Starting your first website? Not sure which content management system will work for you? Undecided between WordPress and Wix? In this article, we will compare both the CMS platforms side by side and then you can decide which of the two can work best for your business.
Let’s get started comparing WordPress & Wix platforms.
Why Use WordPress?
WordPress powers 40% of the websites available on the internet. This fact alone is enough to convince anyone. The platform is powered by the community and is completely open-source. It also has an active development team behind it that is always working on new features to add to the platform.
WordPress is a complete content management system (CMS) and anyone who is looking for a CMS to manage their business website can use this platform with ease.
WordPress is usually the first platform people try because it is free, easy to use, and offers a bulk of customization options to choose from. Moreover, it doesn’t require a developer and anyone can launch their website with ease.
Why Use Wix?
Wix is a hosted website development platform that allows you to easily create a website or an eCommerce store. You can connect a domain with Wix.com, choose a theme of your choice, and launch your website. It is as easy as that.
The only problem with Wix.com is that you are limited to the platform and can’t make any customizations of your own. Similarly, you can’t move your website to another hosting solution because it is a ‘hosted website development platform’.
With that said, Wix is also a growing platform and beginners love it because of the ease it offers.
Here is a graph of how Wix and WordPress compare. The data is taken from Google trends of Wix vs WordPress website development platforms.
In the above graph, you can see that both WordPress and Wix are continuously growing at a steady pace. What this depicts is that both CMS platforms have a high demand among website creators on the internet.
Seven Major Differences Between WordPress & Wix [Complete Comparison]
Let’s see some of the major differences between WordPress and Wix platforms.
We have tested both the platforms and the differences below focus on cost, customizations, ease of use, features of both the platforms. These differences will help you decide which platform will work best for you in the long-term.
1. WordPress is Free, Wix Costs Money
The first difference is obvious and pretty decisive. WordPress is a free CMS platform. You just have to install it on a hosting solution of your choice and it will work in the usual way. You can install a free theme and get free plugins to optimize your website as you will.
On the other hand, Wix costs money. You will need to connect your domain to a Wix account. The basic Wix account costs at least $5 per month to set up and launch your website. If you plan to increase your website storage space and bandwidth, that would cost you additional money. So, in short, WordPress is free and Wix costs money.
2. WordPress is Fully Customisable, Wix is Not
Another major difference between WordPress and Wix websites is that WordPress is fully customizable. You can customize the theme, layout, plugins, and even WordPress core functionalities. WordPress also offers third-party page builders like Beaver Builder and Elementor that you can use to customize the website layout.
Wix is not fully customizable although it offers many template-specific customizations to its users. You can’t add your own payment gateways or change the design of templates offered by Wix. Wix offers its own tools to customize your website. These include Velo by Wix and embedded custom code. However, they all offer only limited customizations to their users.
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3. WordPress Ecommerce Plan is Free, Wix Costs Money
WordPress offers WooCommerce as the default ecommerce solution for store owners. It is perfect for anyone who is starting a store from scratch and wants to DIY everything. The WooCommerce platform is completely free and allows users to manage their websites without hiring a developer.
Wix offers an eCommerce plan under its business hosting package. The basic eCommerce plan starts at $18 per month and is a lot costly for beginners. Although Wix has added multiple features such as selling on other marketplaces like Amazon and eBay, selling on social media channels like Facebook and Twitter, these are freely available for store owners on WordPress or any other CMS platform.
4. WordPress Offers Third-Party Plugins & Themes
A major reason starters opt for WordPress and not any other CMS platform when starting their website is because it offers many third-party plugins and theme options to the users.
By default, WordPress offers over 50,000 plugins and 1000+ free themes to its users. All users can directly install these themes and plugins to their website using the WordPress dashboard.
Wix also offers a plugin option similar to WordPress and it calls this option ‘Apps by Wix’. Apps by Wix allows developers to create apps for Wix. However, they have to follow strict documentation and they can only be hosted on Wix once approved. Developers can’t put them on any other marketplace. This is not the case with WordPress.
5. WordPress is Scalable By Default
WordPress is a completely scalable CMS solution. If you want to scale your website, you just have to change your hosting package. The code of WordPress CMS won’t break even if you get 5X more visitors to your website. In fact, famous websites like Ted Talks, TechCrunch, and many others use WordPress to power their businesses.
Wix is not completely scalable. It offers pricing tiers and each package can host only a number of visitors. To scale your website, you will have to buy a better package from Wix. So, Wix is also scalable but it charges money for doing that.
6. WordPress is SEO Optimised, Wix isn’t
WordPress offers SEO plugins such as Yoast, All in One SEO, and RankMath. All these SEO tools let you improve your website performance through easy on-page customizations. Each page of the WordPress-based website can be customized with relevant keywords, meta titles, and meta descriptions to improve website performance.
Wix doesn’t offer any SEO optimizations for its users. It does offer a few options to add a website to the search console, add a robots.txt file to the website, and similar others. But, these are not proper on-page customizations that you can make to your website.
7. WordPress Maintenance is Easier
Last but not the least, WordPress can be easily maintained without hiring a developer. If you want to customize WordPress themes, a developer can do it for cheap. However, with Wix, you will have to hire costly developers to manage each small functionality. Moreover, there are just so many limitations with Wix that would limit you in making changes to your website layout.
Should You Get WordPress or Wix?
Wix is time-consuming and offers limited features.
WordPress is free and scalable. But, to get the most out of your CMS, you need to hire a developer that can create a website from scratch just as you want it.
Need to create a WordPress website from scratch? Our WordPress experts can help you get it done faster and easier! Get in Touch Today.
Sajan Neupane 
