If you’re just starting out with your dropshipping store, you’ll need to choose a good platform to host it on. Shopify, Wix, and WordPress are some of the best choices out of all the ones that are available.
While Shopify is made for eCommerce, platforms like Wix and WordPress are hard for a lot of people to understand. So, in this Wix vs. WordPress guide, I’ll compare the two from different points of view to help you decide which one is best for you.
Features of Wix: What You Need to Know
Wix is, in a nutshell, an online website builder that also provides dedicated hosting and marketing services. It is based on a freemium model and offers one of the easiest ways to make websites by using a large number of templates that are easy to find.
Wix uses HTML 5 to make websites, and users can add a wide range of native and third-party plugins to their sites. Besides that, Wix’s platform also offers dedicated hosting, analytics, and eCommerce solutions.
What You Need to Know About WordPress: The Main Things
WordPress is the most popular tool for making websites and managing their content. It runs almost 42% of all websites in the world. WordPress.org is an open-source platform that you can load on any hosting service. WordPress.com, on the other hand, is a paid service that is made just for WordPress.
WordPress not only has the best web hosting, but it also has more than 50,000 plugins that you can look through and add to your website. You can use the SEO tools that come with it, and WooCommerce, which is its free eCommerce solution, is also available.
A Detailed Look at Wix and WordPress
Now that we’ve gone over the basics, let’s do a more in-depth comparison of Wix vs. WordPress based on things like how easy they are to use, how much they cost, how flexible they are, and so on.
Simple to Use
For many, the overall ease of use of the tools would be the first and most important thing. Since Wix is made for beginners, it should have a friendlier interface overall.
You can choose from a large number of templates and change them to make your own website. Wix also has a What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) editor that lets you make a website from scratch without having to write any code.
Even though WordPress is also easy to use as a whole, its interface can be a bit more complicated than Wix’s. But you can get access to some of WordPress’s most advanced themes that you can completely change from your dashboard.
Designing and Making Changes
Wix has more than 800 free and paid templates that you can look through and change. Wix is based on HTML 5, but you don’t have to write any back-end code to make a website with it. Though, if you want, you can use Wix ADI or other plugins to get results that are more to your liking.
On the other hand, WordPress has tens of thousands of free and paid themes that you can use right away. On WordPress, there are a lot of ways to change how the layout of a loaded theme looks. You can also change its back-end code on WordPress or use a number of plugins to customize it better.
Apps and plug-ins
When we look at the plugins for both Wix and WordPress, it’s clear that WordPress has more to offer.
Wix has its own web store where you can find more than 200 plugins for SEO, eCommerce, comments, data management, and other things. Please keep in mind that all of these plugins are only available inside Wix, and most of them cost money. You can look at and install any plugin, but this limits how much we can change our websites.
WordPress is clearly the winner here, since it has an open web store with more than 55,000 plugins.
You can find a plugin for almost anything on WordPress, from Google Analytics to table generators and comment filtering to eCommerce store management. Some of these WordPress plugins cost money, but you can use the basic version of most of them for free.
eCommerce Features
As I said above, you can use both Wix and WordPress to set up and run your eCommerce store online. Though, WordPress is a better choice for running a dropshipping store because it has more features and can be used with WooCommerce.
Wix has paid plans that are designed specifically for running eCommerce stores. With these plans, you can manage multiple customer profiles and connect several payment gateways. You can host photos and videos for your product catalogs and get detailed information about your customers.
You can connect your Wix site to Modalyst if you want to get a wide range of dropshipping products. Wix also has options for recovering carts that have been left behind, using multiple currencies, creating loyalty programs, and selling through social media.
If you use WordPress to run your eCommerce store online, you can find almost all of the features that Wix offers, plus a lot more. You will have the option to link different payment gateways, such as PayPal, which will work well together.
You can easily run a free eCommerce store on your WordPress site by installing WooCommerce, which is the native way to do it. It lets you connect your store to the best shipping services and list an unlimited number of products. WooCommerce lets you sell your products on multiple platforms and gives you extra features like inventory management, SEO, coupons, refunds with one click, and more.
Pricing
As a final part of our comparison of Wix and WordPress, let’s take a look at the different pricing plans for each.
Wix has 8 plans for individuals and business owners as of right now. If all you want is a simple, static website with few pages, you can pay between $13 and $39 per month. But if you want to run an online eCommerce store, you can pay between $23 and $49 per month for one of its business plans.
WordPress would be the clear winner when it comes to price. WordPress’s basic plan costs only $4 per month (with limited features). But you can get a business plan for $25 and a plan that is just for eCommerce for $45 per month.
Aside from that, you can also install WordPress and WooCommerce for free on any third-party hosting service, which can drastically lower its price.
Verdict
From our comparison of Wix and WordPress, you can see that both tools have their pros and cons. If you’re new to building websites and want answers right away, you can just check out Wix.
Wix wouldn’t have as many plugins and customization options as WordPress, though. Also, in the long run, Wix would be a more expensive choice. So, if you want to grow and make an eCommerce business that can grow with you, WordPress might be a better choice.
dropship-empire: Give your drop-shipping business an immediate boost.
After reading this comparison of Wix and WordPress, you must have chosen a platform for your store.
Now, you can use dropship-empire, which is the official AliExpress dropshipping tool, to help you find the right products for your dropshipping store.
Free and easy to use
The best thing about dropship-empire is that you can use its services for free and list hundreds of products in your store. The platform is easy to use for beginners and gives you access to millions of different products all in one place.
Supplier Finder
The Supplier Finder feature was added to dropship-empire to help you make more money and give your customers better service. It will help you find the most reliable and profitable suppliers in your field.
Automatic Features
dropship-empire gives you a lot of automatic ways to save time, such as syncing tracking numbers, updating order statuses, and so on. You can also set up automatic pricing to get dynamic results.
What’s else?
dropship-empire also has a lot of other features, like variant mapping, product bundles, shipping settings, stock management, bulk purchasing, and a lot more, to make dropshipping as easy as possible.
Conclusion
I’m sure that after reading this Wix vs. WordPress comparison, you would know more about these platforms. Wix is mostly recommended for people who have never made a website before because it is easy to use and manage. Even though Wix is easier to use, it doesn’t have nearly as many features as WordPress.
So, if you want to make a website that can be changed and has more power, WordPress would be a good choice in the long run. Also, if you want to make sure your dropshipping store has the right products, you can easily use a tool like dropship-empire.