Wix vs Shopify: Which Is Best for Ecommerce?

Let’s compare Shopify and Wix’s basic ecommerce plans.

• $5/month (Starter): Under this plan, you can sell on social media, messages, and other websites. You also get a single-page standalone store. Read how I evaluated this plan in my Shopify Starter review.
• $39/month (Basic): You get all the main ecommerce features you need but have limited access to reports; online transactions are charged at 2.9% + 30 cents.
• $105/month (Shopify): This plan has stronger in-depth reports (such as first-time vs returning customer sales), USPS cubic pricing, and a discounted transaction fee of 2.6% + 30 cents.
• $399/month (Advanced Shopify): Build custom reports and show third-party calculated shipping rates at checkout; online transactions are further discounted to 2.4% + 30 cents.
• Starts at $2,000 (Shopify Plus): This plan is for large enterprises and includes lower transaction fees, a dedicated account manager, full customization access to site coding, and more. Learn how it stacks up with the basic Shopify tiers in my Shopify vs Shopify Plus review.

Shopify doesn’t offer a free plan but is very generous with its free trial. You can sign up and try the platform for free for three days and extend it for $1 for a month. In my experience, this is more than enough time to learn how to operate your Shopify backend and familiarize yourself with the tools. You can spend time building your store so that you can start selling right away when you upgrade to a paid plan.

To know more about the costs of operating a Shopify store, read our comprehensive guide to Shopify pricing. It also includes a calculator to help you determine your monthly Shopify fees.

• $29/month (Core): 5 collaborators, 50 GB storage space, 50,000 products, 10 lead-capture forms, abandoned cart saver, up to 25 products for dropshipping, 2 locations, mobile app
• $36/month (Business): 10 collaborators, 100 GB storage space, 50,000 products, 25 lead-capture forms, abandoned cart saver, up to 250 products for dropshipping, 5 locations, mobile app, automated sales tax on 100 transactions a month, multiple currencies (+5)
• $159/month (Business Elite): 15 collaborators, unlimited GB storage space, 50,000 products, 75 lead-capture forms, abandoned cart saver, up to 50,000 products for dropshipping, 10 locations, mobile app, automated sales tax on 500 transactions a month, multiple currencies (+10)

Wix has a free plan, but you will not be able to accept payments unless you upgrade to a paid ecommerce plan. You can sign up for a forever-free plan to test its site builder or sign up for a 14-day free trial to test its ecommerce platform.

When it comes to payment processing, both platforms offer built-in payment processors and third-party providers. However, Shopify has added transaction fees when you go with a different provider. Wix doesn’t charge any transaction fees for using a third-party processor.

What gives Shopify’s built-in payment processor, Shopify Payments, an edge over Wix’s built-in processor, Wix Payments, is the ability to display and charge customers in different currencies. You only get multi-currency support on the second tier ($36/month), and it’s only limited to your main currency plus five more.

Shopify also offers Shop Pay, a one-click checkout option that also offers customers an app for tracking all Shopify orders in one place.

When comparing Wix and Shopify in terms of website templates, Wix provides all of its templates for free, while Shopify offers more than ten free themes and the rest as paid themes starting at $100.

Shopify’s website builder, Online Store 2.0 (OS 2.0), offers customization options such as sections and blocks that provide modularity and flexibility. Meanwhile, Wix has a drag-and-drop editing tool called Wix Editor. When testing it out, we found that Wix’s editor gives plenty of creative freedom in customization without feeling we needed to learn how to code. It can get overwhelming because of the variety of sections you can add.

The benefit of going with a more templated site builder like Shopify is that it is hard to mess it up since your options are limited to ones that still conform to the template’s design. However, if you have a design background or are familiar with website best practices, you may prefer the freedom that Wix offers.

Wix has an alternative version of its web builder, Wix ADI (short for Artificial Design Intelligence), which we find better suited for beginners. If you just need a template with fewer sections, Wix provides a unique alternative to develop your template using Wix ADI.

Note, though, that there is a limitation with Wix’s templates. You cannot switch templates midway and carry over any content you have previously done with the current template—you would need to start from scratch. We learned this the hard way when we were testing the Wix Editor.

Shopify is a clear winner in this category because of the sheer volume of available apps in its App Store and the variety of ecommerce integrations. We have often said this—if there is a feature you would like to add to your Shopify store, it is a guarantee that you can find an app for it in the Shopify App Store.

Wix can provide small businesses with app choices but comes nowhere near Shopify’s App Store. Some ecommerce features, such as global shipping payments, are only available if using the Ecwid app integration (another ecommerce platform). We also noticed that Wix’s apps are more industry-specific and related to restaurants, hotels, and event planning.

This is where Wix comes out as a runaway winner. While Shopify gives you the ability to edit meta titles, meta descriptions, and URL slugs, Wix takes it a mile further with keyword support, site analytics, and a full SEO dashboard from your account. In fact, it is the best website builder for SEO.

Wix’s blogging tools are also highly-rated and ranked first for best blogging platform. Wix provides a built-in AI content generator and plenty of options for content monetization.

Wix’s performance in this criteria comes as no surprise. Wix is a site builder first, so it excels with its SEO tools, blogging features, and site analytics.

Related: Ecommerce SEO in 6 Steps: The Ultimate Beginner’s Guide

Both platforms have been leaning into artificial intelligence (AI) recently, especially Shopify with its AI tools. It leans more into productivity with the goal of freeing up more time for merchants to focus on more important tasks. It provided an assistant to the small business owner called SideKick and a productivity tool kit called Shopify Magic, which leverages generative AI to produce product descriptions, website copy, and edit product photos.

Wix, meanwhile, leverages AI by providing an AI-powered site builder and AI writing assistant. Its fully-featured AI website builder actually tops our list of best AI website builders.

I have tested both and find them easy to use. They are only as good as your prompts, so making sure to feed the right information to these AI tools is crucial.

Both ecommerce solutions are fully-hosted platforms, so they offer free Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificates across all plans and are Payment Card Industry (PCI)-compliant. What gives Shopify an edge over Wix in this criterion is its strong fraud detection measures. Shopify has an internal fraud prevention and analysis tool called Shopify Protect, while Wix relies on a user’s chosen payment gateway.

Related: PCI Compliance for Small Business: What You Need To Know

Wix and Shopify extend your selling capabilities past your online storefront. Both provide integrations for social media and in-person selling (POS). However, Shopify has industry-leading partnerships with social channels like Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. Go with Shopify if you want the ability to offer in-app social media sales.

For in-person selling, Shopify has a free native POS app, Shopify POS, available on all ecommerce plans. Wix also has a built-in POS app, Wix POS, but it only supports certain business types and is currently available only in the US. POS retail hardware kits for Wix start at $995, while Shopify only costs $459. You can get a card reader for $49 with Shopify, compared to Wix’s $98.

Shopify lets you track stock, receive stock alerts, perform year-end inventory reporting, and more. Aside from having more inventory management integrations, Shopify wins in this category because of its fulfillment network for storing and fulfilling orders. You can even adjust inventory from the mobile app.

If you use Shopify, a complete setup with Shopify POS allows full product and order management visibility in an omnichannel setting—making Shopify our top pick for multichannel POS systems.

Wix just provides basic inventory management methods such as tracking inventory automatically (for sales) and manually assigning “in stock” or “out of stock” status for products. Other inventory features, such as low-stock alerts, must be enabled via an app.

Shopify provides real-time shipping quotes, shipping labels, and discounts on any plan if you use Shopify Shipping and its partner couriers. Otherwise, real-time shipping rates are only unlocked in the $299 Advanced Shopify plan.

Wix allows you to set up shipping rates for your online store, but you need an app, such as ShipStation, to help with global shipments. Wix also doesn’t provide shipping labels and discounts.

Both platforms provide robust marketing tools. In fact, Wix is the only platform aside from Shopify that offers this marketing feature even on its basic ecommerce plan.

Both platforms also offer native email marketing features. Shopify Email, which is also available on all Shopify plans, lets you send 10,000 emails per month. If you exceed the monthly limit, you pay $1 for every 1,000 emails afterward. Email templates and a scheduled delivery feature are provided, but advanced email marketing features like automation and customer behavior segmentation aren’t.

Wix Email Marketing has a free plan that lets you send 200 marketing and automated emails per month. You can upgrade to a paid tier starting at $10 per month (Essentials) to send 500 emails. Its higher plans, Core ($24 per month) and Advanced ($49 per month), let you send 5,000 and 10,000 monthly emails, respectively.

Shopify’s platform is one of the most user-friendly platforms we have encountered. Its dashboard is easy to navigate, and its features are very intuitive. You don’t need to watch tutorials extensively to know what to do. However, if you have trouble with Shopify’s features, its help center has many guides and videos to show you exactly how things are done.

Building an online store with Wix should be simple but can be overwhelming for tech newbies or those that have no idea about website design. When we tried setting up our demo store, we were overwhelmed with the number of creative decisions we needed to make every step of the way, so it took us a while to come up with a good storefront design.

However, we found it interesting that Wix also provides an option to build the site using artificial intelligence (AI) with its tool Wix ADI. It can produce a ready-made template in seconds.

Shopify’s dashboard is intuitive and easy to navigate. You can manage and fulfill orders easily by printing packing slips or updating inventory. There is a clear distinction between your store’s front end and back end. Most of its navigation panel includes links to ecommerce features.

With Wix, you get a store page already included in every online store template you choose. To add products, you need to click on the store icon to access them. If you want to edit them or create collections (categories), the same thing goes.

When we tested Wix out, we found it slightly confusing when adding products and creating categories compared to Shopify. We found Shopify’s structure easier to navigate for ecommerce features.

Shopify’s help page provides extensive step-by-step guides and tries to resolve your problem before handing you over to support staff. One of Shopify’s most significant advantages is having a highly rated 24/7 support team to assist with your concerns. Shopify’s support team has consistently glowing reviews on third-party review sites as being very professional and competent.

All Wix paid subscribers get 24/7 phone support via callback and live chat support for extended hours, 2:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m., EST. Still, only the highest tier plan subscribers get a priority support channel they can reach by phone, and priority tickets automatically bump up the backlog. Suppose you aren’t part of that tier and have difficulty getting through their customer support. In that case, you can directly contact Wix through their social media channels, such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, as they’re usually quite responsive, especially on Facebook.