What’s better: Wix or WordPress?

So you’re building a website, but you’re unsure of the best system. Wix and WordPress are both extremely popular content management systems (CMS), for very different reasons.

Simply put, Wix provides a cheap route to gaining an online presence. Packages include hosting and a domain (for a limited time), with a focus on user-friendliness, working best for portfolio-type websites. Unfortunately, it’s not recommended for larger sites or ecommerce as both the editing and loading times significantly slows as it grows.

WordPress on the other hand is the most powerful CMS in existence. Combining powerful editing capabilities with unparalleled performance. This performance orientation is ideal for larger sites and those looking to rank higher in search engines.

Wix vs WordPress pricing

Wix can be far cheaper than a WordPress website. However, the trade-off in price will mean significant time investment to achieve anything even remotely of the quality of WordPress. We’ve broken down the costs of both Wix and WordPress, including the time investment so you get a clear idea of what’s involved in both projects.

Wix

Advertised plans are shown as monthly, but are actually priced for annual subscriptions paid upfront. For those wanting to pay monthly or anything less than a full 12 months, pricing will increase by at least 20%:

Website plan: $420 annually
E-commerce plan: $588 annually
Initial build: $300 – $1,500
Domain: $240 annually (first 12 months free)

WordPress

Is a complete free platform to build websites, however you will be required to purchase your own domain and hosting. Charged monthly or paying upfront, our pricing doesn’t change:

Domain registration (2 years): $40
Web hosting: $180 annually
Initial build: $900 – $4,000

The biggest cost in any web project, is the design and development (build). It is however, the most important element, which determines whether or not your website actually ranks and delivers leads.

DIY: Wix or WordPress

Most business owners will outsource their website build to ensure a professional design. However, some people like to create something for themselves. This route, will require a significant investment of time instead.

Time taken to create 1-3 pages on Wix

Skill level	Time required
Developer	6 – 8 hours
Intermediate	16 hours +
Beginner	30 hours +

Time taken to create 1-3 pages on WordPress

Skill level	Time required
Developer	8 hours +
Intermediate	20 hours +
Beginner	40 hours +

Ecommerce capability

Both WordPress and Wix have functionality for ecommerce, which includes products, carts and payment gateways. It’s important to note, while Wix has good technology to support ecommerce, it is only suited to businesses with a small range of products. As the site grows, it becomes slow, which is extremely detrimental to purchases (and hurts SEO).

WordPress however, offers a free to use plug-in that supports ecommerce called WooCommerce. With unlimited capacity and high-performance, this is ideal for a fully functional ecommerce store will multiple product categories.

SEO performance

WordPress SEO is arguably one of the best performing platforms for search engines in the world. Google loves WordPress sites, and there’s hundreds of free SEO tools such as Yoast to support you. With the ability to customise key web page elements that matter for SEO, WordPress is definitely the winner if you’re goal is drive organic search traffic and rank higher in results.

Wix on the other hand performs quite poorly in this aspect, with limited customisation where it matters most. Loading speeds tend to be quite poor for Wix sites, which has a direct impact on search results since Google’s page experience update. There is also no ability to customise image file names, which are automatically converted to a random set of characters. Image file names and alt text are incredibly important for Google to understand the image and how it relates to your site.

Design & functionality

Once upon a time, WordPress was an extremely complex CMS requiring developer level experience. Fortunately, a number of significant upgrades in the past 1 -2 years has helped the platform become incredibly user friendly and easy to manage. While going for custom design elements will require a developer, page customisation is unparalleled. At the end of the day, WordPress is only limited by your imagination.

If freedom and customisation is what you’re looking for, Wix is not for you. Wix provides what’s known as a cookie cutter website (cut and paste). Designs must be crafted from templates with highly limited ability to make real changes. This devalues your site, it’s usually (unless extraordinary time is spent) very obvious to tell a Wix site from another platforms site.

Making your choice

A website is an investment, one you are looking to deliver ROI and value from. As a result, it’s important to think about how your website will achieve this. Unfortunately, Wix doesn’t deliver the necessary search rankings, professionalism and results. It will however, offer a route to a cheap presence online. But you don’t just want your business to be seen, you want it to be heard.