Wix vs. Shopify: Which CMS is better? [2024]

In my time working as a content marketer, I've had experience working with a lot of (arguably too many) CMS platforms and website builders. While I can honestly say you'll probably be able to get the job done no matter which one you choose, it's still important to do your due diligence when making your decision.

Wix and Shopify are two website builders that are particularly popular among eCommerce businesses. So I created a fake company on each platform and dug deep into testing to compare their features and offerings. Based on that testing, here are my findings on Wix vs. Shopify.

Table of contents:

• Wix vs. Shopify at a glance

• Shopify is hands-down the more scalable eCommerce solution

• Wix is more flexible when it comes to site design

• The better platform for marketing depends on your audience and initiatives

• Wix offers more in-depth AI tools

• Which is cheaper: Shopify or Wix?

• Shopify vs. Wix: Which should you choose?

• Shopify vs. Wix FAQ

Wix vs. Shopify at a glance

When it comes down to it, you can use either Wix or Shopify to create a powerful and unique online store, but Shopify was built for eCommerce and Wix wasn't.

• Wix is better for small businesses and creative bloggers who value user-friendliness and don't require advanced, scalable eCommerce tools.

• Shopify is better equipped to support medium to large eCommerce businesses with a sales mentality, extensive inventory, and a multinational customer base.

Shopify is hands-down the more scalable eCommerce solution

When it comes to scaling for eCommerce, Shopify doesn't play around. The platform is first and foremost optimized for online selling. For one, its shipping and fulfillment benefits are unmatched. Not many website builders and CMSes can boast owning their own fulfillment network, but Shopify can.

Assuming your business and product offerings meet certain eligibility criteria (e.g., the product can't be alcohol), Shopify will take care of fulfillment and returns. If you're a decently sized business with a lot of orders to fulfill, you can say goodbye to a pretty massive headache.

Plus, Shopify partners with several carriers to offer shipping discounts up to nearly 89%, which tend to increase as you upgrade your plan.

When it comes to inventory management, Shopify gives you a high level of control over an unlimited number of products. With Wix, you'll be limited to 50,000 products. Both platforms restrict how many product variants and options you can add to your store (three options and 100 variants for Shopify and six options and 1,000 variants for Wix).

Shopify also offers over 6,000 eCommerce-specific integrations—including Klaviyo, Spocket, Judge.me, and TikTok—to help facilitate functions like international dropshipping, inventory management, and even customer retention.

Meanwhile, Wix offers 500+ integrations—a fraction of those offered by Shopify. Why the discrepancy? Since Shopify positions itself as the more eCommerce-oriented solution, significantly more stores use it, making it more profitable for app developers to create apps compatible with Shopify.

Still, it's worth noting that Wix offers more in-house integrations (52 mini-apps exclusive to the Wix CMS) than Shopify and that not every Wix integration is eCommerce-centric. Popular third-party Wix apps include Google Analytics, Google Ads, HubSpot, and Mailchimp.

While Shopify offers more integrations than Wix, both platforms integrate with Zapier. So whichever platform you choose, you can integrate it with the rest of your favorite apps, automating your workflows and keeping your business running smoothly. Learn more about how to automate Shopify and how to automate Wix, or get started with one of these pre-built templates.

Ultimately, if you're an eCommerce business with a large inventory, sell many variations of your products, and/or sell to an international customer base, Shopify is likely better equipped to meet your needs.

Wix is more flexible when it comes to site design

Both Wix and Shopify make building an aesthetically pleasing website with eCommerce functionality relatively easy, but Wix goes above and beyond with its flexibility and extensive template offerings.

While Wix initially presented me with a few pages of themes designed specifically for websites in my industry (making me feel very special), I was also able to explore Wix's entire library of 800+ templates. As someone who spends 30 minutes staring at restaurant menus before choosing something, I did feel some decision fatigue. That said, I appreciated Wix's comprehensiveness—it truly has something for everyone.

Plus, all 800+ Wix themes are free. This is more than I can say about Shopify, which only offers 12 free themes and 190 themes total. Most paid themes cost a one-time fee of over $300, so if you're at all price-sensitive when it comes to web design, you may score Wix higher.

That said, Shopify's themes are all fully responsive, meaning they're already optimized for both desktop and mobile. When switching to a mobile view, Shopify adjusts the page, so elements still look great.

Meanwhile, you may have to optimize Wix's mobile layout yourself by adjusting individual elements. But I did find Wix's mobile setup tool very user-friendly when customizing the basics, like headers and navigation menus.

After using Shopify's blocky, rigid theme customizer for a couple of my clients, I felt like a butterfly emerging from a cocoon when playing around with Wix's flexible drag-and-drop editor. In Wix, you can add elements like text, images, buttons, boxes, and more anywhere on the page by just dragging and dropping it where you want it.

While some may like the structure of Shopify's section-by-section block editor, I'm personally a huge fan of the flexibility Wix offers to those who want to give their site a creative spin.

The better platform for marketing depends on your audience and initiatives

Both Wix and Shopify offer excellent automated email marketing campaign tools. Wix allows you to send newsletters to 200 subscribers per month for free. If that's not enough, you can upgrade to one of Wix's paid email marketing plans, ranging from $10 per month for 500 emails to $49 per month for 1 million emails.

Shopify's built-in email marketing option allows you to send 10,000 emails per month at no cost. You can expand this functionality by installing third-party integrations like Omnisend Email Marketing & SMS.

Both platforms provide key marketing features like automated abandoned cart recovery, customer winback, and post-purchase upsell emails, with many more available through third-party integrations.

Each app also has its own built-in marketing email templates to give you a running start. Here are a few of Wix's options:

And here are Shopify's:

If your marketing efforts are SEO-focused, each platform has its own unique pros and cons. Generally speaking, blogging is Wix's specialty. Not only is its blogging interface user-friendly and powerful, but it also offers built-in SEO tools.

It even allows you to add three related posts for each article by hand. This is especially helpful for delivering content that your readers really want to see, lowering bounce rate.

Both Wix and Shopify make it easy to adjust SEO basics within blog posts, like URL, title tag, and meta description. But Wix's partnership with Semrush allows you to view Semrush keyword data from your dashboard. Plus, it unifies all of your sitewide SEO tools under one tab to keep things user-friendly—a feature Shopify lacks.

One area of SEO where both platforms struggle is URL structure. Both platforms add their own unnecessary elements to product page URLs, which cannot be removed: "/collections/" or "/products/" for Shopify, and "/product-page/" for Wix. Shopify also forces blogs into categories with a "/blogs/CATEGORY/keyword" structure. This hinders SEO performance, as it's best practice to keep a post's target keyword as early in the URL as possible.

While both platforms offer multilingual site options, only Shopify will automatically translate the end of your URL to the user's language. For example, Wix will leave a product page URL slug as "/pretty-flowers/" on the Spanish version of the site, whereas Shopify will translate it to "/flores-bonitas/". If you cater to an international audience, Shopify's SEO features may win out over Wix's.

Wix offers more in-depth AI tools

Wix and Shopify have both entered the artificial intelligence arena with new AI tools designed to streamline and augment the site-building experience. 

With Wix, these features come into play before you start building your website. As a first step, you'll be asked to provide info about your business and the services you offer. Then, Wix's AI assistant will generate a site profile with recommended apps, goals, target audience, tone of voice suggestions, and more.

From here, Wix will walk you through site setup steps based on the AI's recommendations. (Of course, you can always change or skip these steps if they aren't quite right.) 

When it comes to design, you can choose to begin with a template or have a site made for you in seconds (literally) by Wix's AI website builder. It's an impressive feature, creating a functional, fully customizable site almost instantly—which is why it tops Zapier's list of the best AI website builders. Just don't expect too many bells and whistles.

If you choose to go the bespoke route or work from a template, Wix's other AI tools—like text and image generators, image auto-enhancement, alternative layout suggestions, and auto background removal—will help simplify the process. 

On the marketing side, you can use Wix's SEO assistant and AI features to do things like auto-generate meta tags, social captions, and Google Ads content based on your business. (Note: SEO assistant is only available for users subscribed to one of Wix's paid plans.) 

Shopify's AI functionality is geared more toward eCommerce and product marketing than design and content, so you won't get anything quite as comprehensive as Wix's full website builder. 

You can, however, use Shopify Magic AI to generate product descriptions, product image backgrounds, FAQ answers, and email timing suggestions, as well as convert live chat to checkout. The product description AI tool is especially handy—just input a product title and a few keywords, and Shopify will handle the rest. You can even select a tone of voice, like "Expert" or "Playful," or write in a custom one. 

Shopify's AI tools are less in-your-face than Wix's, so keep an eye out for the Shopify Magic AI icon (two little stars) as you navigate the site editor. 

Shopify also offers Sidekick, an AI assistant that functions as a business advisor, content generator, and how-to resource all in one. This service is currently in development, and you'll have to request consideration for early access.

At the end of the day, Wix has more (and more in-depth) AI features than Shopify. If you're in the eCommerce space, Shopify's product marketing AI toolset will likely speed up your workflow. But if you're looking for a bit more oomph, Wix boasts a comprehensive suite of AI features that can help you with everything from design and content to SEO, marketing, and analytics.

Which is cheaper: Shopify or Wix?

While Wix's pricing options don't go nearly as high as Shopify's, the cheaper option depends on what plan you choose (depending on your business goals) as well as whether you pay monthly or annually. Each option's basic plans are priced comparably at slightly under $30 per month (if you pay annually), but you'll pay significantly more for Shopify Advanced at $299 per month (if you pay annually) than for Wix Business Elite at $159 per month.

Shopify offers a 25% discount on its plans when you pay annually, whereas Wix offers no annual discounts. Shopify also reduces the percentage of each sale it takes as you upgrade your plan, which Wix doesn't do.

Speaking of transaction fees, both Shopify and Wix charge processing fees on every order, and the amount can change depending on customer location and payment method. For Shopify, most online domestic transactions have a fee between 2.4% and 2.9% of a purchase, plus 30 cents. (More expensive plans have reduced rates.)

Wix's fees are comparable, at 2.9% plus 30 cents within the U.S., but this rate stays the same even if you subscribe to a higher-tier Wix plan. As with Shopify, the fee will be higher for certain credit cards (like American Express) and payment locations.

Shopify vs. Wix: Which should you choose?

Here's the bottom line: If I were making a creative blog and wanted to do some selling on the side, I'd choose Wix. If I were building a website for eCommerce purposes for my medium to large business, I'd choose Shopify.

That's not to say Wix isn't equipped for eCommerce or that Shopify doesn't have the tools needed to design a creative blog—rather, these aren't each platform's greatest strengths. Consider each platform's reputation in tandem with your business's size, financial limitations, and needs to make your decision.

Shopify vs. Wix FAQ

Choosing a website builder is a major decision. After all, nobody wants to go through the hassle of migrating their whole site to a new CMS. Refer to the common questions about Wix and Shopify below as you decide which platform is right for you.

Is Wix better than Shopify?

Wix is arguably better than Shopify in some areas, such as flexibility and quantity of free template offerings, but it falls behind Shopify from an eCommerce perspective.

Which is better for SEO: Shopify or Wix?

Both Shopify and Wix have their pros and cons when it comes to SEO. Shopify is better for multilingual SEO, but Wix provides better keyword assistance, AI tools, and more user-friendly access to sitewide SEO.

Don't let choosing between Wix and Shopify keep you up at night. Just be mindful of your business's primary goals, and choose whichever platform caters to them best.

Related reading:

• How to automate your eCommerce business

• The best free website builders

• Shopify vs. Squarespace

• Wix vs. Weebly

• Shopify vs. WordPress

This article was originally published in March 2023. The most recent update, with contributions from Dylan Reber, was in May 2024.