WordPress is the most popular content management system (CMS) to build a website on in the market, but it’s certainly not the only one. Wix, a website builder, has recently pushed out a massive advertising campaign with A-listers promoting the platform as fun and trendy.

While it’s easy to fall into flashy advertising, it’s important to cut through the jargon and research which CMS is truly better for your specific website needs. Building a website is a complex task, but building a website on the wrong platform will result in a waste of time and money.

To be fair, both WordPress and Wix websites are good. However, the differences between the platforms are pretty significant.

As a general overview, WordPress is known for its immense flexibility to build practically any kind of website, but technical knowledge or programming is often required to achieve this. On the other hand, Wix presents a very modern and flexible platform, but building more complex sites isn’t possible.

So, what’s better?

If you’re debating between Wix vs. WordPress, you will need to identify the pros and cons of each in order to understand which is truly suitable for your website.

Follow along while we compare both platforms so you can finally put the Wix vs. WordPress debate to bed.

Pricing and Costs

Although money isn’t everything, it does need to be considered when choosing your website builder. While the total cost will also depend on the development and maintenance price, it also is determined on your specific website needs.

Wix

While Wix does offer a free website builder, it comes with Wix branded advertisements and the inability to use a custom domain name. Therefore, your website would have to be: username.wix.com/sitename.

Additionally, the free plan does not include important add-ons like favicons, eCommerce capabilities, and Google Analytics. Essentially, you will need to upgrade to one of their premium plans to have a successful website.

Their premium plans range in storage and bandwidth capacity. However, the best value is the Wix Unlimited plan ($12.50 / month), which includes unlimited bandwidth, 10GB storage, free domain name, removal of ads and more.

It’s important to note that this cost dost no include any apps that can be purchased from the Wix app market.

WordPress

Technically, WordPress is free. While they do offer different pricing structures, WordPress software is open sourced and available for anyone to create an account and start using.

Costs start adding up within WordPress because the user needs their own domain name and hosting provider in order to install it.

Depending on the type of website you’re building, you can start with a WordPress hosting providers like Bluehost that only costs $2.75 / month and includes a free domain name and SSL certificate. However, if you need something a more complex managed provider like WP Engine, costs could run up to $29 / month.

WordPress ends up becoming more costly when you tack on premium WordPress themes and plugins. But, WordPress does offer thousands of free versions for both that help minimize costs but still had functionality.

Winner

From a cost perspective, WordPress beats Wix due to its flexibility in hosting providers and overall resources. With WordPress, you can truly build your website to match your budget.

Usability

Most people choose to build their website on Wix or WordPress because they don’t want to hire an actual developer, both platforms are well-known for their ease of use.

Wix

Wix websites include a what-you-see-is-what-you-get (WYSIWYG) interface, so users can simply drag and drop any element directly into the website and start editing.

Within the Wix editor, you can add in media such as paragraphs, photographs, video, slideshows, buttons and more. The elements can be rearranged anywhere on the page to determine how it will look when the site is officially published.

While there are definitely customization limits within Wix, it was built to be beginner-friendly, and many find this platform a blessing because not a speck of code is necessary.

WordPress

Although WordPress does include a theme customizer to edit within a WYSIWYG format and a visual editor to develop content, the platform’s baseline does not include a drag and drop page builder.

To fully understand and control your website’s appearance, you will need some technical competence to understand navigation menus, customizer, post editors and more.

WordPress is known for its flexibility and offers thousands of themes that can be customized.

However, if you don’t understand any code or you are not prepared to seek guidance from a WordPress developer, it may not be the platform for you.

Source: Stackoverflow

Winner

This is a complicated answer. If you’re a beginner who needs easy drag-and-drop functionality – Wix is the winner. However, if you’re willing to hire a developer or are more technically savvy – WordPress’s flexibility is unmatched. In terms of usability, this is a tie.

Design and Flexibility

Your website’s design acts as the first impression for your business or blog – so you need to make it count. Every site needs to have an impactful design, user-friendly navigation, and dynamic functionality that stands out against the competition.

Wix

Wix provides 500+ templates to install into your website. These designs are mobile-responsive and written in familiar HTML5. With their built-in WYSIWYG website builder, you’re able to customize the design and layout with ease.

Wix templates are all very modern, professional and slick. They also provide different designs for various categories like eCommerce, blog, portfolio, business and more.

However, Wix templates big disadvantage is that once the template is installed to the website, you cannot switch it out for another. While you are able to do as much editing as you can within the website builder, you’re essentially stuck with the design.

Source: Wix

WordPress

WordPress offers thousands of both free and premium themes to instantly downland. While one is not necessarily better than the other, free themes often come with limited support and premium themes truly offer unlimited customization.

Generally, premium WordPress themes cost anywhere between $30-$100 and can be purchased from Themify, ThemeForest or Elegant Themes. They are categorized by eCommerce, blog, newspaper and more design styles that are mostly all mobile-responsive.

Additionally, you can download hundreds of different stylizing WordPress plugins to customize your theme even more.

If you know HTML and CSS, you can modify your theme to create the website of your dreams.

Winner

When considering design in the Wix vs. WordPress debate, WordPress wins due to the platform’s flexibility and customization feature. Although you might need to hire a WordPress developer, if you can dream it – you can create it within this platform.

Plugins and App Add-ons

Third-party extensions are imperative to make your website with professional functionality. These add-ons provide extra features like website builders, social media icons, forms, analytics and more.

Wix

Providing 200+ apps to website builders, features like forms, galleries, comments, and email marketing can be added to your Wix website. These apps are useful within booking systems, photographer galleries, and businesses who need invoicing systems.

While some apps require a monthly subscription, most of these add-ons are free or include a ‘lite’ version.

Although Wix has a limited app market in comparison to competitors, they do provide the most frequently used add-ons and have proven helpful for industry-specific applications.

WordPress

There are over 50,000+ different plugins available on WordPress and other premium marketplaces.

In fact, WordPress is known for its plugin functionality and their ability to do just about anything on a website.

For the most part, you can get amazing plugins for free or for a small monthly payment. These plugins do everything from design, security and analytic tracking.

WordPress plugins essentially help transform a normal theme, into an impactful one.

While WordPress plugins are widely available, you may need slight technical knowledge in order to install and update them regularly.

Source: WordPress

Conclusion

This one is pretty easy. Although the Wix marketplace is growing, WordPress easily wins plugin capabilities due to its massive library and category variance.

Blogging Outlet

If you’re interested in starting a blog, choosing the right platform is imperative in your overall success. While most beginners look to Wix and WordPress for their user-friendly functionality, you need to find what gives you the competitive edge.

Wix

Wix includes all the common blog features needed like tags, categories, photos, post scheduling, archives and more. It also lets you customize the mobile title, which can be helpful if it is too long and looks different on small screens.

However, the blogging platform is lacking important features like backdating posts, private posts and featured images. Additionally, it doesn’t include a native commenting system and is instead connected to Facebook.

Lastly, the writing editor is different from the Wix website builder. It uses a plain text editor which can have limited formatting options without the familiar drag and drop builder.

Although not recommended for robust bloggers, it is easy to use and relatively customizable.

WordPress

Powering close to 33% of websites today, WordPress originally started out as a blogging platform. Packed with all the important functionality a WordPress blog needs, the platform also includes RSS feeds and a native commenting system.

It also includes a Gutenberg block editor, which lets a WordPress blogger customize their layout and content to fit into their posts.

Even better, there are thousands of plugins that will help boost your blog’s appearance, search engine optimization, and more.

Conclusion

In the Wix vs. WordPress for bloggers debate, WordPress outpowers Wix. If you’re serious about becoming a blogger, WordPress offers all the customization and flexibility needed to become successful.

Customer Service Support

Let’s face it, we all need a little help sometimes. Especially when dealing with the unfamiliar worlds of website building and potential coding. Choosing a website builder that offers some sort of support will be helpful in answering any troubleshooting questions that will come your way.

Wix

Wix provides phone support as well as company and community forums. Additionally, they have a library full of articles and tutorials that are useful for beginners getting used to the platform.

Source: Wix

WordPress

Because WordPress is open sourced, they do not offer any kind of support team. However, they provide a huge online catalog that answers a variety of questions. There are also thousands of forum posts on how to troubleshoot and use WordPress

While finding help isn’t direct on WordPress, if you install reputable themes and plugins – they almost always provide excellent support services.

Winner

Wix takes WordPress on support, simply because they have official and dedicated support available

Wix vs. WordPress: Final Verdict

If you’re still unsure of where you stand on with Wix vs. WordPress, it really comes down to what your website goals are. Both platforms are beginner-friendly and offer functionality to help your website reach success.

However, if you are looking for complex features and a platform that will go with your website – WordPress will be the best option. WordPress offers powerful blogging and eCommerce capabilities, multilingual possibilities, powerful databases and more.

Whether you hire a WordPress developer or not, the platform is hard to beat.

With that said, Wix is well suited for smaller, informative websites. The drag and drop editing interface are perfect for those without any technical experience to save both time and money.

While we hope our comprehensive article helped you understand the pros and cons of Wix vs. WordPress, it’s always recommended to continue your own research to feel confident in your final decision.

Do you like Wix or WordPress better?

Share with us in the comments below!