As someone that has built and managed many Wordpress websites, I recently consulted on a client’s Wix website and was blown away.
To show you how intuitive Wix is to use, I created a very similar website to our Monetizepros to show you some of the differences between Wix and Wordpress. Let’s discuss a few of the pros / cons for using Wix to create a website.
- Intuitive
- Features
- Apps and Plugins
- Design and Appearance
- eCommerce
- Support
Intuitive:
Hands down, Wix is a far more intuitive platform to use. Even with my WordPress blogs, I constantly find myself testing speed, different servers, and second guessing things.
I am currently using Thrive as my WordPress editor, previously used Genesis, but Wix has a very Clickfunnels-like editor. This allows you to build and design a website in literally minutes.
Most beginners choose Wix or WordPress because they don’t want to hire a website designer. Both Wix and WordPress allow you to create websites without learning to code.
Wix comes with a powerful and intuitive tool to build your website where you can drag and drop the elements on your site and edit according to your needs and preferences. However even the best theme creators in wordpress do not have a completely built-in drag and drop builder. You have to learn the navigation menus, custom menu, widgets, etc. There is indeed a bit of a learning curve involved with Wordpress.
There is no need for any technical skills using wix, beginners definitely love wix in terms of usability.
Thus, Wix is clearly a winner when it comes to intuitiveness and usability.
Features:
Both Wix and Wordpress offer great features. In my opinion, one is definitely leading the charge in terms of features. So let’s check out.First is hosting.
Wix hosts the website for you and you can easily purchase the domain within wix. You can even make a website using Wix's free website hosting services which would give you a free domain name (but we recommend using your own domain name which would require a small payment of at least $4.50 if you use Wix). With wordpress, you are paying for separate hosting and often need to troubleshoot problems as they arise. Do you know what an .htaccess file is or how to configure your memory limits? Then Wix is a better option right away.
On the other hand, WordPress provides a large number of plugins and themes. If you want to add any feature on your website, you will surely find the plugin and theme that supports it. Wix does offer a good variety of features, but maybe not as many as Wordpress.
For the conventional websites that don’t need complicated plugins, Wix is a better choice. Wix even has its own ecommerce options as well. WordPress may provide more features than Wix. One problem I keep encountering with WordPress is spending time checking the compatibility of plugins. There’s nothing worse than installing a new plugin and having it break your whole site. Or an update that causes a malfunction and you have no idea which plugin is the culprit. With Wix, all the features are built for the platform so you will not encounter compatibility issues.Apps and Plugins:
Wix supports apps and WordPress plugins.
All hope is not lost for integrating your favorite wordpress plugin into Wix! What are plugins and Apps?
Plugins and Apps are third-party extensions that you can use with your platform to add more features to your site.
Wix supports 250+ apps. These apps include things like form builders, gallery, reservation systems, etc. Apps can be added in a matter of seconds to your site.
Many apps are free and some have lite versions. Some apps have different prices.
In WordPress, there are over 5500+ plugins available for you to use for your website with a vast variety of features. It’s likely you will find the feature you are looking for with a wordpress plugin option. However, all 5500 of those plugins are not necessarily up to date with the current version of wordpress, which is what creates those compatibility issues.
In conclusion of apps and plugins, Wix contains apps with features that are commonly requested by the site owners. Wordpress definitely has the most options for plugins, although Wix is constantly adding more apps to their app market.
Design and Appearance:
Design and appearance is an important factor for a website. You need to focus on a good website creation process with design to attract more users, which leads to the overall success of your website.Wix comes with over 800+ templates and all of them are fully responsive. After that, you can edit them with built in tools to customize the site design, rearrange elements, etc.Templates are divided into categories like business, Music, hobbies, arts & crafts, personal, etc.
WordPress comes with over 8000+ themes to design your websiteWordPress has a wider section but sometimes, you may face compatibility issues which you can fix with debugging the code. In the case of Wix, all of the themes are fully responsive.
Most themes in WordPress come with built-in customization options of their own. Most free themes require you to upgrade for more options or customizations if you aren’t knowledgeable with CSS.
Ecommerce:
For Wix free plan users, ecommerce options are not available. A paid plan is required for ecommerce, but considering the features you get for your store, it’s definitely worth the investment.
Wix has all ecommerce functionality built-in. There are some apps to integrate with other inventory systems, but these options are limited. Wix recently introduced their own payment system, or you can use Paypal and Authorize.net.
On the other hand, in wordPress it is very easy to create an online store using WooCommerce which is used by many websites in the world. There are plenty of eCommerce plugins to use for selling things online. Therefore, WordPress provides great flexibility for Ecommerce.
Support:
Wix offers phone, chat, and email customer support in all of their packages. In their premium package you can get VIP support. Their response time is usually less than 24 hours. The support is worth the investment, rather than hiring an independent programmer for your custom site.
On the other hand, WordPress is free and open source, so they don't offer any specialized support. For finding a particular answer, you will have to google it, and find the answer by trial and error.
Wix is the clear winner when it comes to support.
Pricing
While making a website, cost of building is an important factor. In fact, the cost entirely depends on your needs of plugins or apps you want to add on.
Let’s compare the costs and pricing between WordPress and Wix
On Wix, you can make a basic website for free. However, you have to compromise a little bit while going for free. The downsides are that the Wix branding will be shown at the bottom and at the top of your website. And, you cannot choose your own custom domain name for your site. The default website address will be: username.wix.com/sitename. We don’t recommend creating a website with a free domain name, as it looks less professional. However, if you are just starting out or experimenting, it is nice to have the free option.
Also, the basic plan does not offer common and useful add-ons such as Google Analytics, Favicons, eCommerce, etc.. To remove all the limitations, you’ll have to upgrade to one of the premium plans they offer.
Here are all the pricing details of the Wix premium plans
On the other hand, WordPress is an open source platform, and anyone can use it. However, on WordPress you need your own domain name and web hosting to install it. Hosting starts at $3.95 per month. If you want to choose premium themes and plugins on WordPress, then the cost of your website will also increase.
Wix vs WordPress for SEO
As we know, to get your site listed on the first page of search engines and drive more organic traffic to your site, you need to optimize your website with on-page and technical SEO. Let’s compare which is better for SEO.
Wix has its own Wix SEO Wiz which makes it easy for you to optimize your on-page SEO. You can add image alt-text, meta descriptions, headings, and custom URLs to your posts and pages. You can integrate your website with Google Analytics and Google Search Console to optimize your site for search.
If you have chosen the premium plan of Wix, then it also offers a premium tool Site Booster. It has tons of SEO features targeting keywords, and performance tracking, etc. Also, you can download or purchase SEO apps in the Wix App Market.
Like Wix, WordPress also allows you to add various things like image alt-text, meta descriptions, headings, and custom URLs in your posts and pages.
WordPress offers some of the most popular and advanced tools in its plugin market. For example, you can install the very famous Yoast SEO plugin or Rank Math Plugin for your WordPress site. These plugins are free and also offer premium add-ons. These will offer suggestions for creating readable text, using your keywords, optimizing your meta descriptions and image alt text, and adding internal links.
Both platforms allow you to integrate your website with Google Analytics and search console. You can also use third party SEO software that tracks and manages your website performance independently.
Although Wix used to have a bad reputation when it came to SEO, in the past few years they have done a lot to improve their SEO, and it is now as good as their competitors. A senior employee from Google, John Mueller, said that “Wix websites work fine in search.” Therefore, despite their rocky start, there is nothing to worry about in terms of SEO when creating a website on Wix.
Conclusion
Both the platforms are good in their own ways. For using WordPress, you should have basic technical knowledge and be prepared to learn a bit. But for complete beginners, Wix is the best option to choose.WordPress provides a wider variety of features and access to plugins for customizations over Wix. Although Wix is fully functional and responsive and does offer access to over 250+ additional apps.
So, both the platforms are good. It does depend a lot on what your website needs are. I hope this article helped you compare Wix vs WordPress and learn their pros and cons.