Shopify is the best known ecommerce platform, built around a fast checkout, a huge app store and tools for selling online, in person and on marketplaces and social media. Wizard Application includes a website builder with an online store too, but your website runs on the same platform as your sales, recruitment, projects and help desk, so every order, applicant and enquiry lands in the right place.
If you are choosing between them, this guide sets out how they compare, where each one is strong, and which kind of business each suits best.
At a glance
| Wizard Application | Shopify | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | A website costs £25 a month on any plan, including the free Starter plan, billed from your wallet | Basic £19, Grow £49 and Advanced £259 a month, billed yearly, or £25, £65 and £344 billed monthly. Plus from £1,800 a month. |
| Transaction fees | No transaction fee from us. You connect your own Stripe or PayPal account and pay only their processing fees. | Shopify Payments online card rates from 2% + 25p on Basic to 1.5% + 25p on Advanced. Using another payment provider adds a fee of 2% on Basic, 1% on Grow and 0.6% on Advanced. |
| Online store | Products with options and stock, digital downloads, shipping and tax by country, discount codes, customer accounts and order emails. Every order lands in Sales. | Unlimited products, a highly optimised checkout and a full set of ecommerce tools |
| Selling in person and elsewhere | Online on your own website only | Point of sale, plus selling on social media and marketplaces |
| Extending it | Everything is built in. There is no app store. | The Shopify App Store, with apps for almost anything |
| AI | Wizard AI drafts whole pages, menus, SEO titles and legal pages, rewrites any block, and answers visitors in an AI live chat | Sidekick, an AI assistant built into Shopify |
| Beyond the store | Jobs from Recruitment, forms into your CRM, plus projects, help desk, HR, chat and invoicing in the same workspace | Connects to other tools through apps |
Where Shopify is strong
Shopify is built for selling and does it extremely well. Its checkout is fast and trusted by shoppers, the app store has an app for almost anything, and the same products can be sold on your website, in person with point of sale and on social media and marketplaces. Its themes are made for stores, and the higher plans add lower card rates and more staff accounts. If your business is mainly an online shop and you want room to grow into every sales channel, Shopify is one of the strongest choices.
Where Wizard Application is different
- Your website and your business in one place. Store orders land in Sales with the customer attached, applications from your careers pages land in Recruitment, and enquiry forms create leads and tasks for your team. Nothing is copied between a website builder, a CRM and an ATS.
- Jobs on your own website. Jobs you publish in Recruitment appear on your website automatically, and candidates apply on a page styled like the rest of your site.
- No cut of your sales. You connect your own Stripe or PayPal account, and we take no transaction fee on top of their processing fees.
- Wizard AI built in. Draft whole pages from a sentence, design your menus, rewrite any block, get SEO suggestions and draft legal pages, then add an AI live chat that answers visitors from your own pages.
- Your domain, handled for you. Buy a domain as you sign up or from Domains in your workspace. We register it in your name, set up its DNS and renew it from your wallet, with SSL and a global CDN included.
- One platform and one bill. Your website sits next to projects, help desk, HR, team chat and invoicing, with one login and one set of permissions.
Where Wizard Application is behind
We would rather you choose with the full picture. Our Website Builder is new, and a dedicated website platform does more today:
- No app store. There is no marketplace of third-party apps and plugins to extend your site.
- Online only. There is no point of sale for selling in person, and no selling through marketplaces or social media.
- Fewer starting points. You build from a section library and your own theme settings rather than a large gallery of ready-made templates.
- No bookings on the website. Visitors cannot book appointments or classes through your site yet.
- Your own domain to go live. There is no free subdomain. Your site stays in private preview until you connect or buy a domain.
- Two payment providers. Checkout takes payments through Stripe and PayPal.
Which should you choose
Shopify may suit you better if selling products is your whole business, you need point of sale or selling on marketplaces and social media, or you rely on apps from a large app store.
Wizard Application may suit you better if you sell online as part of a wider business, want orders, customers, enquiries and job applicants in one place, and would rather not pay a website builder, a shop app, a CRM and an ATS separately.
Moving from Shopify
Keep your Shopify store running while you build your new site. Add your products, set up shipping, tax and payments, and check everything in private preview. When you are ready, point your domain at your new website. If you would rather not move it yourself, our migration team can help.
When you are ready to compare the two properly, see our pricing or explore the Website Builder.
Related reading
Shopify is a trademark of Shopify Inc. Details about Shopify were correct at the time of writing (October 2026), based on its public website and pricing page, and may have changed since. Product names and logos are used only to identify the products being compared, and do not imply any endorsement or partnership.