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WordPress Vs. Wix

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We spent quite a bit of time comparing WordPress Vs. Wix as site builders because we wanted to find out, both for us and for you, which one is truly the best. Our conclusion? Though Wix has lots of great features and is very beginner-friendly, WordPress is what you truly want to use if you want to build a robust website that’s fully customizable and built for growth. 

WordPress Compared to Wix

WordPress is the website platform that’s known to be a stellar option for bloggers and content creators. It makes it easy to publish and rank long-form content with a wide selection of page builders and thousands upon thousands of theme options. You can use it to create a beautiful website for free here. 

Wix is a pretty versatile website builder that can work great for most people, but more specifically, it’s a great option for creating business and ecommerce websites that need payment gateways, membership features, or order and fulfillment tools. You can get started with a free basic Wix website here. 

More Top Website Builders

If you want to see our full list of top website builder picks we recommend you check out our in-depth guide where we get down to specifics. We don’t mean to be biased, but we highly recommend you check it out if you want an in-depth comparison of website builders that goes beyond just comparing WordPress and Wix. Here’s where you can see all of our top picks. 

Where WordPress Shines

Better pricing: WordPress pricing tiers start relatively affordably even as you increase your website needs.

Open-source software: If you’re a developer, you can have plenty of fun with website customization options that you don’t necessarily get with Wix. If you’re a developer, WordPress enables you to totally nerd out and create intricate websites where the sky’s pretty much the limit. 

Specialized hosting plans: WordPress is super popular, which means lots of web hosting providers offer WordPress-specific hosting packages that can be convenient for your website depending on what your needs are. 

Gutenberg page builder: WordPress’s relatively new release of Gutenberg has given it a much-needed facelift in terms of its content editing features. Gutenberg is an easy-to-use page and blog post builder that works with building block features you can stack together to create beautifully responsive pages. 

Free themes: If you use WordPress, you have access to a nice selection of customizable free themes. Though they’re pretty basic, you can definitely get by with a free theme for a standard site that doesn’t need too much complexity. 

Thousands of premium themes: If you decide to go the paid theme route, WordPress offers literally thousands upon thousands of themes to choose from. Depending on how you see it, this can be good news for you as you’ll have a ton of themes to choose from. Either that or the sheer amount of themes available will actually be overwhelming. 

Tons of plugins: Plugins add to the customizability of WordPress websites because they allow you to add extra features with ease. Lots of them are free too, with the option for a paid plan with more features. Plugins also eliminate the need to be highly technical. 

Trust factor: Some of the biggest brands, including Variety, Spotify, CNN, Time, CBS, and NBC are created with WordPress. You can be sure it’s a reliable website builder that thrives on being versatile and usable for just about any website need imaginable. In other words, WordPress isn’t exactly the new kid on the block. It’s been around since 2003 and powers an estimated 64 million websites. 

24/7 support: Either through email or through its community forums, you can be sure you’ll get the help you need if you go with a paid site plan. WIth a paid plan, you’ll also have access to live chat for real-time assistance. 

Mobile and desktop apps: With WordPress, you don’t have to be confined to using a desktop. You can take care of basic site tasks on the go with its mobile app. 

Search engine optimized: WordPress ensures its platform is built so that your site is optimized for SEO with tools like built-in sitemaps. 

Built-in stats: WordPress equips you with website data that lets you in on audience behavior, including where they’re from and what content on your site they’re frequenting. There are also plenty of plugins both paid and free that can give you additional insight into user behavior.  

Where WordPress Falls Short

Its strength can be a double-sided sword: The more powerful and customizable your site platform is, the more complex it inevitably becomes. This can lead to compatibility issues and a bloated, plugin-heavy website that can slow you down if you don’t know what you’re doing. 

Technical know-how needed: Though WordPress offers plenty of website building power, some of it might not be as intuitive as using Wix. If you want access to additional customization, you might need to collaborate with a developer for more advanced features. 

Less intuitive dashboard: If you’re completely new to WordPress, you might have to get through a bit of a learning curve as you learn to use its dashboard. It does offer you more control over customization once you get familiar with it, but getting familiar in the first place may take a while.   

Limited support for free sites: Though WordPress offers support for paid plans, it doesn’t offer support if you decide to go with a free WordPress website. This leaves you to fend for yourself if you ever need advanced customization. 

Where Wix Shines

Pre-made templates: Instead of offering you a ton of themes to choose from, Wix offers you site templates that are ready-made and easily editable. No need to go on the hunt through a ton of themes to find the perfect one as you fight analysis paralysis. 

Ease of use and simplicity: Unlike WordPress, Wix is designed to be beginner-friendly. This means its website editing and customization processes are built to be accessible and easily configurable. 

Elements feature: While WordPress has a very standard customizer option that lets you click through a list of categories to find the option you want to edit, Wix’s Elements feature is a more interactive editor that lets you click right into your theme and create changes right on it. This is a nice visual feature that WordPress simply doesn’t offer which goes right along with Wix’s ease-of-use approach.

Customer support: Wix lets you submit a support ticket or lets you contact them through phone or email for personalized support. It also offers support regardless of whether you’re using its paid or free option. 

Ecommerce features: If you go with a paid plan, Wix has built-in payment gateway features as well as shipping and product listing features. Though you can also use third-party Wix apps to add additional payment gateways or storefront customizations when needed. 

Fantastic reliability: Wix works hard to keep its infrastructure in tip-top shape, so the website you build on its platform is always available to visitors. With 24/7 monitoring supported by redundant site backups stored across Wix’s many global data centers, you’ll never lose your site data and never have to worry about unexpected downtime.

Built-in security: Your Wix site will meet the highest industry standards of web security out of the box. But Wix goes a step further with built-in DDoS protection, TLS 1.3 data encryption, and PCI DSS compliance for payments. Plus, the team at Wix manages security fully on their end, with regular monitoring and swift response to vulnerabilities before they become an issue.

Where Wix Falls Short

Theme options: Wix offers somewhere around 500+ themes. In contrast, there are over 11,000 WordPress themes available through ThemeForest alone. 

Apps: What WordPress calls “plugins,” Wix calls “apps,” and Wix doesn’t offer many of them at all. Specifically, Wix offers only 300 apps to choose from. In contrast, WordPress offers more than 50,000 different plugins for all kinds of website needs. 

Overall customization: Though Wix does offer apps (known as plugins for WordPress) and plenty of layout options, there is a limit to what it can do as far as customization goes. Ultimately, Wix is built to be beginner-friendly over feature-rich. 

The Final Verdict on WordPress Compared to Wix

As far as Wix goes, it offers plenty of plan options based on whether you need a standard website, an ecommerce site, or if you’re looking for an enterprise solution. 

Website Plans – Great for showcasing a professional site

  • VIP – $39 a month
  • Pro – $23 a month
  • Unlimited – $18 a month
  • Combo – $14 a month

Business and Ecommerce Plans – Essential for accepting online payments

  • Business VIP – $49 a month
  • Business Unlimited – $27 a month
  • Business Basic – $23 a month

Enterprise Plans – Custom solutions tailored to your brand starting at $500 a month

What does this all mean exactly and how can you pick a Wix plan that’s right for you? With Wix, once you figure out if you need a standard, business, or enterprise solution, it really comes down to the specific features you think you’ll need as well as the amount of storage space you’ll use. 

Its most basic Combo plan starts at $14 a month for a standard site. That’s quite a lot of money, especially when you compare it to WordPress, for features that only include 3 GBs of storage space, 30 minutes of video hours, and no chance to add a professional logo. 

The value you get for each of Wix’s paid plans is one of the reasons why we prefer and recommend you use WordPress. If WordPress were competing with Wix on affordability only, it’s already ahead of the game with all the options its Premium tier offers for $6 less than Wix’s starter Combo plan. 

Though Wix does try to appeal to website creators that are looking for a website builder that’s ecommerce friendly, you can build a pretty powerful ecommerce site with WordPress for less money. 

Here’s a look at how WordPress’s paid plans look:

  • Free – Start a free website under a subdomain
  • Personal – $4 per month billed yearly
  • Premium – $8 per month billed yearly
  • Business – $25 per month billed yearly
  • eCommerce – $45 per month billed yearly

There’s also a customizable VIP enterprise solution for websites that need more than the basics. Though those prices start at $2,000 a month and you’ll have to get in touch with its sales team to learn more. 

WordPress’s personal use plan is pretty affordable at only $4 a month billed yearly. It comes complete with a free domain name of your choice for a year, the removal of WordPress.com ads, and unlimited email support. That’s not bad at all for a reliable site builder with built-in web hosting that takes care of the basics. 

However, if you don’t plan on using third-party hosting to keep your website online you’ll probably want to look into its $8 a month Premium tier. It’s the best option for content creators since it comes with live chat support and access to premium themes. 

Keep in mind that with WordPress, you can also go with a self-hosted third-party option. Depending on the host you go with and the needs of your site, those prices can vary widely. 

Take Note: While in this guide we’re reviewing WordPress as a whole, WordPress.com is WordPress’s managed website builder option, while WordPress.org is the WordPress option that lets you use it as a website builder with third-party hosting platforms like Bluehost or SiteGround. 

WordPress.com lets you create a WordPress website for free, though you can only create it with a subdomain. This means your website address would look something like this: wordpress.yoursitename.com. 

The difference is worth pointing out since it can be confusing for beginners and first-time users.

Wrapping Things Up

Look, in the end, WordPress is a solid option for website creators that are looking for a powerful platform that offers endless possibilities in the form of customization, themes, open-source software, and website features. 

On the other hand, Wix is built to be beginner-friendly. As you can already guess, if you’re going for beginner-friendly, that also means you won’t get the more advanced features that come with a bit more of a learning curve. So while you can use Wix to create great standard sites that don’t need that much customization, keep in mind that you’re trading ease of use for limited functionality. 

Like I mentioned earlier, we spent a ton of time comparing the best website builders. That means it’s the website builder guide you don’t want to miss. Though I listed a quick recap below, you can check out the full guide here for more. 

  1. Wix – Best website builder for most users
  2. Squarespace – Best website builder for creatives
  3. Web.com – Fastest way to build a new website
  4. Shopify – Best ecommerce website builder
  5. WordPress – Best for bloggers and content creators
  6. Weebly – Best free website builder

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