The answer to the question of Wix vs Shopify is rather complex. On one side, there’s Wix and its undisputed greatness in the web-building market. Shopify, as its name blatantly implies, is suited for e-commerce. In essence, they do the same things; allow you to build a website and sell digital and physical goods online.
This begs the question of which service is better in 2026, Shopify or Wix. To answer that question, our team used both services (we still use them) for months. We hosted, and still host multiple websites and online stores using both and enjoying an awesome experience.
In reality, Wix and Shopify are great and even if you’re nit-picky, it’s hard to find fatal flaws. However, these website builders can be very different, and depending on your needs, choosing one over the other can be a life-changing decision. So, let’s see which one is right for you.
Wix vs Shopify: Quick Overview
| Wix | Shopify | |
| Our current ranking | #1 | #10 |
| Starting price | $10/mo | $24/mo |
| Free Domain | Yes | No |
| Free SSL | Yes | Yes |
| Number of templates | 900+ (free) | 200+ (13 free) |
| Transaction fees | 2.9% + 30¢ | 2.4-2.6% + 30¢ |
| Email marketing | 5,000 free emails monthly | 2,500 free emails monthly |
| Customer support | Phone, email, chat | Phone, email chat |
How to Get Started With Wix and Shopify?
Very few things are simpler than your start with Wix and Shopify. In fact, we’d say even tying a shoelace can be more complicated. Let’s start with Wix.
Wix is an impressive website builder, which tailors to beginners with its multiple options to get started. One option is to use an AI or Wix ADI, which asks you a few questions and generates a website based on your answers. This is a great way to start but with one critical downside.
It lacks customization.
Another option is to create a website using a template. Of course, this template can later be altered and modified to suit your needs. Both Wix and Shopify let you start for free, which is crucial to mention, so you don’t need to shell out money right away to play around.
Speaking of playing around, getting started with Shopify is another walk in the park.
Once you sign up, you’ll verify your email and the web builder will ask you where you want to sell. We picked the online store option and described our experience by choosing “I’m just starting”. From here, Shopify asked us what we’ll sell and we answered with “Services”.
That’s all. Now the dashboard will open where you’ll see the tasks you need to complete. These include adding a custom domain, naming your store, generating a theme, browsing from many pre-made ones, and so on. The start-up process is very similar in both.
The first round is a tie. It doesn’t matter which one you choose, Shopify or Wix; you’ll be able to get up and start working on your website in a minute or two.
Wix vs Shopify: Templates & Website Design
The pillar of every website builder is the presence of ready-made templates. These are your starting points. You’re working your way up from there and modifying the template to get that “Aha!” effect where everything just clicks.
So, which web builder offers more templates, Wix or Shopify?
- Wix has over 900 FREE templates
- Shopify has roughly 230 templates and about 13 are free
It’s clear that Wix has an advantage here, especially because all of its templates are free. Shopify’s 70+ templates will cost at least $100 and up to $310. Don’t worry – this is a one-time fee. After you pay, you won’t be asked to do so again, which is a bit of a solace.
Still, this raises the price of website creation noticeably, especially on a budget.
Template Variety
In terms of variety, Wix is going to beat Shopify at any moment. We love that both providers have different template categories so that you can find what you need easily. Wix relies on industries, such as:
- Electronics
- CBD
- Food & Drinks
- Arts & Crafts, and more.
Shopify does the same but includes a few more “narrowed-down” parameters like:
- Catalog size
- Features
- Price, and more.
For example, you can pick a template for 1 to 9 or 200+ products. The template variety is on Wix’s side. You get a wide gamut of simple and more complex templates whose beauty radiates from afar. Shopify’s templates are a bit minimalistic. A lot simpler, too.
They’re mostly “functional” in a way that showcases your products in the first place, rather than including a convoluted or “fancy” design. Whether you choose Wix or Shopify, you can expect mobile-optimized templates that you can further edit and optimize as well.
Website Design
Once you pick the template, you can begin working on your website. We mentioned that Wix allows you to use its AI-driven ADI editor, which crafts the site based on your merits. This one is handy if you’re a total newbie and have no clue how to build a site.
Bear in mind that the ADI editor isn’t a full-fledged one, so customization is fairly limited. You can alter a few things like the website layout, for example. The good news is that you can seamlessly switch from the ADI editor to Wix Editor and oh boy, that is a big change!
The Wix Editor allows for full freedom to play around and build the website the way you want. It’s, in fact, so “open” that some will find it confusing. There are no constraints you must follow. Instead, you can drag and drop any element anywhere and edit it right away.
This comes at a cost of chaos, which can quickly emerge and “kill” the clean look of the site.
Shopify isn’t as flexible as Wix. However, it’s equally simple to start with. Select the template and boom – you’re ready to edit it. Unfortunately, Shopify doesn’t have a drag-and-drop editor like Wix ADI, so some (plenty) constraints exist to tamper with your creativity.
Instead, you can edit these blocks where you can add elements like videos, text, etc. To be honest, Shopify is more beginner-friendly because you can’t mess up the design that much. You’re within these constraints that already make the website clean and streamlined.
Design Your Website With Shopify
Users can edit their templates by using HTML or opting for a third-party app to add more features to the site.
To digress:
- Wix offers more templates
- Shopify is easier to use
This makes the second Wix vs Shopify round a tie.
E-Commerce Features Analysis
In our hands-on test of Wix, we praised just how powerful its e-commerce features were. However, Wix’s focus isn’t e-commerce. Shopify, with its self-explanatory name, right away says to you “Pick me for your online store!” but you may be a bit too hesitant.
Is it better to use Shopify or Wix if you’re looking to sell online? We’ll explain.
Starting with Shopify, we love its simplistic, user-friendly dashboard that lets you control your inventory and add/subtract products. Customization options are immaculate, so you can add product images, insert tags, and set up the product status (active/inactive).
There’s an option to add product variants. For example, if you’re selling a green shirt, its variants can include red, blue, and purple shirts. The thing we also like is the option to add videos that can additionally describe the product to the potential buyer.
Wix’s e-commerce features are no less impressive. Like Shopify, it lets you sell digital and physical products; subscriptions and services are included, too! You get pretty much the same basic features here, including shipping options, categorization, and so on.
Multi-channel selling is on both sides, making it easier to sell stuff outside your online store.
Wix and Shopify allow you to edit your search engine listing for the product – which can help improve your ranking on Google. You’ll be able to add a title and description of the product and have it appear like that on the Google listing – or any other search engine for that matter.
Product Shipping Features
Creating a proper online store requires plenty of shipping options tailored to each user’s needs.
During our Wix vs Shopify evaluation for 2026, we discovered that the former’s shipping options were sufficient. You can include free shipping, weight-based shipping, and flat-rate shipping. The latter means you always change the same for shipping, no matter the other aspects.
Wix’s diverse shipping options are also customizable, so there’s a custom “filter” that lets you come up with the new rules. Specifically, you can make new rules for specific regions. If a buyer is from the same location as the bought product, this can come in very handy.
Shopify’s options are very similar. It relies on third-party carriers like, let’s say, DHL, to transport your products. Such carriers will charge you for a parcel, whose price can be dropped a bit if you use Shopify’s more expensive plans.
Shopify includes a great feature for local deliveries, where you don’t need to pay for a parcel. Instead, a local delivery service can deliver the package for you at a lower cost.
Payment Vendors & Fees
Before you ship the product, you must receive a payment. You’re not giving stuff away for free. Luckily, both offer a substantial number of vendors.
- Wix lets you accept payments via Stripe, Square, PayPal, credit/debit cards (Visa, Discover, American Express, and other major providers), Google Pay, Apple Pay, Amazon Pay, and at least 40 more.
- Shopify lets you accept payments via Amazon Pay, Google Pay, credit/debit cards, and more third-party vendors – though, definitely less than Wix.
When it comes to fees, we’re looking at a fairly similar structure:
- Wix has a transaction fee of $2.9% + 30¢
- Shopify’s transaction fees range from 2.4% to 2.9% + 30¢
No matter the plan you choose, Wix’s transaction fees are identical. Shopify’s fees change with the plan; the more expensive you go, the lower the fees. Also, Shopify’s third-party payment vendors tend to take their cut, which ranges from 0.5% to 2%.
Other E-Commerce Features & Options
Wix can be a cheaper Shopify alternative if you’re aiming for dropshipping. As both offer dropshipping features, we found them extremely useful for this aspect. Wix uses the Modalyst platform, allowing you to sell up to 25 products for free.
You can also use Printify, Spocket, and a few other options.
Shopify has its in-house dropshipping platform but also a myriad of third-party apps. Since Shopify is a dedicated e-commerce website builder, we expected and got more variety, with hundreds of dropshipping apps, which definitely beat Wix’s offers.
For instance, Shopify lets you sell up to 500 products for free – Modalyst, which Wix recommends, allows for only up to 25. We should also mention their App Stores. They house hundreds, if not thousands of third-party apps to extend your website capabilities.
Wix and Shopify also have first-party apps, which can be both free and paid. However, in this Shopify vs Wix duel, we found that Shopify has way more apps. At the time of writing, that number is well over 6,300. There’s a difference in app categories, however.
Shopify’s apps are pretty much 90% aimed at e-commerce and are divided into categories like:
- Marketing
- Fulfillment
- Shipping and Delivery
- Conversion, etc.
It also has numerous Store Design apps to help you “sugarcoat” your online store. Wix’s apps are more focused on design, management, and website maintenance. However, it also has dozens of e-commerce apps, such as those for dropshipping and other types of sales.
So, should you choose Wix or Shopify for e-commerce? We’d say Shopify takes this one but not by a long shot. Wix is surprisingly close this time but Shopify’s superiority stems from more dropshipping vendors and thousands of e-commerce-focused apps.
Start Your Online Store With Shopify
SEO & Marketing Options: Which One Is More Efficient?
You’re well aware that SEO is a vital part of every website. You can use Semrush to get it right or rely on Shopify or Wix SEO tools. If you opt for the latter, you’ll still get juicy results, as the two website builders sport a hefty number of features and options.
SEO Features
Wix does a tremendous job of guiding you through the SEO process. Its Wix SEO Wiz tool will hand-hold you through the process and make it easier to hone your strategy with an SEO Setup Checklist.
Alternatively, you can use the editor to manually edit descriptions, alt titles, alt text, etc.
We appreciate Wix’s dedication to the cause with its full access to sitemap files and robots.txt. Moreover, you can play around with redirects thanks to the URL Redirect Manager, which is super useful because you don’t have to “chase” a dedicated tool.
In our comparison, we found that Shopify’s SEO is pretty much on par with Wix. You can, again, edit your page title, description, image alt titles/descriptions, etc. Shopify is enough for basic needs, as it doesn’t let you edit the robots.txt file of your site, for instance.
For this purpose, it has a few third-party SEO apps on the store. Sadly, they cost money and since SEO is utterly important, don’t expect to always pay a small fee. At least you have 40+ SEO apps to play around with and they all cover different SEO aspects.
If you want to maximize your chances of improving your website’s SEO, we recommend checking out the comparison of the best SEO tools available.
Website Analytics
You’ll bear the fruit of your labor only if you know if the labor is in the right direction.
Website analytics are vital here and position tracking is one of the key aspects. Wix Analytics allows you to monitor your traffic, cycle through traffic sources, and discover your unique visitors. This is basic stuff, which can be expanded by using Google Analytics.
Wix’s seamless integration with it divulges even more information about the site. You can also get the aforementioned position tracking tool through GA, for instance. The good news is that Shopify also integrates with GA, so you lose nothing in terms of valuable data.
However, Shopify’s cheapest plan is very limited SEO-wise. You get better and more expansive tools in more expensive plans. The default tool still lets you track your sales, conversion rates, total orders, and other e-commerce-related tidbits.
Email Marketing
Email marketing can boost your conversions and drive more traffic to the website. Whether you select Shopify or Wix, you’ll receive an in-house email marketing service. In Wix, it’s called Ascend. Wix Ascend allows you to send newsletters and emails.
You can customize your emails by using one of many Wix-made templates to craft stunning-looking emails. Wix Ascend is FREE but limited to 5,000 monthly emails. The good news is that the premium version is only five monthly quids for sending unlimited emails.
If you use Shopify, you’ll also get a free email marketing tool, alas, with 2,500 free monthly emails. Again, users get a selection of templates that allow for instant brand embedding for added ease of use. Both email marketing tools are fairly useful and easy to use.
We prefer Wix for email marketing because it can send 5,000 as opposed to 2,500 free monthly emails. You can expand Shopify’s limits by using, let’s say, third-party apps from the app store. But as said, you’ll pay extra for better apps, stretching your budget perhaps too far.
Shopify and Wix do a wonderful job in SEO and marketing but in our book, Wix takes the lead. It has more built-in SEO tools and a superior email marketing service, with splendid templates and 5,000 free monthly emails per account.
Blogging: Shopify vs Wix
You may not associate Shopify with blogging. After all, it’s an e-commerce-oriented website builder. Well, that’s not entirely true cause Shopify offers a built-in blogging platform, which works fantastically. It’s rather basic but does the job well enough for what it is.
We managed to write a few blog posts, add titles, and plug-in featured images. The same goes for Wix whose blogging tool is also built-in and easy to access. It’s a bit more convenient because it lets you import blog posts from WordPress, which is super handy.
The blogging editor also offers a bit more.
There’s the option to format the post accordingly and insert elements like GIFs, dividers, buttons, and videos. Meta titles and descriptions can also be added from the same page, so even a total newbie can come up with a good-looking Blog part of the website.
Frankly, Wix is a better option for blogging but Shopify isn’t too far behind.
Create Stunning-Looking Blogs With Wix
Wix vs Shopify Website Performance Tests
Whether your choice is Shopify or Wix, come to terms that they’ll not perform on the level of the best hosting providers. However, don’t think they’re slouches. You’ll get more than decent performance from both, as long as you know how to properly optimize your site.
For this Shopify vs Wix comparison, we used GTmetrix.
The testing procedure saw us use a Canadian server (Vancouver) on our two e-commerce websites built by both options. We’ll begin with Wix’s performance:
Wix’s performance isn’t the best ever but it’s very commendable.
LCP, which should be under a second, is 851 ms, although we’ve seen better results from Hostinger, SiteGround, and Bluehost. FCP and TTI of 243 ms and 2.3 s are also great, indicating that the website performs smoothly and doesn’t take too long to be functional.
As you can see, Shopify performs well too, with the same 99% performance rating. Its TTI is identical, while the speed index of 992 ms is higher than Wix’s 905 ms. FCP is at 470 ms, so Wix’s 243 ms are slightly on top.
LCP, which indicates the time it takes to load the largest page element, is slightly lower in Shopify – 581 ms, as opposed to 851 ms in Wix. One parameter that disappointed us in Shopify is FLT or Fully Loaded Time of a whopping 6.2 seconds, which should be way lower.
Wix’s FLT was 5.1 seconds, which isn’t extraordinary but a bit better. If you want to drop this even further, perhaps it’s smart to use a fast hosting provider like Hostinger or SiteGround.
Judging by our speed tests, Wix seems to be a better performer.
Maximize Site Performance With Wix
Wix vs Shopify: Pricing & Plans
Before moving on to customer support, let’s compare Shopify vs Wix value-wise.
It’s not always about the price. It’s about the value that the website builder provides for the given price. So, here’s how much Wix costs:
It offers four plans in total and the whole range starts at $10/mo for the Light plan. You can, however, use our handy Wix coupon code to drop the prices of all plans by 10%.
Here’s how much Shopify costs:
Its Basic plan at $24/mo is the cheapest one you can get. However, you’ll pay only $1 for the first month, so it’s sort of a gift from Shopify. Looking at these plans, we can see that Shopify is very expensive compared to Wix, with the Plus plan being $2,300/mo!
Discover Shopify Subscription Plans
On the other hand, Wix’s flagship Business Elite plan is only $149/mo.
Right away, we can see that Wix even includes a free domain name in every plan, which Shopify lacks. Moreover, Wix does NOT take any transaction fees but payment vendors do – keep that in mind. Neither of these applies to Shopify. As said, it includes transaction fees.
They just drop a bit if you pay for a more expensive plan.
We compared Wix vs Shopify subscription plans side by side and concluded that:
- Basic Shopify offers unlimited products compared to 50,000 in Core Wix. Basic Shopify also supports multiple currencies, while Core Wix supports only one.
- Shopify is better than Business Wix for larger businesses because the latter’s fees are slightly higher (2.6% + 30¢ vs 2.9% + 30¢), so more sales = higher costs. Business Wix is suitable for smaller online stores that don’t sell over 50,000 products.
- Advanced Shopify and Business Elite Wix are pretty much on par, however, the former costs almost two times more. Again, Business Elite Wix is better for smaller stores because it, this time, has lower fees for up to 100 transactions. 500 and more monthly transactions level the playing field but the advantage is still on Wix’s side because of a 2-times-lower price.
We can digress by saying that Shopify makes more sense for very large online stores that make hundreds or even thousands of monthly transactions. However, Wix is more suitable for smaller and mid-sized online stores with no more than 50,000 products and 500 sales/mo.
With similar fees and roughly the same essentials in higher-tier plans, Wix’s lower initial and ongoing costs will be more budget-friendly.
Customer Support
There’s virtually no difference when it comes to customer support.
Options like live chat, call, callback, and email are there to help you promptly. Both customer support services work 24/7 as well, with a small caveat of not being too easy to reach. Namely, if you’re stuck, you’ll have to resort to “self-help” first. What does this mean?
Simply put, browsing through hundreds of help articles from the knowledge base.
If nothing’s clear and the problem is unresolved, you have related articles – hooray.
Nothing works?
Well, in that case, you can contact our species e.g. humans, and then request help. Though, we must admit that the support teams from Wix and Shopify are some of the best we used. Once you’re in touch, they’ll tackle your needs and ride alongside you until you’re fully satisfied.
There’s no winner here because both are above average – it’s a tie.
Shopify vs Wix: The Final Verdict
The final verdict, after our exhaustive 2026 comparison, is the score of 7:4 for Wix.
Looking at this score blindly would tell you that Wix demolished Shopify but in practice, this is very far from the truth. Both platforms are very capable, and while Wix is a better AI site builder and superior in terms of design, Shopify is a more equipped e-commerce platform.
We don’t need to repeat everything we said a thousand times.
The conclusion is that:
- Wix is better if you favor superb website design, SEO, marketing, and plenty of e-commerce tools for small and mid-sized online stores with moderate sales.
- Shopify is better if you want a robust and growing online store with features like dropshipping, POS, and thousands of apps tailored specifically to e-commerce.
Be warned that Shopify costs more, especially its premium templates and apps that extend your online store functionality. Wix is more budget-friendly and easier to get into if your budget isn’t flexible enough. We’d rather choose Wix over Shopify based on our merits.
But as said, each user’s needs are different. Pinpoint them and pick the website builder accordingly.