Wix Site vs WordPress Site

Wix Site or WordPress?

WordPress and Wix are both popular platforms for building websites, but they cater to different types of users. WordPress is a CMS (Content Management System) and Wix is a website builder. Understanding this difference is critical in deciding which one to choose. To generalize, website builders are easier to use but less customizable. They also include hosting but that means you can’t ever move your website off of Wix and on to a new web host. Many small business owners turn to simple and do-it-yourself site builders like Wix to build their first website, but despite it’s ease of use it can be difficult to build a large, high-performing, successful business site with it. Here in this blog we are comparing WordPress vs Wix to help you make an educated decision and chose which one is the better fit for your needs.

WordPress

WordPress was released in 2003 and is owned by the WordPress Foundation (a non-profit organization) headquartered in San Francisco, California, USA. WordPress is a free and open-source Content Management System (CMS) that allows you to create, customize, and manage websites, blogs, and online stores. It is one of the most popular and widely used website platforms in the world, powering over 43% of all websites on the internet. WordPress is a versatile and powerful platform that is suitable for beginners and experienced users alike. Whether you want to create a simple blog, a professional portfolio, an e-commerce store, or a complex business website, WordPress provides the tools and flexibility you need to bring your vision to life.

Pros:

  1. Flexibility and Customization: WordPress is an open-source platform, which means you have full control over your website’s code and design. You can customize your website extensively with themes and plugins.
  2. Scalability: WordPress is highly scalable and can handle large amounts of content and traffic. It’s suitable for small blogs to large e-commerce websites.
  3. Community and Support: WordPress has a large and active community, so it’s easy to find help, tutorials, and plugins to extend your site’s functionality.
  4. SEO-Friendly: With the right plugins and optimization, WordPress sites can be very SEO-friendly, helping your site rank higher in search engine results.
  5. Cost-Effective: WordPress itself is free to use, and there are many free themes and plugins available. You only need to pay for web hosting and a domain name to get started.
  6. Ownership: You own your website files meaning you can save your data files and transfer them to any host of your choice.

Cons:

  1. Learning Curve: WordPress has some learning curve compared to Wix, but it’s fairly easy to learn without any coding knowledge. Visual dZign offers the necessary training to get you started. There’s also plenty of videos on YouTube to help you learn WordPress.
  2. Maintenance: You are responsible for maintaining your WordPress site, which includes updates, backups, and security but they can all be automated.

Wix

Wix is an Israeli company founded in 2006 and is located in Tel Aviv, Israel. Wix is a cloud-based website builder that allows you to create, customize, manage and host websites on their own server without any coding knowledge. Wix is a popular website builders, powering 2.7% of websites worldwide.

Pros:

  1. Ease of Use: Wix offers a user-friendly drag-and-drop website builder, making it easy for beginners to create a website without any coding knowledge.
  2. All-in-One Platform: Wix provides hosting, domain registration, and built-in tools for SEO, e-commerce, and marketing, simplifying the website building process.
  3. Templates: Wix offers a wide range of professionally designed templates that you can customize to fit your needs.
  4. Customer Support: Wix offers 24/7 customer support via phone, email, and live chat.

Cons:

  1. Less Flexibility: Compared to WordPress, Wix offers less flexibility and customization options. You are limited to the features and tools provided by the platform.
  2. Scalability Issues: A Wix site can be less suitable for large and complex websites due to limitations in scalability and performance.
  3. Performance: The server location being in Israel can indeed affect the performance of your Wix site for North American users. The closer the server is to the website visitors, the faster the website will load.
  4. Cost: While Wix does offer a free plan, you’ll need to upgrade to a premium plan to remove Wix ads, use a custom domain, and access more advanced features.
  5. Ownership: You don’t have control over your website files meaning Wix can take away access to your site and take it off the web if it violates their extensive terms of service.

Conclusion:

Wix Site vs WordPress, which is better? The answer is WordPress, simply because WordPress gives you complete control over the design, functionality, content, code, security and performance. With WordPress you can build any type of website with high level of personalization. It also does a better job with SEO, which helps your site rank and become more visible on Search Engines. Unlike Wix, with WordPress you own your website files, meaning you can save your data files and transfer them to any host and not be stuck with the one and only host (Wix).