Shopify vs Wix (2026)

Shopify is the better pick when selling is the whole business. It has more than 16,000 apps, allows 2,048 variants per product, includes Shopify Markets for international selling on every plan and has a point of sale app for in-person sales. Wix suits a shop that sits inside a wider site, such as a portfolio, blog or booking business, and it lets you build and publish for free before you pay. The cheapest plan that takes payments costs $29 a month on yearly billing with either one, as checked November 4, 2026. Shopify adds a fee of up to 2% when you use a payment provider other than Shopify Payments, and on Wix, separate sites in different languages and currencies need Business Elite at $159 a month.

Pricing compared

Both companies set prices by location, so check each vendor's page from your own country before you buy. These are US prices on yearly billing, checked November 4, 2026:

Level	Shopify	Wix
Free	No free plan (3-day trial)	Free plan, can't take payments
Cheapest plan that takes payments	Basic, $29 a month	Core, $29 a month
Middle	Grow, $79 a month	Business, US price not confirmed
Upper	Advanced, $299 a month	Business Elite, $159 a month
Top	Plus, from $2,300 a month on a 3-year term	Enterprise, custom quote

At the entry level the price is the same, so the contents of the plan decide it. Shopify Basic includes unlimited products, abandoned checkout recovery, the Sidekick AI assistant and 24/7 chat, but no extra staff accounts. Wix Core includes basic eCommerce, 50 GB of storage and 5 site collaborators. Wix's free plan and its Light plan cannot take payments, so Core is the real starting price for a Wix store.

Fees work differently. Shopify charges no transaction fee of its own when you use Shopify Payments. With any other provider, Shopify adds 2% on Basic, 1% on Grow, 0.6% on Advanced and 0.2% on Plus, on top of that provider's charges. Wix says it charges no per-product fees. Wix Payments in the US costs 2.9% plus $0.30 per card payment, or 3.7% plus $0.30 for American Express, with an extra 1.5% on cross-border payments, 1% for currency conversion and $15 for each chargeback. We could not confirm Shopify Payments' US card rates, because Shopify's pricing page showed European rates to our server.

Higher tiers split the two apart. Wix's top self-serve plan costs $159, about half the price of Shopify Advanced at $299. Advanced buys 15 staff accounts, live third-party shipping rates at checkout and a lower third-party fee, so a store that needs those pays for them. Wix Business Elite buys unlimited storage, 100 collaborators and separate sites in different languages and currencies.

Watch the extras too. On Shopify, many stores add paid apps, and paid themes in the Theme Store were listed at $100 to $500 when we looked. Shopify includes 10,000 email sends a month on every plan, then charges $1 per 1,000. Monthly billing costs more than yearly on Shopify. Wix shows yearly prices paid up front and offers other periods at checkout.

Store features head to head

Shopify gives you more room in the catalog. You can sell unlimited products with up to 2,048 variants and three options each. Wix allows up to 1,000 variants per product and covers physical goods, digital downloads, subscriptions, dropshipping and print on demand. For a clothing shop with a few sizes and colors either limit is plenty; for parts or made-to-order products with long option lists, Shopify has more room.

For selling beyond your own site, both connect to marketplaces. Wix lists products on Google, eBay, Etsy, Amazon, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Wish and manages them from one dashboard. Shopify imports unlimited marketplace orders, with the first 50 synced orders each month free of its marketplace fee.

International selling favors Shopify. Every Shopify plan includes Shopify Markets, which translates the storefront and shows prices in local currencies when you use Shopify Payments. Wix has Wix Multilingual and a currency converter, and its Business Elite plan adds multiple sites in different languages and currencies. Shopify also includes up to 3 B2B catalogs with their own wholesale prices on every plan, and unlimited catalogs on Plus. We found no equivalent on Wix's plan pages.

Marketing tools are closer. Both send abandoned cart emails and email campaigns from the dashboard. Shopify adds pay-per-send SMS campaigns and more than 200 real-time reports on every plan. Wix ties its marketing suite to the plan level, from light on Light up to advanced on Business Elite, and can draft marketing emails with AI.

On AI, Shopify's Sidekick assistant works inside the admin on every plan, with millions of AI tokens included. Wix's AI site builder drafts a site from a description for free, its Aria assistant helps with edits, and its store tools write product descriptions, edit product photos and check how AI chat tools mention your store.

Selling in person

Both platforms sync stock and orders between the shop counter and the online store, but Shopify's point of sale reaches more sellers. The Shopify POS app runs on iOS and Android devices and comes with every plan. POS Pro, a paid add-on priced per location, adds unlimited staff roles and permissions, in-store inventory tools and in-store pickup. We could only see its European price, so check the US price on Shopify's site.

Wix POS comes in two forms: Wix Retail POS for a register at a counter and Wix Mobile POS with a card reader or Tap to Pay on iPhone or Android. Mobile POS needs no separate POS plan, while card payments on Retail POS need the Wix Retail POS Pro plan. Both need a Premium plan that takes payments. Wix says its POS is only available to sellers in the US, Canada and the UK (except Northern Ireland) who use Wix Payments, so a shop anywhere else should look at Shopify.

Design and ease of use

Wix is the easier place to start. You can build the whole site on the free plan, pick from more than 2,000 templates or have the AI site builder draft one, then drag any element exactly where you want it. The same dashboard runs bookings, events and a blog, which suits a yoga studio that also sells mats or a photographer who sells prints. The trade-off is that free placement means you lay out every page yourself, and a busy layout is easy to make.

Shopify starts you from one of more than 200 themes, and you edit pages without code. The admin centers on products, orders, customers and reports, so it feels like a shop's back office from the first day. You have 3 days to try it with no card, then a discounted first 3 months on Basic, Grow and Advanced, which gives you time to set up before paying full price. Both have mobile apps on iOS and Android for managing orders and stock away from a desk.

If the store is a side part of the site, Wix will feel more natural. If the store is the business, Shopify's layout will save you time once orders start arriving.

Support and apps

Shopify gives every plan 24/7 live chat, enhanced chat on Advanced and priority 24/7 phone support on Plus. Wix lists 24/7 customer care on all its plans.

The larger difference is how you fill gaps. The Shopify App Store has more than 16,000 apps for reviews, subscriptions, loyalty programs and shipping, and Shopify says millions of merchants in more than 175 countries use it, so most store problems already have an app and a guide. Wix covers more of a general website out of the box, and its App Market adds the rest, though Wix does not publish a total app count. Wix says more than 300 million people use it worldwide.

Who each one suits

Pick Shopify if the store is the business: you sell many products or variants, sell in person outside the US, Canada and the UK, sell to wholesale buyers, or expect to add apps as you grow. Pick Wix if the shop is one part of a site that also takes bookings, runs a blog or shows a portfolio, if you want to design pages freely, or if you want to build for free before you pay.

If neither fits, BigCommerce builds more store features in without apps, and WooCommerce gives WordPress owners a store they host and control themselves.