Wix Stores or Shopify: the real decision grid for a small online shop
Updated: 2 days ago
"Shouldn't I move to Shopify?" is the question we hear most often once a Wix shop starts doing well. The honest answer is rarely a plain yes or no: it depends on five concrete criteria, not on what is fashionable this season. Here is the grid we run through with our clients before touching anything.
One thing worth saying up front: we have already published an article titled "Why migrate from Wix to Shopify for your e-commerce store?". It lays out what Shopify brings to a shop that is outgrowing its tools.
This article does the opposite job: it helps you find out whether you are really in that situation, or whether your Wix shop simply needs to be set up properly. Read both, ideally in that order.
Criteria 1 and 2: catalogue and logistics
The raw number of products is not an issue on Wix Stores: the platform handles tens of thousands of items. What hurts is catalogue complexity. A clothing shop with 300 styles in 6 sizes and 4 colours, stock tracked per variant, prices that change with size and end-of-line bundles: that is where Wix starts asking for workarounds.
Our rule of thumb: under 200 simple products (few variants, one stock level per product), Wix Stores is perfectly comfortable. Between 200 and 1,000 products with many variants, it is debatable. Beyond that, or if you sell B2B with customer-specific pricing, Shopify is noticeably more comfortable, thanks in particular to bulk CSV imports and its inventory management apps.
Second criterion, logistics. Ask yourself a simple question: who packs the parcels? If it is you, in the back room, with a trip to the post office or a pick-up point every afternoon, Wix Stores does the job: labels, tracking, shipping emails, click and collect for a neighbourhood shop. Nothing justifies changing tools.
If you are considering a third-party logistics provider, several warehouses, automatic stock sync with an in-store till or with a dropshipping supplier, the conversation changes. Shopify was built around those flows, and the app ecosystem that plugs into it (carriers, fulfilment, point of sale) runs far deeper.
On Wix these connections exist, but they often go through middleware tools, which means one more subscription and one more thing that can break.
Criterion 3: marketplaces and sales channels
Selling on Instagram, Facebook and Google Shopping works fine on both platforms. The difference shows when you also want to sell on Amazon, eBay, Etsy or a price comparison site, with a single stock shared across every channel. There, Shopify has integrations that have been battle-tested for years.
On Wix it is doable for one or two channels, but you hit the limits quickly.
From our own projects: a home decor shop we look after makes 80% of its revenue on its website and 20% on Instagram. It runs on Wix Stores, and it will stay there. Another client, in sports accessories, makes more than half her sales through Amazon and a comparison site.
For her, Shopify became the obvious choice after a year, not for the website, but for multichannel management.
Criterion 4: subscription, commissions and the real yearly cost
Both entry-level plans sit in the same range, around thirty euros a month, a little less on an annual commitment. The real difference is in commissions. Wix does not take a transaction fee on your sales on top of the payment provider's fees (Wix Payments, Stripe or PayPal).
Shopify adds its own commission if you do not use Shopify Payments, and its higher tiers cost significantly more.
Then add the apps. On Shopify, a small shop commonly stacks 4 to 6 paid apps (reviews, cart recovery, size guides, returns, translation) for 50 to 150 euros a month. On Wix, a good share of those functions is already included in the plan, often in a simpler but sufficient form.
Run the numbers over twelve months with your own figures: that is usually where the decision is made.
Criterion 5: content-rich site or pure shop
This is the criterion everyone forgets. If your site is first and foremost a showcase (a brand, a story, a workshop, news pages, a blog, appointment booking) with a shop alongside it, Wix Studio remains unbeatable for layout freedom and production cost.
A craftsperson, a restaurant selling its products online, a designer with 40 products: Wix is more than enough, and we say so without hesitation.
If, on the other hand, your site is a shop above all, with collections, filters, standardised product pages and a checkout that needs to be tuned to the millimetre, Shopify is stronger. Its themes are built to convert and its checkout is one of the most refined on the market. You lose design freedom, you gain commercial efficiency.
What a migration really costs
A migration is never free, even when the export is "one click". In our projects, for a shop with 100 to 500 products, expect between 2,000 and 6,000 euros in agency fees, depending on how many pages need rebuilding and how complex the catalogue is.
Add two or three weeks of your own time to check product pages, photos, shipping rates and payment methods.
The riskiest item is search visibility. Your page addresses change, so you need clean redirects, page by page, or you can lose in a few weeks a Google presence that took three years to build. We have seen a shop lose 40% of its organic traffic after a migration done without a redirect plan.
With a serious plan, the dip is limited to a few weeks of turbulence.
Where to start
Pull your figures for the last twelve months: active products, share of sales per channel, orders per month, average basket.
Score each criterion of the grid by hand: for each one, write "Wix is enough", "debatable" or "Shopify wins".
Cost both options over a year with your real volumes: subscription, commissions, apps, management time.
If Wix is enough on four criteria out of five, stay and tune your shop: abandoned carts, shipping rates, reviews, payment methods. That is usually where the revenue is hiding.
If Shopify wins on three criteria or more, plan the migration off-season, with a written redirect plan before you start.
What we take away
Most of the small shops we work with do not need a new platform, they need a better-configured shop. Shopify becomes essential when the catalogue gets complex, when logistics are outsourced or when marketplaces carry a large share of sales. The rest of the time, a migration costs more than it brings in.
Our job is to tell you frankly, whether the answer is "stay on Wix" or "move to Shopify", because we work on both.
Want us to run your shop through this grid with your real numbers? We do the diagnosis in a 45-minute meeting, and if the answer is "stay", we tune your Wix shop right away. Book a slot or take a look at our e-commerce services.
Comments