Wix vs WordPress: which should you choose?

Wix and WordPress sit at opposite ends of the same trade. Wix is the easiest way to get a site up by yourself. WordPress is the one you actually own. Almost every other difference follows from that.

We build on WordPress, so treat this as an informed opinion rather than a neutral referee’s. We have also rebuilt plenty of sites for owners who started on Wix, which is where most of what follows comes from. If you want the three way version including Squarespace, that is in Wix vs WordPress vs Squarespace. If Squarespace is on your list too, see Squarespace vs WordPress.

The short answer

If somebody else is building your site, WordPress is usually the better answer, because Wix’s main strength is that it is easy for a beginner, and you are not the beginner in that scenario.

Ownership, which decides most of this

A Wix site lives inside Wix. You are renting the software, the hosting and the platform as one thing, and Wix’s own documentation is clear that you cannot export your site and host it elsewhere (Wix Help Center). You can take your content and your domain. You cannot take the site.

WordPress is free, open software. Your site is a set of files and a database, and both are yours. You can move host, change developer, or walk away from the agency that built it and take the site with you.

That cuts both ways, and we should say so. Owning it means the updates, the backups and the security are now somebody’s job, and that somebody is you or whoever you pay.

Ease of use

Wix wins this for a beginner building their own site, and it is not close. Drag things where you want them, and what you see is what you get. There is one way to do most things and it is difficult to break.

WordPress is more capable and less forgiving. The difficulty sits in the setting up rather than the using. Once it is built properly and someone has shown you round, changing text and adding a page is straightforward, which is exactly why it suits people who are hiring rather than building.

Cost

Wix usually looks cheaper, and for a small site you build yourself it often is. WordPress tends to win the moment you need something the platform will not do, because on Wix the answer is either a higher tier or no. The wider budget is in how much a website costs in the UK.

Design

Wix gives you the most layout freedom of any builder, which is genuinely useful and also the trap. Being able to drag anything anywhere means you can produce something that looks fine on your laptop and falls apart on a phone, because you have positioned elements by eye rather than letting them flow.

WordPress ranges from the same template experience at one end to a completely custom design at the other. Everything in our WordPress examples is a custom build, which is why none of them resemble each other.

SEO

Both can rank, and anyone claiming one platform simply ranks better is overselling it. Wix was genuinely weak at this years ago and has improved a great deal, so old advice on this is worth ignoring.

Wix covers the basics competently: page titles, descriptions, clean addresses, a sitemap. For a small local site that is often enough.

WordPress gives more control over the technical detail, and that matters more as a site grows: redirects, structured data, canonical tags, how content is organised across a lot of pages, and what you can do about speed. If search is central to your plan, that control earns its place. More on how the two connect in SEO and web design.

Speed

Wix is consistent and middling. You get what you are given, and there is not much you can do about it.

WordPress is variable, and both ends belong to you. A well built site on decent hosting beats Wix. A neglected one with twenty plugins and unresized photos is far slower. The controls exist, but someone has to use them, which we set out in improving WordPress site speed.

Selling online

Wix commerce is fine for a modest catalogue with straightforward products and postage.

WooCommerce on WordPress goes considerably further: complex products, unusual postage rules, trade pricing, part exchange, stock behaviour that does not fit a standard shop. We built CW Watches a shop with a private stock room so he can list a watch from his phone with photos, a price and a stock number and have it live in under a minute, then enter a tracking number on sale and have the customer emailed automatically. The costs of each route are in ecommerce website cost.

Leaving Wix

This is the question we get asked most, usually a couple of years in.

Because the site cannot be exported, moving from Wix to WordPress is a rebuild rather than a transfer. Your text and images come across by hand or by copy and paste. The design is built again. What matters is not the content, which is the easy part, but keeping your web address and your search rankings intact, and that is a planning job rather than a technical one.

Your domain is yours and moves with you. See how to transfer a domain name, and work through the website migration checklist before you start, because the redirects are what decide whether the move costs you anything.

When we would tell you to stay on Wix

There are real cases, and pretending otherwise would be dishonest.

• The site is a few pages, rarely changes, and is doing its job.
• You enjoy editing it yourself and would not want to hand that over.
• Your budget is genuinely a few pounds a month.
• You need something live in days and nobody is available to build it.

Moving platform for its own sake is a cost with no return. The reason to move is that Wix is stopping you doing something, not that a web designer told you to.

How we put this together

We are a WordPress agency, so the section above where we argue against hiring us is the one worth weighing most. The comparison comes from building on WordPress daily and from rebuilding sites that started on Wix, including the parts that are genuinely awkward. The claim about exporting is linked to Wix’s own documentation rather than asserted.

The honest bottom line

Wix if you are building it yourself, the site is simple, and you want it handled. WordPress if you want to own the result, need it to grow, or are hiring someone regardless. The upkeep is the price of the control, and for most established businesses it is worth paying.

If you are not sure which camp you are in, that is one of the first things we work out with people in web design for small business, and we will say plainly if a builder would serve you better than a build. Tell us what you need and we will come back the same working day.

Sources

• Wix Help Center, Exporting or embedding your Wix site elsewhere: a Wix site cannot be exported and hosted elsewhere.
• WordPress.org, About: WordPress is free, open-source software you can host anywhere.