Wix vs. WordPress – What’s The Best Website Builder Today?

Let's compare some of the main differences between the two platforms. The one key to notice that WordPress is an open-source platform which means that you will need to take care of many of the aspects related to ongoing functionality and maintenance yourself. This is okay for more advanced users, though some of those just starting out might find this a bit tricky.

On the other hand, Wix uses a site builder with various flexible designs, which is excellent if you want to build something from a template. As an example, this might include creating a portfolio for your business.

That said, a WordPress website still has an advantage in its potential to get everything set up exactly the way you want it to.

Let's now compare the various features side-by-side.

If you want to get started building your site, ease of use should be one of the first aspects to consider in any website builder. Wix offers its powerful drag-and-drop functionality that makes it super intuitive even for those just starting out. They also have an ADI editor, which gives you a series of questions that you need to answer. The wizard will then build out your site based on your specification.

What comes to ease of use on WordPress, it gets a bit more complicated with items such as plug-ins, themes, and extensions. This makes WordPress not as easy to use compared to Wix, especially if you are a beginner in this arena. 

Another consideration when using WordPress is that fixing stuff is up to you. If something breaks, you will need to find a solution or hire someone with more experience to get it done. On Wix you’ll typically get all the help you need to solve any issues that pop up.

Wix has as many as 1000 different templates for you to choose from. With various designs in various categories, such as restaurants, photography, and more, you will be able to find something that fits your industry.

Wix also creates a mobile version independent of the desktop site, which means that your website will be responsive and adjust based on the user's device.

When we consider WordPress, you can get precisely what you want with custom coding. Even though there are tons of different WordPress themes online, this platform gives you the functionality to dig deep and get the look and feel you desire when making specific changes to the website's code.

A WordPress theme or even a WordPress plugin is essentially a group of files that work together to produce a graphical interface with an underlying code structure. There are both paid and free WordPress themes that you can use for your website. However, it is highly recommended that you use a paid WordPress theme if you want to get the most out of your investment in terms of features and customization options.

On the flipside, this also means that the editing experience is much more technical if you want to get something customized created. However, if you have the budget in place, many designers and coders will take on creating the design you want for your WordPress site.

Wix is a much more closed platform in this regard.

If you have a small store or are just starting to create an ecommerce website, Wix may suffice. As such, if you have an online store with just a few different options and functionality, you might want to set up an e-commerce store with Wix.

On the other hand, one will quickly realize that Wix is not very scalable, making it challenging to use this platform for eCommerce as business grows.

WooCommerce also comes with a free version that will be enough for many just starting out as well as mid-sized e-commerce stores.

Another essential feature that everyone should consider when creating a website is SEO. The ability to customize the page title, add meta descriptions, change alternative text of images, and more, are all ranking factors to consider in search engine optimization.

One of the critical factors in ranking web pages is how fast your website loads. When it comes to Wix, the page load time is not as fast as it could be. On occasion, it takes quite some time to load all the various components on the page.

Another thing that is not in favor of Wix when it comes to search engine optimization is that this platform gives all the images uploaded on the website strange-looking names, which could hurt your overall SEO optimization.

It is not all bad, however. Some things are inbuilt, such as the ability to include 301 redirect patterns. In addition, Wix gives you the ability to set up rules that allow the person using the platform to generate meta titles and descriptions for pages automatically.

WordPress also allows you to customize various URLs and headings, set up canonical tags, give search engine instructions, and easily add Google Analytics and Search Console. 

Google Analytics is a free website traffic tracker that will show you how much traffic your website is receiving, where it's coming from, and what keywords people are using to find your site. Search Console is another powerful Google tool that allows you to submit your sitemap, check for crawl errors, and track keyword rankings. These are essential features and factors to help your website's search engine rankings.

When it comes to Wix, its blogging options have become much better than they used to be. This all helps to provide a clean interface that anyone can understand with a minimal learning curve.

This means that those interested in blogging can be up and running making posts in a short amount of time. There is also the option to add various media in blog posts and pages, such as images, videos, galleries, dividers, and much more.

However, blogging on Wix still doesn’t hold a candle to WordPress. As a tool, the latter has continuously been developed with bloggers in mind, so certain functions come natively out of the box and can be used immediately in this regard.

WordPress has also recently introduced a visual editor when setting up posts. You can easily add items such as columns, images, videos, slideshows, and other media types to your blog.

Even though Wix is not as complex when setting up a blog, WordPress is still the preferred platform of many for blogging.

When it comes to having a Wix site, you are virtually guaranteed to get all the support you need. Various articles and tutorials found on the website are helpful for everyone who is setting up a Wix website. This involves users from beginners to more advanced ones.

Even though you might need to go a bit back and forth when dealing with customer support, you are virtually guaranteed to get an answer to your questions sooner or later.

Comparing this with WordPress, there is a big difference between the two platforms. Since WordPress is open-source, no support is included with the platform.

If you run into any issues, you will have to search online to find the correct answer to help solve your problems.

If you are somewhat of a technical person, this might not be an issue since tons of resources are available to help. However, if you are not, you might have to hire someone to deal with such problems as they arise.

The excellent news about Wix plug-ins is that many of them are created by the company itself and can be found on the app market that comes with the website. 

When it comes to Wix, there are as many as 300 options that can help you customize your site and get the functionality you want. This means that if you have a small website, you might be able to get by using Wix and the plug-ins that it offers. 

The Wix app market is one of the most comprehensive and user-friendly app markets available today. However, if you need specific functionality, you might find this selection limited. These Wix apps range from eCommerce solutions to booking systems to live chat tools.

When it comes to WordPress, it is quite literally the opposite. Usually, you can find a selection of WordPress plugins for you to choose from when it comes to getting anything done. 

Installing one of these plug-ins on your website can cause damage to your site that is not easy to solve. It is always essential to choose a plug-in that has many good reviews and has recently been updated. This ensures no vulnerabilities exist for hackers to try and exploit if they were to attack your site.

Wix has clear plans that allow users to pay monthly, yearly, or bi-annually. This is great to know if you want to plan your finances ahead of time and ensure that you have the proper budget allocated for your website.

There are three pricing plans available. which are as follows:

They also offer Business and Commerce plans as follows:

As mentioned this is great if knowing where you stand financially is important for you as a business owner.

When it comes to WordPress, the platform is technically free to set up, which is great at face value. However, it is essential to know the cost for more plug-ins, teams, functionality, and other site aspects can add up.

There is also web hosting to consider, which you will have to pay consistently to have your site stay up on the Internet.

If you create your site on one of these platforms and eventually decide that for whatever reason it's time to move it to another platform, the ease with which you can migrate from the current platform to the new one is something to consider before starting out.

When it comes to Wix, there are not many data migration options. You can only export your posts in XML format, which means you will have to download everything else from your website manually. 

This means that it’s difficult to easily move from Wix to another platform and that a custom solution might have to be implemented. This brings with it various headaches as you will need to figure out what the best way forward would be and who the right person for the job is.

WordPress makes it easy to move from its platform to another. Out of the box, it comes with a one-click exporter that allows you to download your site into an XML file format. 

There are also many ways to do WordPress site backups, so you can always revert to a past instance of your site if you need to.

One aspect that Wix doesn't have is the ability to have users. WordPress users are broken down into various groups.

They are as follows:

As you can see, WordPress gives you a lot of control over who can do what on your website. This is great if you have a team of people working on your site as it allows you to delegate tasks accordingly.

Wix, on the other hand, does not have this functionality. This means that if you want to give someone access to your website, they will have full control over everything.

If you are working with a team of people, this can be a bit of a problem as it means that you will need to trust them implicitly as they will have the same level of control as you do.