Wix vs Shopify for ecommerce: an honest comparison

Wix and Shopify both get a business selling online without a developer, and either can be the right answer. Wix is a website builder with a store module. Shopify is a commerce platform with website tools. Most of the practical differences follow from that.

Plans, prices and limits change. The figures below were checked against official sites at the time of writing; check current pricing and help-centre limits before you commit.

Wix vs Shopify at a glance

If your site needs flexible page design and the store is one part of it, Wix is a fair option. If selling is the business and you expect volume, Shopify has more room.

I have left plan prices out of the table. Both platforms price by region and billing period, and both change them.

Who each platform suits

Wix suits you when:

• Page design freedom matters and you want to place elements wherever you like.
• Your catalog is small or moderate and your products are not hugely variable.
• You want one tool for the site, bookings, a blog and a modest shop.
• You do not expect to sell through many external channels.

Shopify suits you when:

• Selling is the main job of the site.
• You need deep catalog tooling: collections with rules, metafields, bulk editing, inventory across locations.
• You want marketplace, social and point-of-sale sales feeding one back office.
• You are likely to bring in outside help, because the agency and freelancer market around Shopify is large.

A local business with a services site, a booking system and 40 products can be perfectly served by Wix. A brand selling 800 SKUs through its own site, Google Shopping and a marketplace will find Shopify easier to run at that size.

Catalog size, options and variants

The two platforms trade off differently, and it is worth being precise.

Wix Stores documents its limits plainly: up to 50,000 products per store, up to 6 options per product, up to 100 choices per option and up to 1,000 variants per product. You get a notification as you approach a limit and an error if you exceed it.

Shopify advertises unlimited products on every plan. Per-product limits are three options and, since Shopify's changelog of October 2025, up to 2,048 variants. Some apps and themes built for the old 100-variant ceiling may behave oddly on products with large matrices, so test the ones you depend on.

What that means in practice:

• A product with four or five independent options, such as size, colour, material, finish and pack size, fits Wix's option model more naturally. On Shopify you will combine options or split into separate products.
• A product with a large size and colour grid beyond 1,000 combinations only fits on Shopify.
• A catalog above 50,000 products would need Shopify, though few small stores get anywhere near it.

Most fashion, beauty and home catalogs sit comfortably inside both platforms' limits. The place to check is your single worst product, not your average one.

Payments, plans and fees

Compare plan price, payment processing and any additional platform fee together.

Wix lists premium plans from an entry tier that cannot take payments up to higher tiers for ecommerce, and Wix Support states there is no free trial on premium plans, with a 14-day money-back guarantee instead. Wix Payments charges per-transaction fees that vary by country and method. Wix also supports other payment providers in many regions, so check what is available where you sell.

Shopify shows Basic, Grow and Advanced plans and an enterprise Plus plan. If you use a third-party payment provider instead of Shopify Payments, Shopify charges an extra fee on each order, which at the time of writing is 2% on Basic, 1% on Grow, 0.6% on Advanced and 0.2% on Plus. Higher plans also allow more staff accounts: none beyond the base account on Basic, 5 on Grow, 15 on Advanced and unlimited on Plus, per Shopify's pricing page at the time of writing.

If you take payments mainly through a provider that Shopify Payments does not support in your country, work out the extra fee over a year before comparing plan prices. For a store at a few thousand a month the difference is small. At volume it is not.

Apps, themes and growth

Wix's App Market is broad and its editor is flexible enough that many stores need no apps at all. Shopify's App Store is the larger commerce ecosystem. Subscriptions, bundles, product reviews, loyalty, advanced search and returns have several competing apps each.

Apps cost money and add weight. A common pattern on Shopify is paying for ten apps and using four. On Wix the flexibility of the editor can lead to pages that look great in the editor and are heavier than they need to be. In both cases, add something because you need it, not because it exists.

On themes: Wix gives you freedom to lay out a page precisely. Shopify themes are more structured, which keeps stores consistent and is easier for a developer to extend, but offers less freedom per page unless you customise.

SEO basics

Both platforms provide editable titles and meta descriptions, editable URL handles, automatic sitemaps, redirect management, alt text and SSL. Neither will rank a store on its own, and the platform is rarely the reason a store ranks well or badly.

What does differ is how easily you can maintain quality across a large catalog. Shopify's bulk editing and CSV tools make consistent titles, descriptions and handles easier at several hundred products. Wix is perfectly workable for a smaller range. If you are weighing the two mainly on SEO, put that aside and decide on catalog and operations.

If you outgrow Wix: migrating to Shopify

Wix to Shopify migrations are common. Shopify's help centre recommends exporting products from Wix as a CSV, reshaping the file to Shopify's template and importing it, with guidance on column mapping such as renaming fields and converting weight units. Shopify also offers a Store Migration app that can read a Wix export; its availability and scope have been described differently in different places, so check your admin. The app does not import orders and order history, and a third-party tool is needed for that.

Things that go wrong most often:

1. More than three options. Shopify's Wix guide notes that products with more than three options will not have their options imported. You decide how to restructure them before you import.
2. URLs change. Shopify uses fixed prefixes such as /products/ and /collections/. Every old URL that has traffic or links needs a 301 redirect.
3. Variant images and SKUs need a spot-check after import.
4. Metadata and content outside products, such as blog posts, need separate handling. Shopify's migration app does not cover redirects, metafields or canonical tags.

Build the redirect map before you point your domain. If you would rather hand the job over, our Wix to Shopify migration service covers product data, variants, images, collections and redirects.

When to do it yourself and when to hand it off

Choosing a platform is your call and a trial is cheap. Add five representative products to each, including your most awkward one, and see which you want to work in.

If you are migrating, a small catalog with simple variants is a reasonable DIY job via CSV. Hand it off when volume, restructured options or a campaign deadline make mistakes costly. We use an AI engine for the volume and a person reviews every output, and you approve before anything goes live. Turnaround starts from 48 hours for eligible projects; turnaround depends on scope, catalog complexity and the quality of the data and access we receive. We never ask for store passwords and work through a staff account you can remove. See pricing, or request a free 10-product sample and we will say honestly whether the project fits.

A quick way to decide

1. More than one or two options that do not combine neatly, and a small catalog? Wix handles that well.
2. A large grid of variants, or many hundreds of products? Shopify.
3. Selling on marketplaces or in person? Shopify.
4. Site design is the priority and the shop is small? Wix.
5. Unsure? Build your hardest product page on both and compare how it feels to maintain.