Talk of the biggest, most influential website builders in the world going for a contest. You wouldn’t want to miss out on the verdict for GoDaddy vs Wix vs Shopify.
How do you select one out of the three best website builders?
This can take a toll on any person who is creating a website for the very first time. However, the narrative can be different. What if you get expert advice on how to select your winner for GoDaddy vs Wix vs Shopify?
The truth is, different website owners have different needs. One person’s best option may not necessarily be the best for another.
GoDaddy, Wix, and Shopify have striking differences worth looking at. This is key to note especially if you are a beginner and you want to set up a personal website.
Differences between GoDaddy, Wix and Shopify
1. Ownership
Appreciating the background for each of these website builders gives you a glimpse of their stability.
GoDaddy was founded by Bob Parsons and is currently owned by private companies and individuals in shares. This is one of the factors that has contributed to its robust nature. It is majorly known for being the world’s leading domain registrar but it also provides a variety of other hosting services.
Wix was founded in 2006 by Abishai Abrahami as a start-up and since then it has grown to be a leading tech company in the world today. It uses a freemium model whereby the company earns revenue only through premium subscriptions. This explains why they are highly popular for their do-it-yourself (DIY) website builder.
Shopify was founded by Tobias Lütke. One of the most outstanding things about Shopify is its nature. It works more like a web application form where you can create your online store. On the other hand, GoDaddy and Wix work as website builders. Shopify is also more specialized in eCommerce as compared to the other two hosting platforms.
2. Customer support
GoDaddy excels in its customer service and has been recognized globally for this effort. Their contact platforms are easily accessible by all their customers and they are dedicated to responding promptly. You can contact them on live chat 24/7 or through phone from Monday to Friday during office hours.
Shopify has comprehensive customer support. You can contact their support team 24/7 via email, live chat, or phone. To access phone support, you will need to request them to call you back.
Wix provides great support in ensuring that customers receive help from specific experts. Some of the contact means include a 24/7 call-back service or using the Customer care contact page to get personal support. Another way is by contacting the Wix team directly on social media platforms or the Wix official forum. The downside is that they do not offer live support.
The verdict: GoDaddy takes the win for this one.
3. Blogging
Blogging is a strategic way to increase organic traffic to your site. It is highly recommended that online entrepreneurs should have a blog for their websites.
Shopify comes with an in-built blogging function that allows one to create resourceful content to keep you ranking highly on search engines. Some of the things that could be better from this platform include a lack of Yoast-style SEO plugins and no blog post categorizations.
Wix provides a solid blogging option for content creators and emerging entrepreneurs. At the same time, we must admit that they have a long way to go compared to market leaders in blogging.
GoDaddy has a simple blogging editor adequate for small websites. The features are limited making it less interactive hence not the best option for those specializing in blogging.
The Verdict: On the blogging category for GoDaddy vs Wix vs Shopify, Wix provides the best option.
4. Pricing
Pricing is a deal-breaker for anyone intending to start their journey of owning a website. Getting a reliable website builder with good pricing is the catch for any website builder. Is it possible to find this among GoDaddy vs Wix vs Shopify? Let us find out.
Shopify
The Shopify plans range from $29 – $299. These plans are comprehensive and each of them comes with different features. Click here to find out Shopify pricing plans.
Wix
The Wix pricing plans are divided into two categories, that is, Wix web hosting and eCommerce. Below is a highlight of the plans, ranging from as low as $4.50 per month to $24.50 per month. Be sure to check out the comprehensive pricing guide here.
GoDaddy
GoDaddy’s pricing ranges from $6.99 per month to $14.88 per month. This is for both web hosting and eCommerce. Note that GoDaddy provides incredible discounts for first-time subscribers. You can click here to learn more about GoDaddy pricing.
5. Templates
Templates are blueprints for building a website without so much hustle. This goes a long way for people who do not have a knack for web design or those building a website for the first time.
GoDaddy provides impressive templates allowing you to build your website in less than an hour. At the same time, their choices are limited.
Wix has innumerable templates divided across a wide variety of industries. Talk of hospitality, travel, CV writing, politics, education, and so much more. To add, these templates are fully customizable and allow you to add moving text. The only downside is that once you publish your website, you can not change the template.
Shopify provides ten templates with great designs to choose from. You can customize them to your desired outlook and get an outstanding website. Beyond this, you can only purchase other templates for an even better-looking site. Note that the outlook of your website is key now that Shopify is solely an eCommerce platform.
The Verdict for GoDaddy vs Wix vs Shopify for this category goes to Wix.
6. SEO tools
Wix has inbuilt tools for Search Engine Optimization making it easy to keep your website ranking highly on Google and other search engines. All you need to do is make it clear on your settings what your focus area is and let this system do all the hard work for you.
GoDaddy SEO focuses on simplifying everything as much as possible. You can access the ingenious SEO wizard to help you choose the correct keywords for your site and add them to relevant content. This adds your chances of ranking high on search engines.
Shopify features are strong and compete favorably with other hosting platforms. They mostly use on-page SEO to change page titles, meta-descriptions, add headings and alt text.
For GoDaddy vs Wix vs Shopify, it is key to note that all of them have strong SEO tools. However, Shopify provides superior tools that keep your site ranking high.
A Quick Summary
Wix
Pros
- Has super cheap plans with their free website hosting being the most popular one.
- The intuitive drag and drop editor makes it one of the easiest builders a beginner can use.
- Their template collection is massive, and the majority of these templates are free of charge.
- The Wix App Market has numerous apps to help you add more features to your website.
- Wix makes it easy to market your website and products through integration with social media sites.
Cons
- The free plan displays Wix ads at the bottom of your website
- Your site is not transferable
- You must subscribe to a paid plan for you to access tracking and analytics tools
GoDaddy
Pros
- It is fast and easy to create a website. All thanks to their ADI you can get online in under one hour. More to that their server speed ranked at an A+ with an impressive 171.1 ms in the global average test.
- Super cheap packages
- A dependable 24/7 support. GoDaddy has a skilled award-winning responsive team who whole-heartedly invest their effort in attending to customers and solving problems as soon as they arise.
- They provide support in 15 different languages in the world which significantly eases communication and reduces the frustrations that come with language barriers.
- 99.9% uptime guaranteed
Cons
- The templates are quite basic and not easy to customize
- Does not support digital products, for example, eBooks
- Has limited third party resources
ShopifyShopify
Pros
- Simple to use and ideal for beginners and people who are less tech-savvy
- They have a wide variety of beautiful themes to use for your storefront. What’s more, these themes are categorized according to different industries making it easy for you to search for what you want.
- Shopify has over 1200 apps to help you automate your tasks, this allows you to pay attention to reaching out to more customers and scale your site. These apps will help you with some of the most important tasks including accounting, customer service, shipping, inventory, reporting and so much more.
- 24/7 support from a dedicated team on a wide variety of platforms.
- Strategic marketing tools to boost your SEO rankings, share your work on social media and automate a number of tasks.
Cons
- A limited number of free themes. There are only ten free themes and to use a premium one, you are required to pay a one-time fee to use any of the other themes. This also means that you have to understand the Shopify Liquid code or hire an expert.
- Shopify can be quite expensive considering the fact that you need to pay fees for a number of their services like apps and additional templates.
In Conclusion
GoDaddy vs Wix vs Shopify is quite a tight match. It is impossible to pick out one of the three as the winner. What we can deduce from the discussion is that eCommerce owners can consider using Shopify, and check out the GoDaddy or Wix eCommerce if you intend to keep a small online business without scaling.
New website users can use the Wix editor to create their websites or allow the GoDaddy ADI to do all the work for them.
Have you checked out each of these sites individually? This is the only way to determine what suits you the best.