount coupons.
Blogging Features
A blog is important for every business. This is where you put your helpful tips so customers can read them. This is also how you manage your efforts about Search Engine Optimization.
Both Wix and Shopify have blog features, but Wix has a better design. With Wix, it has a real drag and drop feature where you just drag photos and arrange them according to your tastes.
With Shopify, you can only click on some options to reduce their sizes or place them on the size or middle of the page.
With both Wix and Shopify, you can add tags, edit the fonts, add links, and change blog URLs to make them more SEO friendly.
With Wix, you can create blogs and grow your audience faster. Your readers can start a conversation, add hashtags, and grow your community.
Analytics Features
Business analytics is important for every business person. If you know your numbers, you can make the right decisions.
Both Shopify and Wix have this feature.
With Shopify, you can view the following on different timelines:
- Total sales
- Online store sessions
- Returning customer rate
- Online store conversion rate
- Average order value
- Live number people on your site
- Behavior reports
- Top selling products
With Shopify, you can also build custom reports, so you only see what is important to you.
In Wix, the focus of the analytics is to show you how your pages are performing in terms of traffic. Here, you can view:
- Top visited pages
- Counties where your traffic is coming from
- New visitor versus returning visitor
- Visitor by device type
There are other types of data that Wix can provide you. However, if you need a better analytics tool, you need to buy it from the Wix app store.
If you are an expert in this area, you can use Facebook Pixel and Google Analytics on both Shopify and Wix.
Secure Socket Layer
This is also known as SSL. It is a security feature where all the things that happen in your website are encrypted so your information, and your customer data, are all protected. Both Shopify and Wix have it, and they are already included in any plan that you buy.
Search Engine Optimization
Both platforms have great Search Engine Optimization processes. For every page, blog, or product that you post, you can edit the snippet, meta title, and meta tags.
This is important, so Google will index our site and pages properly, and so customers will find your store if they search for a specific keyword.
Wix, however, has an advanced SEO feature, which includes canonical URLs, SEO patterns, 301 redirects, rich results, and many more.
Support and Knowledgebase
Both Wix and Shopify offer different types of support systems, and both of them has a huge library of training materials that you can either read or watch.
For customer support, Shopify offers live chat 24/7, plus phone and email support. Wix, however, only offers phone support.
Both platforms have forums where you can get advice from other users, and blog pages where you can learn how to build your site and grow your business.
Dropshipping
Shopify is a hub for dropshippers and apps that have something to do with dropshipping. Wix is not. In Wix, you need to upload your own products.
With Shopify, you have the support of so many dropshipping platforms like Chinabrands, AliExpress, Oberlo, and so much more.
If you have your own product, this should not be an issue. But if you are sourcing from China or other countries, you may have a difficult time copying and pasting product details in Wix.
In Shopify, it is automated. Your product prices are even going to change automatically if the price from your source also changes.
Site Performance
Many reviews indicate that Shopify performs significantly faster than Wix. Tests show that Shopify has a performance rating of 92% with a loading time of only up to four seconds.
The issue with Wix is that its performance rating is only at 65%. The load time can take up to nine seconds, which is really longer than what is desirable.
How does this affect your business? Slow response times and slow loading times can make customers go away. If a customer clicks on a product and it takes a long time to load, he will exit the site and not come back.
Summary
Clearly, each platform has its own pros and cons. In summary, Shopify is best used by people who are serious in growing an online store, especially those who are in the dropshipping niche.
Wix, however, is best used by bloggers and influencers who want to sell a bit of stuff here and there. It is also a great choice for small business owners like local stores selling products to local customers only.