Magento Vs Wix: Which Should We Choose In 2022?

When it comes to the e-commerce platform, there are plenty of options for the merchants. However, Magento and Wix might be the most common names. Both of them bring about tremendous benefits for the users, but in different ways. Then, we would like to put these two platforms on a scale, compare them from different angles to figure out which is an excellent solution for online businesses in this blogpost. The Magento vs Wix battle now begins!

What is Magento?

Up to now, Magento has become one of the most prevalent e-commerce platforms to start an online business. Being a part of Adobe Experience Cloud and written on PHP. Hence this platform is robust, highly flexible, and easy to customize for the merchants’ different needs. In other words, Magento can bring almost everything you expect for a successful eCommerce website development. The Adobe acquisition in 2018 had even made Magento more vigorous than ever.

What is Wix?

While Magento might be the leader in terms of the e-commerce platform, Wix, by far, has been recognized as one of the most outstanding and potential website builders in recent years. It was developed by an Israeli company – Wix.com Ltd. Owing to its dynamic drag-and-drop tools, Wix makes the e-commerce website development process much easier for everyone (included both professionals and nonprofessionals) and requires less time to release. Unlike Magento (focusing only on delivering e-commerce solutions), Wix gives you the capability to develop various websites such as business, online store, photography, music, designer, events, blog, portfolio, and CV so on.

The History: Magento vs Wix 

Magento

In the previous blog post, we introduced you to Magento’s long history from 2007 to 2018. It’s not easy for Magento to get its position today in the e-commerce industry, but a long journey of continuous effort and innovation. During that time, Magento held many events (named Meet Magento) and spread its reputation around the world (in the US, UK, India, Greece, Singapore, Thailand, Germany, Poland, Japan, etc.).

History of Magento

Wix

Wix is founded one year ahead of Magento. Here are some highlights in Wix history from 2006:

• Established in 2006 by three Israeli programmers – Abrahami brothers and Giora Kaplan
• Releasing the beta version based on Adobe Flash in 2007
• The users of Wix were 3.5 million users in 2010, which increased by an incredible 5 million in 2011
• In 2012, replacing Adobe Flash with HTML5 site builder
• It reached 34 million users in 2013 and 50 million one year later
• Wix had an initial public offering (IPO) on the American stock market (NASDAQ), attracting $127 million from investors in 2013
• In 2014, Wix acquired Appixia – An Israeli startup specialized in native mobile commerce app development, and OpenRest, famous for restaurants’ online ordering systems 
• Wix announced its acquisition of DeviantArt for $36 million in 2017

History of Wix

Magento vs Wix: What Are The Solutions?

Magento

Now Magento provides us with two editions – Open Source, formerly Magento Community (free edition), and Commerce, formerly Magento Enterprise (annually paid edition).

Magento Open Source

Magento Commerce

Wix

Some people think that they can start e-commerce with Wix at no cost. Wix indeed allows us to build free websites using its drag-and-drop tools. However, free pricing is applied to only certain kinds of websites. To develop an e-commerce website, you must subscribe to a Wix Premium Plan (among Super Store, VIP Store, Unlimited Store, and Basic Store plan), which costs from $16.16 to $39.91 monthly.

Magento vs Wix: Popularity

Both Magento and Wix are viral platforms for e-commerce development. However, to have a more in-depth insight into these platforms, we got some data about the current number of Magento and Wix websites from builtwith.com: As you can see:

Magento

215,425 total live sites & 305,541 additional website redirects (more than 80 thousand stores in the US), and approximately 1,5% are websites with over 1 million revenue (14,727).

Wix

3,076,563 total live sites & 10,059 additional website redirects (more than 19 thousand websites in the US),  and approximately 0,6% are websites with over 1 million revenue (5,667).

It will be a big mistake if we depend only on the above statistics to compare Wix and Magento’s popularity.

As we mentioned before, while Magento emphasizes offering e-commerce solutions, Wix delivers a wide range of website types. That’s why the number of Wix websites is significantly greater than that of Magento. Moreover, it’s hard to compare the number of e-commerce stores empowered by Magento vs Wix. For Magento, probably 90% of its entire live sites are e-commerce, but for Wix, it perhaps makes up less than 10%, just our guess.

Magento vs Wix Comparison Regards Geography (according to SimilarTech)

Examples Of Magento & Wix Websites

When it comes to Magento e-commerce websites, there are some big names such as Nike, Ford, Fox Connect, Vizio, Olympus, Rebecca Minkoff, Christian Louboutin, Fiji Water, The North Face, and so on. In another blog post, we listed some  with an attractive design. Let’s have a look!

Christian Louboutin’s Magento Website

In comparison, most of the Wix website owners are small to medium companies, for example, Monica Pack Pilates, Brown Owl Creative, Linda Franzosi, Leandro Pedretti, Jellyfish & Co, Adam McCain, Sonja van Duelmen, and Natalie Latinsky, to name a few.

Vintique’s Wix Website

MAGENTO VS WIX COMPARISON ON 10 DIFFERENT ASPECTS

1. Ease of Setup and Use

The first Magento vs Wix battle is about ease of setup and use from different users’ perspectives.

Magento eCommerce review

It takes just a few minutes to install the Magento package on a new site for the developers. However, the time to complete a Magento website development might take a long time, from 1 to 5 months, depending on the initial requirements’ complication level. Apart from it, since the developers are familiar with technical terms, they can easily navigate to any sections on the Magento backend (the management board of Magento)* for configuration. (*Each Magento website has two parts: front-end, where the customers can access, and backend, where the store owners can monitor their stores.) On the other hand, from the merchants’ perspective (without technical knowledge), they can’t build a Magento website yourself. They can select a theme (website design) and list all of the functionalities on the site that they want, and then the coders will turn those into reality. Regarding the website management on the backend, the store owners will need to spend their time learning Magento user guides to understand the admin panel structure, how to configure the store, and take advantage of the all-powerful features of this platform. It might be quite tricky at first, but after 1-2 weeks, most merchants can know what they can do and how to do that with their stores. Gradually, they even might “fall in love” with the professional, intelligent, and high-tech of the Magento backend.

Magento 2 frontend (default demo)

Magento 2 backend (default demo)

Wix eCommerce review

One of the most vital factors that make the Wix famous is its ease of use and fast to set up. In contrast, it requires a specific technical background to develop a Magento website. Wix is immensely easy to use. It might take just a few hours to be familiar with the interface and settings. There is no need to download or install the software since all manipulations are directly processed on your web browser. To create a Wix eCommerce website, you need to sign in (via Facebook or Google account), select a template, and get started. Nonetheless, some users complained that using Wix’s available templates is not as easy as it looks. In the beginning, “playing” with the theme brings a lot of fun. Although Wix is much easier than Magento, if the store owners don’t have an artistic instinct, their Wix website can be a mess. It’s also worth noting that since the Wix website is set up on the web browser, you will need a stable Internet connection. Otherwise, you might lose your setups when the connection fails. Moreover, if there are too many components on the site, it will no longer be easy and fast to move the subjects to change the design (lagged and inactive status).

Wix Template Settings Demo

So, Magento vs Wix – which is the winner in terms of Ease of Setup and Use?

From the above analytics, Wix might defeat Magento by its highly user-friendly at the beginning. However, in the long-term, Magento seems to be a more stable and reliable platform.

2. Available Themes & Templates

The second battle of Magento vs Wix is about their “quantity and quality” of the themes and templates.

Magento

Although Magento does not provide us with an official bank of themes, we can easily find thousands of templates (both free and paid) from the theme market/ providers like Themeforest, Magento Marketplace, TemplateMonster, CreativeMarket, ArgentoTheme, UberTheme, VenusTheme, and so on. There is a wide range of these categories for you to choose from, such as fashion, technology, health, beauty, entertainment, sports, electronics, shopping mall, etc. In the previous blog post, we also listed the Top 100 Magento Responsive Themes For Free Download that you might want to have a look at.

Magento Themes On Themeforest

Wix

Wix advertised that they offer over 500 free designer-made website templates; notwithstanding, just one-fifth of them can be used for eCommerce stores. Compared to thousands of Magento themes, this number is too small. The only plus of Wix templates is the attractive design for different types of products, from Fashion, Jewelry, Art, Home Decor, Food, Sports, Electronics to Pets, etc. Since we only evaluate Wix and Magento from the e-commerce perspective, Magento wins in the Magento vs Wix Theme battle.

3. Number of Apps/ Extensions

Magento

After setting up your Magento store, if you want to add more advanced features or improve the site performance, let’s find some proper extensions. There are more than 4,500 modules on Magento Marketplace (both free and paid) in different categories, including Accounting & Finance, Marketing, Content & Customization, Customer Support, Payments & Security, Reporting & Analytics, Sales, Shipping & Fulfillment, and Site Optimization. Although Magento officials do not develop those plugins, they all had to experience strict censorship and code standard testing to get a place on the list.

Magento Marketplace

Besides Magento Marketplace, you can find quality extensions from reliable Magento extension providers such as Tigren, Amasty, Aheadworks, Mirasvit. In case that none of the existing Magento extensions can fully meet all your requests, find a trusted Magento developer and ask for a custom module development.

Wix

Up to now, Wix has offered 250+ apps in the market (free and premium), which can be installed with ease. Unlike Magento, you are not allowed to install any third-party extensions, just Wix’s. Moreover, it seems impossible to customize the available apps or build a custom one for your Wix eCommerce store.

Wix App Market

Magento outweighs Wix when discussing the number of available apps/ extensions and the ability to add/ develop custom ones on the e-commerce store.

4. Short-term & Long-term Cost

The cost of developing an eCommerce website is a fundamental matter for online businesses. Let’s figure out how much does it cost to build a Magento vs Wix website!

Magento

As mentioned in the previous part, you can opt for Magento Open Source (free edition) or Magento Commerce (premium edition). From our experience, if you possess a small to medium eCommerce store, there is no need to use Magento Commerce edition; the Magento Open Source is already “too good to be true.” Therefore, what costs you the most might be the fee of hiring the Magento developers to develop your store. The price range of Magento web development is vast. To know how to estimate the Magento pricing yourself, read our guide here, or contact us to get a detailed quote at no cost. Besides, you might have to invest a certain amount of money in buying the theme and hosting service. On the flip side, if your Magento e-commerce store has a large scale with many SKUs, you might consider Magento Commerce. Here is the cost of acquiring this edition:

Wix

There are four Premium plans for developing a Wix eCommerce store, ranging from $16.16 to $39.91 per month. Besides the cost of the subscription to a plan, you might also have to pay for designers to give you an appealing website storefront. In the short-term, undoubtedly, Magento development is more costly than Wix’s growth. Hence, going with Wix sounds more reasonable for start-ups or small e-commerce businesses. However, it does not mean that developing a Magento website is not affordable. Assumed that you have a minimal budget, hiring an Asian Magento agency (in Vietnam, Thailand, Singapore, India, etc.) might be an ideal option. On average, you will be charged from $2,500 to $5,000 to achieve a Magento website.

5. E-commerce Features

The most crucial thing to evaluate the quality of an eCommerce platform is its functionalities/ features. Let’s see what Magento and Wix bring to the table:

Magento

There must be some reasons for the high acquisition price of Magento e-commerce development, and we guess that they are due to all of the excellent eCommerce features of this platform. There is a very long list of Magento features, providing everything you need for an e-commerce store. Here are the highlights:

Promotions & Pricing Catalog Management Catalog Browsing Product Browsing Payments & Checkout Site & Content Management Order Management Customer Service

Customer Loyalty Customer Accounts Support for Global Sites Search Engine Optimization Analytics and Reporting Architecture and Security Layout and Theming Performance and Scalability Cloud Offering

Wix

We can find a list of Wix eCommerce features that are fewer but quite similar to Magento’s; however, most of them are very basic.

• Product & catalog management
• Order management
• Customer management
• Marketing tools
• Payment & shipping
• Tracking & analytics
• Tax
• SEO
• …

In comparison, both Magento and Wix provide useful functionalities to start an e-commerce business. On the surface, there are many similarities in their lists of eCommerce features. But in fact, Wix covers only basic features while Magento will furnish your store with basic but advanced ones by default.

6. Supported Languages & Currencies

Nowadays, there is a considerable increase in the number of global e-commerce stores, who need to develop a site with multiple currencies and languages. For Magento, it’s easy to set up a multi-currency or multi-language website. However, it’s worth noting that you will need to install a language pack to translate your site automatically to different languages. For Wix, you have the same ability to select more than one language for your site, but unfortunately, you can choose only one currency.

7. Payment & Shipping Integration

Wix allows you to integrate with multiple payment gateways such as Stripe, PayPal, Square, Wirecard, 2Checkout, Moolah, Braintree, WorldPay, eWay, Fat Zebra, PagSeguro, Yandex, Leumi Card, and so on. By default, Magento is integrated with several popular payment gateways, namely PayPal, Braintree, Authorize.net, CyberSource, and WorldPay. It also offers some payment methods such as COD, bank transfer, purchase order, and check/money order. If you want to connect to another payment gateway beyond the list (e.g., Stripe), you will need to install a module (e.g., Stripe and Magento integration extension).

8. SEO & Marketing

Let’s move on to Magento vs Wix’s comparison in terms of SEO and Marketing capability.

Magento

Magento provides us with an effective SEO and Marketing tool. Here are the outstanding related features: Promotions and Pricing

• Set promotional pricing for specific stores, categories, customer segments, or products
• Create flexible coupons for particular stores, customer segments, periods, products, and categories
• Export coupon codes for offline distribution, email, newsletters, and more
• Track and report coupon usage

Search Engine Optimization

• Automatically generate a Google sitemap
• Create search engine friendly URLs
• Set meta keywords, meta title, and meta description
• Integrated Google Analytics and Google Adwords

Wix

Wix also offers some exciting marketing tools, for instance:

• Get found on Google
• Email marketing
• Social posts
• Marketing integrations
• Automation
• Coupons
• Videomakers

Nonetheless, when we dig deeper into these marketing functions, we can see a significant difference between Magento’s and Wix’s. Let’s take the Coupon code feature for example:

Wix Promotion Setup

As you can see, the Coupon function of Wix is very basic. You need to set a code, label the coupon, set a discount amount, select customers’ target, set time for applying the coupon, and limit coupon usage times. On the contrary, you can do considerably more than that with Magento. It allows you to set a discount rule for each product/ catalog or shopping cart. Therefore, assumed that you wanted to give your customers 10% off when they spend over $100 on the store, Magento can help you to do that with ease, while Wix cannot. It also means that Magento wins in Magento vs Wix Marketing Tools Battle.

Magento Promotion Setup

9. Customer Support

Both Magento and Wix are highly evaluated in terms of customer support. Their Help Centers provide a strong knowledge base to help the users find the answers yourself. In case that the knowledge base cannot help, the users can create a ticket/ contact Magento/ Wix officials for assistance.

Magento

Magento Help Center

Wix

Wix Help Center

10. Scalability

Scalability is one of the most vital factors when selecting an appropriate eCommerce platform but often being overlooked by the merchants. Nevertheless, even when you start “small,” you still need a scalable platform to help you expand your business in the future. In Magento, especially Magento 2, almost everything can be scaled up or down (e.g., number of products, categories, attributes, users, extensions, etc.) without any problems. As a result, it can satisfy all e-commerce stores’ needs, from the startups to the large ones. Inversely, Wix eCommerce does not allow you to access your site’s code, its scalability is limited. In our opinion, Wix was not designed to serve large stores that need to sell in bulk. Once again, Magento defeats Wix when it comes to scalability.

WHICH IS THE BETTER SOLUTION FOR E-COMMERCE BUSINESSES?

Both Magento and Wix have specific pros and cons. Wix is undoubtedly cheaper to acquire and more accessible for the store owners to use, but its e-commerce features, flexibility, and scalability are minimal. On the flip side, there is a cost and ease of use barrier when going with Magento initially; but in the long-term, it might be the most powerful and unbeatable e-commerce platform. From our point of view, business success must be attained not only in the short-term but also in the long-term. Therefore, we would opt for Magento e-commerce website development after Magento vs Wix comparison if we were you. So, how is your decision? Last but not least, we can send you a free quote of Magento development if you want, send us your request! [ratings]