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Wix is an exceptional website builder, allowing you to create a highly functional and professional website with zero coding experience. Even web developers have access to numerous tools to enhance their site’s customization and functionality.
In my opinion, Wix is the best website builder for general use, whether you are a photographer, musician, restaurateur, blogger, or just setting up a small ecommerce business.
Wix Compared To The Best Website Builders
While most website builders tend to focus on niche markets like ecommerce or content management, Wix is a jack of all trades. This website builder casts a wide net, making it attractive to all kinds of people who need professional-looking websites quickly and cheaply.
Whether you are a seasoned restaurateur looking to promote your business, a startup venturing into your first online enterprise, or an experienced web developer without the time or resources to create a website from scratch, Wix will work for you.
Be sure to see all of my top picks for the best website builders before you decide Wix is the best option for you. There, I review three more services in separate categories and include an in-depth guide focusing on different types of website builders, what criteria you should consider when choosing the best website builder, and more.
Who Is Wix Best For?
While it is easy to be transfixed by Wix’s marketing and features, the truth is this website builder targets a particular audience.
Wix works exceptionally well for individuals or small businesses that want a professional website but don’t want to bother with hiring a web developer, registering a domain name, finding a web hosting company, and all that goes into setting up a professional website.
Wix does a great job of making an online presence more accessible to small businesses and individuals.
Wix websites are attractive, relatively cheap, and quick to set up. Wix also caters to diverse niches, including blogging, photography, ecommerce, music, events, hospitality, bookings, restaurants, forums, and much more.
Wix’s industry-specific themes, design templates, tools, and resources often feel like the company had you in mind when creating its platform. However, this all-inclusive take on website building is also Wix’s Achilles heel.
The platform simply doesn’t offer sufficient functionality and scalability for larger businesses and bigger ecommerce websites. For this, Shopify would be a much better option.
Wix: The Pros and Cons
One of Wix’s best-defining features is the freedom it offers. You can create your ideal site, down to your preferred pixelation.
While freedom is a good thing, newbies may find the design potential slightly overwhelming. Wix remedies this by offering extensive resources, including step-by-step tutorials, videos, articles, and a wealth of information to help you grasp the editor.
Wix also has unique elements that you don’t see very often with website builders. For example, the Repeater feature allows you to easily replicate elements for list items with a similar layout and design but different content.
One major challenge when using a website builder is differentiating your website from competitors using the same themes and templates. Wix offers far more customization options than Weebly and certain other competitors.
You can tell that Wix prioritizes the user’s ability to create unique websites. The design possibilities are endless, especially in the hands of a seasoned developer.
Pros
Intuitive Interface: While the drag-and-drop feature is hardly a revolutionary concept among website builders, Wix succeeds in this regard. You have unbridled freedom to move elements around with few restrictions. Additionally, the platform offers guidelines to help you get the hang of the tools and templates. Wix also lets you preview your mobile site rather than cross your fingers that the mobile site will be just as good as the desktop version.
Robust App Market: Wix has plenty of built-in tools to get started, but you might need more functionality in your site. Wix has a highly populated app market that offers apps and widgets for almost any functionality you can think of, including events bookings, live chat, newsletter, blogging, opt-in forms, pop-ups, online ads, forums, and much more. The app market offers more than 250 integrations covering almost every conceivable area of your online presence.
Built-In SEO: It’s one thing to create a beautiful website, but an entirely different territory getting your site in front of eyeballs. You can fill in metadata and keyword tags related to your niche, and Wix will help you rank in the search engines. Additionally, Wix lets you edit your URL format for each page to boost your site’s Google ranking. If you aren’t quite ready to invest in SEO, Wix is a good start and requires minimal effort on your part.
Exceptional Security: Something few people think about when building their website is how to protect the data of your site and that of your site’s visitors. Good thing is, with Wix, you don’t even have to. Their managed security elements, including built-in TLS 1.3 encryption and DDoS protection, secure ecommerce payments, and keeping all platform elements compliant with the highest industry standards, mean you won’t have to lift a finger to ensure your site is secure.
A Reliable Platform: Wix puts in the work to make sure the sites their users create are reliably available. Through 24/7 platform monitoring and their powerful array of data centers, you’ll almost certainly never experience downtime for any site you build on Wix. They also offer auto-scaling technology so your site can handle big, sudden rushes of traffic with no degradation of the user experience. Wix even automates backups of your site data, so if anything does go awry, you can restore everything had before and continue along as normal.
Tons of Templates: Wix offers 500+ industry-specific templates to help you build your website. Wix lets you sort and select templates by industry to narrow down your options, including tourism and travel, corporate, photography, ecommerce, music, and more. The templates are all high-quality and designer made. If you are worried about boiler-plate offerings, these templates are highly customizable. You can edit content, change the site name, delete sections, replace images, and tweak the template to make it your own. Wix has one of the largest template libraries of any website builder out there.
Flexible Plans: Wix has an affordable entry-level plan if you need to create a basic personal website. Should you need more functionality, simply upgrade to a premium plan for as low as $4.50 per month. Also, Wix won’t lock you into a contract. Many website builders need you to commit to a 24 or 36-month contract for premium features. With Wix, you can choose to cancel your subscription at any time. This flexibility works particularly well if you aren’t sure about the direction you want to take with your web presence.
All-in-One Solution: With your Wix subscription, you don’t have to worry about web hosting, domain*, SSL certificate, downtime, security, website speed, or any of the practical elements of running a website. Wix takes care of all that for you, included in your monthly subscription. The platform also has a very responsive customer support team to help you with your site’s problems. You can contact customer support via email, chat, or direct phone call.
*Wix offers a free domain voucher valid for one year with most subscriptions. Domain extensions include .com, .org, .net, .biz, .xyz, .space, .pictures, .co.uk, and .info.
Cons
No Unlimited Plans: A sizable number of website builders offer unlimited storage or unlimited bandwidth. Although Wix provides unlimited bandwidth for its Business and Ecommerce plans, there is still a storage limit. This omission reinforces my opinion that Wix is meant for individuals and small businesses rather than large ecommerce enterprises.
Inflexible Templates Once Live: You can customize your Wix’s website templates to your heart’s content, but once you are locked in, that’s it. You cannot change your template once your site goes live. While this might not be such a big problem for a personal website, it can spell trouble down the line for an online business that continues to grow, morph, and evolve over the years.
You Can’t Export Your Website: To piggyback on the con above, Wix can lock you into a long-term commitment even without a contract. Once on the Wix platform, you are locked in for life. You cannot transfer or export your website to another platform. Again, this may not be a big deal for a small business or an individual. However, a fast-growing startup will have problems down the line if Wix can no longer meet its needs.
Wix Pricing
Wix paid plans fall into two categories; Website Plans and Business & Ecommerce Plans. Each category has individual tiers, as you will soon discover.
Before I get to the nitty-gritty of Wix’s pricing structure, there are a couple of things worth mentioning.
First, Wix’s advertised pricing is based on an annual subscription. You have the option of paying month-by-month, but it will cost more. Don’t be surprised if your monthly billing is a little higher than advertised on the website. It’s all in the fine print.
Secondly, your free domain is only available for one year. After that, you have to pay an annual premium. Additionally, you are only eligible for the free domain if you pay for the whole year in advance. You lose out on the offer if you choose the month-to-month payments.
Wix Website Plans
Connect Domain
Starting from the far right, Connect Domain is the most basic plan. This option costs $4.50 per month and doesn’t come with a free domain. Also, your website will display Wix ads. You can still connect your existing or custom domain name to your Wix site. This plan also comes with:
- 24/7 customer care
- Free SSL certificate
- 500MB storage space
- 1GB bandwidth
Some of the features you’ll be giving up here include the ability to upload and stream videos on your site, site booster app, social media logo files, and visitor analytics app (SEO tool).
I only recommend this option if you want to put together a simple informational website or portfolio at the lowest possible price. However, considering that you’d have severely limited bandwidth, Wix ads, and a Wix-branded URL, this isn’t the kind of site that could conceivably rank high on Google. There are very limited use-cases for this plan.
Combo
This option costs $8.50 per month and is an excellent alternative to the Connect Domain for a simple personal website. This plan comes with a free domain, or you connect a custom domain.
This option offers 2GB bandwidth, 3GB storage space, 24/7 customer care, and 30 minutes of video. However, you’ll be losing out on social medial logo files, a visitor analytics app, a site booster app, and a professional logo.
Ultimately, you are getting a good deal for a low-traffic but professionally done website. You can always upgrade to a higher plan should your needs change.
Unlimited
This Wix plan targets freelancers and entrepreneurs. It will cost $12.50 per month in exchange for 10 GB of storage space and unlimited bandwidth. You also get a free SSL certificate, no Wix ads, a free domain for one year, one video hour, a visitor analytics app, and a site booster app.
If you want to start a professional website or online business, the unlimited plan will serve your needs better than the Combo plan for a nominal price hike.
VIP
The price shoots up rather drastically with the Wix VIP plan. This one costs $24.50 per month. For the price, you get all the features not included in the other plans and some add-ons. These include:
- Free domain for one year
- Remove Wix Ads
- Unlimited bandwidth
- 35GB storage space
- Free SSL certificate
- Social medial logo files
- Visitor analytics app
- Five video hours
- Professional logo
- 24/7 customer care
I recommend this plan for an established business wanting to make its online presence.
Wix Business & eCommerce Plans
If you plan to accept online payments, Wix offers three tiers under its Business & Ecommerce Plans.
All business and ecommerce subscriptions offer:
- Secure online payments
- Customer accounts
- Plans & recurring payments
- Remove Wix ads
- Custom domain
- Free domain for one year
- Video hours
- Unlimited bandwidth
Business Basic
This plan costs $17 per month and offers 20GB storage space and five video hours in addition to the above-listed features.
Business Unlimited
You get all the Wix Business Basic features, except this time, you get an additional 15GB (35GB total) storage space. This plan costs $25 per month and guarantees ten video hours instead of five. The distinction between the two plans in terms of offerings is negligible in most cases.
I suggest you start with the Wix Business Basic plan and only upgrade to Business Unlimited if you have good reason to do so.
Business VIP
This tier costs $35 per month. The most prominent upgrade is proprietary customer care. If you value customer support or have nightmares of your site going down at a critical hour, this is the plan for you.
Additionally, Wix Business VIP allows you to create customized reports from the data you collect. This functionality isn’t available on any of the other business and ecommerce plans. Additionally, you get unlimited video hours on this plan.
I recommend Business VIP for established businesses.
Wix Product Offerings
Wix allows people with little to no coding experience to create a website from scratch. To this end, Wix offers all the features you would need to create a professional website.
Wix Editor
The Wix editor is the platform’s main feature, allowing you to create a website from scratch with little or no coding experience. This editor is among the most robust out there, and is intuitive and feature-packed, and can handle just about any kind of website you throw at it.
The Wix editor offers more than 500 designer-made and industry-specific templates. You can browse through the templates based on industry to make things easier. You get total design freedom, including dragging and dropping template elements to get the perfect site.
Suppose you’re worried about your site looking the same as everyone else’s. In that case, Wix allows you to add scroll effects, video backgrounds, animation and display your text and videos. You can also choose from more than 100 fonts with the option to upload your own.
Wix also lets you create a mobile-optimized site independently of your desktop site. Additionally, the Wix Mobile app lets work on your site from a smartphone (hopefully one with a large screen!) or a tablet.
Overall, Wix offers excellent design flexibility without being too overwhelming for newbies. This website builder treads the thin line between being feature-rich and easy to use.
Wix Artificial Design Intelligence (ADI)
If you are pressed for time or the platform’s functionality is proving a little overwhelming, Wix can literally build the site for you.
The ADI offers a hands-off approach to customized website building. Simply enter your social media profiles (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc.) or website. The AI will extract business information from these pages and create the first draft of your website.
You can then tweak and customize the site to fit precisely what you are looking for. To make your job even easier, the ADI feature offers helpful tips and prompts throughout the process to help you create the perfect website.
Wix succeeds at pushing boundaries, and this Wix ADI is a feature you won’t see too often on the market.
Velo by Wix
Although Wix primarily focuses on people with minimal to no experience creating a website, this platform does have something for amateurs and more experienced web developers.
Velo by Wix offers more freedom to create the website just how you want it. Wix lets you use your source control tools and code editors and work in your environment of choice or online.
Additionally, you can use external data sources or use Wix’s integrated databases. Velo by Wix uses an open platform, allowing you to connect to an external data source and third-party data sources.
Wix Professional Suite of Features
Wix has all the tools you would need to create and maintain your website. Most plans offer a free custom domain name with the option to connect your existing domain. You also get free website hosting and a professional mailbox complete with a personalized email to match your brand and domain name.
Additionally, Wix offers contact management to help you collect and manage contacts and subscribers from a single dashboard. Additional features include:
SSL Certificate: Wix offers a free SSL certificate to help you with website security and search engine optimization.
Social Tools: You can easily connect all your social media accounts to your Wix website.
Analytics: Wix keeps track of your web performance, including in-depth stats to help you make data-driven decisions.
Considering that Wix mostly targets small businesses, freelancers, and individuals, it’s hard to fault its feature suit. Its all-in-one approach to website building takes a huge load off your back when creating your online presence.
Wix Business and Ecommerce
Another area where Wix excels is its industry-specific offerings for businesses and ecommerce sites. First, Wix lets you build an online store from scratch. Ecommerce features include a storefront, order-tracking, customized shipping and tax rules, coupons and discounts, and multiple payment methods, among other features.
While these features work well for a small business, Wix isn’t well suited to a large online business that relies primarily on online sales. For starters, Wix only supports a handful of payment methods. There is a good chance a large company will need the help of third-party payment gateways to get around this limitation.
Additionally, its built-in ecommerce features aren’t all that powerful compared to competitors such as Shopify.
On the upside, the industry-specific ecommerce offerings include:
- Wix Booking
- Wix Stores
- Wix Blog
- Wix Music
- Wix Photography
- Wix Events
- Wix Videos
- Wix Restaurants
With these options, you get industry-specific templates, features, and functionality. This system makes your work so much easier.
For example, Wix Bookings allows you to accept online payments, accept bookings around the clock, and send auto-reminder emails to your clients. Wix Photography lets you tweak your image’s sharpness and quality, secure your photos with built-in watermarks, and display your pictures in over 30 galleries.
You may need a more robust website builder for a large ecommerce store. However, for a small business, professional blog, or freelance business, Wix ticks all the boxes.
The Best Website Builders
To get a more comprehensive view of how Wix stacks up to the competition, please be sure to check out my Top 4 Best Website Builders post.
- Wix – Best for general use
- Weebly – Best for beginners
- Shopify – Best for eCommerce
- WordPress – Best for content management
Overall, Wix is an exceptional website builder for a select group of people, including small business owners, freelancers, professionals, and bloggers. While Wix also works well for small ecommerce businesses, you may need to look elsewhere if you are creating a sizable online enterprise. Wix is user-friendly, highly functional, and offers excellent value for money.
