Are you trying to decide between Wix vs WordPress to build your website? While WordPress is the most popular website builder in the world, it is not the only option.
We’ve tested both platforms extensively and in this in-depth comparison, we share our findings. So read on to discover which platform is right for your business — and what alternatives are available.
The cost of website building is an important factor when choosing your site builder platform. The total costs of developing and maintaining your site will entirely depend on your needs. Our goal is to make sure that you can do whatever you need within your budget.
Let’s compare the pricing of Wix and WordPress to find out which one gives you more bang for the buck.
Wix offers a basic website builder for free. However, there are two major downsides to it.
First, it adds Wix branded advertisements on the top and bottom of your website. Second, you cannot use a custom domain name for your site, so your website address will be: username.wix.com/sitename
Apart from that, the basic plan does not offer necessary add-ons such as Google Analytics, Favicons, eCommerce, etc. To remove ads and get additional features from their apps market, you’ll have to upgrade to one of the premium plans they offer.
Each Wix premium plan has different storage and bandwidth limitations. You can pay monthly or choose a yearly plan.
The WordPress software is open source, and it is available for free for anyone to use.
We often get asked about why is WordPress free and what’s the catch?
Well, the biggest catch is that you need your own domain name and web hosting to install it.
There are several WordPress hosting providers that you can choose from. See our guide on how to choose the best WordPress hosting company.
Depending on your budget, you can start with a basic plan with a WordPress hosting provider like Bluehost that will cost you $2.75 per month and includes a free custom domain name.
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.
Let’s take a look which one of them is easier to use for beginners with no coding experience.
Wix comes with powerful and easy to use tools to build your own website. It offers a simple drag and drop interface where you can select any element on your site and start editing it in a WYSIWYG interface.
WordPress comes with an incredibly powerful WordPress block editor that allows you to edit your pages with a live preview.
This allows you to create visually stunning layouts by adding blocks. There are blocks for all common elements like text, headings, buttons, background images, galleries, and more.
Your site’s design and layout play an important role in your success. Every site owner needs a web design that’s not only good-looking but also user-friendly and makes their brand stand-out.
Wix comes with more than 900+ pre-made templates to choose from. All Wix designs are fully responsive and written in HTML5. Using the built-in tools, you can further tweak your site design, change the layout, and rearrange items as you see fit.
There are designs available for every kind of site. Templates are divided into categories like business, eCommerce, hobbies, arts & crafts, personal, etc.
One big disadvantage is that once you have selected a template, you cannot change it. You can modify it and customize it as much as you want using only the built-in tools, but you cannot switch to another template.
There are thousands of free and paid themes available for WordPress. Free themes come with limited support, but they also go through a strict review process. Paid themes generally offer more features and come with premium support options.
WordPress themes range from small personal sites to full-fledged eCommerce sites. Most themes come with built-in customization options of their own. You can also use one of the many styling plugins to further style or customize your WordPress themes.
Users can download free themes from WordPess.org directory.
More importantly, you can change your WordPress theme anytime you want and use a different theme. This allows your website design to grow and evolve with your business.
The perfect website builder, it goes without saying, depends on the website you need. If you want a powerful solution that will scale over the years, you should probably go for WordPress. Moreover, if you need complex features straight away, it’s really your only option for creating powerful blogging, directories, multilingual sites, complex databases and FTP access.
However, Wix is much better suited to smaller, informative websites. Small online stores can also be run completely through Wix.