The comparison of Shopify vs Wix, the two of the most popular site builders for eCommerce stores, has always been attractive for eCommerce businesses since it’s challenging to pick one over the other.
Shopify is excellent for big sales and larger companies, while Wix is fantastic for small businesses. However, choosing a site builder or an eCommerce platform for your products isn’t just about which platform is the best; it’s often about which one is more suitable for your business.
That’s why here we will compare critical Wix vs Shopify aspects such as pricing, SEO, templates, and others to make your choice process much easier and faster.
Let’s begin our Wix vs Shopify for eCommerce comparison.
Table of Contents
Shopify SEO Vs Wix SEO
One of the crucial aspects of choosing a Shopify vs Wix store is addressing both platforms’ SEO options. The reason is simple – there’s no success in today’s modern world without search engine optimization, no matter which eCommerce platform you choose.
This is how things stand regarding eCommerce SEO for Shopify vs Wix.
Shopify SEO
Shopify is quite efficient when it comes to SEO, and if you hire experts who know how to utilize SEO practices properly, you can rank high on Google and other search engines.
The theme you use for your store will have sharing and social media linking options in order to make it easier to sell products, but more importantly, some SEO will be taken care of automatically. There are auto-generated canonical tags in landing pages to prevent duplicate content from showing up in search engine results.
There’s also a massive app store with countless SEO opportunities to gain more traffic. Still, SEO professionals are necessary to hire since certain URLs bear a mandatory string, which isn’t SEO-friendly. Also, the Sitemap and Robots.txt files aren’t available for modification, so this can be frustrating for SEO practices.
Wix SEO
Wix vs Shopify SEO is a different story since this platform has an excellent set of SEO built into each Wix website.
The most significant advantage is that Wix can efficiently optimize your SEO workflow while you adjust SEO features from time to time. You will have much more freedom in customizing meta tags, canonical tags, structured data, URL slugs, and more.
In addition, each Wix website is backed by a vital infrastructure that meets Google’s and other search engines’ needs, providing you with robust SEO fundamentals to compete against competitors in organic searches.
So, we can conclude that the comparison between Shopify SEO vs Wix SEO shows one crucial thing – they provide an excellent chance to achieve results, but hiring SEO experts would be highly beneficial.
Wix Pricing vs Shopify eCommerce Plans
One of the first things every eCommerce business owner should consider when choosing between Shopify vs Wix is their pricing offers.
So, let’s see which are the options.
Shopify Pricing
Regarding Shopify vs Wix pricing, even if we consider other platforms as well, “cheap” wouldn’t be the word one would use to describe Shopify’s pricing.
Shopify has a 3-day free trial and an exclusive time-limited offer of “$1 for three months”, but its pricing plans are somewhat different:
- Shopify Starter – This plan is $5 per month, and you can sell products by sharing links on email, social media, and SMS. Instead of building a full store, you can manage your business through the Shopify dashboard.
- Basic Shopify – This one is $29 per month, and it’s similar to Wix since it’s suitable for merchants who desire a simple store or are just starting out because they get all the fundamental eCommerce functions.
- Shopify Plan – It’s $79 per month and provides you with everything you need to grow your business. You get all the things from the Basic plan plus global selling support; pro sales report features, etc.
- Advanced Shopify – Advanced with features, but also costs a lot. This plan is $299 per month, but you will get full advanced features that help medium-to-large businesses grow fast.
Wix Pricing
When it comes to Wix pricing vs Shopify, Wix has a more direct offer since it has three pricing plans:
- Business Basic – You will pay $17 per month, and it’s best for beginners since you’ll get a set of features to sell online. Some of them include report and sales analytics, unlimited bandwidth with a year-free domain, and so on.
- Business Unlimited – It’s $25 per month with everything from the previous one but has a professional logo, pro eCommerce features, and more storage. You also get multiple currencies, dropshipping, tax calculators, etc.
- Business VIP – This one is $35 per month, and you get all the features from Business Unlimited plus priority support. Also, you get reports to help you get insights and make data-driven decisions. All your questions on the answer page will appear at the front of the line.
This is the Wix eCommerce pricing vs Shopify, and the easiest way to decide which one is better for you is by asking yourself how much you tend to invest according to what you get.
Shopify vs Wix Security
Another critical aspect in today’s online world is security, and the comparison of security regarding Shopify vs Wix shows that both platforms will help you do all the necessary work.
Shopify Security
Shopify takes care entirely of security problems and updates in the background because of its platform’s hosted nature. It will provide you with SOC, which stands for Service Organization Control reports and also Transparency reports as an assessment of info systems by third parties.
Furthermore, this platform runs on a Level 1 PCI-compliant server that is obligatory to accept debit or credit card information. And don’t worry; your shoppers’ data will also be safe since Shopify uses SSL encryption for each store.
Wix Security
If you choose Wix, you will gain the shoppers’ trust since you will have SSL web security that will keep connections private and secure over the HTTPS. Because of this, customers and visitors will rest assured that your Wix eCommerce store is of high quality regarding security.
Furthermore, Wix has TLS 1.2, which stands for Transport Layer Security, and a Level 1 PCI Compliant, which means that your site keeps your customers’ transactions safe and provides them with a high standard of security for payment.
With DDoS Protection, a reliable web hosting, Wix has done extensive hacker testing to make sure that your store site is always effective.
Customer Support
Customer support is essential for eCommerce stores, and regarding this Shopify vs Wix eCommerce aspect, it’s fair to say that both platforms have help centers that are always kept up to date. You will get assistance from experts and users worldwide by joining their forums.
Shopify Support
The Shopify support team is available 24/7 via phone and email, but what makes this platform better, or at least different, is that it also provides a live chat. This advantage is highly beneficial since each time your waiting time is down, or there is an issue, a solution will be available quickly, so your eCommerce store will soon be able to be a steady source of income once again.
Furthermore, you won’t have any severe problems since you can get help from experts or exchange experiences via the Shopify Community with numerous other merchants from all over the globe.
Wix Support
Wix is also robust when it comes to customer support since it’s popular for various lively instruction videos. The only thing you need to do is to hover your mouse over the editor’s question marks, and small bubbles will show up that will provide you with answers fast.
In addition, for languages such as Italian, French, German, Russian, Spanish, Portuguese, and Japanese the line is available only during business hours, but an English support line is constantly available. Also, regarding live support, you can submit tickets and request a callback.
Templates and Their Customizability
We all know that the door that opens and motivates a visitor to become a buyer is visualization since an excellent storefront captures their attention and makes them purchase products.
Fortunately, there isn’t a problem regarding this Shopify vs Wix aspect since both Shopify and Wix provide merchants with beautiful responsive templates to satisfy their customers, but this is also unfortunate since it’s hard to decide which one is better.
However, both platforms provide you with the advantage and privilege to make custom edits so that you can customize your site with provided coding languages.
Shopify Themes
Shopify has 11 free and 100 paid themes designed for online stores, and the price usually ranges from $140 to $180. As with the pricing plans, themes are also generally expensive, but each paid theme is significantly cost-effective since it’s artistically tremendous and highly functional.
Also, you can use Shopify Liquid, which is excellent for modifying the underlying code if you want to add elements and if you have an idea for a new feature you think would make everything look much better.
Wix Templates
Unlike Shopify, there are 800 free Wix templates available for you to choose from and cover various aspects of your store and modify them to make more sales. Of course, choosing the best one with this massive number of templates is challenging, but remember to look for something that will represent your business and is eye-catching simultaneously.
If you don’t have time to create, this platform offers built-in design tools to help you design your Wix ADI, storefront, Wix Editor X, etc.
Still, there is one negative side regarding Wix templates, and that’s the fact that their design flexibility has a limitation since Wix templates aren’t changeable. This disadvantage can be problematic since what you choose at the beginning stays till the end, so rebranding your eCommerce store would be extremely challenging.
So, the Shopify vs Wix for eCommerce comparison in this section clearly shows that even though Shopify is much more expensive, Wix’s limitations can be a potential issue.
Payment Methods
Shopify and Wix are seen as platforms with excellent payment methods according to many eCommerce merchants, but here are the facts to help you choose which one is more suitable for your business.
Shopify Payments
This platform has its own solution for payments called Shopify Payments and helps you get transaction fees off your mind. There are different credit card rates according to the chosen plan. If you choose Basic, you will have to pay $2.9 + 30 cents per transaction, $2.6 + 30 cents for Shopify Plan, and 2.4$ + 30 cents for Advanced.
If you don’t use Shopify Payments, there’s an additional fee per transaction – 2% for Basic, 1% for Plan, and 0.5% for Advanced.
Wix Payments
With Wix Payments, you will get these advantages:
- Safe online payments
- Easy and free set-up
- 24-hour customer service support
- Unified dashboard for refunds, chargebacks, and payouts
- Usage of iDeal, debit/credit cards, and buy now, pay later options such as Sezzle, Affirm, etc.
- You won’t need a third-party payment gateway
In addition, this platform supports all traditional payment options like Stripe, PayPal, and others with strict standards and online encryption. Furthermore, the buy now, pay later option is excellent for shoppers since it provides them with financial freedom, and there are no additional integration costs.
Before we wrap up, it’s valuable to mention that you shouldn’t rush with your decision, so check other comparisons like Shopify vs WooCommerce or any other to make an in-depth analysis and pick the perfect eCommerce platform.
Wix vs Shopify SEO Summary
We have come to the end of our Wix stores vs Shopify comparison, so leave some time for impressions to cool off and make your decision. Both platforms are fantastic for your eCommerce business, so it doesn’t matter who is the best but which is most suitable for your eCommerce store.
One more tip before we end the Shopify vs Wix comparison is to remember that the eCommerce industry is the most competitive one all across the globe, so make sure you make the maximum of whatever option you choose!
FAQs
Is Wix cheaper than Shopify?
Yes, Wix is much cheaper than Shopify since the lowest monthly fee for Wix eCommerce websites is $17 per month for Wix Business Basic.
Should I choose Wix or Shopify?
Wix is great for small businesses while Shopify is excellent for larger companies and bigger sales. Also, you have to see which platforms’ features suit better for your eCommerce business.
Is it possible to switch from Wix to Shopify?
If you have your own domain name bought outside of Wix for your online Wix store, you can move it entirely to Shopify. The two options for doing so are to transfer it to Shopify or connect it to your new account.
