- So I've been using both Shopify and Wix to build multiple e-commerce
stores over the past years. I've even created complete
beginner tutorials on how to set up online stores
using both Shopify and Wix. So in this video, I'm gonna compare both of these e-commerce
platforms side by side. This video is not sponsored
by any of these platforms. I'm simply gonna give you
my honest opinion based on my own experience and
based on some further research that I've done for this specific video. So let's get started. (gentle music) Now, I wanna make clear that
I'm gonna compare Shopify and Wix as e-commerce platforms, so a place where you can
build an online store and sell things, because this is already where
we can spot a big difference between Wix and Shopify. Both companies started out in 2006 but Wix started out as a
website builder, whereas Shopify from the beginning focused on
being an e-commerce platform. Only in the recent years, Wix started rolling out
e-commerce features allowing us to sell products on a Wix website. So just based on that fact, it's clear that Shopify
has a lot more experience in the e-commerce space. However, that doesn't mean
that we should immediately go and build our store on Shopify. So let's go ahead and take
a deeper look into both of these platforms starting
with plans and pricing. With Shopify, you can choose
between three different plans: Basic, Shopify, and advanced. When you're starting out, the basic plan should be
more than enough for you. So that would be $29 per
month plus transaction fees for every sale that your store makes. You already get a lot with a
basic plan, like being able to sell an unlimited amount
of products, 24/7 support, and features like discount
codes, abandoned cart recovery, marketing automation, and a lot more. The main difference between the basic plan and the other plans are
the transaction fees. So if you go for one of
the more expensive plans, you're gonna have lower transaction fees for every sale that your store makes. So when you reach a certain
number of revenue per month, it certainly makes sense
to upgrade to a higher plan to reduce those transaction fees. We will take a closer look
into payment providers and transaction fees later in
this video because, obviously, this is a very important deciding factor. Now let's look at the pricing of Wix. On the pricing page,
we first have to switch from regular website plans to
business and e-commerce plans 'cause these are the
ones we need to go for if you want to sell
products on our website. Here, we also got three
plans: Business basic, business unlimited, and business VIP. And by the way, these prices
apply if you pay yearly. If you wanna pay on a monthly basis, then these are the prices
for the respective plans. With a basic plan for $34 per month, you get everything you need
for a basic online store. However, if you want your
international customers to see prices in their local currency, or if you wanna sell subscription
products, then you need to go at least for the
business unlimited plan at $38 per month. Now, looking at the Wix and
Shopify plans side by side, we can see that the basic plan of Shopify is actually
a bit cheaper compared to Wix's basic plan if you pay monthly. Then the higher tier plans of Shopify are much more
expensive compared to Wix, at least when you first look at them. Because one of the main
differences here is that Wix doesn't reduce
their transaction fees for the higher tier plans. So even though you'll pay more
in a monthly subscription fee for a higher tier Shopify
plan, the overall cost in a month can still be
lower compared to Wix because for every sale that you make, you're gonna pay less in transaction fees. So, in my opinion, the plans of Shopify are a bit
more attractive because with the basic plan, you pretty
much get everything you need for your online store. And I also like the fact that you can reduce your transaction fees once you start making
more money with your store by simply upgrading to a higher tier plan. Shopify does have a 14-day free trial so you can test out everything
before choosing a paid plan. You're gonna find a link
to that trial down below in the video description. However, if you want to launch your store and make it available to visitors, you do need to be on a paid plan. Wix doesn't have a limited free trial, you can basically just
create a free Wix account, take your time to build your store, but then once you wanna start selling, you also need to be on a paid plan. Let's move on and compare
the website themes of Wix and Shopify. Both platforms have a
lot of beautiful themes for all types of online stores. Wix literally has hundreds
of free online store themes that you can choose from,
so the chances are very high that you're gonna find one
that you're really like that is already optimized
for the kind of online store that you want to build. Shopify, on the other hand, only has nine free online store themes. So if you don't like
any of these nine themes for your store, you have the possibility to browse their premium theme library. However, those themes cost you around $300 as a one-time fee. So Wix definitely gets a big point here for having a lot of free
themes for online stores. However, one of the key
differences between Wix and Shopify themes is that Wix's themes aren't
always fully responsive, meaning that when you look at your website on a mobile device, it won't
always be perfectly optimized. So you'll need to make sure
to rearrange all the elements that are out of place
for smaller screen sizes. Wix does have the so-called
Editor X that you can use to build fully responsive designs. However, that is more geared
towards the advanced designer and agencies rather than the average user. Shopify's themes, on the other
hand, are fully responsive, meaning that you can just build
everything on desktop view and it'll automatically
look good on mobile as well. Now, let's talk a bit more about design customization
options for Wix and Shopify. Generally, you'll be
more flexible using Wix to design your online store. You can simply use drag
and drop to add any element to your website and
customize it as you like. This kind of drag and drop
doesn't work on Shopify. Here, everything has
its predefined position and you get some customization
options on the side menu. So you definitely do get more
flexibility when it comes to website design using Wix. In terms of ease of use, I have to say that I find both platforms
fairly easy to use for beginners. Wix really tries to make
it as simple as possible for absolute beginners to
build a beautiful website. If you wanna get your website
up and running as quick as possible with minimum design work, you can use their ADI website builder. Here, you can simply
answer some questions, pick some favorite designs, and then Wix will automatically
design your online store based on your answers. Shopify doesn't have something like that, but I still think it's
fairly straightforward to build your first
online store, especially if you use my Shopify tutorial to guide you through step by step. In terms of managing
everything else that comes with running an online store, like fulfilling orders,
managing inventory, handling customer support, or
sending out marketing emails, I would say that both of
them are equally easy to use. I personally like Shopify a bit better in terms of user experience. I just feel like, when I
use Shopify, I really notice that everything is specifically
made for selling online and everything is optimized
for that specific purpose. So there's no unnecessary
features that distract you from what's actually important. However, I did read a lot of comments from similar videos like
this one and saw a lot of people saying that they
found Wix a lot easier to use and a lot less complex. So, probably, the best
way would be to sign up for both of these platforms
and see for yourself which one comes easier to you. And by the way, if you need
some help in the beginning, getting started with
either Shopify or Wix, definitely make sure to watch
my beginner tutorials here on YouTube. They already helped out a lot of people to create their first online store. You'll find links to
those videos down below in the video description. Now, let's look at the variety of apps or plug-ins that you can use on your online store on Wix or Shopify. So whenever you wanna do something with your online store that isn't included in the basic features of Shopify or Wix, the first thing you would do is look for an app that can do
that specific thing. Just like the Apple App
Store or Google Play Store for your smartphone, Wix and Shopify also have so-called app stores where you can find tons of
apps for your online store. Shopify has over 7,000
apps in their app store, most of which are free to use. On Wix's app store, there's only around 300
apps you can choose from. And that's because there
are a lot more stores built on Shopify compared to Wix. So of course it does make
sense for the app developers to build their apps for Shopify first, because there's just a lot more customers with Shopify stores. So the amount of apps available in the app store is
definitely a big reason why many people would
choose Shopify over Wix. Just imagine buying a
smartphone and then realizing that you can't use 95% of apps
on that specific smartphone. You probably wouldn't buy that phone. I leave the links to both the Shopify and the Wix app store down
below in the description, so you can check out for yourself what apps
they have available, as well as a link to the
most popular Shopify apps. When it comes to shipping and fulfillment, both platforms have many
options, including different ways on how to calculate
your shipping rate based on weight, price, product or even display realtime
shipping rates based on the actual prices of carriers. For Wix, this feature
is limited to shipping with USPS, and for Shopify, you also get realtime shipping rates with USPS, FedEx, and UPS. However, that option is
only available if you go for the advanced Shopify
plan at 299 per month. What you get with any plan on Shopify are discounted shipping rates for DHL express, UPS,
Canada post and Sendle, and that's because
Shopify has partnerships with those carriers so they can offer their users
a discounted shipping rate of up to 88%. What's also very cool with Shopify is that they have their
own fulfillment network. So it can actually send your products to one of their fulfillment centers, and then when somebody
orders on your store, they will take care of the fulfillment of the order and also
take care of the returns. This can definitely make running
your business a lot easier. However, this is only
available for stores that sell in the US and that make
at least one sale per day. And then the product
you're selling also needs to meet these criteria here as well. So when it comes to
shipping and fulfillment, you definitely get a lot more features and benefits with Shopify. Something that is always really hard to judge before buying a
product is how responsive and helpful the customer
support actually is. I always find it very frustrating
when there's a problem, but you're not able to
reach the customer support or you can reach them, but
they're not helpful at all. I'm sure you've all been there. So let's talk about that
for Shopify and Wix. The availability of both
platforms is very good with 24/7 customer support
by email, chat or phone. So what about the quality of answers that you get
from those support teams? And here, I can only tell you
what my own experience was, and to be completely honest,
the answers that I got from Shopify were overall
a bit more helpful compared to Wix. I just felt that they immediately
understood what my problem was and they were able to solve
it for me very quickly. Oftentimes, with Wix, I felt that the support agents
weren't as knowledgeable as I'd like them to be. And the last topic I wanna
definitely discuss here is payment providers and transaction fees. Both platforms have their own
integrated payment systems, Shopify Payments, and Wix Payments. These payment options allow
your customers to pay directly on your website using a
credit card, using Google Pay, Apple Pay, Shop Pay, or even Meta Pay. For the US, the transaction
fee of both platforms is 2.9% of the sales price plus 30 cents, which is pretty standard in the industry. The difference between
Shopify and Wix payments is that Shopify reduces their
transaction fees to 2.6 or 2.4% when you upgrade to the Shopify or the advanced Shopify plan. If you can't or don't want to
use Shopify or Wix payments, both platforms also offer the possibility to use a third-party payment provider. Something like Stripe, for example. What's annoying with
Shopify is that on top of the fee that you have to pay
to the third-party provider, you also have to pay a
0.5% to 2% fee directly to Shopify for using a
third-party payment option. So for example, if you were
to use Stripe and you're on the basic Shopify plan,
you'd have to pay 2.9% to Stripe and then another 2% to Shopify,
which is totally crazy. So if Shopify payments is not
available in your country, this might be a good reason
to choose Wix over Shopify because they don't charge
any additional fees for using a third-party payment provider. You can find an updated
list of all the countries where Shopify payments
is available down below in the video description. So what e-commerce
platform should you go for? In my opinion, Shopify is
definitely the way to go if you're serious about
building an online store. Really the only reason why I
would choose Wix over Shopify for e-commerce is if I already
had an established site on Wix and now I would also
wanna sell some products on that website. And like I've mentioned
before, another reason might be that when Shopify Payments is
not available in your country and you don't wanna pay the extra fee that you're gonna have to pay with Shopify for using a third-party provider. If there's any deals or discounts going on in the time of you watching this video, I always leave them down below
in the video description, as well as a link to a free
trial for Shopify and Wix, so you can totally try
out both these platforms for yourself before making
your final decision. And when you do, I highly recommend to watch my beginner tutorials
for either of these platforms to help you set everything
up step by step. Thank you very much for watching and I look forward to seeing
you in the next video.
