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When people think of Shopify, they think of online stores.
Shopify’s actually the 2nd-most popular ecommerce platform, at around 2 million users, behind WooCommerce which has 4.5 (source: wisitech, 2021).. Get paid, ship products, market, and do analytics.
You probably don’t think of Wix in the same way. That’s because it’s a general purpose website builder, known for building sites as fast as possible. You can also do selling and marketing; Wix powers over 600,000 online stores (source: WebsiteBuilder, 2021).
Here’s how to choose between the two:
Wix vs. Shopify Review
Your trusty HostingData team has boiled down its deep findings into two bullet-points:
- ☑️ Shopify — for bigger operations / but it’s expensive/trickier
- ☑️ Wix — for smaller businesses / it’s easier/cheaper/less advanced
Let’s explore this further:
Wix vs. Shopify: Pricing
Free website building is possible. But if you want an online shop, you’ll need to get onto a paid tier and we recommend that businesses pay for custom URLs via a professional domain registrar.
One of Shopify’s boons is letting you attach an outside powerful web host. Wix forces you to host exclusively on its own servers — a drawback for scalability, though Wix sites are speedy enough.
See our website builder list for other options. Squarespace/Weebly are fast builders with ecommerce and enable external hosts. SiteGround is our web host-of-choice:
First: WooCommerce vs. Shopify
If you want an online shop for your WordPress page, the likes of BlueHost and SiteGround (SiteGround review) offer special WooCommerce plans for it:
StartUp 🏁
- One Website
- 10GB Web Space
- Daily Backup
GrowBig 🌴
- Unlimited Websites
- 20GB Web Space
- Add Collaborators
GoGeek 🤓
- White-Label Clients
- 40GB Web Space
- Priority Support
But — for a single place where your business can be more simply managed and customer/operational data gathered accurately for analytics — we recommend Shopify.
Shopify Price 🛍️
You’ll have relatively high starting-costs at $29 per month, which is around £21/mo. But this takes care of hosting on its servers as well as setting up an essential online shop with key features. This makes Shopify a poor choice for businesses yet to turn out a good, reliable profit.
Wix Price 🕯️
Wix starts at nearly half the price of Shopify, at the most basic business level — you’ll be able to sell customer accounts, create secure online payments, stock an unlimited number of products, with extra features like abandoned cart recovery and 24/7 support.
Business Basic 👔
- Secure Payments
- Payment Plans
- Customer Accounts
- Free 1-Year Domain
- 20GB Storage
- Unlimited Bandwidth
Business Unlimited 🏦
- Everything you get with Business Basic Plan, and:
- 35GB Storage
- Sell on Marketplaces
- Multiple Currencies
Business VIP 🧧
- Everything you get with Business Unlimited, and more:
- 50GB Storage
- Priority Response
- VIP Support
Wix vs. Shopify: SEO
Search Engine Optimisation as a practice of getting your page website to appear in a strong position among search engine rankings.
Both Wix and Shopify Have Good SEO
In 2019, roughly two-thirds of sites used WordPress (source: isitwp).
At a glance, it seems like WordPress must be better for eCommerce SEO (as more websites rank high on Google searches) — but this could easily be a distortion, due to the marketplace’s oversaturation by WordPress websites.
Studies from the likes of Neil Patel and Ahrefs suggest that Wix it’s perfectly fine for SEO in all of the essential aspects.
For more specialist bells and whistles however, that SEO specialists might want, WordPress is the gold standard.
If you’re not in a super-competitive industry, you should be fine (and the same goes for Shopify, which popular opinion says is either as good as Wix or slightly less effective).
Over 22 million mobile sites use Wix and Shopify has a larger market-share than Wix — with so many paying customers relying on these platforms, they’re clearly good enough for some level of business.
SEO Capabilities
Both platforms make it easy for you to:
- Add or edit descriptions, headings and page titles — Ie. text/headlines that show up in Google
- Use alt text for images — Let Google see what you images are, and surfers in situations where the image doesn’t load (such as after being blocked by email clients)
- Customise URL slugs — This is the text that follows the main section of your URL, eg. “https://hostingdata.co.uk/wix-vs-shopify” 👇🏻
One inconvenience however, is that Shopify and Wix do odd things with URLs. For instance, Wix adds a ‘“/product-page/” to your product pages so that you can’t fully customize your URL. While Shopify adds “/products” or “/collections/” to certain pages. Other than this, it’s full-featured for non SEO experts.
Also access sitemaps here: yourdomain.com/sitemap. And, by adding a Facebook Pixel code, you’ll be able to track ecommerce conversions on social media.
SEO & Page Speed
How quickly your website loads impacts your SEO score. All things being equal, faster pages are more recommended by search engines over their slower competitors.
A GTmetrix test reviewing a standard Shopify site resulted in a 90% (A star) rating), with a Pingdom Test score of 85/100. In terms of loading time, this your Shopify page will pop up between 1 and 4 seconds. Wix may typically be slower (we found this to be the most common case), which could negatively impact your SEO.
We have our first clear winner.
Shopify outpaces Wix, however it’s not by a massive margin.
Wix vs. Shopify Top Tip ⭐
A few interesting stats about mobile responsive websites:
- 61% of Web servers using mobiles are more likely to contact a local business if the website is mobile friendly. (Source: inter-growth)
- Mobile devices are expected to drive £1 trillion in local sales in 2021. (Source: GeoMarketing)
- The average mobile site takes 22 seconds to load — but 53% of users will abandon a mobile page if it takes more than 3 seconds to load. (Source: Think with Google)
Both Wix and Shopify are mobile responsive and optimised for mobile performance, meaning your website will work well whether on PC, mobile, or tablet.
Wix vs. Shopify: eCommerce
Point of Sale (POS) Capabilities 📲
Of course, both Shopify and Wix offer POS capabilities. Let’s start with Shopify:
Let’s say you have a physical store. Shopify and Wix will allow you to embed their POS solutions into your website, to sell your inventory of physical products online and offline. They do this in slightly differently ways:
Shopify POS is a ready-made app for selling in-store via iPad/iPhone. For users in Ireland, UK, Canada or US, you can also buy hardware such as card readers/receipt printers Shopify itself (else, attach your own compatible hardware).
Their POS is usable in any country that supports the credit card payment providers they use. The app is powerful, letting you sell products, take payments, customise checkouts, make customer profiles, track inventories and more.
In comparison, Wix POS gives you many similar features inside of a free app, with a few unique bonuses including unlimited stuff accounts, roadside pickup, and local delivery.
The major caveat here is that Wix POS is only available in the US.
Yours has to be a supported business type: notably, he cannot sell products that are in the financial industry, marketing products, and other specific services such as for airlines, animals and wildlife, ancestry research, governmental services, drop shipping companies, real estate services, ticket agencies, and many more.
Also keep in mind that you’ll need (you can’t opt out of it) to purchase Wix’s proprietary hardware. Also, no other type will be compatible — which means that, despite low monthly costs, their POS service will minimally cost £400.
If you are in the US, there’s a way around this — choose to sell using your mobile, via the Wix Owner app, taking payments via either SumUp or Square. This isn’t optimal for physical stores though, as you miss out on a number of important features.
If you are going to purchase hardware anyway, Wix’s restrictions may not be a deal breaker for you.
If you don’t want hardware, or have a specific brand you want to use, Shopify comes out on top — this is to be expected, as they have more features, don’t require you to purchase hardware, allow other hardware to be used with the service, and have a greater availability of services.
However, Wix does offer interesting free bonuses, such as local delivery and staff accounts, to make up for some of its limitations. This may be more than enough for the average entrepreneurial or small online business.
Options for Payments 💳
Both Shopify and Wix let you receive payments via PayPal as well as credit card. Payment fees for Wix vary via credit card payments, and they have no additional transaction fees (Stripe, Square, and others, depending on your region).
Shopify is more predictable, giving you a transaction rate between 2.4% and 2.9% using Shopify Payments, with no additional fees.
Shopify and Wix also accept offline POS payments. However, only Shopify accepts Apple Pay or Google Pay. You’ll also get more extra channels for selling if you use Shopify. While Wix lets you sell via Instagram and Facebook, you will also get access to even more marketplaces: Amazon, Pinterest and Esty (using Etsy’s external app).
You’ll need to decide what marketplaces you want access to. For an all-in-one solution that allows you to connect the largest number of marketplaces to one POS payment system, Shopify should come out on top. If you don’t mind setting up extra accounts on each marketplace, then this won’t be a particular deal-breaker for you.
You otherwise mostly get the same features Shopify offers, in terms of actual payments.
Related Read: What is eCommerce?
Wix vs. Shopify Review of Features
Apps and “Buy Buttons”
Apps and “Buy Buttons” A Buy Button allows merchants to generate an embeddable product card/checkout onto any website. You can sell separate products or collections, simply by putting an embed code onto your site.
Also embed a mobile-friendly shopping cart, linking the power of Shopify with your website or blog — all in a single button.
You have full control over this. With a few clicks, customise colours to match your brand and style. There’s also 5,760 free apps via Shopify versus 54 via Wix. In other words, get an enormous range of e-commerce focused apps if you go with Shopify.
Wix doesn’t have the Buy Button feature and fewer ecommerce apps.
Which makes Shopify the clear winner here; a very interesting advantage particularly for bloggers and podcasters who may want to drop in a product here and there, all we want to have far greater reach/integration for social media and other communication channels.
Fast Checkouts / Logins 🛒
Shopify stands out for offering great options for pre-checkout customer registration. Set this as obligatory, optional, or non-required. It’s a simple process for purchasers to subscribe by filling in basic information.
Customers who register to create accounts, will be able to access order statuses, use prefilled delivery and payment information for faster checkouts, and view their order history. Shopify is also able to retroactively associate past purchases with accounts at any point of creation (by referencing this with the email address linked to the purchase).
Wix also has a members area, allowing faster checkout processes for repeat buyers to save time by logging in. Customers will be able to track orders, manage dresses, say payment information and view subscriptions. An extra bonus feature is wishlists — customers can save/view favourite products they have not yet purchased.
Wix vs. Shopify FAQ
Which Is Cheaper, Shopify or Wix?
Which Is Cheaper, Shopify or Wix? You can set up an online shop and do payment handling with Wix, at a lower cost than with Shopify. In comparison, Shopify’s cheapest pricing plan starts at £21/mo.
But Wix requires you to purchase physical hardware such as card readers, which costs a fixed fee of £400. You’ll need to balance these. But you’ll get a free trial of some sort (Shopify is 14 days. The longest for Wix is a month).
Can You Code on Wix and Shopify?
Yep! Shopify uses a language called Liquid which lets you achieve advanced customisations of Shopify’s themes. Wix lets you access this code using its editor where you can also modify its templates.
This makes two solutions suitable for people interesting in designing their website, where specific and emerging “customer first” initiatives can be introduced to better engage with your customers and visitors.
Do Shopify and Wix Have Multilingual Features?
Do Shopify and Wix Have Multilingual Features?To varying degrees — Wix lets you set up multiple versions of each page in different languages. This is very simple via its automations: translate links, text, SEO settings and your Wix Stores with just a click of a button.
Shopify is a bit more finicky.
You can get roughly the same outcome using its multilingual apps, such as GTranslate, but these are not quite as user-friendly.
Do Wix and Shopify Offer Shipping Discounts Functionalities?
Yep! If you want to reward your customers or run incentive campaigns, you can use either of the two to generate discount codes active for a set period of time.
Note however that Wix restricts your discount code to being a specific amount of money. Shopify is more advanced here, letting you set this as a percentage discount deducted from the order.
Can I Sell Products on Wix?
Yep. The basic plan levels let you build online stores (you can do this free of charge). To actually sell products, you’ll need to upgrade to one of the 3 eCommerce plans.
You’ll get secure payments, payment plans, 20 GB storage, unlimited bandwidth and customer account functionality. The eCommerce plans are Basic Business (£13/month), Business Unlimited (£16/month), and Business VIP (£22/month).
What Is Better for SEO, Shopify or Wix?
What Is Better for SEO, Shopify or Wix?There is some debate as to whether any of the two can match with WordPress at the higher end.
But head-to-head, on practically all of the essentials, Shopify and Wix are tied.
Shopify probably takes the lead in terms of page loading speed — which gives it the edge in SEO in that aspect. Meanwhile, Wix offers an extra keyword feature that isn’t available with Shopify — which can help you to better target SEO in your pages.
Are Shopify or Wix Themes Mobile Responsive?
Yes. you find a greater number of templates with ecommerce functionality using Wix (108 since we last checked). Whereas Shopify has a bit over 60 premium themes which range in cost, between £103 and £132. Every theme on offer is mobile responsive, so your store will work well on any sized screen.
Is Wix Better Than Shopify?
And we’re in with the penultimate question, which do you choose..?
- ☑️ If you work in a super competitive industry AND have some money to spend on technicians and higher monthly bills -- go with Shopify
- ☑️ If you are a self-starter AND do not mind skipping on a few marketplace opportunities (or having to employ additional solutions to enter those markets) -- go with Wix
If you go for Shopify, our guide on how to set up your Shopify store may be of help.
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