Shopify vs WIX: Which is the Best eCommerce Platform?

If you’re not sure whether you want to go with Shopify or Wix, today we’re going to be going over the main differences and the pros and cons of each. So this video is going to give you the information that you need in order to make a better decision on which e-commerce platform is best for you. So little disclaimer here, yes, this is a Shopify channel, but as a human being, I’m going to give you the most unbiased advice so that you guys can make the best decision for yourselves and your business.

Wix was originally designed as a solution to build content-focused websites with their best wordpress seo experts. So think like blogs and portfolios, but Shopify was specifically designed for people that are wanting to create an online store. All of Shopify features are focused on selling products.

It’s an e-commerce platform. It’s pretty much ready to go out the box. You’re going to have features that allow you to manage inventory, shipping, analytics, that kind of a thing. So based on the history of each platform, Shopify is going to be the best choice for e-commerce entrepreneurs while Wix is going to be a better choice for any of you that are trying to make a website that’s more content-focused. But, but it is not that simple because Wix now has a lot more selling features than it used to.

It’s kind of catching up to Shopify and Shopify has definitely gotten a lot better with the content management tools. So it’s kind of catching up to Wix. So that is why today we’re going to do a super in-depth analysis. I’m going to go over everything. I’m going to compare everything from like pricing to features and templates. And I know a lot of you guys are dropshippers. So we’re also going to look at those features as well.

Let’s Compare Pricing

All right. First off, let’s compare pricing. So starting with Shopify is going to have three tiers. You have Basic Shopify, Shopify, and Advanced Shopify. Most of you’re probably just going to need the basic plan that is 29 us dollars a month. And that’s going to include features like an unlimited amount of products that you can upload, and 24/7 customer support. You also get shipping discounts and that’s going to give you up to 45% off, which is actually insane. Um, and you can also use a Shopify POS.

That’s going to allow you to accept payments in person and handle inventory management. You can sell in 133 different currencies and you can set up your store in 20 different languages. I mean, there’s a ton of other features as well, but those are the main ones that stand out, right? So let’s look at Wix now. So for the lowest tier, it’s going to be 35 us dollars a month.

You can get unlimited products uploads, so that’s pretty much the exact same of Shopify and you get priority customer care. So that is not 24/7 customer care that you would get with Shopify. So that is a little bit of a step down. And also there’s no shipping discount with Wix. There is a POS hardware available, but it’s only currently available in the US so if you are outside of the US you would have to make use of a third party service like square.

Wix does not allow you to sell in multiple currencies, which I find unfortunate because you definitely tend to make more sales when you can actually sell in the currency of your store visitor. One edge Wix definitely has is that there is a loyalty program that is already built-in, and this program is called smile.io. Shopify has tons of apps for loyalty programs, but it’s not included in the plan. For me I think you got a lot more e-commerce functionality from Shopify and you get it at a lower price point than you would with Wix. So I’m going to have to give this point to Shopify.

Website Templates

All right. So next up is a templates. Let’s start with Wix this time. So the beauty of Wix is that there’s tons of free options for templates. And once you create a Wix account, you can choose from over 800 included templates.

When you do sign up, it gives you the option to either create your website yourself, or hire a professional. If you decide to go yourself, there are templates for literally any type of business that you can think of. And then you actually have the choice to either create your website yourself, or answer a questionnaire, and Wix’s artificial intelligence will create it for you.

Now. Let’s look at Shopify’s options. Over the past couple of years, Shopify has definitely gotten a lot better with their themes. And there’s just a lot more to choose from nowadays. So whether you are a restaurant or you’re selling clothes, you can find a theme that’s going to work for you and make sense for your business. The Shopify theme store includes over a hundred free and premium professionally designed e-commerce website templates.

That’s a mouthful, you can use any of those for your online store. Ultimately, in terms of sheer quantity of templates Wix is going to be the winner. But what about quality? So since Shopify themes are designed for e-commerce, they are arguably going to be a lot more powerful. One thing that’s important to actually mention is that Shopify themes are a hundred percent responsive.

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That means the texts, images, all of that’s going to form automatically on the page and resize for the device that you’re using, whether that’s on mobile or desktop or on a tablet. But on the other hand, Wix, they use absolute positioning. That basically means that you’re going to have to spend time designing for desktop and mobile, which is a little bit annoying.

It’s going to be a little bit more work for you. But what I will say is that Wix recently released something called Editor X that will allow responsive design, but however, it is only currently aimed at developers and agencies rather than just general users. So, if you are looking for a large range of general use templates, then Wix is going to be the obvious choice.

But if you want something that’s a little bit more sleek and that’s designed with selling in mind and also that’s responsive, then you’re definitely gonna want to go with Shopify. So all in all, I think both are good options, but if you are a beginner and if you are looking for a little bit more flexibility with your designs, this point is going to go to Wix.

Customizing your Online Store

What I will say is that I really respect that Wix is very flexible and customizable. So when you’re designing your website, you can move your texts anywhere. You can move your images anywhere on the page. You’re not confined to a grid at all, and it’s all very drag and drop.

It makes it really, really easy to build a store in very little time. So this would be perfect for beginners. So my biggest complaint used to be that if you didn’t really know what you’re doing, it would just be really hard to make custom changes to themes and change the way that your Shopify store would look. You’d have to either really dive into the code or hire designer to do it for you.

But the good news is that there’s been a release of a new theme editor called Shopify online store 2.0, so now you could build websites with a drag and drop editor. It’s a bit different though, because Wix allows you to drop anything anywhere on the page, but Shopify 2.0 requires you to actually drop and drag things into pre-defined blocks and predefined sections. So it’s still a little bit restrictive, but at the very least, Shopify does ensure that your store will remain responsive and mobile-friendly.

How Easy is it Use

All right. So next is ease of use. Or in other words, how easy is it to perform the day-to-day tasks using each of these platforms? So the way your platform responds and works is going to be different across each e-commerce platform. And I think this is really important because you don’t want to be frustrated by the tools that you’re using every day.

With Wix, everything does feel very intuitive. All the tools that you need in order to run your business from finance, to creating your logo, that’s all going to be right on the sidebar. If you’re a beginner, Wix is really great because you’re never going to feel lost or confused when you’re trying to perform a day-to-day task. But Shopify is also super easy to use after you do familiarize yourself with where everything is.

First of all, you can set up and launch your store in literally one day, which is amazing. And another thing that I love is that you can bulk upload products rather than uploading 500 products individually. And probably one of the most important things for me is that Shopify has a built-in shipping suite where you can keep all your shipments organized. In my experience, shipping can get a little bit tricky.

So having an efficient system with Shopify is going to save you a bunch of time, and it’s going to save you a bunch of money. Other features like creating discount codes or setting up your taxes, it takes like five minutes to do. So all in all Shopify is really easy to use.

Ecommerce Features

Chelsea Winfield who runs an ethical fashion store on Shopify wrote: not only can you keep your website in shape to serve your customers well, Shopify also offers great backend infrastructure to maintain inventory and analytics that we just don’t have with Wix. So while I think Wix is really easy to navigate for beginners, the functionality of Shopify in my opinion, is unbeatable. You can quickly perform involved tasks that would normally just take hours on other platforms. So this point is going to Shopify.

Dropshipping

Now let’s take a look at each platform and how it compares with dropshipping. So dropshipping, if you’re not familiar, it allows you to sell merchandise without paying for inventory upfront. You don’t have to manage the storage solutions. You don’t even have to pack orders. So basically what happens is you choose the products that you want to sell from a supplier catalog.

Then you add the new products to your online store and then you start selling. So it’s really simple and it’s the supplier’s job to hold the inventory and take care of the shipping for you. All you have to worry about is marketing your products. But yeah, if you need more information on what dropshipping is and how it works, make sure to check out this video right up here. Um, but anyways, yeah. So with Wix, the thing is that you only get one platform option called Modalyst.

If you’re a new store owner, or if you’re an experienced seller, you can use Modalyst. So that’s, that’s, what’s really great. And it does connect you directly to designers, brands, eco-friendly suppliers, private label manufacturers, and Ali Express sellers. So Modalyst can be a really great option. However, however, there’s a but, with Shopify, you can also connect your store to Modalyst among many others.

So with Shopify, you can use Oberlo, you can use Spocket, Printful, Dropcommerce, Salehoo, you get the point. Bottom line is that there’s just so many more options for dropshipping platforms with Shopify. So Shopify is definitely going to take the cake on this one.

Shipping and Fulfillment

Being able to stay on top of your packages going out and any returns coming in is so important in staying organized. A platform with an easy to use shipping suite minimizes mistakes, which means that’s going to save you money in the long run. So which shipping suite is better: Shopify or Wix? Both platforms allow you to offer free shipping, flat rate shipping, shipping by weight, shipping by price and shipping by product.

They both also offer real-time shipping quotes to your customers. Though Shopify caters to more countries and more shipping service. Some pros with Wix are that you get an interactive tutorial to help you set up your shipping. This is something that Shopify does not offer. Once you’re all set up, though, you can choose which shipping service you want to go with. So there’s a lot, whether that’s FedEx or UPS, you can basically ship to anywhere in the world.

You can customize your shipping rates, whether you need it to be priced by weight or by flat rate, and you even get a real-time calculator to help you determine how much your shipping is going to be. You also get flexibility with how you want to ship your packages. So for example, you can get your customers to pick it up, you can do a local delivery option, or you can do an international delivery option.

One thing that I did notice though, which I actually hate is that you need to download apps to get the full shipping and fulfillment functionality that you actually really do need to run an e-commerce business. And some of these aren’t free. So this is likely going to be a deal breaker for a while.

With Shopify, you get everything that I just mentioned from Wix, but you just don’t have to download or pay for any extra apps. The shipping and the fulfillment suite basically just comes with the Shopify platform. If there is an app that you want to enhance your shipping and fulfillment processes, then of course you can just head over to the app store and get it, but it’s not necessary. So while I do like how beginner friendly Wix is, I’m going to have to give this point to Shopify.

I just think that there’s less steps involved with Shopify and in my opinion, shipping and fulfillment is a pretty core component of running an online store. So, you know, the easier and the quicker this part is the better.

Apps

Apps are super powerful when it comes to running an e-commerce store, they can help you increase sales, they can add custom features to your site as well. So Wix has its own version of an app store called Wix App Market. And here there are 300 apps available.

They have most of what you would need from loyalty programs do Google ads. But I just think that the selection doesn’t come nearly as close to Shopify as 6,000 apps. So for example, if I type in restaurant into Wix is app store. I’m going to get a couple of options here. Like this one here, let’s you add an open sign to your site, which I think, you know, might look cool, but it doesn’t really help you make sales. It doesn’t really help you run your restaurant more smoothly.

You know what I mean? But with Shopify, we have apps that are actually going to add functionality. That’s going to help you run your business. Like here, you can add a menu for. And then we also have an app that’s going to help you upsell to increase your sales. So as you can see, the apps are just going to be a lot more powerful on the Shopify side. So Shopify is definitely going to take the cake with this one.

Customer Support

At some point or another you’re going to get frustrated whether you have a question about building your website or you’re just trying to figure something out. I think at one point you are going to need some help. And when you sign up for an e-commerce plan, Customer Support should be included in that price that you’re paying. So you want to make sure that you’re well-supported. So I got in touch with Wix, just with like a fake question, just to see how easy it was to get in touch.

Brett answered my question in three minutes. I thought that was great. Um, and then you can also contact Wix by phone and they have a lot of different languages for that. So I love that. I think the only thing is that their customer support is only open from 12:00 AM to 3PM. Shopify also has really, really good customer support. Um, their support team is available 24 hours.

Seven days a week by email live chat and by phone. And Shopify also has really great peer support. There’s a community forum to get your questions answered. There’s also Shopify Help Center, which has answers from people that actually work at Shopify. And then there’s also YouTube channels, just like this one for any tutorials and any advice.

For this one, I’m going to give the point to Shopify. So I actually just want to stop and say that as I was writing this script and doing my research, I actually had no idea how this was going to turn out. But yes, all in all Shopify does win and I think by a long shot. And I think the reason for that is because Shopify has been around for 15 years, WEX officially launched their e-commerce I think in 2020.

They’re like a year into this. And I think between pricing, between the amount of customizations, the support that you can get Shopify is just going to win by a landslide. Shopify is known as a global leader in e-commerce for a reason. I think if you want to build a website that does not include, e-commerce like if you wanted to do a blog or if you wanted to do a portfolio and you don’t really need to sell anything, then I would say, definitely go with Wix because you can really customize your site if you do need that. But in terms of the best e-commerce platform? Shopify for sure.

I mean, I always recommend Shopify to my clients. I recommend it to my friends. And honestly, just doing the research for this video helped me back that up. If you want to try a Shopify, I’m going to leave a link in the description box for you guys with that, you can get a free 14 day trial and actually think Wix also has a free trial. So I would recommend you try out both and just see what you like better for yourself. Okay. So now onto my favorite part of the video, I’m going to look at some of your guys’s comments and I’m going to answer you: so Bigsands says, tell us more about the benefits of using Shopify for selling t-shirts and other print-on-demand. Okay, love this question.

When you put Shopify together with a print-on-demand business, it basically just like supercharges your business. Shopify makes everything very smooth. From your marketing to fulfillment, to shipping. Everything is very centralized, um, so that you don’t have to use a bunch of different other apps and a bunch of different other platforms.

Everything is just all baked into one. So if you’re looking for, um, a solution that is really easy all in one, that’s why I would use Shopify for your print-on-demand business. So hopefully that’s answered your question. All right. So the last comment is from Joel 22 and he says, this channel is underrated.

I’m so happy that we’re able to provide you guys with some value and help you with your business journeys. All right. So that is it for today’s video. Thank you guys so much for watching. If you are an online entrepreneur and you’re looking either to start your business, run your business or grow your business, this is the place that you want to be in order to learn everything that you need to make it happen.