When people think of websites that are easy to build, they think of Wix. It comes with a huge library of more than 500 designer-created themes including many designed specifically for the needs of Ecommerce owners.
Companies At a Glance
Wix: Wix is the world’s most well known drag and drop website designer and Wix Stores is its Ecommerce specialist product. With more than 165 million users, it’s used for just about every kind of website imaginable. Wix Store’s product centers around the Wix Editor, a design platform. It also offers a comprehensive app marketplace and automatically mobile optimized themes.
BigCommerce: When Ecommerce store owners want to roll out impressive online shops with enterprise features but without the price tag, BigCommerce is the solution that they turn to. BigCommerce allows users to tweak the theme library with fully customizable HTML, CSS, and Javascript. The checkout experience can also be fully customized by API and SDK.
Here’s how they compare: While Wix is the versatile one size fits all solution, BigCommerce is laser focused on addressing the needs of the Ecommerce sector. Relative to Wix and Wix Stores, BigCommerce is also a more complex tool focused on allowing webmasters to fully customize all aspects of the buyer journey. Although they’re both great products, Wix, and its Ecommerce variant, is definitely the more universal and user-friendly option of the 2.
1. Features and Apps
Wix: The centerpiece of the Wix platform is the Wix editor, which features one of the first—and arguably the best—What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) drag-and-drop editors on the internet. Wix Stores allows you to drag Ecommerce elements onto pages and build more complex design functionalities such as video backgrounds and tiling elements.
BigCommerce: BigCommerce is the leading Ecommerce website builder and includes a powerful set of functionalities that are designed to help online store owners get up and selling in record time. The platform features a number of site security features as well as conversion optimization tools and a traffic analysis platform. While it’s a great choice for those that want enterprise-grade technology without the hassle, most general Ecommerce owners are actually better served by going with Wix’s simpler product.
Winner: Wix
2. Design Templates
Wix: Wix has a virtually unrivalled library containing more than 500 templates all of which users are able to use as part of their subscription—and the Wix Stores app allows users to fine tune these for the needs of Ecommerce. The themes have been carefully optimized for conversion, SEO, and responsiveness. Additionally, the builder offers a number of Ecommerce specific themes suitable for the needs of store owners.
BigCommerce: When we checked out the BigCommerce theme store we found a library of more than 150 themes for Ecommerce sites. While many of the themes are undoubtedly impressive and well optimized for selling, a significant number of the best themes are premium-only—which means that users have to pay an additional amount on top of their premium subscription to join.
Winner: Wix
3. Payment Gateways
Wix: Wix supports more than 24 payment gateways including both major providers like Paypal and Stripe as well as niche local card processors and gateway companies. Wix also provides detailed setup instructions for each supported platform and the Wix Stores marketplace add-on allows users to secure the checkout with an SSL certificate.
BigCommerce: BigCommerce features 65 pre-integrated payment gateways serving more than 250 countries and more than 250 local payment methods. Many of the major providers, including Apple Pay and Paypal, can be set up in a single click.
Winner: BigCommerce
4. Ease of Use
Wix: Wix is a very straightforward and easy to use platform. Even without the excellent support documentation that the Wix team has provided, users would have a hard time struggling to get the platform set up thanks to its intuitive and user-friendly design. The majority of Wix features work by dragging and dropping design elements into pages. Should more complex functionalities be required, such as embedding YouTube videos, users can simply opt to drop in an iFrame element to the page. Wix Stores can be installed in one click by accessing the Wix App Marketplace and is simple to use.
BigCommerce: Although BigCommerce is certainly a lot easier to use than installing a server-side script such as Magento, its features can still be somewhat difficult for a first time user. For instance, although BigCommece’s open API allows development teams to create custom integrations with any other cloud service that has its own API or uses webhooks, it requires expert knowledge to provision and maintain.
Winner: Wix
5. Customer Support
Wix: Wix’s customer service is regarded as some of the best in the industry. It recently set up an additional EMEA facility focused on support in Dublin, Ireland and the team offers telephone support in English, French, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish. Wix also maintains a superb helpdesk that the company has spun out into its own product. Wix users truly always have somebody to ask for help.
BigCommerce: BigCommerce support is available by live chat, by telephone, and by email. The support services are well secured and require a support pin in order to access—thereby ensuring that only authorized users can manage tickets on behalf of the business. Although the support is responsive and competent, we didn’ think that the breadth of the support channels offered matched that of Wix.
Winner: Wix
6. Value for Money
Wix: Wix provides excellent value for money throughout its product range including the small cost for users that simply want to connect their domain to a Wix website without wishing to use additional features. The packages are competitively priced—especially considering that they all include unlimited access to Wix’s designed-authored catalog of themes. The Wix Stores add on can be added to any free premium Wix subscription.
BigCommerce: Although BigCommerce can provide a lot of firepower to get Ecommerce websites up and scaling quickly, it does tend to become quite expensive. Its Pro tier, for instance, costs $299.95/month and is required to unlock some important features such as importing Google customer reviews and enabling product filtering (faceted search).
Winner: Wix
Overall Winner
Wix wins our overall head to head because, for a very reasonable price point, it provides a wealth of features—not to mention access to an enormous and well developed theme library. It also has excellent help center credentials and is a battled hardened tool that has powered more than 100 million websites worldwide.
