When choosing to build your very first website, finding a suitable website builder or content management system (CMS) can be a struggle. After all, there are tons of different platforms you can use to build your website.
Two of the platforms you can use to build your website are Wix or WordPress. Before we get into our analysis of Wix vs. WordPress, we have to point out that comparing these platforms is like comparing apples to oranges. These platforms are great in their own right but as you’ll see, they are vastly different as well.
Building your first website will often come down to a few key factors. One of these factors depends on your level of comfortability with web design and development. Another crucial factor is the level of customization you will have in making any change you want to your website.
As we’ll demonstrate, Wix and WordPress are both great at one but not necessarily both factors.
Wix vs. WordPress – An Overview
Before we get started in our Wix vs. WordPress comparison, let’s take a quick look at some of the key facts and points about each platform.
Wix:
- Was founded in 2006 in Israel.
- Was founded by Avishai Abrahami, Nadav Abrahami, and Giora Kaplan.
- Their head office is in Tel Aviv, Israel.
- Has 19 offices worldwide.
- Employs over 5,000 people across all their offices.
- Had an IPO in 2013 and is listed on the NASDAQ stock exchange.
- Generated $1 billion in revenue in 2020.
- Has a user base of over 200 million as of 2020.
- Premium subscriptions are growing at a rate of 15% year over year.
WordPress:
- Was founded in 2003.
- Was founded by Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little.
- Their head office is in San Francisco, USA.
- Its parent company is Automattic.
- The name WordPress was recommended by a friend of Mullenweg.
- 65% of all websites that use a CMS are using WordPress as of 2021.
- 41% of the top 10 million websites are run on WordPress.
- As of 2021, it’s estimated that over 64 million websites are using WordPress.
- Generates over 400 million unique visitors each month to their website.
- Generates over 20 billion page views each month.
Ease of Use
A website builder’s ease of use can be one of its biggest strengths. Not every website builder or CMS is easy to use or learn. You also have to remember that people have varying degrees of tech-savviness and may find some more challenging to use than others.
But, when it comes to ease of use, we’ll evaluate how easy it is for a person new to website building to learn Wix or WordPress if they had never used it before.
Wix
Hands down, between Wix and WordPress, Wix is a far easier website builder to use. Wix features a “what you see is what you get” (WYSIWYG) builder that makes the experience for new and experienced web users enjoyable.
With the WYSIWYG Wix editor, you’re able to move blocks of images, copy, buttons, and more, around with a simple drag and drop. It’s easy to edit and re-arrange these blocks in any order or hierarchy that you want and can be done in a very quick manner.
Most WYSIWYG editors are made with beginners or inexperienced web users in mind and Wix sites are no different. The target demographic here is clearly people that want to build a website but may feel discouraged because they lack any coding ability. WYSIWYG web builders help to overcome this problem.
Simply put, if you’ve never put together a website before and are hesitant to do so, Wix makes the process as seamless and easy to do so as possible.
WordPress
WordPress, on the other hand, is more geared towards people that are more technically proficient when it comes to using digital platforms. While it’s nice to be able to see how your website will look in real-time using a WYSIWYG editor, WordPress does not provide that.
Thus, if you want to be able to see the changes you’ve made to your website, you can’t do it in real-time and will always need to save your page draft and hit the preview or publish buttons to see it.
On top of not being able to see your edits live, the WordPress editor is also much different from Wix’s. You can’t drag and drop blocks of content on your page and move them around with a few clicks. Users with coding experience will definitely have a leg up when using WordPress over people who don’t.
On top of coding experience, the WordPress experience can heavily rely on plugins and extensions. Installing these aren’t always a breeze and users with more technical skills will really be able to get the most out of WordPress.
On the whole, however, WordPress does require a certain level of technical know-how to operate and is not the easiest way to build a website, especially your first one.
The Victor: Wix
The ease of use Wix vs. WordPress battle easily belongs to Wix. Creating a Wix website is simply much easier than creating a WordPress website. No coding experience is required and making edits is easy to do and can be done in real-time.
The primary factor here is that people of all technical levels from beginner to expert can create a website on Wix. The same, however, cannot be said for WordPress websites.
Customization and Design
We’ve identified that Wix is a much easier platform to create your website on but, what about customizing and designing your website? Which one is easier?
Being able to design and customize your website is an important factor because it will tell you how much freedom you have in how you want your website to look. To design and customize your website, you don’t need any coding experience at all!
Wix
Creating a website can actually be a quick process thanks to the Wix templates. These templates offer Wix users a customizable way to create their own website. They come loaded with text and graphics and using the Wix editor, you can insert your own images and overwrite the text in the template with your own copy.
Getting started with these Wix website templates is fast to do as well. Right after signing up with Wix, you’ll then be prompted to select from over 900 different and free templates. Once you’ve found the right one for you, you can start customizing your website.
These templates are pre-coded, meaning you don’t have to do anything to the code! They’re also fully responsive which means these websites will be optimized for mobile and desktop devices.
The Wix templates are truly beautiful however, the one limitation to editing your website in Wix is that you cannot customize every single feature. You only can customize the blocks that the template allows you to edit.
We also have to warn you, however, that once you select your Wix template, you cannot change it. That’s why it’s important that you are absolutely sure you want to proceed with the template you have chosen. You can customize and edit your selected template as much as you want. But, if you realize a month later that the template you chose is not right for you, then you are simply out of luck!
WordPress
While WordPress does require a bit of coding knowledge, the level of customization is virtually endless with a WordPress website.
Like Wix, WordPress also offers pre-coded themes that you can download and use for your website. Many of these pre-coded ones are free WordPress themes, however, there are tons that you can purchase.
If you don’t like the selection of WordPress templates, you are free to find a template from a third-party website but it’s likely you will have to pay for it. There are also Premium WordPress themes that you can purchase from WordPress directly. These themes can cost up to $300.
Once you have chosen your WordPress template, you can begin customizing how you want to. These themes will have their own customization features and some can be more user-friendly. To supplement customizing your website, you can also install plugins that can often help to make the process easier.
The one feature where Wix falls short, being unable to change your template after you have chosen one, is not applicable for WordPress. Users are free to select a different WordPress theme at any time. This is great if you encounter scalability issues and perhaps, your website has grown a lot faster than you anticipated.
The Victor: Tie
This one is too close to call so this Wix. vs WordPress battle of design and customization features ends in a draw. The comparison between these two platforms is really about tradeoffs.
Customizing a Wix template is easy to do but you’re really limited in what you can edit. You also cannot change templates so you’re handcuffed to keep on with the template you have chosen forever.
On the other hand, WordPress templates are highly customizable, so much so that you can virtually edit anything. There is a higher learning curve to installing your template and getting acclimated to the customization features. But, if you get to a point where you feel it might be too challenging, you’re free to select a different template!
The tradeoff is best represented by this graphic.
Both platforms offer solid customization options through Wix or WordPress themes. The only question is what level of customization are you comfortable with? If you’re new to website design and don’t need to absolutely customize every single element of your website, then Wix is probably right for you.
However, if you need to be able to edit everything on your website and like the flexibility of being able to change your theme at any moment, create a WordPress site instead.
In any event, we’re calling this a tie because it just really depends on what you’re comfortable with!
Blogging
It’s estimated that there are over 600 million blogging websites out there on the world wide web today. So, it’s understandable then that people would turn to Wix or WordPress to create their own blog.
For bloggers, they’re usually looking for a quick and easy way to create their content in. The website builder must be intuitive and user-friendly. Fortunately, both Wix and WordPress have terrific blogging features and both provide an optimal blogging experience.
Wix
As you might have guessed, Wix’s platform is great for beginner bloggers. Their WYSIWYG editor allows you to quickly add in your content and see how your blog will look as you edit it.
You can also easily add images or any other media such as gifs to your blog by using the drag-and-drop feature. When it comes to giving your blog a category, Wix supports the creation of categories and tags so that your blogs will be indexed appropriately on your Wix website.
There are some downsides to using Wix as your main blogging platform. Unfortunately, if you want to add a table, you’ll need to know how to code that since it is not an addable content block. You would also be out of luck if you wanted to backdate certain blog posts.
WordPress
What some people may not realize is that WordPress actually has its roots in the blogging world. It first started out as a blogging-focused platform and over time, it just grew out of that niche and into a full-on website builder.
With the WordPress software, you can use the Gutenberg block editor or any other block-based editor to help create your blogs. These editors enable users to create a layout where they can add blocks of content. While it’s not as intuitive as Wix’s editor, WordPress’ blogging editor is more advanced and offers more features.
For example, it comes with its own commenting section, something that Wix does not offer yet. Commenting can be a crucial element on any blog as it lets a blogger’s audience engage with the blogger and the blog post itself.
WordPress also gives bloggers the option to make certain blogs private so that you can see them but your audience can’t. Bloggers might use this function if they publish a blog but then choose to later put it on private because perhaps, they released it too early or they want to wait indefinitely to post it. Keeping the blog private prevents them from deleting the blog and saving the time from re-creating it at a later date.
When the blogger is ready to take that private blog to a public one, they also have the choice to backdate this blog with WordPress.
The Victor: WordPress
When we compare Wix vs. WordPress’ blogging capabilities, it’s clear to us that WordPress wins this battle. While Wix offers simplicity in their blog creation, WordPress just offers that and much more functionality with theirs.
We especially like that WordPress has its own native commenting section as engagement with a blogger’s audience is a key metric of success. Having the freedom to set some blogs on private and then backdate them once they do go live are two other great features for bloggers to have.
WordPress’ powerful blogging tools make it a much better choice over Wix when it comes to the full spectrum of blogging features.
Applications and Plugins
Another interesting feature in the Wix vs. WordPress debate is the use of apps and plugins to enhance a website. Since Wix and WordPress are different types of website builders, it should come as no surprise that these website enhancements are called different things for each platform.
Wix calls these add-ons “apps” whereas WordPress calls them “plugins.” Either way, the goal of both is the same: to add more features to your website and to make the website creation process smoother.
Let’s find out how these apps and plugins do so for Wix and WordPress, respectively.
Wix
Wix understands their target market and that most of the people that use their service are likely going to be a beginner or someone with little web design experience.
With that in mind, users will get access to over 200 Wix apps that you can peruse and decide which one you want to add to your Wix site.
These apps are quite broad in what they offer users from email marketing to a commenting section to adding Google Ads and so on.
Depending on the Wix apps that you choose to add to your website, some of them will be free while others will require some form of payment.
Before you get started building your website, it’s probably a good idea to browse the Wix app market and see which apps you want to add to your site. Most of these apps are created by third-party developers while Wix offers a few of their own apps in this app store.
What’s important to note is that every app in the Wix app store is and has been reviewed and approved by Wix. This is to ensure that the apps being offered are legitimate and meet the standards Wix has set out.
WordPress
Unlike Wix where each third-party application is vetted, the same cannot be said for WordPress plugins. That’s because WordPress is an open-source platform that gives any developer the right to create their own WordPress plugin.
Developers can create plugins that are both free and paid and once they are ready, anyone can choose to download them. Since anyone can add a plugin at any time, there are over 50,000 WordPress plugins available to download!
While 50,000 plugins seem like a lot to sift through to find what you’re looking for, many of the more popular plugins are rated favorably. This is often a good way to judge whether a plugin has been downloaded by other users and what their thoughts on it are.
Despite having an enormous library of plugins, some plugins can be more difficult than others to install. To install these plugins, you’ll obviously need to have a version of WordPress installed. Some common installation issues with plugins are that they can be challenging to install and some can even conflict with other already installed plugins.
The Victor: WordPress
In this battle between Wix vs. WordPress of the best add-on features, it’s once again about the tradeoffs. For Wix, it’s quality over quantity, and for WordPress, it’s strength in numbers. Both approaches are fine but we’re choosing WordPress as the winner.
The Wix app store is great because it provides over 200 different apps to help enhance your Wix website. As we mentioned already, these apps have been reviewed and approved by Wix so that there are no surprises in their app store. However, this severely limits what Wix users can find on the app store simply because there isn’t enough choice. To further compound the issue, Wix isn’t an open-source platform like WordPress and users cannot simply get someone to design and develop their app and upload it to the Wix store.
On the other hand, WordPress is an open-source platform and because of this, anyone can create their own plugin. We prefer having this versatility despite the fact that finding the right plugin for you can be a time-consuming task.
With over 50,000 plugins available, we prefer the variety WordPress plugins have to offer.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
One of the most important aspects of creating your first website is getting people to come to it! Search engine optimization (SEO) is the foundational way for users to leverage to try and get visitors to their page.
Both Wix and WordPress do offer some SEO-rich features, most of the best ways to leverage SEO tools is by installing apps and plugins.
Wix
With Wix, you can accomplish very basic SEO such as setting your header tags, adding alt tags to images, and creating meta descriptions. However, this is pretty much the extent of Wix’s native SEO features.
Because of Wix’s SEO limitations, users turn to the Wix app market to install their SEO tools. A few of the more popular SEO apps are Wix SEO Wiz and Site Booster. Both apps are easy to use and will walk you through some SEO basics. They’re also helpful to have when you’re trying to rank higher in search results and getting your site added to online directories.
WordPress
Like Wix, WordPress also leans heavily on plugins to do the heavy SEO lifting. Without plugins, WordPress SEO features are fairly similar to Wix. You can set H1-6 tags, add alt and metadata, and meta descriptions. One SEO feature you have more control over in WordPress is that you can alter the URL to whatever you prefer.
To get the full SEO benefit, you must use a plugin. Arguably one of the best plugins you can download in WordPress is Yoast SEO. In fact, it’s so good that we recommend you install it right after you install WordPress.
Yoast SEO is used in millions of WordPress websites and it comes with free and paid services. If you’re just looking for basic SEO features, you’ll be fine with the free version. However, if you want to get the most out of this plugin, Yoast SEO premium will cost you about $70.
While Yoast SEO is the de facto king of WordPress SEO plugins, there are other free plugins you can try that offer good SEO features.
The Victor: WordPress
The SEO apps that are offered in the Wix app store are good but not great. There’s simply just a limited selection of SEO tools here. Fortunately, the SEO tools that they do have in the Wix store are simple and get the job done. They aren’t overly complicated to navigate through and do a good job of helping new users learn the basics of SEO.
There are millions of WordPress sites that use the Yoast SEO plugin and we have to say, that this plugin alone gives WordPress the win. This SEO plugin comes packed with excellent SEO features that help you optimize your website and help it to get discovered by search engines.
Users can take the basic SEO features from this plugin in the free version or pay to upgrade for the full features. Both options are good depending on what your SEO goals are.
This plugin is absolutely essential for any WordPress website building!
Ecommerce
The past few years have seen a sharp increase in the number of eCommerce websites. Ecommerce is essentially where people sell their products on their website. If you use a dedicated eCommerce platform like Shopify, you can have a seamless and tailored experience towards managing your inventory, sales, marketing, and website efforts on that platform.
While neither Wix nor WordPress is specifically an eCommerce platform, they both can accommodate e-commerce on their respective platforms.
Wix
While Wix is not just an eCommerce platform, it does offer its own eCommerce paid plan. Wix users that want to use their Wix site for eCommerce need to purchase this plan. Ecommerce features are not available as part of Wix’s free plans.
If you do purchase a Wix eCommerce plan, you’ll actually get plenty of great value for what you pay for. For instance, you’ll obviously be able to sell your products on your Wix page but you can also accept and process payments using Wix Payments or a third-party payment gateway app like PayPal.
Be sure that you’re okay with the transaction terms associated with Wix Payments. As of now, they charge 2.9% + $0.30 for every transaction in the United States.
There are also a few different eCommerce-specific apps in the Wix app market. These apps can help you sell and upsell your products and promote and market your store.
WordPress
WordPress also features an eCommerce pricing plan and with it, users can leverage the largest and most popular eCommerce platform in the world, WooCommerce.
WooCommerce is an eCommerce plugin that you have to download in order to use it. But, once you do download it, you can do virtually anything eCommerce-related with it. WooCommerce also offers WooCommerce Payments, which is a free feature of this plugin, although users are still on the hook for any transaction fees. With WooCommerce, you’ll also have to pay for a custom domain and web hosting.
Fees aside, the WooCommerce plugin allows users to build the online store that they want and all this can be done from WordPress.
Of course, WordPress users aren’t obligated to use the WooCommerce plugin. With WordPress’ vast library of plugins, there are tons of other eCommerce plugins that they can use. These plugins are excellent at helping users sell their products and promote their online store.
The Victor: WordPress
The winner of this Wix vs. WordPress eCommerce battle is…WordPress. When you have the largest and most popular eCommerce platform available to you as a downloadable plugin, it’s hard to look any other way. WooCommerce is an eCommerce giant and they do everything right to help users make a sale and process payments.
Wix’s eCommerce offering is no slouch either. They offer reasonably fair eCommerce pricing plans that beginner users can choose for creating their eCommerce website on Wix. However, in terms of scalability and handling growth, WooCommerce is the best solution to handle this and it’s why we’re going with WordPress again.
Pricing
Pricing can often be a determining factor when it comes to which website builder or content management system (CMS) you want to build your website on. If you’re not particularly set on both Wix’s or WordPress’s features, your final decision might just rest on pricing and what your budget may be.
Below, you will find the various pricing plans for both Wix and WordPress.
Wix
Currently, Wix offers two different sets of pricing plans. The first is a set of pricing plans for the Wix Website Plans. There are four different plans under this ‘category’ and they are VIP, Unlimited, Combo, and Connect Domain.
Each plan varies in features and functionality and ranges in prices. The prices are expressed on a per month basis.
For users seeking to leverage more business-related features from Wix, Wix also offers Business & Ecommerce Plans. These plans include Business VIP, Business Unlimited, and Business Basic.
These Wix websites come with the ability for your site to accept online payments and more. Once again, the prices of these plans are reflected on a per month basis.
WordPress
WordPress keeps it relatively simple with its pricing plans. They only offer four plans but each plan is distinct for a specific purpose. The plans that WordPress offers are Personal, Premium, Business, and E-commerce.
WordPress offers its plans on a monthly or annual payment schedule. For those looking to pay monthly, here are the plans and their prices:
For those looking for a longer-term commitment, here is the WordPress pricing on an annual basis:
The Victor: WordPress
When you have to start flipping through different tabs to compare the features and prices of plans, that’s probably too much information to consume. Wix’s prices and plans are great but a lack of simplicity makes WordPress the winner of this battle round.
We enjoy the fact that WordPress neatly displays its four plans and shows exactly what you’re going to get, all on one page. Their prices are also very fair and reasonable.
What are the Pros and Cons of Wix?
Wix has established itself as an intuitive and easy-to-use website builder. Despite these attractive features, they also feature some cons as well. Here are the best pros and cons of building a Wix site.
Wix Pros
- Is great for people with little web design experience to build a website quickly.
- No coding experience is required to build a website.
- Little to no technical experience is needed to install apps or troubleshooting app installations.
- Clean and intuitive user interface.
- All the apps in the app store are vetted and verified by the Wix team.
- A WYSIWYG editor lets users edit and see how their Wix site will look in real-time.
- Drag-and-drop block builder makes it easy for users to add in their content.
- Has basic SEO features.
- Can create a dedicated ecommerce website but only with a specific Wix ecommerce plan.
Wix Cons
- Wix websites tend to be slower to load which can affect SEO and user experience.
- Unable to switch themes after selecting one.
- Can’t customize every single aspect of your website.
- You’re limited to only the apps available in the Wix app store.
- Is not open-source and can’t download third-party apps that aren’t in the Wix app store.
- More expensive than WordPress’ pricing plans.
What are the Pros and Cons of WordPress?
Like Wix, there are many pros and cons to building a WordPress website. Here are the most notable ones.
WordPress Pros
- It is free to install WordPress.
- Is open-source which allows anyone to develop and make available their own plugins or themes.
- Has much more online resources and support since over 40% of all websites are run on WordPress.
- You have total control over your website in that you can customize every single aspect.
- Can change themes at a moment’s notice.
- WordPress CMS is the best way to create pages, manage your content, and promote your website.
- Pricing plans are very fair and affordable.
- Excellent ecommerce integration with the WooCommerce plugin.
- A never-ending library of helpful plugins to add value to your website.
WordPress Cons
- Has a much steeper learning curve for beginner web designers.
- Need some level of technical experience to troubleshoot any issues.
- The platform is not as user-friendly as Wix’s.
Wix vs. WordPress: And the Winner is…
While both Wix and WordPress have strong features, WordPress is the winner of our Wix vs. WordPress overall battle.
While WordPress does have some issues, most notably that it isn’t the right platform for complete beginners when it comes to creating a website. Despite this, it’s simply too much of a powerful platform to not want to learn.
It’s the best content management system out there and the fact that any part of your website can be customized is what it comes down to. Wix makes it easy to edit and customize your website, something WordPress struggles with, but you’re unable to customize every aspect of your website with Wix.
The last factor is the open-source vs. non-open-source. WordPress’ open-source platform allows any user to create a plugin and to that, over 50,000 plugins have been created! Comparing Wix and the meager 200+ apps they have in their arsenal, it’s safe to say that users will eventually find what they’re looking for with WordPress’ plugin library. If they don’t, they can simply just create one themselves or get someone else to create it!
