Wix OR Shopify ? To be, or not to be, that’s the question.

Table of Content

• Shopify VS Wix and Wix versus Shopify. Let’s play with Google search.
• What’s the purpose of Wix and Shopify? What problems do they solve?
• Wix vs Shopify for eCommerce.
• Storefront Design. Wix templates and Shopify themes.
• Important thing you need to know about the Wix and its Ecommerce function.
• Wix vs Shopify Reddit
• What about the Shopify and Wix pricing? Let’s do a quick math.
• Migration of store from Wix to Shopify.
• So in conclusion, wix or shopify for building your online store?

Are you considering finding the best ecommerce solution for your business? 

As the solution you’re probably considering Wix or Shopify or other ecommerce platforms. In this blog post, we’ll analyze both platforms and answer the question: Wix vs Shopify for ecommerce? In addition, we’ll review the process of migration from Wix to Shopify as an example.

Side Note: this review has been written in Feb 2020. So you have the latest updates of both “candidates”.

First of all, let’s take a look at some stats from Google Trends. Just curious where they stand in the ecommerce market. Why? 

To estimate how long the company has been in business, and the growth traction. We can safely have the assumption that if the company is starting out, it’s a little bit dangerous to trust the business. You’re a business owner, and looking for an ecommerce solution to rely on.

5 years ago, 10 years ago. “Blue line” (Wix) was in high search demand. However, let’s say...

For the past 12 months the picture is more clear and Shopify search demand is higher in comparison with Wix. 

Side Note: If you already have a Wix store and are now looking for the solution to migrate your Wix store to Shopify, Jump on the migrate Wix to Shopify section.

You might like this:

• Etsy vs Shopify: Which one is right for you?
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Shopify VS Wix and Wix versus Shopify. Let’s play with Google search.

Google can tell you what people are searching for. This is a simple approach to help understand the main purpose of Wix and Shopify. Let’s keep in mind we’re looking for an ecommerce solution for our business.

When we type “shopify vs” you can see Google Suggest gives the comparison of Wix, WordPress, WooCommerce… We’re getting warmer. WooCommerce is a WordPress plugin which you can install on your website and build an online store. BigCommerce, and Magento are both ecommerce solutions. It’s clear that users usually use Shopify for ecommerce purposes.

Let’s take a look at Wix and do the same thing above. If we type in Google “wix vs” and… WordPress comes up. WordPress is mostly associated with blogs and other different website types. Squarespace is an ecommerce platform. Weebly, a free website builder. 

Shopify, well it’s ecommerce. The rest of the suggestions are related to hosting providers like Godaddy and Bluehost.

What’s the purpose of Wix and Shopify? What problems do they solve?

“Create a Website You’re Proud Of”. If you have needs in building a website, let’s say a personal portfolio, event’s website, blog etc. Wix is probably your choice.

Shopify. “Build your business. You’ve got the will. We’ve got the way.”. And scrolling... 

“With you from first sale to full scale”. “Start - your business journey”. I believe it’s clear. For website builders, it’s Wix, for business owners, if you’re looking to open a business or searching for an ecommerce solution, Shopify is the one to go with.

Ok, It’s only the beginning of our research and analysis. More interesting things to come. Let’s move forward.

Wix vs Shopify for eCommerce. Here are some important things to pay attention to. 

We have made some assumptions that Wix is for generic website building, Shopify is for creating an online store and business. For analysis we’ll have two websites (stores) registered with Wix and Shopify. We’ll look inside both systems and outline PROs and CONs of each system.

Storefront Dashboard.

Here is our Wix dashboard and I set ourselves as a merchant who sells t-shirts. From first glance the Wix dashboard looks a little bit messy, and it takes some time to get familiar and understand overall navigation.

As you know, we have mentioned before that Wix position themselves as a website builder. So I was curious what the Dashboard would look like if the user created a new site and let’s say, a Blog. In the Dashboard, look at the menu to the left then you’ll see the “Blog” menu item. 

There are no more “Store Products” and “Store Orders”. The main content Dashboard still follows the concept of the creation of the Wix store. The difference is the onboarding flow content.

Turning to the Shopify dashboard. After signing up with a 14 Days free trial, you’ll land on a short survey page and here you are… the Dashboard. With Wix we have seen it’s Store Products and Store Orders. With Shopify we clearly see that it’s designed for ecommerce. The following can be seen:

• Home
• Orders
• Products
• Customers
• Analytics
• Marketing
• Discounts
• Apps

From the user end point of view it’s easy to navigate with Shopify.

Products & Collections

For any ecommerce stores, products and collections are tightly connected to each other. We’ll review each of them for Wix and Shopify. And we’ll keep in mind that we’re building an online store, not a website to showcase a product.

Wix Product

Wix product editor offers you basic and advanced fields to fill in. For any products you’ll need to fill the Product Title, Description, Image, Variants. The inventory setting is located here as well. Inside the Wix product editor you can customize SEO settings.

Wix Collection

I wish the Product collection could be better because the options to filter the product for a collection is limited. You can build the collection by selecting the products only. It might be a little bit time consuming if you build a collection and pick the product one by one.

Shopify Product

Like Wix product editor Shopify also has necessary fields for the product. However, since Shopify is built for ecommerce you can see additional settings such as Product Type, Vendor, and Tags. It helps merchants better configure the product to fit their business.

Shopify Collection

Shopify collections are “smarter” compared with Wix collections. Here you can build a collection based on product tag, product title, product price etc. The filter is very rich, so you can filter exactly the products you want to display on the collection. When you successfully select the products you can additionally sort products based on specific criteria, for example, best selling products like in the screenshot below.

Payment gateways

When the store layout has been built, products are added and collections are configured there is another step to build your online business. The Payment gateway setup. 

Both Wix and Shopify have their own payment gateway which accepts major credit cards. Both Wix and Shopify Payment gateways are available only in specific countries.

• Countries Wix Payments support: 14.
• Countries Shopify Payments support: 15.

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• Wix: 23 payment gateways.
• Shopify: 100+ payment gateways.

We clearly see that Shopify goes way  beyond Wix with supported payment gateways numbers. Shopify is for ecommerce but Wix is not. Whether you look at Wix or Shopify Payments gateway there is a difference in supporting countries. For example, in the UK or Australia you can use Shopify Payments, but there’s no way to do that with Wix Payments.

An important thing to note is about PayPal. If you prefer to accept payments through it, please keep in mind that only business PayPal accounts are accepted on both platforms.

Analytics

As a business owner you have to play well with numbers and math. You invest the time and money into your online store, and you want to measure the impact of your investment. Both Shopify and Wix provide you Analytics functions to see visitors coming to your store and whether they buy products or not.

Wix Analytics

Wix’s past as a website builder solution is clearly seen here. You can notice two tabs in the Analytics dashboard like Traffic & Store. To see the store’s data you’ll need to upgrade Wix to the premium business plan. (See Pricing review part)  

We’re looking for an ecommerce solution, and Wix gives us ecommerce general overview insights: visits, product views, cart, checkout, purchased. It’s called a Purchase Funnel. 

Examples of the purchase funnel. This screenshot is directly taken from Wix official documentation. We don’t have a real store to show you the numbers.

Shopify Analytics

The Shopify Analytics report can be found in the Analytics menu. The sales report from Shopify is very detailed and contains a lot of customers and sales insight. It’s easy to navigate between analytics reports and find the data you’re looking for. Depending on your Shopify plan, basic or advanced reports are available for access. (See Shopify plans).

That was just an overview. Let’s go deeper into the specific reports provided by Shopify Analytics. 

Sales by Products.

Sales by Billing Country.

And more specific reports are there. More reports to come, so it’s clear that Shopify wants to give merchants as much insights as possible for helping them manage and grow their business.

Storefront Design. Wix templates and Shopify themes. Let’s talk about customizing your store layout.

The storefront design is one of the most important parts of any ecommerce online business. With both platforms you’ll find free and paid themes. What’s to choose from and do Shopify or Wix have enough choices to give you the best result? 

Let’s take a look at Wix first.

500+ Wix templates in the collection

When you create a new website there are over 500 templates to choose from. Seems to us most of them are free, some are paid. It's quite hard to actually filter which template is a paid one and which is free. There is no filter by pricing model, just for category.

Wix store building by drag and drop elements

When you start building a store with Wix, on the left side of Wix editor there is a list of elements to drag and drop into the editor’s area. Wix provides you a wide range of elements to really “build the house”.

The list of elements is behind the “+” symbol. Text, Image, Gallery, Button or other elements are compacted into a very long list. With Wix you can do plenty of customization and we believe you can customize the store to “pixel perfection”.

Wix drawback? No way to choose another template… 

When you start a new website and select a template, you’ll stick with that template for the websites entire life. There is no easy way to switch from one design to another. So you’ll need to hire a designer to do the migration process. John Smart shared quite genuine thoughts about this issue.

Change Shopify Themes with ease

When you select a Shopify theme you can change later to another one. Some page content needs to be rebuilt with a new Shopify theme, but overall this process can be done. The Shopify theme file is based on Liquid programming language, so it’s flexible to actually modify from a code point of view. In our example we use the free Brooklyn Shopify theme made by Shopify Team.

Shopify Themes Store: 64 paid and 8 free Shopify themes. For real?

That’s true. When we came to the Shopify Themes marketplace we found a very small number of paid and free Shopify themes. The direct assumption is Shopify keeps the quality top notch and keeps only themes that support businesses.

Shopify themes are not just only a storefront design feature, it’s something MORE than that. It's a unique buyer experience from the landing to the thank you page.

But rest assured it’s just Shopify Themes marketplace that follow that strict direction with selecting and approving Shopify themes. You can find Shopify themes on other marketplaces such as ThemeForest, or TemplateMonster. In addition, there are a lot of independent theme developers as well like Out of Sandbox or Pixel Union.

The drawback with Shopify themes? There is no page builder in the theme.

With Shopify you can easily build a layout, they call it “sections”. It’s easy to drag and drop sections on to the home page. If you want to add a new section there is an “Add Section” button. 

You can see the whole process through the image below.

However, the sections are very limited on other pages like on product or collection pages. You won’t see the “Add section” button.

In this case, if you want to customize ecommerce store pages you’ll need to install a 3rd party Shopify page builder apps. You can find them at here https://apps.shopify.com/browse/store-design-page-builders

Let’s extend the functionality. How many apps does Wix and Shopify have?

You might start your business with a small budget and investment. When your business grows you’ll need to think about the scaling side. You might consider adding additional functionality to your existing store, so it comes down to “apps” to solve such a problem.

On Wix, inside the editor you can find 334 apps in different categories. You can access the Wix apps marketplace directly to find the suitable one.

What about Shopify? On the Shopify Apps store marketplace in summary you’ll find over 3,800 Shopify apps to solve different problems. That's a huge number. We have found that the payout to Shopify App developers for 2018 is more than $90 mln which is a good signal since the app provider will work further to maintain and develop new app functions.

Please keep in mind there are free and paid apps as well. Free is more for “testing purposes” or an app with basic features. However, it is better to think about the investment with paid apps or paid subscription plan of the app.

Important thing you need to know about the Wix and its Ecommerce function.

We want to know how Ecommerce function comes to Wix and if it’s integrated into Wix natively or it behaves like an “addon” and additional app. To verify this assumption we decided to register the Blog with Wix. Below is the main dashboard if you pick “blog” as your website to build with Wix.

What if we start our business journey as the blogger and aim to be KOL? When the brand gets enough followers it’ll be the right time to monetize the audience. So in that case we’ll need to add an Ecommerce function. With a few mouse clicks we discovered the “App market” and voila… “Wix Stores by Wix” is in the list. 

Does it mean the “Ecommerce” selling point is that Wix promotion is just a combination of Wix + App? Under “+ Add” button there is a “Premium” badge mentioned. It’s the Premium feature.

We installed the Wix Stores app and indeed that’s true. We have noticed new items in the Main Menu. Now we can add Products and Collections. So in short, Ecommerce here is about actually adding a new module to the existing Wix platform. It’s not natively integrated with Wix, so please keep in mind that fact.

Wix vs Shopify Reddit

Reddit is a well known social network with different types of users including entrepreneurs. Looking at search trends there are suggested search requests around Wix and Shopify. And people debate over both systems as well. If you go to Reddit and search Shopify or Wix you’ll see people are considering the systems from an ecommerce point of view.

Seems like a lot of Shopify customers are there and well, the system we use, we aim to “depend” rather than go against it. But… we personally believe in the genuine opinion of users, not just because protecting personal interest.

Enough positive things, let’s be real and try to discover the drawbacks of Shopify.

Our takeaways here:

• Learning curve. Whether you use Wix or Shopify you have to think about the investment of your time in learning both systems. It's quite an easy system to use compared with other open sources like Magento or WooCommerce.
• Additional cost with Apps.That’s true. If your store grows it’ll need some additional functionality, and there are additional costs of paying for Shopify apps. We believe the same things will happen with Wix.

What about the Shopify and Wix pricing? Let’s do a quick math.

Wix pricing: website and online store plans.

Wix pricing is divided into Website and eCommerce plans. Since we’re building an online store, we’ll check the plans for eCommerce. 

• Business Basic
• Business Unlimited
• Business VIP

For all three plans you’ll have access to Google Analytics (GA) function. You’d understand better who your audience are and whether they’ll buy products from your store or not through GA. Wix ads are removed for all three plans. Wix has been popular because of the “free website builder” and because it’s free there are ads inside Wix. You won’t see that message in eCommerce Wix plans.

The difference between plans is in VIP & priority support which is available only in the Business VIP plan. For Business Unlimited Plan you get Professional Logo design service valued at $50. Social media logo files are also included in that plan.

There is no difference with the transaction fee between plans, whether you’re selling 100 orders or 10,000 orders per month the transaction fee will be the same. For the long run it might not be a good ROI. So there is the big question of business scaling and whether Wix can support you in that area.

Shopify Pricing: start from Shopify Basic and scale to Shopify Plus.

Reference: https://www.shopify.com/pricing

• Basic Shopify: $29 / month
• Shopify: $79 / month
• Advanced Shopify: $299 / month

Shopify has three major plans with differences in features, staff accounts, and transaction fees. With “features” you’ll need to pay attention to whether you need a Gift Card function / Advanced Report or not. The transaction fee also matters, and when sales volume is huge the numbers will hurt and you’ll have to think of a higher plan to save money on transaction fees.

For high sales volume merchants, Shopify has a dedicated Shopify Plus plan. Enterprise level business aims to use Shopify Plus to grow their business. The monthly fee for Shopify Plus is $2,000 / month and an even better transaction fee rate. You can learn more about Shopify Plus here https://shopify.com/plus

The investment above is just for the Shopify platform, because now we need to talk about additional expenses. First of all, you’ll need a professional looking Shopify theme. By default Shopify provides 8 free Shopify themes, but if you need a customized one to match your brand, you’ll need to think about an investment of around $160 / theme.

Monthly apps expenses. Shopify has actually built - in features to support you with building and launching your online store. However, if you want to add some additional functionality to your store and make more money, you’ll need to define a certain budget for the apps investment. The average budget for Shopify apps is around $150 or more. Some apps have a free plan, so they would start charging you when you get more sales.

Migration of store from Wix to Shopify. Is it easy? Expensive?

From our research analysis we have made, there are two names popping up when it comes to migration to the cart store. In our case it’s the migration of the Wix to Shopify platforms. They are Cart2Cart and Litextension. In this article we’ll review the Litextension store migration process. We hope with this article you’ll have an overview of how the migration process looks.

With Litextension we found a landing page which describes the Wix to Shopify migration process. Following data can be migrated from your Wix store to Shopify - Products, Product Categories, Customers, Orders. This piece of data is essential for any ecommerce business, as for the other part of your store such as design layout, you’ll need to hire a qualified Shopify expert.

The Litextension page has a live calculator where you can estimate the approximate cost of the store migration. The price covers the payment for their tool to migrate data including the customer support. If you are busy and want to dedicate this task to them, they have an “All in one full package” service.

But hang on… is Litextension legit? Is it a real business and have any customers used the company’s service before? We have googled a little bit and found Trustpilot reviews.

Litextension Review from Trustpilot

From Trustpilot there are 98 reviews and the latest one was made just a few days ago. Just 1% Bad and Poor experience. In general, customers are satisfied with the service.

Is there any Wix to Shopify migration customer experience? Well, there is an honest review from a user named George. Let’s give it a try with Litextension, and register an account to see how the process looks.

Transfer from Wix to Shopify. How does it work with the Litextension solution?

After the registration of your Litextension account you’ll see the main Dashboard with 4 stages of migration process including Setup, Demo Migration, Full Integration, and Completed.

In the Litextension dashboard from the section Target Cart Setup, you’ll need to spend some time getting API Key and Password. The idea is you create a private Shopify app inside your store and get this information. To make this process easy the Litextension team provide a detailed video tutorial.

We filled the API Key and password then clicked the Next button. We’ll land at the stage of Demo Migration. The idea is you migrate a sample of information and test the solution before actually paying for it. There are some additional options for you for consideration during migration. Some are free, others are paid. So decide yourself what’s the best options for your future Shopify store.

Now, you can click on the “Next” button to see the demo migration, or just SKIP it and go with full store migration. In our case, we’ll do demo migration first. You’ll clearly see the process of each stage like the screenshot below.

The process has been completed and a successful message is displayed.

The products from our test t-shirt store have been moved successfully to our new Shopify store. The whole process looks smooth and is not really hard to do at all.

The customers' data has been transferred normally. It’s just my admin account and two test customers accounts. So in summary 3 customers.

The final stage. Full Migration and confirmation with the payment. As you can see the full list of tasks are outlined, so you understand what you pay for. For any questions there is a convenient chat box in the right bottom corner.

One of most frequently asked questions with the store’s transfer from Wix to Shopify is, will it be possible to migrate the domain name as well? We have reached out to Litextension and the answer is YES and the fixed price is $99.

So in conclusion, wix or shopify for building your online store?

Finally, as a business owner you need to decide which platform to use: Wix or Shopify? We need a robust and reliable platform to build our online store, so the obvious answer would be Shopify. Shopify is designed for ecommerce and positions itself as an ecommerce platform. For Wix. it’s more suitable for building generic websites such as portfolio, blog or other. 

When you start with Shopify you’ll get 14 days free trial, so it’ll be your learning time and to test drive the system. The good news is you don’t have to sign in any contracts or fill out credit card info, you just need an email. You can signup with Shopify at https://shopify.com/free-trial 

Another Review: Big Cartel to Shopify. Check this out.

Disclosure: in this article you can find Shopify affiliate link. We recommend this platform because we believe this ecommerce solution is the best one on the planet. We understand if we recommend a bad one, we’ll lose credibility and brand as well. PageFly - Shopify page builder with 28,000+ active merchants, 1,500+ five stars reviews. Avg. Rating 4.9 / 5.0.