Wix vs WordPress – Which is the better option?

Budget

First of all, you need to have a budget in mind when it comes to building your very first website. The overall cost of maintaining and developing your website will completely depend on your expectations. There are several factors that we as website designers consider when putting your quote together such as functionality, complexity, size and style of your website. Functionality in particular can really affect the overall cost of your website because if you want your website to perform in a specific and unconventional way it becomes a much bigger project.

Wix

Pros: A great benefit to using Wix is that it offers a basic website builder for free. This is ideal for small businesses with a small budget.

Cons: However if you require more complex features, you will need to pay additional costs. Another problem with using the free builder is that you cannot use your own custom domain name and you will have adverts at the top and bottom of your website. This will majorly affect user experience and therefore conversion rates.

To access more features and help you will have to sign up to one of the premium Wix plans, view their full website pricing list here. Please note that none of the plans include any special app or plug-in access that you may require.

WordPress

Pros: WordPress is free to use and you can choose from thousands of free plug-ins that add all sorts of helpful functionality to your website.

Cons: The platform itself to use is free but in order to be able to install it, you will need to purchase a domain name and hosting. We would recommend using 123 Reg or GoDaddy to purchase your domain. If you are looking for a place to host your website with you can talk to us!

Alternatively you can purchase one of the WordPress plans which are in fact really affordable. Their plans include a domain and provide you with hosting, view their plans here.

In Conclusion…

WordPress wins this round as not only are you able to use the builder and plug-ins for free, but it has much more affordable plans that include both a domain and hosting of your website unlike Wix.

maintenance and management

Wix and WordPress are both beginner friendly website platforms. They both provide you with drag and drop elements that can be customised to suit your branding. However many beginners choose Wix over WordPress to avoid additional costs of hiring a website designer. Wix pretty much does it all for you whereas WordPress provides you with a lot more creative freedom to work with. This can cause problems if you are inexperienced with building websites.

As we mentioned, you don’t necessarily need a website designer to help you manage your WordPress website but because this platform enables you to do almost anything and everything, when it comes to building something complex or unique, you may need help of a professional.

Wix on the other hand gives you everything but you lose that sense of uniqueness and are having to rely on templates that likely thousands of other businesses are also using. This can cause your brand to get a little lost.

In conclusion…

Tie. Wix and WordPress are both beginner friendly and allow for you to manage & build websites without the need of using code. Wix does a great job at providing you with a user friendly interface through a drag and drop builder but it lacks in more advanced capabilities. Alternatively WordPress has the tools and capability to perform more complex actions on your website but would require additional training or help of a website designer.

plugins & apps

Plug-ins and apps are what we would refer to as third-party extensions that you can install on your website in order to add more features and functionality.

WordPress likes to call these extensions plug-ins whereas Wix refers to these as apps.

Wix

Pros: On Wix you can find over 200 different apps to choose from. These apps offer features such as email marketing, contact forms, social media buttons, video, gallery and much more!

WordPress

Pros: There are over 50,000 free plug-ins available to be downloaded from WordPress. Without a doubt there is a plug-in out there that will make it happen on your website.

Unlike Wix, certain features like contact forms or social media buttons come with the WordPress builder as standard. This may save you the hassle of having to download additional features.

In conclusion

Without a doubt WordPress wins this round. Adding functionality to your website can be quite costly but with over 50,000 free plugins provided by WordPress, there is bound to be something that can help you achieve your requirements.

Seo

SEO (search engine optimisation) is a term used to describe optimsation processes that all contribute to enabling your website to be found more easily on search engines. See the processes below:

Wix

Pros: Wix is a great website platform for most website projects and offers a few basic SEO features that are already built into the platform with the aim to boost your website on search engines.

Cons: If you have a small budget and are not looking to spend a lot of money on your website, you may struggle to get your website seen. The free version of Wix displays ads on your website which will massively impact your user experience and as a result your SEO. To give your website the best chance to be seen on search engines be prepared to sign up to one of their paid plans.

WordPress

Pros: WordPress provides you with a lot more features and plug-ins that improve factors such as your site speed, security, meta-tags, user experience, onsite SEO and much more. Some of these plug-ins are free to download. For example, NitroPack offers a lite version of their plug-in for you to use that improves the speed of your website.

Cons: As you are able to choose from thousands of plug-ins that all aim to improve SEO on your website, you are opening yourself up to many frequent updates. This is good in terms of security of your website but sometimes plug-ins can cause conflicts which could make your website go down. This could potentially affect your SEO.

In conclusion

WordPress wins this round as it offers more resources that contribute to improving SEO on your website.

ecommerce

As a result of the pandemic we have seen a surge in the opening of small businesses online. For many beginners, being able to manage a webshop and sell online is essential.

Wix

Pros: The Wix ecommerce feature is very easy to use and ideal for starter businesses/ website beginners. It has everything that you need to get yourself started.

Cons: However, ecommerce is not available as part of the free plan, you would need to upgrade to one of the paid plans in order to access this feature.

Once your webshop is all set, you will need to establish how you are going to accept payments. You can use Wix’ own payment system or a third-party app such as PayPal. If you do decide to take payments via Wix you will encounter a transaction charge which is 2.9% of the transaction amount plus 0.30 USD for the US region (WP Beginner). As you grow and begin to sell more products, this fee will only become more substantial and affect your overall profit.

The Wix ecommerce feature, compared to WordPress, is fairly limited and if you are looking to add more complex functionality to your webshop, you may not be able to.

WordPress

Pros: WordPress makes it really easy for you to set up your webshop through an extension called WooCommerce. This platform is the most popular ecommerce platform in the world.

WordPress offers plenty of ecommerce plug-ins that enable you to sell your products, services, subscriptions, tickets and so much more online!

Each plug-in comes with their own features and and themes that enable you to design the perfect webshop meeting all of your requirements.

Cons: As there is so much functionality and plug-ins available for you to use in order to create your webshop, it can become difficult to build and manage on your own. This feature may not be the best for website beginners but there are plenty of WordPress tutorials on Youtube which teach you how to build webshops/ ecommerce websites.

In conclusion

Wix is the perfect platform to get yourself established on and start selling online. However, if you are looking for a bit more flexibility and functionality within your webshop then you will need to consider using WordPress.

Who wins?

Now that’s up to you. Both Wix and WordPress come with their own set of pros and cons. Wix is much more beginner friendly than WordPress as it has less features to work with and does a lot of work for you. Whereas WordPress has thousands of plug-ins to choose from giving you a never ending creative freedom – the world is truly your oyster!

#TLDR

Too long didn’t read? Here’s what you need to know:

1. Wix & WordPress are both free website platforms.
2. Both platforms are beginner friendly with easy drop and drag builders.
3. Wix has 200+ free apps to choose from whereas WordPress has over 50,000.
4. WordPress offers more SEO resources compared to Wix.
5. Both platforms have the ability to help you set up a web shop although Wix is more limiting to your shop growth.