Deciding between Wix vs WordPress when building websites can be challenging, provided you can maximize both platforms.
Wix and WordPress are helpful tools for developing robust websites. However, their approaches are entirely different.
Wix is a renowned website builder, and WordPress is a leading CMS (Content Management System). Therefore, understanding the differences between the two platforms is crucial for choosing the right one.
This blog post will thoroughly differentiate Wix vs WordPress and help you decide which option suits your website.
NOTE: Remember, this blog post differentiates Wix vs. WordPress.org, not WordPress.com.
Wix vs WordPress (History)
Wix was launched by Three individuals, Avishai Abrahami, Giora Kaplan, and Nadav Abrahami, in 2006. WordPress was launched by two individuals, Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little, in 2003.
Wix vs WordPress Ease of Use
Wix offers customers a great mix of user-friendly features, enabling them to develop their websites depending on their needs or demands.
For instance, its drag-and-drop interface allows you to customize your website without manually using any code. Wix provides users with two intuitive editors, Wix Editor and Wix Studio Editor.
The former delivers a user-centric experience to those who prioritize simplicity over complexity, while the latter helps professional users, such as website designers, apply complicated design elements.
Compared to Wix, WordPress offers a highly impressive block editor. The block editor helps users edit their pages with a live preview and create attractive layouts using various blocks.
You can utilize blocks for several elements, including text, buttons, galleries, background images, and text. Similarly, WordPress has a vast library of website templates that you can use to customize your sites.
WordPress vs. Wix Design and Layout
Wix provides users with 900+ customizable templates. The best thing about these templates is their responsiveness. Besides, they are written in HTML5.
It means you can easily customize your website designs, changing layouts accordingly. Numerous templates are available and divided into categories: e-commerce, hobbies, personal, business, and more.
WordPress has beaten Wix by a long distance in the templates sphere. Fortunately, you can select your desired theme from a comprehensive list of thousands of free and paid WordPress themes.
As expected, free themes lack various features and offer limited support. However, paid themes have many compelling features and provide premium support.
Wix vs WordPress Pricing
Wix delivers a free website builder to users who are newbies and want to build their sites using the website builder quickly. But, there is a catch in utilizing the free site builder. You cannot get a customized domain for your website. For example, your site address will look like this:
“username.wix.com/sitename”
In addition, the basic package does not come with helpful add-ons like Google Analytics, Favicons, etc. Likewise, the site builder includes branded advertisements on your website at areas like the top and bottom. Therefore, subscribe to its paid plans to eliminate ads and use additional features.
Depending on your budget, you can use the Business Elite, Business, Core, and Light premium plans. The Business Elite plan costs $159 per month, while the Business plan costs $36 per month.
The Core and Light plans will cost you $29 and $17 monthly.
All pricing packages come with a 14-day money-back guarantee. These plans include 24/7 customer support, no Wix branding, and a custom domain.
Users with a free package cannot manage their e-commerce stores. They will have to subscribe to paid plans for running e-commerce stores smoothly.
On the other hand, WordPress is an open-source platform that is freely available to everyone. However, you will incur additional costs like web hosting and domain names. Various WordPress hosting companies help you get your preferred web hosting and domain names at affordable prices.
Also Read: WooCommerce vs Wix – Comprehensive Comparison
WordPress vs. Wix Payment Methods
The notable website builder offers its payment provider, Wix Payments.
Through Wix Payments, users can easily accept credit card payments and other options, including:
- Affirm
- Afterpay
- Google Pay
- Apple Pay
- Discover
- MasterCard
- Visa
- AMEX
- Diners
- CUP
- JCB
- Maestro
WordPress lets users create their online stores with the help of WooCommerce, a famous e-commerce platform worldwide. WooCommerce supports payment gateways, including PayPal, Klarna, Stripe, etc.
Wix vs WordPress – Which One is Ideal for Blogging?
Wix is a reasonable option for blogging since users can effortlessly incorporate a blog section into their sites. Additionally, they can smartly use several features to enhance blogging, like photos, videos, archives, tags, and categories.
However, it lacks desirable features, such as creating private posts and backdating them. Wix needs to improve its blog post-writing interface.
The writing interface heavily relies on a plain text editor that lacks advanced formatting options.
WordPress is a comprehensive CMS (Content Management System) with a Classic Editor and Gutenberg Editor. WordPress provides users with several shortcuts that are helpful for both editors.
WordPress began as a blogging platform and transformed into a full-fledged CMS. On the blogging front, it has all the features that can revolutionize your blogging journey to unprecedented heights.
Wix vs WordPress Plugins and Apps
You can consider plugins and apps like third-party tools. These plugins add features and improve the functionality of your website. Wix calls such third-party tools apps, which allow users to enhance their sites’ functionalities and features. WordPress has named these apps plugins.
Wix has over 200 apps that help users optimize their sites by adding multiple features accordingly. These features include social media buttons, custom contact forms, featured product display, privacy policy, quote request, and more.
These apps are mostly free or come with a lite version. A few apps are paid as they need monthly payments and have different prices.
WordPress offers over 59,000 plugins to users. They can access these plugins from the WordPress.org plugin directory. Apart from this, users can access paid plugins by visiting online marketplaces.
For example, the “Restaurant for WooCommerce” plugin allows you to create your restaurant delivery system. In short, WordPress plugins enable you to do anything you want to enhance your website’s functionality considerably.
Suppose you manage an e-commerce store and want to sell your products online to the right target audience; WordPress plugins can help.
Considering the abundance of WordPress plugins, add-ons, and extensions, Wix offers limited options in this regard. So, Wix will need to add more options to compete with WordPress in the future.
Wix vs WordPress Data Portability Options
Data portability allows users to move their content anywhere else when needed.
Data portability in Wix allows you to utilize a handful of options when moving content to other platforms. For instance, you can export your blog posts in XML format only. You must download images, pages, videos, and other content manually.
WordPress is a comprehensive content management system that helps users quickly transfer content to other platforms. Its one-click exporter option lets you export content smartly and download it in XML format.
Furthermore, you can even download media files and export your WordPress database manually. All in all, WordPress is miles ahead of Wix in terms of data portability.
Wix vs WordPress SEO Optimization
The excellent thing is that Wix and WordPress genuinely understand the importance of SEO. The former offers various tools and features to boost users’ sites’ search engine ranking and visibility.
Users can consider utilizing the Wix SEO Setup Checklist when optimizing sites for search engines. Thus, they can easily apply SEO best practices depending on the content.
Wix also emphasizes mobile responsiveness, as Google prioritizes websites that are mobile-friendly.
WordPress also emphasizes SEO, offering various SEO plugins that help users improve their digital existence and search engine rankings. These plugins are SEO Marketing Checklist, Simple SEO Criteria Check, and more.
Users can enhance their websites’ online presence and search engine rankings through these plugins.
The above Wix vs WordPress SEO comparison indicates that the latter provides users with various SEO plugins that can allow them to improve their search engine rankings significantly over time.
Also Read: WordPress vs. Webflow – Comprehensive Comparison
WordPress vs Wix – Which is Suitable for E-Commerce?
WordPress is a reliable yet results-driven e-commerce platform. That’s because you can choose from a wide range of WooCommerce plugins, add-ons, or extensions that enable you to optimize your WooCommerce stores.
For instance, WooCommerce is one of the most popular plugins for turning any WordPress site into an engaging commerce store. Once you convert your WordPress websites into online e-commerce stores, integrate WooCommerce add-ons and plugins to supercharge your e-commerce stores.
Wix supports e-commerce through its paid packages. In addition, the website builder offers a few helpful sales features, such as Abandoned cart recovery emails, Automatic discounts (implemented at checkout), back-in-stock notifications, Social channel integration, and more.
However, Wix is unsuitable for large businesses, as they will likely experience issues scaling their respective e-commerce stores. Therefore, WordPress is a better choice for e-commerce store owners than Wix.
WordPress provides users with plenty of attractive themes, enabling them to customize and optimize functionalities and designs of their online stores. Furthermore, users can easily integrate several WordPress plugins with a comprehensive list of payment gateways.
WordPress is helpful for e-commerce stores, as it allows them to benefit from innovative features and customization options, boosting the performance and functionality of their respective stores.
The above WordPress vs Wix e-commerce comparison suggests that the former helps users more than the latter in almost every way when setting up e-commerce stores.
What is the Future of Wix?
Wix powers over 8.5 million sites. More users will likely turn to the popular website builder in the coming years.
Wix will likely retain and expand its customer base by addressing diversified needs or preferences in the coming years.
What is the Future of WordPress?
The future of WordPress is exciting because the leading CMS has continuously launched new versions to keep new and current users engaged and interested.
As mentioned, users can access a comprehensive list of over 59,000 free plugins using the WordPress.org plugin directory to optimize their sites. It shows that the popular CMS has all the right ingredients to cater to the needs of varied target audiences in the future.
If we discuss the recent developments in WordPress, the latest version, WordPress 6.6 Dorsey, allows users to optimize their WordPress sites to a new level.
Do You Need Professional Help?
WPExperts is a seasoned web development agency that caters to the diverse needs of small, medium-sized, and large businesses worldwide.
Through WordPress theme development and customization services, businesses can optimize their existing WordPress websites to the next level by getting customized solutions according to their specific needs or preferences.
Wrapping Up
We hope you appreciated our blog post explaining the differences between WordPress and Wix. WordPress should be your preferred choice if you have experience building websites related to multiple niches and target audiences.
If you want to create your potential website quickly using a website builder, you can prefer Wix over WordPress. Wix provides users with engaging templates and a drag-and-drop editor, allowing them to build impactful websites smartly.
Still, WordPress is a better option than Wix, as the latter offers more options and functionalities to users.
These options and functionalities allow users to enhance the productivity of e-commerce stores in terms of conversions, sales, and revenues in the long run.
All in all, Wix and WordPress have advantages and trade-offs. Therefore, choose the right one wisely because you will be the one to pay if anything goes wrong or doesn’t go as planned.
