Difference between E-commerce shopify & Wix website development

Wix and Shopify look like similar products with few features like they are aimed at people without coding skills, help you create and update a website, let you sell products.

Wix was devised as an answer for building content-based websites, i.e. it aimed to aid those users to build brochure sites, blogs, photography portfolios, news sites, and other websites where providing information or showcasing content was the key priority. Wix offers beginner-friendly eCommerce features for small online stores with less than 100 products. 

On the other hand, Shopify is suitable for much larger stores as it is built to easily manage thousands of store items and it was specifically designed from the ground up to be a solution for creating an online store.

But in recent scenarios both Shopify and Wix can technically be used to create a content-focused website or an online store. But, because of their history, you will probably find that Wix usually remains the better option for building content-heavy websites, and Shopify the better bet for e-commerce.

Wix and Shopify:

1. Templates Provided: Quantity, quality, and responsiveness

• With a Wix account, there are options to choose from around 500 included templates. 
• These are professional in appearance and contemporary in terms of their design. 
• Wix offers a greater range of general-purpose templates.
• Wix categorizes its templates by industry or business type.
• Wix uses absolute positioning, where web elements are positioned by pixel. 

A new version of Wix — Editor X — has recently been released (as a BETA edition) which facilitates responsive design. This is currently aimed at developers and agencies.

 There are 9 themes bundled with Shopify and these templates come in 2-3 variants each, meaning there is a bit more template choice available in Shopify.

However, there remains an option to purchase a premium theme (64 of these available which vary in price from $100 to $180). These are professional in appearance and contemporary in terms of their design. 

The Shopify themes are directed more towards e-commerce and are robust for use in that context. 

 Shopify’s templates are all fully responsive. Their components — text, images, forms, etc. — will automatically resize themselves to suit the device that they’re being seen upon (for example a desktop computer, mobile)

2. Template performance on mobile devices

 In Shopify, you get full access to the CSS and HTML code of your template. With Shopify, it is very easy to switch templates.

Shopify provides better design flexibility too.

 This is not the case in Wix if you are not using the developer version of the product. With Wix, while switching to another template, you have to rebuild your whole site. 

 3. Content management and interface:

a) Ease-of-use

 Wix has three interface options for building websites:

•  Wix Editor
•  Wix ADI
•  Corvid

Wix Editor helps to pick a template, create a structure for your site, and then populate it with content. 

Wix ADI mode (‘Artificial Design Intelligence’) creates a customizable website with images, video, and text. 

Wix Corvid allows the addition of greater functionality to Wix sites and more control over their design.

There is just one interface with Shopify. It has a few more (or less) options available depending on the plan.

The main difference in managing content in Wix vs Shopify is that with Wix, you’re working on a front-end interface.

 3. b) Importing and exporting content

Both Shopify and Wix make it straightforward to import products via a CSV file.

With Wix, there is a limit of 5,000 products applied to exports and digital goods can’t be exported. Workaround for getting blog content out of Wix can be more technical in nature than in Shopify. 

It is easy to export any of your product data from Shopify. 

Shopify is a better choice for exporting other types of content (pages and posts) considering the factor that you will have to use an app like Excelify to do so.  

4. Wix and Shopify pricing Free plans and trials and premium plans

 Wix offers an entirely free plan.

 There are 8 options available.

Website

•     Combo — $14 per month
•     Unlimited — $18 per month
•     Pro — $23 per month
•     VIP — $39 per month

Business and E-commerce

•     Business Basic — $23 per month
•     Business Unlimited — $27 per month
•     Business VIP — $49 per month
•     Enterprise — custom pricing.

 Shopify offers a two-week free trial.

 There are 5 Shopify pricing plans to choose from:

•     ‘Shopify Lite’ – $9 per month
•     ‘Basic Shopify’ – $29 per month
•     ‘Shopify’ – $79 per month
•     ‘Advanced Shopify’ – $299 per month
•     ‘Shopify Plus’ – fees are negotiable but in the region of $2000 per month.

In contrast to Wix, in Shopify, there is no free plan available, but a two-week free trial is available.

5. Content management systems

Both Wix and Shopify support adding HTML to a page. In Wix this can be achieved by adding an HTML block; in Shopify, the page editor can be used to toggle between WYSIWYG and HTML mode. In both cases, this lets you configure your pages in more extensive ways.

Wix focuses on Website building in general on the other hand Shopify is focused on e-commerce

A much wider range of website building components to choose from. Wix interface provides a more straightforward means of creating the page layout.

Adding apps to Shopify is more flexible as compared to Wix.

6. Product options and variants

Wix permits 6 product options (e.g. size, color) and 300 variants i.e. combination of size and color.

With Wix, it is also easier to add a custom field to a product.

Shopify’s limits are 3 and 100 respectively, there is an option of installing (paid-for) apps to your Shopify store.

7. Tax calculations in Wix and Shopify

Wix users need to use the third-party Avalara app to apply the correct rate. On a positive note, this helps you calculate and apply the correct tax rates. 

However, there is a limit to a certain number of calculations per plan. 

Shopify permits automatic tax calculation. This remains a built-in feature and no limits are applied to the number of calculations per month. However, this feature is limited for US, Canadian, and EU users. 

8. Integrations and apps

Both Wix and Shopify provide app stores with a range of add-ons for your site.

Wix app store is stocked with apps that generally let you add additional features to your site. 

Shopify app store is better as compared to Wix in that it is much about integrations for example with email marketing apps, accounting apps, and CRM apps. The number of apps and integrations available for Shopify is better than that of Wix. There are 3000+ Shopify apps to Wix’s 250 apps approx.

9. Blogging

Blogging functionality is almost the same in both Shopify and Wix.

Wix has a slight superiority in the blogging department in that you can insert ‘strips’ of recent posts into other pages with ease. 

Wix lets you use both categories and tags in your blog posts; Shopify only lets you use tags. There’s an autosave feature for Wix blog posts that you won’t find in Shopify — this helps you avoid losing blog content if your computer crashes whilst you’re in the middle of composing a post.

 With Shopify, the insertion of strips of recent posts into other pages is not so easy as compared to Wix.

RSS feeds are available for both Shopify and Wix blogs which allow other people to subscribe to them easily or feature your blog content on their sites.

10. Mobile Apps

Wix’s mobile app is called the ‘Wix Mobile App.’

 Wix app can be used to create blog posts; manage events; and add images to galleries; These general site updates are not available with the Shopify app.

 Below are mentioned the mobile apps for Shopify:

•     Shopify
•     Shopify POS

The Shopify app is a general-purpose app that allows you to manage your store; and the Shopify POS app is for Shopify users who are working in a ‘point-of-sale’ context and need to take payment or sync inventory from their mobile device.

Whether Android or iOS users, other Shopify apps are available too. These include a chat tool, a business card maker, and a logo maker.

Shopify app is more better for e-commerce.

11. E-commerce features & Payment gateways

A payment gateway is software to accept payments on the site

• Wix Payments
• Shopify Payments

Shopify integrates with a significantly larger range of payment gateways: over 100 to Wix’s 30 or so.

12. Using multiple currencies

Wix helps to present prices in different currencies through the addition of a currency converter app.

Shopify facilitates full multi-currency payments.

This functionality is built into some templates. Also, it helps to use one of several multi-currency apps to sell in local currencies.

13. Point-of-sale functionality

 Wix POS works properly in certain countries like the US, Canada, UK, Australia, and Japan.

It is possible to use Wix POS in other countries — but only using cash payments, not a card reader.

On the other hand, while using POS with Wix, you need an additional product, Square, to get things off the ground.

 Shopify POS is available in most countries, whereas

POS is more tightly integrated into Shopify — the product is designed with point-of-sale as a key feature, rather than an add-on. features like POS support, a POS hardware store, and POS reporting are there with Shopify. 

14. Data capture and email marketing: a) Capturing data and Sending e-newsletters

Creating forms and capturing data is easier in Wix than in Shopify because Wix provides a form builder, and Shopify doesn’t.

 In Wix, you can send 3 e-newsletters to 5000 subscribers a month for free or you can upgrade to a paid-for plan and extend this limit.

 To create forms in Shopify you’ll need to either use page templates (for example, a contact page), install a form-building app, or add code to your page. Shopify Email’ is free to mail up to 2,500 subscribers, with a $1 fee applying to every additional 1,000. The new ‘Shopify Email’ feature allows you to send e-newsletters from Shopify without any email marketing app.

Wix vs Shopify: the conclusion

Wix is more suitable for anyone wishing to build a ‘general-purpose’ website. Its page layout tools, email marketing, data capture, and a wider range of templates simplify it for those kinds of users. On the other hand, Shopify is suitable for e-commerce applications.

Reasons to use Wix over Shopify

•   It provides a free plan and it’s more cost-effective as compared to Shopify.
•   Wix is a better tool for creating a ‘general-purpose’ website. It’s easier to add features like galleries, forms, and events to a Wix site.
•   There are no transaction fees in Wix even if you use a third-party payment gateway.
•   A wide range of bundled templates is available in Wix.
•   Its drag-and-drop interface makes it easier to generate page layouts.
•   blog content on static web pages can be featured more easily in Wix.
•   You can send automated abandoned cart reminders with Wix.
•   It has built-in tools for managing cookie consent in a GDPR-compliant way.
•   Product options/variants limits are considerably more generous than Shopify’s.
•   Official integration with Mailchimp is available for Wix.
•   Cleaner URLs can be created in Wix which is good from an SEO point of view.

 Reasons to use Shopify over Wix

• Shopify’s templates are fully responsive.
• Shopify allows users to check out in multiple currencies.
• Shopify’s dropshipping features are more flexible.
• From a point-of-sale applications view, Shopify is considerably better.
• Shopify calculates and applies VAT MOSS rates automatically which is timesaving while selling digital goods in the EU.
• Switching over templates is easier with Shopify.
• A much wider range of apps and integrations are available for Shopify.
• Exporting content is more apt in Shopify.
• Shopify’s interface is easier to use.
• There are many options for payment gateways available in Shopify.
• SEO features are on balance better in Shopify than Wix.
• The Shopify ‘Buy Button’ helps to use the platform to sell on an existing website or social media profile.