Shopify Vs Wix: It’s Not Even a Comparo

Recently, I noticed a few blog posts that compare Shopify Vs Wix or whatever. TL;DR — it’s not a comparison.

Don’t mix these two up. That’s not how you look at it.

This isn’t to say Wix is terrible or that Shopify isn’t right for you. These are two different platforms for absolutely two different use cases and target audiences.

Both Wix and Shopify are fantastic tools and both of them are run by companies that are healthy and profitable.

However, comparing them is like comparing a surgical grade scalpel (Wix) with a precision earth moving equipment (Shopify).

The scalpel has work cut out for it and so does the earth moving equipment — each built for very precise but completely different reasons.

Wix: The Deceivingly simple website builder

Wix is an extremely easy to use DIY website builder helping millions of small business owners to get up and running with a website. Of course, professionals and freelancers can also create their websites and individuals can create their personal websites too.

Wix — as a drag-and-drop builder — makes use of various blocks and elements to help build your website. Choose relevant modules, blocks, sections, and other elements to build your site.

You can choose from one of the many templates and tweak accordingly.

Wix has various apps you could work with for various purposes such as for you to enable invoicing, appointment booking, restaurant table reservations, and also commerce.

For some reason I can’t fathom, Wix doesn’t integrate with MailChimp and other popular tools such as Sumo, OptinMonster, Drip, and a few others.

That would have been nice.

What Wix does have — doing justice to the Wix Vs Shopify comparision — is its own ecosystem of features and apps that lets do Wix everything you want it to do (including eCommerce).

For email marketing, you use Wix’s own email marketing system. If there are specific tools you use as a part of your marketing stack, it helps to do your bit to research or write to Wix’s pre-sales support.

Shopify is for ecommerce

Shopify is a powerful platform to help build ecommerce sites. Just like Wix, it boasts of an ecosystem of its own. Together with Shopify Apps, there’s a lot you can achieve.

Shopify is best used for eCommerce.

It has everything you need — free Shopify themes, paid Shopify themes, Shopify Apps, Shopify experts available to help customize your store. When you start with Shopify, hosting is a part of the package and you get Shopify’s built-in editor or eCommerce site builder.

Inside the Shopify Platform, you can easily start building a store with one of the free themes or purchase a new theme. If you need help, there’s an entire community of Shopify Partners and Shopify experts ready to help.

With Shopify, assuming you don’t need any customization, you can be up and running in 20 minutes flat.

Just as most marketing and technology tools are built keeping WordPress in mind (and making sure they work together), Shopify has tons of app of its own. Many others also build marketing, technology, and other apps for Shopify.

Plus, practically everything you’d ever want to use — for whatever business functions such as finance, inventory management, sales, and marketing – work with Shopify.

Wix Vs Shopify: What to use and When?

Let’s keep it simple: use Wix if all you want is a simple website for your business — nothing more and nothing less.

Wix is not the best fit for digital marketing either — a lot of awesome tools won’t work with Wix and you’d be lucky if any of the tools you use in your marketing stack have any apps built for Wix.

If you are looking for the freedom and flexibility that you get with WordPress or Shopify, Wix isn’t for you.

Shopify, on the other hand, is just as popular as WordPress (but for eCommerce). If it’s an online store you need and all the bells and whistles (including bank-grade security, constant uptime, great customer support, and more), Shopify is what you need.

Shopify, however, isn’t the best platform for regular business websites or for blogs (although you do have a blogging feature within Shopify).

Note: If you need to start a blog, start with WordPress the usual way. WordPress can be used for everything but I’d still recommend Shopify for ecommerce.

If you want that further simplified without having to worry about the quality of hosting, try Studiopress (templates and hosting come packaged with it).

Have you used Shopify yet? Or Wix? What do you think about either of them?