For those of us who have used both WordPress and Wix, we know that each platform has its own strengths and weaknesses. While one might be better for your needs than the other, there is often no clear winner in this debate. Instead, the best decision comes down to which platform will suit your specific needs in terms of functionality, ease of use and cost.
Therefore, we have put together an objective guide, comparing the two platforms in these areas to help you decide whether WordPress or Wix is better for your business.
Ease of Use
Both Wix and WordPress are fairly easy to use, which is what the appeal of them are in the first place! However, Wix is much easier to use than WordPress. Wix has a drag and drop editor that’s easy to understand, while WordPress uses code. This makes Wix ideal for beginners who want a website without having to learn any coding skills.
WordPress isn’t as user-friendly as Wix – it has quite the steep learning curve, in fact. But it does offer some advantages over the drag and drop editor. If you’re looking for more control over your site’s design and functionality, then WordPress will be better suited for your needs because of its advanced features like custom post types and taxonomies (which we’ll talk about below).
In general, you’re going to need to hire a professional WordPress developer or WordPress agency if you want to create a professional WordPress website that performs well. It’s possible to do it yourself, but this is how you run into some of the common issues we talk about later.
WordPress 0 – 1 Wix
Design and Layout
WordPress has a lot more flexibility in terms of design and layout. It can be customised to your heart’s content, which is great if you want to do things like change colours and fonts or add new features to the site.
The Wix Editor is very limited in its ability to customise the design of your website. While it’s not difficult or time-consuming to set up your site on Wix, there are some limitations on what you can do with the editor. For example, if you want something that isn’t already included in their library (like a dropdown menu), then it will have to be coded by hand into each individual page using HTML code (the language used for making websites). This adds an extra step that doesn’t need to exist once WordPress does everything automatically!
There are essentially unlimited possibilities with WordPress if you know what you’re doing. You can also still use themes and templates within WordPress, and because it’s the most popular CMS, there are thousands of people creating themes for WordPress that allow you to make a stunning website without a single line of code.
Plus, WordPress is about to roll out the Gutenberg Editor to all of WordPress soon which could mean you could make the entire website customisable, allowing it to even compete with Wix’s Editor.
WordPress 1 – 1 Wix
Apps/Plugins
WordPress are known for their plugins. There’s actually a plugin for pretty much everything. The reason why WordPress has so many plugins/themes is because it has such a thriving community behind it with millions of users who create their own themes or plugins for free (or at least for a price lower than you would pay for something similar in other platforms). They also have an official directory where all the ones approved by them are featured which makes finding what you need much easier than searching through all those third-party sites trying to find one that works best for you!
However, Wix has now got a pretty impressive marketplace for apps and some of them have quite advanced functionality. It also now has a new tool called Wix Velo, which allow experienced developers to create their own apps and add Javascript and APIs to the website.
We’re going to generously call this one a tie. Even though there are way more WordPress plugins out there, they are not vetted due to it being open source. Therefore, you could download one that breaks your website or isn’t very good and you won’t realise. Plus, plugins are the reason why badly built WordPress websites run so slowly.
Since Wix is about quality and not quantity, we’re calling this one a draw.
WordPress 1.5 – 1.5 Wix
Blogging
Considering WordPress was built for blogging, it beats Wix hands down on this one. All of the features you need out of the box are already built in – tags, categories, RSS feed etc. You can fully customise your blog exactly how you want it and there are thousands of themes to help too.
Additionally, WordPress has built-in SEO functionality so users can easily find your content and Google will rank it higher in search results because it’s optimised—allowing potential customers or readers to easily find what they’re looking for!
Wix’s blog features are still easy to use, even though they’re limited.
WordPress 2.5 – 1.5 Wix
Ecommerce
Wix has a dedicated online store option now that’s actually pretty sophisticated. If you’re a small business, it’s probably perfectly acceptable for you. However, there are a lot of limitations such as the fact that Wix only allows one sub-navigation, so you cannot create a good user experience (UX) by categorising your products accordingly. Plus, since Wix has a lot of out-the-box functionality built in, their sites are much slower, which means that you cannot have lots of products on it or it will slow down the site… which in turn hurts your SEO. You will also struggle to sell in other currencies.
WordPress on the other hand, has WooCommerce – the world’s most popular e-commerce solution. There’s pretty much nothing you can’t do with WooCommerce and some of the world’s largest e-commerce sites are built in WooCommerce.
If you’re a small business, we’d probably give this a draw, or perhaps even a win for Wix, because of how many options WooCommerce provides. It may even be intimidating for small businesses.
But due to the level of what you can create, it has to be a win for WooCommerce.
WordPress 3.5 – 1.5 Wix
SEO
Wix has come a long way in terms of SEO. You can now customise the page title, meta description, the URLs, headings etc. However, there are some parts of the URLs that you cannot change, such as /product-pages and /single-post.
WordPress websites generally do super well when it comes to SEO and digital marketers love it due to plugins like All-In-One SEO and Yoast, which allow people to not only edit the relevant parts that help their SEO, but also to get suggestions for what will help them rank higher.
We’ll call this one a draw, because for the majority of people, it won’t really make much of a difference unless you’re taking out professional SEO services.
WordPress 4 – 2 Wix
Ongoing Maintenance
Wix is an independent platform and so everything is carried out by their in-house team. All their updates, security patches, bug fixes with their software etc., will be done by them. They also have a customer support channel where you can get support for issues you have.
Since WordPress is open source, there’s no official support channel. There’s a huge community with tons of incredible developers who can help, but nothing official in that sense. Also, you will need to seek a professional developer or agency to help you with WordPress updates, as sometimes they can break your site if the wrong ones are done.
So, Wix wins this one quite easily.
WordPress 4 – 3 Wix
Cost
This one is tricky to compare as they are both completely different when it comes to pricing, but let’s explore Wix’s pricing:
With Wix, you’re obliged to pay their pricing if you use their platform. If you have a small site, you can keep these costs down, but for most small businesses, you’re looking at least £20 per month.
WordPress is technically completely free. If you download the software from WordPress.org, you can install these files on any server in the world. Most of these servers also have built-in WordPress installs so you can even skip that step. The difference is that you will need to purchase your own hosting package, but these are usually much lower than Wix’s pricing and offer a lot more flexibility.
If you have a rather large e-commerce site, then the differences in pricing will be astronomical.
WordPress 5 – 3 Wix
Security
If there’s one thing that WordPress gets negativity for, is its security breaches. This is the problem with it being such a “popular” platform that is available to everyone. When WordPress websites are built badly, they are prone to hackers. The fact that it’s open-source means that anyone can create a plugin/theme and then these can be taken advantage of.
So, if you don’t know what you’re doing, you could end up with lots of malware on your website.
Wix is an enclosed platform, completely managed by their in-house team. They’re very selective of which apps they allow into their marketplace, and they are continually monitoring and checking their security.
Therefore, Wix wins this one.
WordPress 5 – 4 Wix
Scalability
Due to the limitations of Wix, if your business starts to scale, it will be difficult to scale your website along with it. However, with WordPress, there are no limitations and so you can keep growing. Some of the largest household names have websites on WordPress, such as Sony Music, Tech Crunch, CNN, Disney, Microsoft and Vogue.
Therefore, WordPress is the clear choice here.
WordPress 6 – 4 Wix
Conclusion
Over these 10 categories, WordPress comes out the winner, but not by too much for small businesses! However, if you’re looking for a professional option that allows you unlimited capabilities and to scale along with your business, then it’s definitely the better option.
Wix is clearly a fine contender for small businesses with a low initial budget though. Even though Wix costs more in the long-run, because it’s so easy to create without knowing any code, you can create your own website, saving you thousands of pounds on initial developer fees.
Overall, we think WordPress is the more professional option, but Wix is a great option if you’re just starting out.