You are new to e-commerce and you do not know what to choose between Shopify and Wix for your online store? It’s completely normal not to know what to choose, as these two different platforms stand out from the crowd for their features and ease of use. Wix or Shopify? What suits me best, ask many beginners in e-commerce. In this article, you will have a better idea, because we will analyze the advantages and disadvantages of each of them. Thus, by knowing the specific characteristics, the positive and negative points of each of them, you can easily choose what is the best option for you.
Wix or Shopify: General
First of all before starting a comparison between Shopify vs Wix, it is important to understand the context of each.
Wix
Wix is a platform for creating websites. It is really easy to use by beginners and has great tools for an online business. In addition, it should be noted that it has millions of users around the world. With Wix, the process of creating websites becomes smooth, simple and fast. It is a creative tool that allows you to create a personal blog for a portfolio website or even an online store.
Shopify
Shopify is an online ecommerce platform that allows you to create and manage an online store to sell products. He takes care of several components; from marketing and payments to secure payment and shipping. This way, you can focus on other, more important tasks. Based on a proprietary model, Shopify really offers individuals and businesses alike the ability to manage their online business.
Shopify – Wix
It must be said that in terms of e-commerce, Wix offers features suitable for beginners who run small online shops with less than 100 products, although it specializes in creating websites. On the other hand, Shopify is suitable for much larger stores, as it is designed to easily manage thousands of items with an online store. It has always been a tool designed for the creation of online shops.
However, over time, Wix has added new features. This is where his e-commerce projects come in. Generally, all of Wix’s ecommerce plans offer you unlimited staff accounts, bandwidth, and full functionality. By the way, already with $23/month you can get Wix’s Business Basic plan while the Shopify Basic plan is $26/month. The main limitation with Wix is storage. However, you can still get 20 GB of storage with the Business Basic premium plan. You can always increase the storage by upgrading to one of the more expensive Premium plans. Most of the time, the Business Basic plan is suitable for the majority of users.
The equivalent plan to this Wix ecommerce plan at shopify is Shopify Basic. It is affordable and allows unlimited sales of both physical and digital products.
However, you don’t get some advanced features like advanced and professional reporting, support for gift cards, real-time package tracking. These features are only available with Shopify and Advanced Shopify plans. Wix trumps Shopify in this case.
Wix or Shopify: Basic Features
Before we make an in-depth comparison of Shopify vs Wix 2020, taking into account things like ease of use, payment options, let’s first look at the main features. On the Internet, it is not uncommon to find that there is some erroneous information when it comes to features. One of them is the cart abandonment feature. In case you didn’t know, this feature allows you to automatically send abandoned cart emails to those who have left unpurchased items in their cart. It reminds them to make the purchase. This is, of course, a great way to increase your sales. Contrary to some information that circulates through videos, Wix offers the “Abandoned Carts” feature just like Shopify.
The same applies to the other functions of electronic commerce. With Wix and Shopify, you can create product variants, enable user feedback, and dropship. However, Shopify gives you more options when it comes to dropshipping. Wix just like Shopify allows you to manage taxes, although setting up is a bit tedious with Wix. Both platforms offer a decent SEO option, even if it slightly changes the structure of your URL. Also, SSL certificates and verification of one’s own domains are available on both. The only thing that is impossible to do with Wix is to create a multilingual online store worthy of the name and that is also easy to reference. With Shopify, there are palliatives, but they are for the moment either a little complex or very expensive.
Shopify vs Wix e-commerce: Other Features
Here are some other things to consider if you’re hesitating between Shopify vs Wix store.
Ease of use
Wix and Shopify are both easy to use. However, in terms of ease of use for beginners, it’s up to Shopify to take the place from Wix. Wix’s interface is so intuitive that you will hardly need any help using it. Receiving help through the tutorials is a great thing. While Shopify seems to be the best solution for Shopify online stores, getting started with this isn’t an easy task. It is true that when it comes to the user experience, everything is so well designed that in a few clicks you can already create your first store. This is done in just a few minutes.
Adding products and variants is a pleasure. They offer tutorials and instructions that are very useful if you are a total beginner, especially if you want to create a Shopify store. It may take you at least a few hours to set everything up correctly. However, even if everything always ends up going well, you’ll prefer Wix to do so.
In fact, Wix itself recognizes and insists that it is very easy to use, especially when it comes to creating websites and online stores. This is verified. In reality, we can say that Wix is one of the easiest website builders to use. They offer a great user experience and the instructions they give are quite easy to understand and follow. It offers a decent drag-and-drop editor, easy and simple when you want to create a website. This is not the case when he does the creation of online stores. So we remember that in terms of use, Wix is relatively easier to use for a beginner than Shopify.
Payment Options
Wix or Shopify offers several payment options. First of all, it should be noted that both offer PayPal and credit card payments. However, at Shopify, you won’t pay a transaction fee if you go through Shopify payments, but you’ll need to plan for transaction fees for the hundreds of other payment gateways they offer. As for Wix, they accept credit card payments via Wix Payments, PayPal, Stripe, Moolah, Square, and this without transaction fees. Apple and Google Pay are also other payment gateways available on Shopify, but not on Wix. Best of all, Shopify allows you to pay in multiple currencies.
On the other hand, Wix and Shopify offer offline payments, but only Shopify offers sales channels such as Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, Amazon, or Etsy (via an external app). While Wix only offers Instagram and Facebook. When it comes to POS, Shopify offers it via Shopify POS, and Wix via Square.
To summarize this section, we will say that Shopify offers several payment methods, unlike Wix which offers very few. This means you can sell anywhere with Shopify. Be aware that if you don’t live in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, Ireland, Denmark, Italy, Spain, Germany, New Zealand, or Singapore, you won’t be able to use Shopify Payments. This means that you will have to pay a transaction fee.
Themes and Templates
Shopify only focuses on e-merchants, it is a platform dedicated to the creation of online stores. Wix, on the other hand, is a general tool that also allows you to create e-commerce sites. This is possible thanks to its e-commerce or VIP offer. Since Shopify only targets individuals or ecommerce businesses, the themes are all designed with this in mind to meet your needs. Shopify’s themes are also very flexible when it comes to customizing them. It also offers more than 60 designed by professional designers who ensure that these models are up to date. However, not all Shopify themes are free. Some paid models could cost you between $140 and $180.
On the other hand, Wix offers more than 500 templates also designed by professionals. However, there are only a few templates for ecommerce purposes, as mainly Wix isn’t created just for online stores. Unlike Shopify, all Wix themes are free. Wix doesn’t offer premium themes; which remains an interesting point. On the other hand, Shopify has an advantage over Wix. You can switch themes easily without having to start all over again, which is not the case on Wix. You can’t change the theme once you’ve chosen one. So we’re finding that Shopify’s themes come out on top, because they’re flexible, responsive, and ecommerce-focused. This allows you to customize the look of your store. Wix isn’t as flexible as Shopify, especially when it comes to product pages.
Inventory management
Wix allows you to manage your inventory with remarkable simplicity. In addition, it gives you the ability to change the stock at any time. You just have to go to the editor of the product page. You also receive a notification when your stock runs out. On the other hand, Shopify offers a more complete solution for inventory management. It allows you to manage stocks from a dedicated interface; which saves you time if you have a large catalog. Wix doesn’t allow it as fast, as you have to manage or adjust inventory step by step.
Customer service
Wix and Shopify offer support via phone, email, social media chat, forums and help centers, and more. Moreover, online forums are very active and are a great source of information. However, when it comes to live support, Wix is only available during office hours. With shopify, it’s 24/7, via chat, email, and phone. What’s positive about Wix is that it integrates a help center directly into the editor. This allows you to benefit from advice when you edit your site.
In short
Here we are at the end of this small comparison that will allow you to choose between Wix or Shopify. It must be said that Shopify and Wix offer various features designed to help you get started in website creation. Choosing the platform that suits you as a beginner depends on your needs and ambitions. Taking into account the elements that have been compared, it is clear that Shopify offers many more options to build, develop and most importantly to grow your online store. Indeed, you really feel that all the features put in place have been designed to improve your conversion and help you have an important reputation in online sales.
However, Wix also has its advantages when it comes to ecommerce. It is more affordable, very easy to use and is suitable for small online shops. In reality, estimate that you want to create a small simple online store to sell a maximum of fifty products. In addition, you do not plan to develop your catalog later. In this case, Wix is the best option for you. Wix offers a very intuitive editor and allows you to create sites with a really impressive design without the coding.
Wix is best for you if you’re a beginner while Shopify will help you grow your business. It allows you to manage much larger sales with more access. So choose Wix if you’re a small business that needs to build a web presence. Otherwise, Shopify will be better suited to manage and grow your ecommerce.
