Building a website is an exciting but time-consuming task, no doubt! Once you reach the place in your business where you’re ready to have a website, the excitement is palpable. You may want to jump right into designing, but something to consider before getting started is deciding which web builder you are going to be using.
You’ve probably heard about a couple of different builders in the past (we made a whole post about this over here). All claiming to be ‘user-friendly’ and ‘drag-and-drop’. The beautiful thing about creating a website in 2021 is that you really do have so many simple options to choose from.
Today we’re comparing Wix and WordPress, as we have recently made the switch from WordPress over to Wix ourselves.
In the effort of organization, we’ll be comparing these two builders and how they measure up among a few different categories:
1. User-Friendly Interface
When it comes to using the platform, Wix can be much more intuitive to navigate. All designs can be made within the Wix Editor, via a sidebar that comes equipped with a really helpful search function. All design elements, widgets, and functionalities can be accessed directly from this sidebar.
WordPress on the other hand will have you jumping between the dashboard and the on-page builder. Most design elements can be added via the on-page builder. However, the header/footer settings, widgets/plug-ins, blog posts, theme managers, and more must be found in various places scattered throughout the site’s dashboard.
2. Design
When it comes to design flexibility, Wix allows for you to literally drag and drop elements anywhere on the builder. Conversely, WordPress keeps you within specific parameters of using
margins, padding, and transformation elements. This makes Wix a much easier option if you’re looking for asymmetrical designs and having full creative freedom.
Both WordPress and Wix allow you to save your favorite designs into your design library. WordPress allows you to save entire pages, while Wix allows you to save particular sections. Wix even goes a step further by allowing you to simply highlight an entire page, saving it to your design library.
Wix allows for mobile optimization, in a quick an efficient fashion. WordPress gives users the ability to make specific customizations for desktop and mobile, while also allowing for tablet view customization. This is useful in ensuring that you’ve formatted the pages correctly, regardless of how somebody is viewing your site.
By using WordPress you have the ability to completely recreate your site on mobile, simply by hiding desktop versions.
3. eCommerce
When setting up your eCommerce platform, there are a few considerations to be made between the two platforms. Wix Stores requires a premium business hosting plan where WordPress’ WooCommerce is a free extension.
WooCommerce is less user-friendly to set up and manage, compared to Wix’s intuitive shop set up. WooCommerce also has less opportunity for customization.
The biggest advantage of Wix Stores over WooCommerce is most apparent with Digital Downloads. On WooCommerce, the confirmation page and confirmation email are not intuitive and will often result in a disgruntled customer email wondering where to find their digital product.
However, Wix allows for much more customization in the confirmation screen and email. This makes it easy to develop a funnel that ensures your customer will be able to locate their new digital product.
4. SEO & Blogging
It has been long rumored that WordPress websites allow for a stronger organic search engine presence. But in our experience, the SEO ranking of our websites has greatly increased when we made the switch. Albeit, our SEO knowledge had greatly improved since building out our very first website.
One of the contributing factors to this goes back to how user friendly Wix is compared to WordPress. Although they will both have similar SEO tools, Wix has integrated them in a way that’s easy to understand for the novice developer. This helps ensure that every web page and blog post is properly optimized to its full extent.
In addition to the more technical tools, the visual advantage of Wix is apparent on the blogging side of things as well. There are far more tools that allow for the creation of aesthetically appealing blog posts, which integrate visual elements in a seamless fashion.
However, the tradeoff is that there is less customization on Wix when it comes to creating specialized blog posts. This is largely due to the unfortunate fact that Wix blog posts use a more streamlined builder than other pages. On WordPress, users are given more possibilities for customization, but these features would only benefit certain bloggers.
Because of this, we recommend Wix for people whose blog is a smaller part of another initiative and WordPress to larger media outlets.
5. Site Security
With Wix being a newer website builder, it has a lot of long-requested features built right into the editor. WordPress relies heavily on plug-ins, in order to truly achieve all of the functionality that your website might require. While this might not seem like a big deal to the average user, it can actually pose as a security risk.
Each plugin that you install on your website is technically another portal into your website and can make your site more prone to hackers. WordPress is said to also be the most hacked website platform on the market. While some are unsure if that’s due to a flaw in its design or the number of users, we’d prefer to play things safe and stick with Wix.
6. Support
Building a website is a complicated process that will certainly result in a few head-scratching moments and endless ‘Googling’. We scoured the internet for support when we first began our web development journey and still utilize these information outlets regularly.
Wix has a lot of informative and insightful forums available. A quick Google search of what problems you’re encountering, coupled with the terms “Wix Editor”, will likely find you exactly what you need. Through Wix Customer Support, you can even create a ticket with the chatbot requesting a callback and a real live person will phone you directly within a few minutes.
WordPress on the other hand has no formal support at all. If you’re stumped and searching for an answer, your best bet is to look to public forums. This can be tricky as WordPress users are all using unique builders. So, the answers you find here might not directly apply to your specific project.
We have had some good luck using Elegant Themes’ Divi forums as they often offer video tutorials specifically for the Divi WordPress builder. But because WordPress has been around for so long, be prepared to spend some time weeding through outdated and irrelevant threads and tutorials.
7. Domain & Hosting
Wix allows you to start building for free, without having to commit to purchasing a domain or a hosting plan, until you’re ready to publish your site online. Technically, Wix even allows for a totally free plan that leverages Wix ads in exchange.
Ultimately, you can wait until you’re completely ready to launch your website before ever having to commit financially. This can be a great option to have if your design and development stage take longer than anticipated.
However, with WordPress you must have an active domain and hosting plan before building out your website. This means that you’ll need to commit to a domain name before you dive into the creative stage.
You’ll also have to do some of your own research to find a decent domain and hosting service to invest in. This can also get a little tricky if you aren’t the most tech-savvy, as linking your domain, hosting, and WordPress blog is complicated. Because of this it may be necessary to reach out to a few different support portals to get everything connected.
Setting up a domain email is often a great first step once you’ve settled on a domain name. We love how Wix makes it incredibly simple to create your own domain email, hosted by Google Workspace (formerly G Suite). Seriously, you can set this up with just a few clicks.
Meanwhile, setting up a domain email when you have a WordPress site is a lot more involved. You’ll have to either claim that email directly through Google Workspace, or through your Domain provider.
To Summarize:
There’s plenty to consider when deciding between the most ideal website builder. When it comes to comparing platforms like Wix and WordPress, there are a number of criteria we like to consider, including:
In all of these cases, we’ve found Wix to be a much better choice for the both novice and experienced developers. The visually appealing nature of it, easy user interface and awesome support system leave little to be desired.
On the other hand, WordPress has some strengths and useful use cases as well. Being heavily customizable, we’d recommend it to those who need even more flexibility, professional bloggers, media outlets and experienced web designers.
What are your thoughts? If you think that we missed something important or have a favorite web builder of your own, let us know in the comments below! Don’t forget to follow us on all of our social channels to stay in the loop on the latest news from Bloom Your Biz!