Wix vs Shopify In 2026: Which Is Better For Selling Online?
David Roberts
Founder and CEO
10.18.2026
Wix and Shopify both let you build an online store without code, but they come from opposite directions. Wix is a website builder that added ecommerce: its strength is building an attractive, all-purpose business website, with selling as one of many features. Shopify is an ecommerce platform first. Everything in it, from the admin to the checkout to the app store, is designed around selling products and growing order volume.
That difference matters more as your store grows. For a handful of products alongside a service business, Wix is often simpler and cheaper. For a brand where online sales are the business, Shopify’s checkout, inventory tools, sales channels and app ecosystem usually justify its price. This guide compares the two on pricing, fees, store features, design, marketing and scalability, using current US pricing as of October 2026.
Short answer: choose Wix if you want one platform for a business website that also sells some products; choose Shopify if ecommerce is your main revenue stream or you plan to scale beyond a small catalog.
Here is how the two platforms compare for selling online as of October 2026. Prices are US prices on annual billing.
Feature
Wix
Shopify
Core focus
Website builder with ecommerce
Dedicated ecommerce platform
Lowest plan that can sell
Core, $29 per month
Basic, $29 per month
Free option
Free plan (cannot sell)
3-day free trial, then $1 per month for 3 months
Platform transaction fee
None
None with Shopify Payments; 0.6% to 2% with third-party gateways
US online card rate
About 2.9% + 30 cents
2.9% + 30 cents (Basic) down to 2.5% + 30 cents (Advanced)
Product limit
Large catalogs supported, up to 1,000 variants per product
Unlimited products
Point of sale
Wix POS
Shopify POS, POS Pro at $89 per location per month
App ecosystem
Wix App Market
Shopify App Store, the largest commerce app ecosystem
Enterprise tier
Wix Enterprise (custom)
Shopify Plus, from $2,300 per month
Best for
Service businesses and small catalogs
Product brands and growing online stores
What Is The Difference Between Wix And Shopify?
The core difference between Wix and Shopify is what each platform optimizes for. Wix optimizes for building a website. Its freeform editor, broad template library and built-in tools for bookings, events, restaurants and blogs make it a strong choice when your website needs to do many things, and selling products is one of them.
Shopify optimizes for selling. Its admin is built around orders, products, customers, inventory and analytics. Its checkout is among the most trusted and conversion-tested on the web, and Shop Pay gives returning shoppers accelerated checkout. Its sales channels connect your catalog to marketplaces, social platforms and in-person retail. When a store grows to hundreds of SKUs, multiple warehouses or wholesale customers, Shopify has native features or proven apps for it.
In practice, many businesses on Wix are service companies with a small shop. Many businesses on Shopify are product brands that also have a few content pages. Knowing which of those you are is half the decision.
Wix vs Shopify Pricing In 2026
At the entry level, Wix and Shopify cost the same for selling online. The differences show up in payment fees, upper tiers and the apps you will need. All prices below are US prices as of October 2026.
Wix Pricing
Wix has a free plan that cannot sell, and four standard premium plans on annual billing: Light ($17 per month), Core ($29), Business ($39) and Business Elite ($159). Ecommerce starts on Core, which Wix describes as basic ecommerce; Business adds standard ecommerce features and Business Elite adds advanced ecommerce and developer tools. Monthly billing costs more. See the Wix plans page for current details.
Wix plan
Annual price per month
Storage
Ecommerce level
Light
$17
2 GB
No online selling
Core
$29
50 GB
Basic ecommerce
Business
$39
100 GB
Standard ecommerce
Business Elite
$159
Unlimited
Advanced ecommerce
Wix does not charge its own transaction fee on orders. You pay your payment provider’s processing rate, commonly reported at 2.9% plus 30 cents for US online card payments through Wix Payments.
Shopify Pricing
Shopify has four main plans. On annual billing they cost $29 (Basic), $79 (Grow) and $299 (Advanced) per month, with Shopify Plus starting at $2,300 per month. Monthly billing is $39, $105 and $399 respectively. New stores get a 3-day free trial, then $1 per month for the first three months, per the Shopify pricing page.
Shopify plan
Annual price per month
Monthly billing
Online card rate (US)
Third-party gateway fee
Basic
$29
$39
2.9% + 30 cents
2%
Grow
$79
$105
2.7% + 30 cents
1%
Advanced
$299
$399
2.5% + 30 cents
0.6%
Plus
From $2,300
n/a
2.25% + 30 cents
0.2%
Shopify charges no transaction fee if you use Shopify Payments. If you use a third-party payment provider instead, Shopify adds the fee shown above on top of that provider’s own rate. All plans support unlimited products and include casual in-person selling; POS Pro for retail locations costs $89 per location per month.
Total Cost Of Ownership
For a small store doing $2,000 a month in sales, the two platforms cost about the same: roughly $29 per month plus around 2.9% plus 30 cents per order in processing on either one.
The bigger differences are apps and scale. Shopify stores typically add paid apps for reviews, subscriptions, upsells, email or loyalty, which can add $20 to $200 or more per month. Wix includes more of these features natively but offers fewer advanced options. At higher volumes, Shopify’s Grow and Advanced plans lower card rates, which saves real money once you pass tens of thousands of dollars in monthly sales. Wix has no equivalent processing discount tiers that we could verify.
A Worked Example
Take a store selling $10,000 a month online with an average order of $50 (200 orders), all through the platform’s own payment processor at US card rates. On Wix Core or Shopify Basic, processing at 2.9% plus 30 cents comes to about $350 per month, plus the $29 plan fee. On Shopify Grow at $79, the 2.7% plus 30 cents rate brings processing to about $330. That saves about $20 a month against a plan that costs $50 more, so at this volume Basic is still cheaper; Grow’s rate discount alone only breaks even at roughly $25,000 in monthly sales, and the case for upgrading earlier rests on its staff accounts and reporting. Add your apps, and the real monthly cost on either platform is usually $400 to $500 at that volume. These are illustrations; your rates depend on card mix, country and payment method.
Ease Of Use
Wix is easier for building the website itself. Its drag-and-drop editor and AI site builder get a complete, branded site up quickly, and the shop is just another section you add. If you have never built a site before, Wix feels more forgiving.
Shopify is easier for running a store. Its admin is designed around daily ecommerce tasks: processing orders, printing shipping labels, managing stock, issuing refunds and reviewing sales reports. Setting up a theme takes a little more learning than Wix’s editor, but once a store is live, Shopify’s workflows save time every day, especially as order volume grows.
Point Of Sale
If you also sell in person, both platforms can unify online and offline sales. Wix offers retail and mobile POS options that sync inventory with your online store. Shopify includes casual in-person selling on all paid plans and sells POS Pro for retail locations at $89 per location per month on annual billing, adding unlimited staff access, advanced inventory and omnichannel features. Shopify’s POS hardware and retail tooling are more mature, which matters for brands with physical shops or frequent pop-ups.
Ecommerce Features Compared
Both platforms cover the fundamentals well: product variants, inventory tracking, discount codes, abandoned cart recovery, tax calculation, shipping rules, gift cards and customer accounts. The differences are in depth.
Catalog And Inventory
Shopify supports unlimited products, multiple inventory locations (up to 10 on Basic, Grow and Advanced, and 200 on Plus, according to Shopify’s plan comparison), bulk editing, metafields for custom product data and detailed inventory reporting. Wix supports large catalogs, up to 1,000 variants per product, CSV import and export, and inventory syncing across its sales channels. For a few dozen products both are comfortable. For thousands of SKUs and multiple warehouses, Shopify’s tooling is stronger.
Checkout And Payments
Shopify’s checkout is its biggest competitive advantage. It is fast, mobile-optimized, supports Shop Pay, Apple Pay, Google Pay and PayPal, and benefits from Shopify’s scale in fraud detection and conversion testing. Wix’s checkout is solid and supports major wallets and payment providers, but it does not have the same accelerated-checkout network behind it.
Sales Channels
Both platforms sell across channels. Wix lets you reach shoppers on Google, eBay, Etsy, Amazon, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Wish from one dashboard. Shopify connects to Google, Meta, TikTok, Pinterest, YouTube, Amazon and many more through its sales channel apps, plus its own Shop app. Shopify’s channel ecosystem is deeper, particularly for social commerce and marketplaces.
B2B, Subscriptions And Selling Models
Wix supports subscriptions, digital products, print-on-demand and dropshipping natively. Shopify supports the same and more through native features and apps, including mature B2B and wholesale tooling on Shopify Plus. If you need wholesale price lists, company accounts or complex subscription logic, Shopify is the safer platform.
Design And Store Builder
Wix gives you more design freedom out of the box. Its freeform editor lets you place elements anywhere, and its templates cover every industry. That makes it easy to build a distinctive brand site where the shop is one section among many.
Shopify uses themes from its Theme Store, built on a section-based editor that is structured but flexible. Themes are designed specifically for stores, with product pages, collection filtering and merchandising built in. A developer can customize anything with Liquid, Shopify’s templating language, or build a headless storefront. For a store-first site, Shopify’s themes generally convert better with less tweaking.
Verdict: Wix for design freedom on mixed-purpose sites. Shopify for store-optimized themes and deep customization through developers.
Apps And Integrations
The Shopify App Store is the largest commerce app ecosystem, with thousands of apps for reviews, loyalty, subscriptions, email and SMS marketing, upsells, fulfillment, accounting and more. Almost every ecommerce SaaS tool builds for Shopify first. That is a major reason brands choose it: whatever you need, someone has already built it.
The Wix App Market is smaller but covers the essentials, and Wix includes more features natively, such as email marketing, bookings and loyalty programs. Wix also offers Velo for custom code and integrations. If you rely on specialist ecommerce tools, check their Wix support before committing.
Marketing And SEO
Both platforms handle ecommerce SEO basics: editable titles and descriptions, clean URLs, sitemaps, structured product data and redirects. Wix offers granular SEO controls and strong built-in blogging, which helps content-led small businesses. Shopify’s blog is more basic, but its SEO apps, schema tools and strong page speed on modern themes make it fully capable of ranking large catalogs.
For marketing, Wix includes email campaigns, social posting and automations within the platform. Shopify offers Shopify Email, Shopify Messaging and marketing automations, plus the widest range of third-party tools such as Klaviyo. For a brand investing heavily in paid social, email and retention, Shopify’s ecosystem is the stronger base. Our list of top Shopify marketing agencies covers specialists in exactly that work.
Scalability
This is where the two diverge most. Wix can grow with a small business, and Wix Enterprise serves larger organizations, but it is primarily a website platform. Shopify scales from a first sale to brands doing hundreds of millions in revenue. Its upper plans add lower processing rates, more staff accounts and advanced reporting, and Shopify Plus adds checkout customization, B2B, automation tools and higher API limits.
If you expect strong growth, multiple sales channels or international expansion, starting on Shopify avoids a painful migration later. That is why “migrate Wix to Shopify” and “switch from Wix to Shopify” are among the most common searches around these two platforms.
Support
Both platforms offer 24/7 support. Wix provides a help center, live chat and callback options depending on plan and region. Shopify offers round-the-clock chat and email support, a large help center, and an enormous community of partners, forums and agencies. For complex store issues, Shopify’s partner ecosystem is a significant advantage: there is almost always a specialist who has solved your exact problem before.
Moving From Wix To Shopify
If you already sell on Wix and are outgrowing it, a migration is very doable with planning:
Export products, customers and orders from Wix as CSV files and import them into Shopify, or use a migration app or service.
Choose a Shopify theme and rebuild your pages, since Wix designs do not transfer.
Recreate discount codes, shipping rules, taxes and apps.
Map old Wix URLs to new Shopify URLs and set up 301 redirects to preserve search rankings.
Move your domain, test checkout end to end, then cancel your Wix plan.
The right platform depends on how central online sales are to your business.
Choose Wix If…
Your website does many jobs and selling products is only one of them.
You run a service business, studio or restaurant that also sells a small product range.
You want maximum design freedom without hiring a developer.
You prefer built-in bookings, events and marketing tools over adding apps.
Your catalog and order volume are modest and likely to stay that way.
Choose Shopify If…
Ecommerce is your main revenue stream.
You plan to grow your catalog, order volume or sales channels significantly.
You want the most trusted, conversion-optimized checkout available.
You rely on specialist ecommerce apps for reviews, subscriptions, retention or fulfillment.
You may need B2B, wholesale or enterprise features later.
When Neither Fits
If you need full ownership of your code and a CMS for heavy content alongside a store, WooCommerce on WordPress is the main alternative; our WooCommerce vs Shopify comparison covers that choice. For very large catalogs with complex requirements, enterprise platforms like Adobe Commerce or BigCommerce are also worth a look.
Who To Hire
A good partner can save months on a store build or migration. Shopify in particular has a large ecosystem of specialist agencies. These ReVerb lists are a good starting point:
Shopify is better for dedicated ecommerce businesses because of its checkout, inventory tools, sales channels and app ecosystem. Wix is better for businesses whose website does many things and that sell a modest range of products alongside services.
Is Wix cheaper than Shopify?
At the entry level they cost the same: $29 per month on annual billing for Wix Core and Shopify Basic as of October 2026. Shopify can cost more once you add paid apps, while Wix includes more tools natively. Shopify’s higher plans reduce card processing rates for high-volume stores.
Does Shopify charge transaction fees?
Not if you use Shopify Payments. If you use a third-party payment provider, Shopify adds a fee of 2% on Basic, 1% on Grow, 0.6% on Advanced and 0.2% on Plus, on top of that provider’s own processing rate.
Does Wix charge transaction fees?
Wix does not charge its own transaction fee on store orders. You pay the processing fee of your payment provider, such as Wix Payments, PayPal or Stripe.
Can I use Shopify with Wix?
Not as a native combined store. Some businesses keep a Wix website and link to a separate Shopify store, or use Shopify’s Buy Button to embed products, but most growing brands eventually run the whole site on one platform to keep checkout and analytics unified.
How do I move from Wix to Shopify?
Export your products, customers and orders from Wix as CSV files, import them into Shopify or use a migration app, rebuild your design on a Shopify theme, set up 301 redirects from old URLs, then move your domain. Many agencies offer this as a fixed-scope service.
Is Wix or Shopify better for dropshipping?
Both support dropshipping. Shopify has the larger range of dropshipping and print-on-demand apps and is the more common choice for dropshipping businesses that plan to scale. Wix offers built-in dropshipping and print-on-demand that suit smaller operations.
Conclusion
The Wix vs Shopify decision comes down to whether you are building a website that sells or a store that has a website. Wix is excellent for the first: a flexible, attractive business site with bookings, content and a small shop in one place. Shopify is built for the second: a commerce engine with a best-in-class checkout and an ecosystem that supports growth from your first order to enterprise scale.
If online sales are or will be the heart of your business, start on Shopify and consider working with one of the specialists on the ReVerb lists above. If your products are a supporting act, Wix will keep things simpler and give you more creative control.
