Shopify vs Wix for Online Stores: Costs, Fees and Fit

Choose Shopify if your business is the products: it is built around inventory, checkout and order handling, and it keeps scaling as the catalog and sales grow. Choose Wix if your business is a service, a practice or a brand with content, and the shop is one part of a wider website.

We build on both, so this Shopify vs Wix comparison is not a sales pitch for one platform. It is for small business owners about to open an online store or move an existing one. You will find current US prices, what the fees look like at real sales levels, a three-year cost with build work included, and the signs that tell you which platform fits.

Shopify vs Wix at a glance

The headline prices look alike. The differences are in what each plan is designed to do. Our Shopify store builds and our Wix websites start from these same plans:

US prices and features	Shopify	Wix
Cheapest plan that takes payments, billed yearly	Basic, $29 a month	Core, $29 a month
Middle plans, billed yearly	Grow $79, Advanced $299 a month	Business $39 a month
Top published plan, billed yearly	Plus from $2,300 a month on a 3-year term	Wix Business Elite plan, $159 a month
Monthly billing	Basic $39, Grow $105, Advanced $399 a month	Offered; Wix’s plans page shows yearly prices
Online card rate on the entry plan	2.9% + 30¢ (Shopify Payments)	2.9% + 30¢ (Wix Payments)
Lower card rates on higher plans	Yes: 2.7% on Grow, 2.5% on Advanced	No; Wix Payments lists one US rate
Fee for using another payment provider	2% on Basic, 1% on Grow, 0.6% on Advanced	Not listed on Wix’s plan or fee pages
Team access on the entry plan	No staff accounts on Basic (5 on Grow)	5 collaborators on Core
Products	Unlimited on every plan	Store features grow by plan: basic, standard, advanced
Bookings for services	Through apps	Built in from Core
Product export	CSV export	CSV export, up to 5,000 rows per file

Sources: the US Shopify pricing page and Wix plans page, both as captured on November 9, 2026; Wix Help Center pages on Wix Payments service fees and exporting products, read on November 10, 2026. Wix prices are for yearly plans paid upfront, before tax. Prices outside the US differ.

Shopify and Wix plan costs, side by side

For a store, the real starting point on Wix is Core, not Light. Wix’s Light plan at $17 a month cannot take payments, so it does not count for selling. Wix Business at $39 a month adds standard eCommerce, customer accounts and automated sales tax for up to 100 transactions a month, which is where most growing Wix shops end up.

On Shopify, Basic covers most new stores. You move up for lower fees, staff accounts, or the live carrier shipping rates that come with Advanced. One detail catches small teams: Shopify Basic has no staff accounts, so if two or three people run the store, budget for Grow at $79 a month. Wix Core already includes five collaborators.

Apps change the total on both platforms. Reviews, subscriptions, bundles and email tools are often paid apps with their own monthly prices, and they usually cost more than the difference between the two plans. List the apps you need before comparing plan prices.

Transaction fees at real sales levels

At small volumes, the fees are a tie. Shopify Basic and Wix both charge 2.9% + 30¢ for standard US card payments through their own payment services, so a $60 order costs about $2.04 in card fees on either. American Express costs more on Wix Payments, at 3.7% + 30¢.

The difference shows as sales grow, because only Shopify lowers its rate on higher plans. The Grow plan cuts the card rate by 0.2 percentage points and costs $50 a month more than Basic on yearly billing ($79 against $29). Divide $50 by 0.002 and the Shopify Grow plan pays for itself at about $25,000 a month in online card sales. Advanced, at another 0.2 points off, needs much higher sales to cover its $299 price.

One Shopify cost to avoid: if you use a payment provider other than Shopify Payments, Shopify adds its own fee of 2% on Basic on top of that provider’s charges. For most US stores, Shopify Payments is the cheaper route.

A three-year cost with the build included

Plan fees are only part of the bill. Here is a worked example for a small brand selling about 30 products, with a few information pages, on yearly billing. Build prices are ours; platform fees are Shopify’s and Wix’s.

Item	Shopify route	Wix route
Build	Our Shopify Small Store: $1,290 (up to 30 products, payments, shipping and tax set up)	Our Wix Growing Business site: $1,490 (up to 12 pages with Wix Stores set up)
Platform plan	Shopify Basic: $348 a year	Wix Business: $468 a year
Platform plan over three years	$1,044	$1,404
Three-year total before apps and card fees	$2,334	$2,894

On Wix Core instead of Business, the Wix plan drops to $348 a year and the three-year total to $2,534. Either way, the two routes land within a few hundred dollars of each other, so price alone rarely decides it. What you are selling and how you will grow decides it.

For wider budgets, including stores with custom design, integrations or several markets, our ecommerce website cost guide covers the full range, and every plan we offer is on our pricing page.

Where Shopify is the better choice

Shopify is the stronger store once products are the center of the business. In our builds, these are the situations where we recommend it:

• Bigger or growing catalogs. Unlimited products on every plan, with variants, collections and inventory tracked across up to 10 locations before Plus.
• Selling in more places. Shopify lists selling on social channels, marketplaces and AI chat on every plan, all from one product list.
• Fees that fall as you grow. Card rates drop from 2.9% to 2.7% and 2.5%, then 2.25% on Plus.
• Room to scale. Shopify Plus adds a customizable checkout, wholesale catalogs and extra stores without changing platforms. Our guide to Shopify Plus vs Shopify covers when that step is worth it.
• A deep app and developer pool. Most ecommerce tools, shipping services and ERP systems offer a Shopify connection first.

Where Wix is the better choice

Wix wins when the store is not the whole business. A salon selling gift cards and a few products, a studio taking class bookings, or a consultant selling a handful of digital downloads all fit Wix well, because bookings, a blog, forms and a shop sit in one editor and one plan.

• Services first. The Wix bookings platform is included from Core, so appointments, classes and deposits need no extra app.
• Design freedom for non-technical owners. The drag-and-drop editor lets you move anything on the page. Shopify themes are structured, which keeps stores consistent but limits layout changes without a developer.
• Content-heavy sites. Wix gives a fuller website builder around the shop, while Shopify’s blog and page tools are basic.
• Small teams. Five collaborators on Core, with no need to upgrade just to give a colleague access.

If you are weighing Wix against a website you fully own, our Wix vs WordPress comparison covers the long-term trade-offs.

Moving later: what you can take with you

Both platforms are hosted, so neither site can be downloaded and run somewhere else. If you switch later, the design is rebuilt on the new platform. Your store data is more portable than that:

• Products: both export to CSV. Wix exports up to 5,000 rows per file and does not export digital products, so those are added by hand.
• Customers and orders: exportable on both for records, though order history usually needs an app or a developer to import into the new store.
• URLs: product and page addresses change on a move, so every old address needs a 301 redirect to keep search rankings.

Our ecommerce replatforming checklist walks through a store move step by step.

From our projects: before we quote a store, we ask what share of revenue will come from products and what share from services or bookings. That one answer settles the platform for most clients. Whichever route you take, the Shopify or Wix account is opened in your name and you pay the platform directly, so the store stays yours if you change developers.

How to decide between Shopify and Wix

Your business	Better fit	Why
Product brand with 50 or more items, or planning to grow the catalog	Shopify	Inventory, variants and order handling are its core
Service business with bookings and a few products	Wix	Bookings, site and shop in one plan
Selling on social channels and marketplaces as well as the website	Shopify	One product list feeds every channel
Content-led brand where articles drive sales	Wix	Fuller site and content tools around the shop
Expecting $25,000 or more a month in online sales soon	Shopify	Lower card rates on higher plans
Owner wants to change page layouts without a developer	Wix	Free-form drag-and-drop editor
Wholesale, several stores or a custom checkout on the roadmap	Shopify	Shopify Plus adds these on the same platform

If most rows point one way, that is your answer. If they split evenly, choose for the next three years, not for launch day: the cost of a rebuild later is higher than any plan difference now. Once you have chosen Shopify, our Shopify SEO checklist covers the setup that helps a new store get found.

Get a fixed quote on the right store platform

Attors Technologies builds Shopify stores and Wix websites for businesses in the US, UK and Europe. Tell us what you sell, roughly how many products you have and whether you take bookings. We will recommend the platform that fits and reply with a fixed written quote, and if a simple Wix shop is enough, we will say so.

Request a fixed quote for your online store