Wix vs WordPress - a choice you can miss

Are you trying to decide between Wix and WordPress for creating your website?

If the answer is yes, keep reading to find out which one is the best option for your specific needs.

WordPress and Wix are two totally separate platforms for building websites but there is a tough battle between them.

Wix is easier for beginners but WordPress offers more.

Wix is growing popularity in recent years but WordPress is the most popular option.

There are a lot more factors like this that make the choice between Wix and WordPress even difficult.

So, today we will take an in-depth look at both of them to decide which one is the best option for you.

Let’s start with each one of them separately and then we will go into the key differences.

Wix

Wix is an all-in-one, drag-and-drop website building platform that doesn’t require any coding skills.

It is also very easy-to-use for the beginners and has all the necessary tools for building a beautiful and functional website.

With Wix, you won’t have to care for third party plugins to add different functions on your website because everything is built-in.

But if you need any functionalities that aren’t natively offered by Wix, you can use apps from Wix App Market to enable those.

WordPress

WordPress is a website building software that you can install on a web server to build beautiful websites without any coding skills.

It is the most popular website builder on the internet in fact about one-third of all the websites are built on WordPress.

It is also an open-source software so anyone can use it for free.

WordPress software is from WordPress.org but don’t confuse it with WordPress.com.

WordPress.com is a website hosting platform that lets you host your WordPress website on their server and charges for that.

Because of being an open-source platform, WordPress is very much dependent on third-party developments.

Therefore you will need to use third-party plugins to enable different functions on your WordPress website.

However, WordPress is now very mature and there are thousands of third-party plugins that let you do almost anything using it.

7 Key Differences Between Wix and WordPress

In order to decide between these two platforms, we will compare them against seven key points and decide which one is the winner in each of the points.

1. Ease of Use

The most important question for most beginners is which one is the easiest to use.

Both Wix and WordPress don’t require any coding skills but Wix is a lot easier to work with especially for the beginners.

You will get all the necessary elements you need to build a website on the Wix editor menu.

So, you can just drag and drop elements from the menu and set them however you want.

WordPress, on the other hand, uses a block-based editor so you can add different blocks to create your website.

This is simpler than Wix if you only use WordPress for blogging and don’t care about having a beautiful design.

However, a beautiful design is a must for any website and Wix is an easier solution for building a beautiful website.

But that doesn’t mean that you can’t build beautiful websites on WordPress.

There are a lot of page builders available on WordPress that will completely change how you build a website on WordPress.

Some of these page builders work really great and give WordPress a drag-and-drop website building experience.

Therefore you can easily build beautiful websites using WordPress.

But aside from learning how to use WordPress, you will have to learn to use the page builders and this isn’t very convenient for beginners.

So, when it comes to ease of use, the winner is Wix, especially for beginners.

2. Design and Customization

Wix comes with an easy-to-use interface for designing beautiful websites but when it comes to design customization, WordPress has way more options than Wix.

You can build anything you can think of using WordPress but that may sometimes require some coding skills.

It is also possible to tweak anything on a WordPress website to change its look however you like.

You can even change the formatting of any elements on your website and the entire website will reflect the changes making it easy for customization.

There are thousands of free and premium templates to choose from on WordPress.

But there is a limited number of templates that you can use on your Wix website.

So, the winner for design and customization is WordPress in fact it is one of the most important reasons for choosing WordPress by many.

3. Maintenance

If you can build a website once and if that works perfectly without requiring your actions, that’s the best maintenance to me.

Wix is a closed platform so everything they offer is tested by their developers before it is made available for use.

Therefore every new update on the platform is tested before it is rolled out on the platform.

You aren’t even notified for minor updates on the platform because they take place internally without requiring your actions.

So, you can be sure that every new update will work fine on Wix.

Wix even creates automatic backups for all the versions of your website so you can always roll back to a previous version in case of any emergency.

Conversely, WordPress is an open-source platform and most of the themes and plugins are built by third-parties.

Because third-party plugins aren’t always tested with the platform, they can cause serious problems with the website.

Some plugins may even have bugs that can take your entire website down and if that happens it will require countless hours to fix the website.

In fact, you are responsible for keeping the website up to date by updating your website regularly.

So, for every new update of any theme, plugin or even the WordPress software, you will have to manually update it to the latest version and hope that nothing goes wrong.

That’s why you are also responsible for making frequent backups of your site in case anything goes wrong.

Therefore you can’t just build a website on WordPress and forget about that.

You will have to constantly maintain the website by yourself.

Also, updating your WordPress can sometimes take your website into maintenance mode and no one can use the site until the update is completed.

Therefore this can be a big problem if website uptime is a very important factor for you.

So, when it comes to maintenance, the winner is Wix because you don’t need to worry about maintaining it at all.

4. Third-Party Integration

Most of the times you want to do a lot more with your website other than just publishing it on the internet.

For example, you may want to see your website analytics, add a signup form, have a members area and do a lot more with the Website.

Wix provides a lot of these options but the options in WordPress are way more.

Because WordPress is an open-source platform and anyone can use it to build their own themes or plugins, there are thousands of themes and plugins that add different functions to WordPress.

So, you can add almost any features you want to your WordPress website using third-party plugins which isn’t possible with Wix.

Though Wix has its own app market that lets you add a lot of functions, it doesn’t stand out when compared to WordPress.

So, when it comes to third party integration, WordPress is the winner for its huge collection of third party plugins.

5. Ecommerce

You can create online stores using both WordPress and Wix.

Wix has its built-in eCommerce functionality that you can use very conveniently.

But to use eCommerce on Wix, you will need to sign up for an eCommerce supported plan.

Ecommerce on Wix is fairly easy to use and it can be enough for a small online store with relatively less amount of products.

WordPress, on the other hand, requires a plugin called WooCommerce to be installed on WordPress to enable eCommerce functionalities.

WooCommerce is a very popular eCommerce solution and it is free.

The learning curve with WooCommerce is steeper than Wix, but with that steep learning curve, you will get some advanced features that will help you manage a fully grown online store with ease.

Therefore, if you are planning to sell a few items online, Wix eCommerce will be enough.

But if you want to have a fully functional online store for selling hundreds of products online, you will find limitations in the Wix platform.

So, when it comes to eCommerce stores, WordPress is the winner because of its usability in managing an online store.

6. Support

Wix is a commercial platform that charges you for using their platform.

Because they charge for their services, they have a dedicated support team for helping their users.

You will also find documentation, tutorials, and forums created by Wix to help you build your website.

WordPress, on the other hand, is a free software so you won’t get any support from the WordPress team.

But because WordPress is so popular and there is a huge community for WordPress on the internet, almost all the problems related to WordPress have already been addressed.

Therefore you can easily get answers to all your questions if you look for it on the internet.

But, sometimes you may find it difficult to get a proper solution because there is an overwhelming amount of information and separating the good ones from the bad isn’t always simple.

So, when it comes to support, Wix is the winner because of its dedicated support team who will provide you with relevant support for your specific problems.

7. Pricing

Wix and WordPress are two different types of platforms so the pricing models for them are also different.

For Wix, you need to pay for a plan that is most compatible with your needs.

In the case of WordPress, you need to pay web hosting companies for hosting your WordPress website.

So, even though WordPress is a free software, you still need to pay for hosting and domain to get your website up and running.

Wix offers a free plan but that comes with Wix branding and doesn’t allow you to add your domain with the website.

So, you need to upgrade to a premium plan which starts from $4/month and goes up to $35/month.

But to accept online payments you need a plan that costs at least $17/month.

However, you can get web hosting for as little as $2/month for hosting WordPress websites.

But the pricing can go a lot higher depending on the type and features of the hosting.

Pricing for hosting WordPress websites seems a lot cheaper than that of Wix.

However, you need to use third-party themes and plugins to use WordPress and that can cost you a substantial amount of money.

Therefore when you add all the costs associated with a WordPress website, it starts to look as pricy as Wix and it may even cost more.

But there is another thing to consider, Wix provides an online tool for building websites and it is only available on Wix.com.

So, once you build your website on Wix, you can’t move it to anywhere else without completely recreating your website from scratch.

But because WordPress is a software that you install on any web server, you have the opportunity to move your entire site to another web server without damaging any files.

Therefore, you will always have control over your website and you can choose to go with a hosting provider that offers the most for the least cost.

Also, if you are planning to have multiple websites, the cost for WordPress will be substantially less because you can upgrade to hosting plans that support multiple websites for a small price upgrade.

Other prices for themes and plugins also decrease if you buy a multi-website license.

Conversely, Wix won’t charge you less for having more than one website.

So, when it comes to pricing, WordPress is the winner because it can go with flexible pricing options.

Conclusion

You can take your decision based on the above discussion but if you need a very specific recommendation here you go.

If you want customization and flexibility on your website and don’t bother about spending some extra time learning the new platform and maintaining your website, go for WordPress.

But if you just need an easy-to-use website building solution that you can set up once and forget about its maintenance, go for Wix because you may not even need the extra functionality of WordPress.

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