As an eCommerce website owner, you will be doing a lot of research, development, and decision-making before you can finally put your finger on the changes or updates you want to make to your website. An e-commerce website could be anything from an online shoe store to a website that allows users to purchase second-hand cars online. When it comes to creating an e-commerce website, there are two giants in the industry right now. The first one is Shopify, and the second is Wix. On the other hand, finding the website for the creation of e-commerce is also a big task. But we are here to help you out with it.
Today, we are going to find out which of these website creators will be best for your eCommerce website and how. In addition to this, we also discuss how these two are different in their work and provide website owners with various features and tools that they can use in their website creation.
Shopify Vs. Wix: Which Is Better?
We will compare Shopify and Wix based on their main features and functionality. Wix, as we know, is more of a website builder that is used for creating websites that range from a personal blog to a multinational e-commerce store. At the same time, if we look at Shopify, we can see that it is explicitly developed to help people get their business online using its eCommerce builder. Everything you see on Shopify speaks of eCommerce.
Given below, we have discussed both of these website builders’ pros and cons. Along with this, you will see their main features and what they do to ease the development of eCommerce websites.
Shopify
Shopify has been a staple of being the best eCommerce website builder of all time. For many, it is the best option for developing eCommerce applications that come with a fully responsive template and AMP support on their product pages, along with other features such as multiple payment options, dropshipping, etc. Shopify allows website owners to integrate a number of different apps into their website to make it work in harmony with other applications where targeted traffic is present. This makes it, overall, a more professional choice for anyone who is looking to build an online store for their business.
Wix
Wix, on the other hand, makes things easier for you with its drag-and-drop interface. It has a massive library of bundled templates. Thus, it is an excellent choice for those business owners who want to create an e-commerce website without getting into the technical aspects of building one. There is also a page layout tool, data capturing, and an email marketing tool, among other prominent features that make building and managing a website on Wix more accessible to non-technical users.
In a lot of ways, you can cut the expense of building a website using Wix. One of the most obvious ways to save money by using Wix as an eCommerce builder is to avoid paying transaction fees on each sale made through the website.
1. Functionality
Shopify
Shopify is considered to be a dedicated heavyweight when it comes to building eCommerce sites online. Right now, there are more than 600,000 businesses using Shopify to get their costumes online and make sales using their services. Both Wix and Shopify come with quality basic features, but when it comes to selling products online, Shopify, without a doubt, is the clear leader that has one of the best store management features along with super clean product pages for users to go through quickly. The core functionality of Shopify is to allow users to sell their products online.
Wix
Wix has the best drag-and-drop feature for creating websites. It makes website creation accessible to everyone. There are also easy-to-use builders that will help you launch the website in no time. Wix’s core concept is to help people build excellent websites.
Winner – With Shopify, without a doubt, you are getting more features that are specifically designed to make your e-commerce stand out in the sea of other online shopping websites.
2. Ease Of Use
Shopify
Shopify never said it was easy to use, even though it is the best solution for e-commerce builders. Still, if you are talking about the creation of a website, then the whole experience is so well designed that everything can be done in just a few clicks. The website can go live in just a few minutes of work. Apart from that, when you set up everything on Shopify, you are going to spend a couple of hours configuring things according to your requirements.
Wix
Wix claims to be at the top of the list when it comes to providing users with ease of use. One point here in favor of Wix is that it is super easy to create a website and online stores with the number of tutorials and step-by-step guides that are well documented for its use.
You can add the eCommerce module to your website with a simple drag and drop. This is something quite intuitive. On the other hand, if you are looking to create an online store in a short time, then you can go with Wix ADI. It will use Artificial Intelligence (AI) in order to develop a ready-made template for your site in mere seconds.
Winner – Wix is the clear winner in ease of use; that’s because Wix’s drag and drop feature allows users to make websites with less to worry about.
3. Choice of Themes & Flexibility
1. Shopify
Shopify creates eCommerce websites with 60+ themes. Each one of them is modern, sleek, and responsive. They are explicitly designed to work on desktops and mobile phones. If you want to customize them and give them your personal touch, you can do that too. The live editor that you get with Shopify is able to provide you with excellent results.
On the other hand, if you have knowledge of CSS and HTML, you get to tweak those themes to your heart’s content and make them as customized as possible. The only problem that we have here is that you need to pay a one-time fee in order to use most of the themes. That is because only a few of them are available to you completely free. If you want your website to be responsive, Shopify is the way to go.
2. Wix
Wix also provides users with 60 free eCommerce templates to use, and they totally compete against the themes that are present in Shopify. We like how each of the themes is presented in the form of a catalogue for users to go through before applying. But the thing that everyone needs to know is that themes present on Wix are not always responsive. And when you are creating an e-commerce website, you need to make sure that your website is as responsive as it can be.
Also, due to themes’ non-responsiveness, you need to rearrange some elements manually. so they can be displayed on a smartphone in a certain way. The Wix Editor X is trying hard to solve this problem, but till now it’s not been able to achieve any significant results. You do get tonnes of customization via code, such as HTML and CSS. Still, you are not getting the complete freedom of Shopify with the use of programming.
Winner – Shopify, by all means, designs themes that work perfectly with the nature of websites that are to be used as eCommerce or online stores. You get to customize the look and feel of your store. Wix can’t be trusted with responsiveness, especially in the case of product pages.
4. Pricing
Shopify
Shopify has its own method of showing users that it provides free service. You will get a two-week trial period, and it can be extended on request as well if you want to be sure before making a purchase from Shopify’s paid plans. The structure of pricing is a bit similar to that of Wix. There are a total of five Shopify pricing plans to choose from. The name and the features are broadly consistent across the globe. Given below is the list of Shopify pricing.
- Shopify basic plan – $29 a month
- Shopify business plan – $79 a month
- Shopify advanced plan – $299 a month
All of these plans are billed with a billing cycle of 30 days.
Wix
Wix has an extensive planning chart, and they are divided into three different categories. If you look around the globe, the pricing is somewhat similar, but the names are changed up. So it is better that you don’t get confused.
The website plans range from $9 to $500+ on a monthly basis; the main focus here is to allow users to build a general website. The combination of business and eCommerce is the one you have to aim for as it brings all the eCommerce functionality to the mix. This allows you to create a website that can be used to sell products online. The full range of Wix plans is written down below:
- Connect domain – $1.03 a month.
- Combo – $18 a month.
- Unlimited – $23 a month.
- VIP – $56 a month
Business Plans
- Business basic – $28 a month
- Business unlimited – $33 a month.
- Business VIP – $56 a month.
- Business Enterprise – $500+ a month.
These plans might seem much more affordable than the ones you saw on Shopify. But these plans are built annually, and once you are paid the amount, you have to stick with the schedule for the rest of the year. The enterprise plan is specifically designed for corporate users, and before you dive into choosing any one of them, it is best to go through all of the features that you are getting.
Winner – The overall winner of this round is Wix, as it provides a much cheaper option to create an e-commerce website.
5. Presentation of Product
1. Shopify
Shopify has fewer features if you compare it with Wix. Still, it holds its ground when it comes to unique and captivating ways of showing your products. This will help you increase online sales. You get to add an unlimited number of items to your eCommerce store in real-time and also add up multiple variants of the same thing using the Shopify app too. For this, you first need to implement some extensions on your website to get the essential tools working properly. Apart from that, the rest of the product presentation is done very smoothly.
2. Wix
On the other hand, Wix has so many features that sometimes you get overwhelmed as to which one to use and why? But this website builder can also be used to make your product shine on the internet. You can even embed your video on the website to improve the customer experience and make things easier for them to find on your website. Wix also bought the new checkout customization options tool. You can use it to give a personal touch to each customer when they are making a payment for your product online.
Winner – Wix here takes the win due to a massive list of eCommerce-based features and ease of use in their implementation as well.
6. Payment Options
Shopify
A payment gateway is nothing but software that is used to accept payments from customers on your site. In some places around the globe, you might see that Shopify’s payment gateway doesn’t work. In that case, you can go with the third-party extensions to get payments from customers and make your sales online. Shopify has the edge over Wix due to the fact that it is able to integrate with 100 different types of payment options in comparison to Wix, which could only do 80. But here, you have to pay the fees for every transaction that you get from the customers. Shopify uses Shopify Payments, which is their self-developed method of making transactions.
Shopify charges different credit card rates on each of the payments when a customer on your site is using Shopify Payment methods. For Shopify Basic users, the charge is $2.9 + 30 cents per transaction. This fee will be reduced to $2.6 + 30 cents with the Shopify Plan. Lastly, for the Shopify Advanced Plan, you will be charged $2.4 + 30 cents for each transaction.
Apart from that, when you think about using some other option instead of Shopify Payments, Then you are looking at 2.0% to 0.5% of the transaction fee on each payment.
Wix
As we said, Wix has 80 different payment options for your customers to choose from, and still, it is, by all means, a considerable number. It has support from all the traditional payment solutions such as PayPal, Stripe, Square, and more. All of them come with advanced online encryption and follow the strict method of keeping the details of the customer’s private to the owner of the website.
Wix also provides website owners with a “Buy Now, Pay Later” solution. This gives customers of the website the financial freedom to pay in instalments without having to worry about their finances. This feature does not come with any additional integration costs. So it makes Wix stand out from the competition.
Winner-Here, we have to go with Wix, as it demands money on customer transactions, and you are also getting the “Buy now, pay later” method of payment, which is preferred by a lot of users online.
7. Dropshipping Support
Shopify
Dropshipping is regarded as an essential component of doing business online. There are thousands of e-merchants that choose to work in this form of business because of the potential to make vast amounts of profit via warehouses, capital, and fulfillment. Shopify and Wix both give website owners a kickstart on dropshipping stores, but Shopify’s drop shipping capabilities are a bit more furnished in any of the plans you choose from it. Shopify has its own drop shipping app known as Oberlo, so you don’t have to use any third-party applications to get the job done.
Wix
To use the drop-shipping capabilities of Wix, you need to upgrade your plan to Business Unlimited or Business VIP. There is no inbuilt application that does the work of dropshipping. As a result, you have to find a third-party app that works flawlessly with Wix and makes it possible for you to start the dropshipping process. With the Business Unlimited plan of Wix, you will only be able to use dropshipping for 250 products.
After that, you have to wait for the monthly cycle to complete to restart the dropshipping of your products. As a result, if you are thinking about going dropshipping, it is best to choose Business VIP, as it allows business owners to use dropshipping for as many products as they want from their inventory.
Winner: Shopify is the clear winner here with its very own dropshipping app and is asking for no extra cost or upgrade from users to use dropshipping for their eCommerce websites.
8. Mobile Apps
Shopify
You can not take your laptop everywhere you want; for that, you have a smartphone. A smartphone in today’s world can help you track down your analytics, process orders, edit pages, monitor your e-store, and what not. Shopify’s mobile gives you all the power you want to control your online store. But Shopify has an old-school app look that sometimes feels laggy or takes one or two seconds to take you to the desired page. Still, it gets the job done, and you can control your entire inventory, theme, backend, and editing from this application.
Wix
Wix, on the other hand, has the most intuitive features that you can find in an app. Here you get all the different tools and features to edit your website as you want. Some of the features that are explicitly related to eCommerce might be missing. But apart from that, you are getting the whole package on your smartphone. The app is pretty responsive, and you can easily edit the layouts of your website using the Wix mobile app.
Winner: There is no doubt Wix is the clear winner here. Shopify, too, has tonnes of features, but where the app lacks is speed and response. When you are on the go, you need apps to be as fast as possible, and that is something Shopify needs to work on as of now.
9. Point-of-sale (PoS) Functionality
Shopify
POS is the method that allows you to sell your products in the real world. That means products can be sold in shops, stalls, malls, concerts, and so on. Shopify has its own built-in POS tool that lets owners manage their inventory, payment methods, invoicing, and more. All of this can be done using Shopify’s PoS. But for the more advanced features, you need to turn to third-party extensions. On the other hand, to truly implement the PoS of Shopify, you need to go with its PoS Pro plan, which costs $89 a month for individual locations. The inbuilt tool is excellent for simple needs; for anything more than that, you will have to use the pro version or use a third-party PoS that can integrate with your Shopify website.
Wix
Wix, on the other hand, does offer its own PoS system, and you don’t need to think about how much you need to pay to access its functionality. You only need to pay for the hardware; keep in mind that only Wix-approved hardware will work with its PoS software. But once you get it, you can run it with ease at no additional software cost. Wix is new in the field of PoS, but it is working its way up to hold a better chunk of the market. In truth, with Wix, you are able to achieve the PoS features at a much more affordable cost.
Winner: Wix wins this tie because it doesn’t charge any extra money to use its PoS tool. Still, Wix’s PoS can only be used to get the primary job done; anything apart from that, and you will have to go with Shopify’s PoS tool.
10. SEO & Marketing
Shopify
An eCommerce website needs to have effective SEO, and Shopify does that in quite a good way. This will help your website rank higher. Some of the SEO points are taken care of automatically, such as your pages will have auto-generated canonical tags. So there will be no duplicate content on the website.
The themes you will be using for the website come with social media linking and sharing options that allow you to market the products that are present in your store easily. Shopify relies on third parties for its marketing solutions, and this indeed gives users the versatility to pick their choice of software or tool for managing the marketing campaigns.
But there are specific URLs that come with the mandatory strings that you need to include, and they are not as SEO-friendly as the other URLs presented on Shopify. For example, if we look at the URL of a product web page, then we can see its URL present in the form “/products/.” On the other hand, the Robots.txt file and the Sitemap are not available for the user to change or make modifications to. This makes using Shopify from a digital marketer’s perspective a little bit frustrating. Still, it has a massive app store that comes with endless SEO tools to help you gain more traffic online.
Wix
Wix certainly has the edge over Shopify here, as it provides all-in-one marketing solutions to the owners of the website. You can manage all your marketing campaigns in one place. Wix has high-quality email marketing, and you can even start sending the emails in no time by choosing any one of the templates from the Wix repository. Or Wix can help you create your own email marketing campaign from scratch and send it to your customers.
Wix has one of the best SEO tools built into every website that is created using Wix. After years of adjusting SEO features, Wix can now effectively optimize your SEO workflow. All the sites created on the Wix platform are backed by a solid infrastructure that meets all the requirements for scoring high in search engines. This gives users a strong SEO foundation to compete within the organic search results. Likewise, merchants have a lot more freedom and flexibility when it comes to customizing their meta tags, URL slugs, canonical tags, and more.
Winner: Wix is the winner of SEO and marketing tools as it gives a lot of freedom to the website owners and gives them an all-in-one place to run their website’s marketing campaigns.
Final Verdict
So, based on the above comparison, we can easily see the number of times Wix emerged victorious from a tie, and even we were surprised to see Wix defeat Shopify 7-3. Apart from the jokes, Wix is the most up-to-date eCommerce website builder, and Shopify has some catching up to do if it wants to retake its throne. We hope that this post will help you in your search for the best eCommerce builder for your needs. If you notice something missing, please let us know in the comments section. Until then, good luck with your studies!