Video: Wix vs Shopify comparison

Video transcript

Hey there, it’s Matt from Style Factory.

In this Wix vs Shopify comparison, I’m going to put two of the web’s leading website building platforms to the test. I’m going to show you six key areas where Wix beats Shopify, and six key areas where Shopify is the winner.

So stay tuned to find out which of these website builders is the best fit for you.

Let’s start with six key reasons to use Wix over Shopify.

One — Wix gives you a lot more templates than Shopify

With Wix, you have hundreds of free templates to choose from.

By contrast, Shopify only gives you access to around 10 free ones, and buying a template from its range of premium themes can work out expensive.

Two – Wix gives you more website building features

Because Wix started life as a website building platform rather than an ecommerce solution, it gives you more tools for laying out your content exactly the way you want to.

You get a lot more ways to create attractive page layouts, galleries and forms in Wix, and its blogging features are stronger too.

Three — Wix lets you use more product options and variants than Shopify

Product options and variants let you offer your store’s products in lots of different colours, sizes and shapes.

While Shopify limits you to just three product options and 100 product variants, Wix lets you present your products in six different options and 1000 different variants.

Now, to be fair to Shopify, it lets you add apps to your store that increase or remove these limits, but you usually have to pay extra to use them.

Four — Wix doesn’t charge transaction fees if you use a third-party payment gateway

A payment gateway is the software you use to process credit card payments on your store.

With Shopify, if you don’t use its built-in payment gateway, and choose to use another one like Stripe or WorldPay, you’ll get charged transaction fees.

Wix doesn’t apply any charges for using third-party payment gateways, and this can make credit-card processing cheaper.

Five — Wix’s abandoned cart saver lets you send more reminder emails

An abandoned cart saving tool lets you send reminder emails automatically to people who leave your store in the middle of a transaction. You can use these emails to encourage those visitors to complete their purchase, or give them a discount code that incentivises them to do so.

While Wix lets you send two of these automatic reminders, Shopify limits you to sending one.

Six — Wix’s built in email marketing tools are more powerful

Both Shopify and Wix give you free tools to perform email marketing, but Wix lets you send more emails per month as part of your subscription.

And while Shopify’s email marketing tool only lets you send basic newsletters, if you upgrade to Wix’s ‘Ascend’ plan, you’ll get access to quite sophisticated email marketing tools, including drip campaigns.

Ok — so that’s six key things that Wix does better than Shopify. But where does Shopify outperform Wix?

I’m going to come onto that in just a second, but before I do it’d be great if you could just take a moment to give us a thumbs up, hit the subscribe button and click the notifications bell. This helps make our content more visible on YouTube and lets you access it more easily.

Right, so let’s look at the six key reasons to use Shopify over Wix.

One — Shopify’s ecommerce features are stronger

In general, Shopify’s ecommerce features are considerably stronger than those available from Wix.

Unlike Wix, you can use Shopify to facilitate checkout in local currencies; it gives you a lot more options for dropshipping; and its automatic tax calculation features are much more sophisticated.

Two — Shopify templates are fully responsive

Unlike the templates in Wix, all of Shopify’s themes are fully responsive, meaning your website’s design will automatically adjust itself to suit the device its being viewed on. Whether you’re looking at a Shopify site on a smartphone, tablet or desktop computer, it will look great.

While Wix does let you create mobile-friendly websites, they are not truly responsive, and the design process involves building two separate versions of your site.

Additionally, responsive design is preferred by Google, and building responsive websites can lead to better performance in search results.

Three — you can switch templates easily in Shopify

If you want to change templates in Wix, you’re out of luck – you can’t.

This means that applying a new site design in Wix involves a total rebuild of your site or store. Shopify by contrast makes it really easy to preview or switch templates.

Four — Shopify lets you sell bigger digital products

Shopify lets you sell larger digital products than Wix – you can sell files of up to 5GB in size, whereas Wix limits you to a 1GB file size.

Additionally, Shopify automatically adds correct EU VAT MOSS taxes to digital product prices, which is a huge time saver for merchants selling digital goods to an EU audience.

Five — there’s a much wider range of apps available for Shopify

Shopify’s app store gives you access to a much wider range of apps and integrations than the Wix equivalent — there are over 6000 apps available for Shopify, but just a couple of hundred for Wix. This larger range of apps gives Shopify users lots more options when it comes to adding extra functionality to their stores.

Six — Shopify’s Point of Sale features are more extensive

Point of sale features let you use your online store to sell not just on the web but in physical locations too — all while keeping your data from online and offline sales in sync.

While both Wix and Shopify provide point of sale features, Shopify’s are more extensive. With Shopify you get access to much more point of sale hardware and features, and you can use them in more countries too.

So that’s it — six ways that Wix outperforms Shopify, and six things that Shopify does better than Wix.

Of course, the best way to discover which platform meets your needs best is to try both out – you’ll find links to free trials of Shopify and Wix below.

I hope you’ve found this comparison helpful, but there’s lots more pros and cons of both platforms to discover. You’ll find all these in our full Wix vs Shopify comparison, which is available on the Style Factory website.

And finally, if you have any questions about Wix or Shopify, do leave a comment below, we try to answer all of them.