Shopify, Wix & Looka name generators, reviewed

Shopify, Wix, and Looka all ship free business name generators, and each is a top-of-funnel tool for a different core business: Shopify sells an e-commerce platform, Wix a website builder, Looka a logo maker. The practical differences are real. Shopify’s generator asks for nothing — no account, no email — and returns 100 ideas per search, with a companion domain tool that checks 17+ extensions in one pass. Wix’s is also free and unlimited, but its own FAQ confirms you need a free Wix account, and results feed straight into Wix’s own domain, site, logo, and email products. Looka is the brand-first option: it checks social-media handles alongside domain availability and flows every name into its logo maker.

So the fit is fairly clean — Shopify for anyone who wants a zero-friction brainstorm (and especially merchants building on Shopify anyway), Wix for founders launching everything inside one ecosystem, and Looka for people who want to see a name as a visual identity before committing.

One thing this review doesn’t do is rank the names themselves. There’s no credible head-to-head benchmark of output quality, and a handful of our own searches isn’t evidence. What follows compares what each tool costs, what it gates, and what it checks for you.

What does Shopify’s name generator actually give you?

Shopify’s business name generator is free with no sign-up required — its own FAQ says it “is free for everyone to use and you can run as many searches as you please,” and each search returns 100 ideas: “You now have 100 possibilities to select from or use as inspiration.” That makes it the only one of the three that needs nothing from you at all.

It pairs with a companion domain generator, also free and signup-less, that checks 17+ extensions — regional ones (.ca, .co.uk, .com.au, .in) alongside .com, .shop, .store, and .xyz. Nothing requires a Shopify account until you register a domain or open a store; at that point you’re on the free-trial path toward a paid plan. For an e-commerce founder who planned to build on Shopify anyway, that’s the real advantage: name, domain, and a working storefront from one vendor. Our domain name ideas for e-commerce brands covers what to feed a tool like this; connecting your domain to a host covers pointing a domain bought elsewhere at Shopify.

Is Wix’s business name generator free?

Wix’s generator is equally free — “There is no cost for you to use it. You can use the free Business Name Generator to create as many names as you want without any limitations” — but it has one gate Shopify doesn’t. Asked whether you can use it without a Wix account, Wix’s FAQ answers plainly: “To use Wix’s AI name generator, you’ll need to sign up for a free account with Wix.” A free account, not a paid plan, but it’s a genuine friction difference between the two platform tools.

The account requirement makes sense once you see the funnel: the results page cross-sells Wix’s domain registration, website builder, logo maker, and business email. The generator itself is marketed as “AI-Powered Brand Name Ideas” with a real-time availability check — click any suggested domain to check it, then register it with Wix. The fair read: for someone committed to Wix, going from no name to a live site with a logo without leaving one ecosystem genuinely beats bouncing a shortlist between four separate tools.

Is Looka’s name generator worth using if you don’t want a logo?

Looka’s generator is free and the most brand-first of the three: “Using advanced algorithms, we generate names in five categories.” It groups results by name type with filters for length and style, and — unusually — checks social-media-handle availability alongside domain availability in the same pass, “pulling from major domain providers.” Handles are a check most plain name generators skip and most founders forget.

Looka doesn’t sell domains: there’s no registration checkout, just a “See Logos” button into its logo maker, and you take an available name to a third-party registrar like GoDaddy or Namecheap yourself. The upsell is the logo and brand kit, which is why Looka sits a little apart from the rest of the AI name generators we’ve looked at — it’s the one built to hand you a visual identity rather than a storefront.

Are these actually AI generators?

This deserves precision rather than a gotcha. Shopify’s marketing invites you to “Create an AI-generated business name and claim the domain in seconds,” but its own FAQ describes the mechanism in plainer terms: “A business name generator is a tool that combines random words and industry-specific terms to create unique, catchy name proposals.” Looka’s page title says “Free AI Business Name Generator” while its body copy says, more modestly, “Using advanced algorithms, we generate names in five categories.” Wix says “AI-powered” and doesn’t describe the mechanism on the generator page at all.

None of this makes anyone a liar — “AI” has been stretched thin across this entire industry, and a word-combining algorithm can still surface a great name. It does mean the label tells you nothing, so judge each tool by its output. Shopify effectively says so itself: “Results are AI-generated and should be reviewed before use. You’re responsible for your use of any results.”

That includes us. Domain Yoga sells itself as an AI generator, and the same test applies: ignore the label, look at whether the list contains names you’d actually put on a storefront.

How do the three compare at a glance?

Tool	Free?	Account required?	Ideas per search	Availability check	Main upsell
Shopify	Yes, unlimited searches	No	100 (per its FAQ)	Yes, via companion domain tool (17+ TLDs)	Domain → free trial → paid plan
Wix	Yes, unlimited use	Yes — free account (per its FAQ)	Unlimited, no fixed count (per its FAQ)	Yes, real-time (per its copy)	Domain, website builder, logo maker, business email
Looka	Yes	Not disclosed	Not disclosed	Yes, domains plus social handles; doesn’t sell domains itself	Logo maker → Brand Kit

What do these free generators actually cost you?

Nothing is hidden — but as with Namecheap’s and GoDaddy’s generators, each tool exists to feed a funnel. As of mid-2026 that funnel looks roughly like this — prices localize by region and change, so confirm at checkout. Shopify’s entry-level Basic plan runs roughly $29/month billed annually (about $39/month billed monthly), and a .com through Shopify approximately $11–$16/year. Wix’s cheapest premium plan, Light, is roughly $17/month billed annually, rising to about $29/month for Core, its entry point for e-commerce features; a .com through Wix costs roughly $13–$17 for the first year and renews at roughly $21/year, though most paid Wix plans include one year of a domain free. Looka’s logo packages run about $20 (Basic) and $65 (Premium) one-time, with the Brand Kit subscription at about $96/year and Brand Kit + Website at about $129/year.

None of that is a cost of the generator, though — it’s what the platform costs if you decide you wanted the platform. You can take a name from any of these three tools and register the domain anywhere you like.

Two caveats travel with any generated name. These are business-name generators first, so a name you love may not have its matching .com open — does your domain have to match your business name? walks through that exact decision. And no generator clears trademarks for you — Shopify’s “review before use” disclaimer exists for a reason, so run the checks in trademark basics before you register before you commit. This is general information, not legal advice — talk to a trademark attorney for that.

When is a paid search worth it instead?

Often it isn’t, and that’s not false modesty. All three of these tools are genuinely free, and if you’re building on Shopify or Wix, their generator is wired into the platform you’ll use every day — free, unlimited brainstorming is exactly the right price for early-stage naming, and for many readers it’s the whole answer. The gap appears when you want a sorted shortlist rather than more raw ideas. That’s the job Domain Yoga charges for: each search returns around 250 availability-checked ideas ranked by brandability, at $2–$5 per search with no subscription and credits that never expire. Whether that trade makes sense is what free vs paid domain name generators digs into — start free, and pay only if sorting the free output becomes the bottleneck.