Video: Wix vs Shopify comparison

Video transcript

Hi again everyone, it’s Matt here from Style Factory.

Today I’m going to be looking at Wix vs Shopify. Stay tuned to find out which of these popular website building platforms is the better fit for you.

But before I begin, a quick note to say that if you have any questions about either product, do leave them in the comments. We read them all and will do our best to answer them.

We’d also love you to like this video and subscribe to our channel.

With that out of the way, let’s dive in. I’ll start with a look at the reasons you might want 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 12 free ones. Although more templates for Shopify are available from the platform’s theme store, these can be very 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 than Shopify for laying out your content precisely 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, shapes and sizes. While Shopify currently 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, Authorize.net or WorldPay, you’ll get charged transaction fees.

By contrast, Wix doesn’t apply any charges for using third-party payment gateways, and this can make credit-card processing considerably cheaper — especially if you are a high-volume seller.

Five — Wix lets you translate your site into more languages

Both Wix and Shopify let you translate your website into multiple languages — but Wix lets you work with more of them. While Shopify restricts you to 20 translations, Wix lets you create 180 different language versions of your website.

Ok — so that’s some of the key things that Wix does better than Shopify.

Now, let’s look at the reasons you might want to use Shopify instead.

One — Shopify’s ecommerce features are better

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 it’s being viewed on.

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. This can be time consuming.

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 store. By contrast, Shopify makes it really easy to change your theme.

Four — Shopify lets you sell on other websites

While both Wix and Shopify both let you sell products on your own site, Shopify goes one further and lets you create ‘buy buttons’ that let you embed your products and product catalogs on other websites.

So if, for example, you managed to get an article about your products on a popular blog, with a Shopify ‘Buy Button’ you could make them available for sale immediately on it too.
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 8000 apps available for Shopify, but just a few hundred for Wix. This larger selection lets Shopify users integrate their store with a much bigger range of other online tools, and extends the platform’s functionality in ways that are not possible with Wix.

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

Point of sale features let you 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 much 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 – our take on where Shopify and Wix beat each other.

Of course, the best way to understand which one is the right platform for you is to try them out — and free trials are available for both. I’ve put links to these in the video description, where you’ll also find some exclusive discounts and offers for both Shopify and Wix.

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 blog post comparison, which is available on the Style Factory website.

Before I go, as ever, I’d love if if you could like this video, click the subscribe button and hit the notifications bell. This helps us out and gives you easy access to all our ecommerce content.

And finally, if you have any questions about Wix or Shopify, do leave a comment below. We read them all and will do our best to help.