How to Migrate from Wix to Shopify?
When it comes to selling online, store owners are confused by the sheer number of options available to host and run their eCommerce store. Referrals or online reviews often influence the decision-making process.
While some eCommerce solutions are better suited to small businesses, others are designed to support big enterprises. The decision to choose the right eCommerce solution can bring a lasting impact on your day-to-day business functioning and pave the path for its future growth.
Wix and Shopify are the two most popular website builders who provide robust eCommerce platforms. In this blog, we compare Wix with Shopify, compare the two platforms, and reveal reasons to migrate from Wix to Shopify.
We will also walk you through how you should be moving website to Shopify with a quick step-by-step.
What is Wix?
Wix is a popular website builder that allows individuals and businesses to create stunning websites without any coding knowledge. It provides an intuitive drag-and-drop interface, offering users the flexibility to design and customize their websites according to their specific needs.
With Wix, users can choose from a wide range of customizable templates, making it easy to create professional-looking websites for various purposes such as e-commerce stores, blogs, portfolios, and more.
The platform offers a range of features and tools, including built-in SEO capabilities, mobile optimization, e-commerce functionalities, and a robust app market for extending website functionality.
Wix also provides hosting services, which means that users don't need to worry about finding a separate hosting provider. Additionally, Wix offers a free plan with limited functionality, making it accessible for individuals and small businesses on a tight budget.
However, it's important to note that Wix is primarily a website builder, and while it offers some e-commerce functionality, it may not be as robust as dedicated e-commerce platforms like Shopify.
If you're looking for a more comprehensive e-commerce solution, migrating from Wix to Shopify might be a viable option.
In the next sections, we will explore the steps and considerations involved in migrating from Wix to Shopify, ensuring a smooth transition and helping you take advantage of the powerful features and scalability offered by Shopify.
What is Shopify?
Shopify is a leading e-commerce platform that allows businesses of all sizes to create, manage, and grow their online stores. It provides a comprehensive set of tools and features that enable entrepreneurs to sell products, manage inventory, process payments, and customize the look and feel of their online store.
With Shopify, users can choose from a wide range of professionally designed templates or create custom designs to match their brand identity. The platform offers a user-friendly interface, making it easy for individuals with no technical expertise to build a professional and mobile-responsive online store.
With Shopify, you can easily manage product listings, track inventory, process orders, and handle shipping and fulfillment. The platform offers a secure and reliable hosting infrastructure, ensuring that your online store is always available to customers.
Furthermore, Shopify provides a wide range of add-ons and integrations through its App Store, allowing you to extend the functionality of your store to meet specific business requirements. From marketing and analytics to customer support and inventory management, Shopify offers numerous solutions to optimize and streamline your online business operations.
Whether you're a solopreneur, a small business owner, or a large enterprise, Shopify empowers you to build a professional online store and create a seamless shopping experience for your customers. Its user-friendly interface, scalable architecture, and extensive feature set have made it a go-to platform for businesses to establish and grow their e-commerce presence.
In the following sections, we will delve into the various features, benefits, and steps involved in setting up and leveraging Shopify for your online store.
Wix vs. Shopify - Comparison
Undoubtedly, both Wix and Shopify are market leaders in their respective niches. Though both were created with different goals and applications, both are easy to use, boast great functionality, and bring versatile design customization options.
But we'll give you a more detailed comparison of Wix vs Shopify now:
1. Ease of use
Any business looking to set up their store quickly needs to do so with minimum time and effort. On the ease of use front, eCommerce business owners largely favor Shopify over Wix, as Shopify makes it quicker to build your online store.
Shopify is designed to help you set up your store in minutes. It comes with an easy-to-use editor made with eCommerce in mind and pre-existing themes that you can make use of or customize easily. On the other hand, Wix comes with a drag and drop editor that is common to all types of businesses. So you’re going to have to look for the right elements to work with.
This difference lies in the need they fulfill. Regarding eCommerce, Shopify is the winning choice as it was created keeping all aspects of eCommerce in mind. Since its inception, Shopify has acted as a pure eCommerce solution that offers a wide array of tools and features for online sellers.
Whereas Wix is primarily a website builder, which gives you the ‘option’ to also sell online apart from setting up a web page. It was specially created with beginners' needs and skills in mind who don’t possess extensive programming skills and want to create a basic website in a matter of hours. Wix offers limited eCommerce functionality and site customization options.
That is one of the biggest reasons why business owners end up migrating from Wix to Shopify.
Verdict: Shopify wins due to its ease of use and more backend support to set up an advanced online store in just a few days.
2. Template Design and Customization Capability
Consumers are increasingly preferring to shop from their mobile phones, with 45% of shoppers completely shifting to m-commerce since March 2020. Both Shopify and Wix provide mobile-responsive templates, which means whichever platform you choose, should guarantee a great shopping experience across all devices.
Shopify comes with thousands of free and premium, paid themes in different design styles, for different industries. Each one of them is easily customizable, based on the version you choose to install - paid ones, obviously offering more customizations. Paid themes begin as low as $19 and can go upwards based on what you’re looking for.
On the other hand, Wix has over 800 templates, among which only 114 are e-commerce specific templates. While these templates are free to use, they don’t offer much customization abilities.
As a plus, Shopify also gives you the freedom to play around with your site’s code (using HTML and CSS) and change whatever you want in the theme file as well. This flexibility attracts many medium and large business owners looking to adapt to new design trends.
Verdict: Wix might offer free templates, but the options are very limited for eCommerce businesses and the flexibility of customization is much lower. Shopify is a better choice here.
3. Pricing
Wix is cheaper than Shopify in terms of costs, with a starting price of $28 per month compared to Shopify’s $29 per month. But it comes with a few hidden costs in terms of hosting fees, transactions and more which may vary from business to business.
While Shopify might seem a little expensive as compared to Wix, it delivers more powerful features and increased scalability through its plans. And there are no hidden costs. It’s also good to know that Shopify does not charge transaction fees if you make use of Shopify Payments as the payment processor. Although a third-party payment processor might cost you a little per transaction.
Verdict: Wix might look like value for money on the onset of things but the hidden costs may result in higher expenses. Shopify offers more inclusive plans, making it a better choice.
4. Payment options
Shopify draws more advantage over Wix in the number of payment options it offers. It has partnered with all major payment gateways and wallets to enable easy set up on your store, giving your shoppers more options to complete a purchase with. You can check them all out here. Shopify also has its own payment gateway that you can get started with immediately, Shopify Payments.
Wix supports all known payment options, including Paypal, Stripe, and Square but doesn’t support Amazon Pay and Apple Pay. It has no in-house payment gateway.
Verdict: Shopify beats Wix for the huge number of payment options it offers.
5. Product inventory support
Shopify triumphs over Wix for its extensive eCommerce sales features, one of them being inventory management. Instead of having to manage your stocks on an external application, you can do within the account dashboard. You can get a complete overview of your available stocks, stocks sold and out of stock items.
On the other hand, Wix will require you to install an additional solution or integrate your store with an external platform for inventory management.
Verdict: Shopify is the ideal choice for businesses of all sizes as it makes it easy to keep track of product inventory. It also has additional Shopify apps that you can add to your store for advanced inventory management.
6. Shipping
Both Shopify and Wix support a variety of shipping options: free shipping, flat rate shipping, shipping by rate or product. Shopify ensures it offers merchants more flexible and contact-free options like local delivery and curbside pickup with the help of plug and play apps.
Shopify comes with an in-built real-time shipping quote functionality for some countries. For example, in the USA, you can avail real-time shipping quotes from shipping providers like DHL Express, UPS, or USPS, and discounts of up to 74% to fulfill orders without burning a hole in your pocket. For stores in other countries, Shopify has logistics aggregator apps that can help you do the same.
On the other hand, with Wix, you’ll need an app integration to ensure global delivery. Wix offers app integration with a shipping solution called ShipStation that streamlines the process of eCommerce product delivery. This adds an additional step to setting up your online store.
Verdict: Shopify gives your store more flexible shipping options with the help of their partners and smart integrations.
7. Marketing features
Shopify powers its users with an incredible marketing package containing the best promotional tools, design customization options, and great content management support. Its set of eCommerce tools include statistics tracking and analytics, loyalty programs, and marketing channel integrations with platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Amazon and more, to name a few.
Wix offers a subscription-based tool called Wix Ascend, a complete all-in-one marketing and customer management suite. Wix too provides support for SEO and marketing. But the features are common to all types of sites, not keeping in mind the customizations that an eCommerce store may need.
Verdict: Being where your customer is, is important. With Shopify, you can easily integrate your store to other platforms to reach a wider audience and sell more. There is an easy integration as well as apps to enable you to do so.
8. App Store
Integrating third-party apps with your store builder can make it easier for you to drive more sales from your target audience. Shopify’s app store gives you a huge variety of targeted eCommerce apps to scale up your store.
It provides apps for adding a customer wishlist, adding product reviews, doing currency conversion, set up drop shipping, among other things. No matter what the business function or feature you want to add to your store, there’s an app for it.
The Shopify App store has thousands of apps to choose from to help you scale your online store.
On the other hand, Wix, though packed with a good number of third-party apps, doesn’t give you the same variety as Shopify. Not all of their apps cater to online stores, so you may need to filter out the eCommerce Wix apps - the options are fairly limited and you’ll have to look for solutions outside of the ecosystem.
Verdict: The Shopify app store is better than Wix in terms of available eCommerce app integrations. All the apps offer a one-click install, making it easy for you to put them to use right away. There are free and paid options for every solution in the app store, and most come with a free trial as well.
9. Security features
Both Wix and Shopify have proper measures in place to ensure a secure transaction online for both you and your customers.
- Both Shopify and Wix have SSL security with all their plans. This is essential to protect visitors’ data like login and payment details entered on your site.
- PCI compliance is essential if you’re selling online and accepting credit or debit card payments. Both Wix and Shopify are certified Level 1 PCI DSS compliant, which means it protects your payment information and saves you from online frauds.
- Wix and Shopify have built-in security measures to protect against malware, viruses, and DDoS attacks.
Verdict: Both Wix and Shopify are completely safe to use as both have plenty of security measures in place to protect your online store.
10. Customer Support
Shopify and Wix both provide comparable customer support.
But Shopify provides round-the-clock instant support with its live chats and 24/7 phone support. In addition to that, it also has an extensive help center that consists of how-to guides in both step-by-step text and video formats. They also have a community wherein you can post a question to get answers from experts in case you don’t find a solution.
Wix offers an in-editor help center, which you can refer to while setting up your store or making changes to it. But it can be tough to manage side by side.
Verdict: Shopify is for the doers. It enables businesses with answers to everything they might need during a store set up with an extensive help center and a very active community.
11. Google vitals
Another thing important to succeed online is being able to please the search engines. This means you need to set up an online store that is easily indexable so that you get found for the right keywords, and drive the right traffic to your storefront.
But that's not all. Your site's performance also needs to be good; including the site speed, irrespective of the features you offer on the storefront. Your Google vitals are important and Shopify has taken all of it in account for everything it has to offer to growing businesses.
Wix vs. Shopify - Who should you choose?
How do you know which platform is the right choice for your business needs?
Go for Wix if you’re someone who is:
- Starting or running a small online store
- Embed lots of creativity into their site
- Need the store site to serve only the basics
- Require extensive blogging features to maintain a blog for your online store
- Know a little bit of coding to be able to do customizations
If you’re a small business or a brand-conscious entrepreneur looking for an affordable way to quickly set up an impressive online store, you should choose Shopify.
You should choose Shopify if you are:
- Planning to start and scale an online business for your brand
- You’re not well-versed with coding and would like ease of set up on your own
- You want to be able to set up a well-designed website without added costs
- You want to be able to leverage more features and tools for marketing, inventory management and more
- You want an excellent built-in analytics tool
- You want a more comprehensive range of payment gateways
Why Shopify is Worth the Cost
While Wix may be appealing to users because of its free or low-cost plans, it's important to understand that the cost of Shopify reflects the value and benefits it provides to businesses of all sizes.
Although migrating from Wix to Shopify may come with additional expenses, the long-term advantages and potential for growth make it a worthwhile investment.
Here are some key reasons why the cost of Shopify is worth it:
1. Professional e-commerce functionality
Unlike Wix, which is primarily a website builder with limited e-commerce capabilities, Shopify is built specifically for e-commerce. It offers a comprehensive set of features tailored to help businesses succeed in online selling.
From robust inventory management to seamless payment processing and order fulfillment, Shopify provides all the tools necessary to run a professional and efficient online store.
2. Scalability and growth potential
Shopify is designed to grow with your business. As your online store expands, Shopify can accommodate increased traffic and sales volume without compromising performance. The platform can handle thousands of orders per minute, ensuring your store remains stable and your customers have a smooth shopping experience.
Additionally, Shopify offers advanced analytics and reporting tools to track your store's performance and identify growth opportunities.
3. App integrations and customization options
Shopify's App Store provides access to a vast ecosystem of third-party apps and integrations. This allows you to extend the functionality of your store with features like advanced analytics, email marketing automation, customer support tools, and more.
The ability to customize your online store extensively ensures that you can create a unique and tailored shopping experience for your customers, enhancing your brand identity and overall customer satisfaction.
4. SEO and marketing capabilities
Shopify offers built-in search engine optimization (SEO) features to help your store rank higher in search engine results. From customizable title tags and meta descriptions to URL redirects and sitemap generation, Shopify provides the tools to optimize your store for increased visibility and organic traffic.
The platform also includes various marketing features, such as discount code generation, abandoned cart recovery, and integration with popular advertising channels like Facebook and Google Ads.
5. Reliable and secure hosting
With Shopify, you don't need to worry about finding a hosting provider or managing server configurations. Shopify provides reliable and secure hosting for your online store, ensuring that it remains operational and accessible to customers at all times.
This eliminates the technical complexities associated with self-hosted solutions and gives you peace of mind to focus on growing your business.
6. Support and resources
Shopify offers 24/7 customer support via live chat, email, and phone to assist you with any inquiries or technical issues that may arise. Additionally, Shopify provides extensive documentation, tutorials, and a vibrant community forum where you can find answers to common questions and learn from other Shopify users.
7. Mobile app
With Shopify's mobile app, you can manage your store on the go, including viewing orders, updating products, and responding to customer inquiries. You can also enable mobile-friendly checkout for a seamless mobile shopping experience.
8. Payment Processing
With Shopify Payments or third-party payment gateways, you can securely accept payments from customers using credit cards, PayPal, Apple Pay, and other popular payment methods.
How to migrate from Wix to Shopify
The migration process from Wix to Shopify mainly requires website (all content) and domain name transfer. The process will also require adjustments to website and SEO settings to keep your Google search ranking intact when you execute the Wix to Shopify migration.
Here are the steps to migrate from Wix to Shopify:
1. Create a website on Shopify
Step 1: Signup for Shopify
The first step is to signup for Shopify and explore its features and capabilities before you create your new web store. As soon as you sign up and login, it’ll ask you to set your goal for using the platform, your industry and email address for billing purposes.
Step 2: Customize your homepage
Once you’ve filled up the basic details, start customizing your theme. You can either select a theme from the Shopify design library or go for one of the premium designs in the integrated theme store. A third option is to select the default theme and start customizing it from scratch. Once you’ve selected your template, start adding the required sections.
Step 3: Add new pages
After you’ve created and customized your homepage, start adding more pages to your website. For each page, fill out the required fields, add your content, insert media files (videos and images), and add all relevant links.
Step 4: Import your Wix web store data into your new Shopify site
Since your Shopify site is for making sales, the proper transfer of content from your Wix store to Shopify is essential. One way is to manually upload your products, their content, specifications, cost and SEO parameters through the sidebar. This method is practical if you have a small assortment of products.
For a larger number of products export your web store data into a CSV file from the control panel of your Wix web page and import this data into your corresponding Shopify site. Use the same procedure to import customer lists and other website content. This method turns out to be a bit complicated and time consuming.
Step 5: Preview your result
Once you’ve transferred all your product content, take your time to check all the pages and make sure the export was completed properly. Spend time here to fill out more detailed product descriptions, ensure all product fields are mentioned properly and update missing ones. If you own a large online store, select an application to check product availability and keep track of assortment in stock.
Now that you’ve completed your website’s content transfer from Wix to Shopify, the next crucial step is to transfer domain name and finally publish your store.
2. Transfer your domain name from Wix to Shopify
Here’s a step by step guide on how to transfer your domain from Wix to Shopify:
Transferring your Wix domain name to Shopify
If you want to transfer your purchased Wix domain name to Shopify, here are the detailed guidelines on how to do that without losing out on search rankings:
- Login with Wix and go to the “My Domains” page.
- Choose the domain you want to move (if you own multiple domains, make sure to choose the right one), click on the option “Advanced” and then click on the “Transfer away from Wix” tab.
- Email yourself the EPP code. Remember that you won’t be able to transfer your domain name from Wix to Shopify if you purchased it less than 60 days ago.
- Specify the Shopify domain transfer route. After sending the inquiry, the migration will be completed within 7 days.
- Adjust the required settings before starting to sell through your Shopify store. These settings are about payments, shipping and tax options and can be checked in the Shopify dashboard.
Transferring your own domain name to Shopify
If you have bought your own domain name outside of Wix you can transfer your domain in two ways – either by transferring it to Shopify or by connecting it to your new account.
Here is how you can transfer your personal domain to Shopify:
- Before starting the transfer process, check the transfer policy offered by your domain name provider.
- Login to your domain name provider account and unlock the domain name you want to move from the settings section.
- You’ll get an authorization code which you’ll use to transfer the domain.
- Open the Shopify admin panel, in the “Online Stores” section click on the “Domains” tab.
- Click on “Connect existing domain” and then click the “Transfer in your domain” option.
- Click on the “Transfer Domain” button, enter the domain you want to move, click “Next” and then click the “Verify Domain” button. Your domain name is ready for transfer once you’ll see the “Domain unlocked” message. FInally click on “Next” to complete the procedure.
- Finally, verify the transfer in your email. Enter the EPP authorization code given by your domain name provider and finally click “Next” and “Bu and Transfer” options. Finally again check your email to confirm the transfer again.
Following the above steps, it will take around 20 days to complete the transfer successfully. Upon completion, Shopify will send you a message confirming this.
Connecting your own domain name to Shopify
You can also connect your own domain name to Shopify without transferring it. This will allow you to manage your own domain name settings, renew it and make the payments. Here are the steps to connect your domain name to Shopify:
- Add your domain to the Shopify store. Go to the Shopify admin panel, navigate to the “Online Store” section and click on the “Domains” tab. Choose “Connect existing domain” and click “Next” to get started.
- If you’ve purchased the domain name from a third party provider, you’ll have to edit some DNS settings. Also, edit the A record to point it to a Shopify IP address. This step would impact some other settings like email forwarding.
- To modify your settings, login to the domain provider’s registered account, navigate to the DNS settings section and look for domain management and DNS configurations.
- Change the A record to point to the required Shopify IP address (23.227.38.65) and save the changes.
- In the DNS settings, find the www.CNAME record and change it so that it points to shops.myshopify.com. Save the CNAME record and activate the Shopify confirmation email to verify the domain name connection.
Check your new Shopify website to check if everything works well. If you need any help, never hesitate in reaching out to Shopify experts.
Bottom Line
Migrating from Wix to Shopify is a time taking effort, yet completely worth it if you’re hoping to achieve bigger results from your online store. The domain and content transfer is a complicated task, however we hope the above guide helps in navigating through this process with ease. Make sure to pay special attention to domain name transfer.
We know the process of migrating from Wix to Shopify can be overwhelming. That’s why we’re helping brands migrate their stores to Shopify now.
Contact us today!
Frequently asked questions about migrating from Wix to Shopify
Is it easy to move from Wix to Shopify?
To migrate data from Wix to Shopify can take some time, you can either use an automated service for the migration or reach out to Shopify experts like XgenTech. Choosing the latter ensures you don't lose any date while making the move on both the product and the customer fronts.
Can I transfer domain from Wix?
If you have purchased a domain from Wix, you can later transfer it to another domain host - in this case, Shopify. If you need any help, please reach out to Shopify experts like XgenTech.
Is there a Wix to Shopify migration service?
Yes, there is. Shopify expert agencies like XgenTech help businesses set up their brand online. This also includes offering services like Wix to Shopify migration to get them on eCommerce platforms that help them grow. You can reach out to us here.
Should I switch from Wix to Shopify?
If you're starting an online store for the first time or venturing into eCommerce, you need solutions that are easy to manage, have a short learning curve and let you grow without any limitations. This is where Shopify wins, with its ease of use and an extensive list of Shopify apps that you can plug and play to offer your buyers a seamless shopping experience.
How much does Wix cost?
The cost of designing a website on Wix with the help of an eCommerce expert is about $50-$100 per hour, and development typically costs between $100-$200 per hour. Owing to the complex CMS of Wix, it can take anywhere from 10 hours and upwards to set up a storefront, which can be costlier than it is to set up a site on Shopify.