Wix vs WordPress: Which One Should You Choose?
Although more than 40% of all websites run on WordPress, there are other platforms you can use to create a website.
That's why I'm going to compare WordPress with Wix here and discuss the advantages and disadvantages of both tools. This should ultimately make it easier for you to choose the right website builder for your site.
Brief Summary
- WordPress offers practically complete freedom in terms of design and functionality, making it suitable for both simple blogs and complex websites.
- Wix is more user-friendly and requires less technical knowledge, but is more limited in terms of functionality and design. As a result, it's only suitable for simple websites.
- For most people, WordPress will ultimately be the best platform because it's more flexible, cheaper (just a few euros per month through hosting providers like Hostinger and Cloud86), and more versatile.
Wix vs WordPress: which is better for blogging?
You can blog with both Wix and WordPress blogging. However, one of these platforms is better suited for this purpose than the other.
Blogging with Wix
You can easily add a blog to your site with Wix. You can enhance your blog posts with images and videos, and you can assign categories and tags to them.
For blog posts, you don't use the Wix website builder. Instead, you get a rather bare-bones text editor that doesn't offer many layout options.
Managing visitor comments isn't as straightforward as it is with WordPress. Many Wix users ultimately opt for third-party solutions like Facebook or Disqus to handle their comments.
Wix's blog component also lacks several important features. For example, it doesn't allow you to backdate your posts or create private messages.
Blogging with WordPress
WordPress started as a blogging platform. The platform has been the go-to choice for serious bloggers for years. Every month, thousands of people start a blog with WordPress.
It literally offers all the features you need to create a beautiful blog. The Gutenberg editor gives you complete freedom in this area.
WordPress also features an excellent built-in comment system.
Finally, you can enhance your blog with plugins that allow you to add virtually any functionality you can imagine.
Winner: WordPress
I've yet to meet the first serious blogger who uses Wix instead of WordPress. WordPress wins this contest hands down.
E-commerce capabilities
Starting an online shop is a type of functionality that many entrepreneurial people look for in a website builder. Let's examine how the ecommerce capabilities of both website builders compare to each other.
Ecommerce with Wix
To use Wix's ecommerce functionality, you'll need to purchase one of their paid plans. You cannot sell products with the free version of Wix.
Unlike WordPress, Wix is a closed system. This means there's a long list of products you cannot sell through Wix, including alcohol.
You probably weren't planning to sell products from Wix's prohibited list anyway, but it's still frustrating when a platform imposes such restrictions on you.
In some cases, you're not even selling a “prohibited” product and you can still run into problems:
Due to a mistake on Wix's part, this user hasn't received any payments for months now.
Wix's own payment system is on the expensive side, with 2.9% transaction fees plus a fixed fee of 30 cents per transaction. Fortunately, you can also use third-party services like PayPal.
Wix's ecommerce system offers fewer features than many competing ecommerce platforms.
Ecommerce with WordPress
You can start an online store on WordPress using WooCommerce, the second most popular e-commerce platform in the world after Shopify. WooCommerce is open-source and free to use.
Additionally, there are countless other ecommerce plugins available for WordPress that allow you to sell products and services.
Most of these plugins allow you to sell products without any restrictions.
Furthermore, WordPress also offers the excellent MemberPress plugin. You can use it to sell online courses.
Winner: WordPress
If you want to set up a substantial online store, WordPress with WooCommerce is a much better option than Wix. WordPress offers far more freedom, flexibility, and capabilities than Wix.
Website design options
Website design is a critical success factor for your site. Here we'll compare the web design capabilities of Wix and WordPress.
Website design with Wix
You can create a beautiful website quite easily with Wix. You have access to more than 900 design templates to choose from, as well as various themes. These are organized into different categories such as business, hobbies, and art.
You can customize your site's design quite easily through the Wix editor.
Keep in mind that once you've chosen a template, you're committed to it. If you want to change it later, you'll need to rebuild your site from scratch.
WordPress website design
There are thousands of WordPress themes available. For virtually any type of website, you can find a suitable theme. Some of the best themes are available for free.
Additionally, you can customize the appearance of many of these themes to your liking. You also have the option to hire a developer to create a unique theme specifically for your website.
You can also swap your WordPress theme with a different one in just a few clicks.
Additionally, there are page builders like Elementor that allow you to design pages exactly the way you want them to look. You can also create beautiful pages using the Gutenberg editor.
Winner: WordPress
WordPress offers far more possibilities for designing a beautiful, unique site. Additionally, you can change your WordPress theme whenever you want.
Plugins
Plugins are small programs that you click into your website. They provide your site with extra functionality. Let's examine how Wix and WordPress plugins compare.
Wix plugins
There are more than 200 plugins available for Wix (Wix calls these “apps”). Some of these are free, while others require payment. These plugins allow you to add features like social media buttons, contact forms, and comment sections to your site.
Although Wix doesn't offer a huge selection of plugins, their available options cover most of the functionality that website owners typically need.
WordPress plugins
There are more than 60,000 plugins available for WordPress. The majority of these are free, some are freemium, and others are only accessible through paid subscriptions.
These plugins offer virtually every functionality for your website that you could possibly imagine.
Check out our favorite WordPress plugins for every category.
Winner: WordPress
There are far more developers creating plugins for WordPress than for Wix. As a result, WordPress offers both a greater quantity and higher quality of plugins.
Ease of use
If you're new to website development, you'll want a website builder that's easy to use.
Fortunately, both Wix and WordPress require minimal technical knowledge, allowing anyone to easily create a website using either platform.
Wix user experience
Wix offers an easy-to-use drag-and-drop editor that you can start working with right away. Simply click on any element of your site and you can easily modify it on the spot.
You can move elements of your website, modify text with a single click, and change images.
WordPress ease of use
The ease of use of WordPress partly depends on the theme and page builder you're using. Some are more intuitive than others.
If you're building your site in Gutenberg or using a page builder like Elementor, you can customize your site almost as easily as a Wix website.
The WordPress dashboard can look intimidating to beginners, however. Additionally, a WordPress site requires more maintenance than a Wix site.
Overall, WordPress has a somewhat steeper learning curve than Wix – primarily because it offers more possibilities and flexibility.
Winner: Wix
Both Wix and WordPress are user-friendly, even if you have limited technical knowledge. You can put together a simple website just as easily with either tool.
Wix is somewhat simpler because it's a closed system with fewer options, where more things are automatically handled for you (such as software updates).
Flexibility and migration options
You may reach a point where you want to migrate your website to a different platform or web hosting provider.
Here we'll look at the migration options that Wix and WordPress offer.
Wix migration options
When you choose Wix, you're locked into their platform. Your site is hosted on Wix and this cannot be changed. You can only export blog posts in XML format. All your other data will need to be downloaded manually.
Wix is a closed system. Unfortunately, this has a rather negative impact on your freedom to maneuver.
There are a few ways to migrate your Wix site to WordPress, but none of them are ideal.
WordPress migration options
WordPress is a CMS that makes it extremely easy to export your content. With just one click, you can download your content in XML format.
You can also easily download your entire site to your computer or a cloud account like Google Drive using backup and migration plugins.
You can also easily change your web hosting whenever you're dissatisfied with your current hosting provider.
Winner: WordPress
Wix makes it extremely difficult to migrate your data. Once you choose Wix, you're basically locked in. With WordPress, you can migrate your data much more easily.
Costs
Costs are a crucial factor to consider when choosing a website platform. Let's take a look at exactly how the pricing structure breaks down for both Wix and WordPress.
Wix pricing
You can build a website with Wix for free. However, for most sites this isn't a good option. First, you'll have to tolerate Wix advertisements at the top and bottom of your website. Additionally, you won't be able to connect your own domain name to your site.
With the free version of Wix, you also can't sell products through your site, use Google Analytics, etc.
Let's take a look at the cost of Wix's paid plans:
The cheapest Wix plan without ads costs 11 euros per month. The most expensive plan costs 149 euros per month.
WordPress pricing
The beauty of WordPress is that it's 100% free. However, you'll need to host your site somewhere. With a good hosting service like Hostinger or Cloud86, this can cost just a few euros per month.
For smaller websites, shared hosting is perfect, while rapidly growing, larger websites would be wise to consider VPS hosting or cloud hosting.
Some WordPress themes and plugins cost money, but there are plenty of fantastic free alternatives. For example, Kadence, the theme we use for WebsiteGecko, also offers a free version.
Winner: WordPress
With WordPress, you can ultimately end up spending less than with Wix, since you can get a site with all the functionality you want online for just a few dollars per month.
Conclusion
In my opinion, WordPress beats Wix in most areas.
I only recommend Wix for simple websites and when you want to spend as little time as possible on website development and maintenance. You should also be comfortable with the fact that your site is effectively in the hands of a company that can impose their rules on you.
WordPress has a steeper learning curve than Wix, but ultimately allows you to create better websites. This makes it likely the best website platform for most users.
In this article, I'll walk you through step-by-step how to build a WordPress website.
