WordPress is the most popular Content Management System. It powers 34% of all the websites on the internet. Wix’s presence currently is at 1.1% of the websites on the internet, but its popularity is growing because it grew by 149% from 2018 to 2019 so far. Both have their own advantages in terms of website building and hosting. So if you are caught between choosing from the two, here’s some insight that can help you with the decision:
WordPress vs Wix – Beginner friendliness
Wix
Anyone can use Wix to build a website. It allows you to drag and drop elements on your website to create a design of your choice. There are over 500 templates that you can choose from and you can customize these templates according to your brand personality. All these templates feature a responsive design, which means that it will be able to adjust to different screen sizes.
The drag and drop builder makes it very easy for beginners to get started with building a website on Wix. In fact, most people using Wix are loyal to it because of its ease of use. You will not come across codes or developer stuff that you do not understand.
WordPress
With regards to beginner friendliness, WordPress is slightly more difficult than Wix. While it offers more than 3000 themes to choose from, you will need some extent of technical knowledge to get used to WordPress. Once you start using the control panel regularly, it becomes relatively easier, but there is a certain amount of learning required in WordPress.
The good thing is that WordPress offers lots of tutorials to support new customers. It also has a very active community and help forum where you can ask questions if you get stuck.
WordPress vs Wix – Flexibility
Wix
Wix is flexible when it comes to customization of the template you have chosen, but it is rigid when it comes to changing the entire template and getting your website on a new template. You can make as many design changes on the existing template and give it a look that replicates another template of your liking, but you cannot swap templates.
The availability of templates and plugins is also relatively lower than WordPress. Wix has approximately 223 apps in its app market. Many of these are free. Some paid apps also have free versions with limited features available.
All of the website building tools are created by Wix’s development team. This means that flexibility is somewhat reduced. But this also ensures safety and security in terms of the tools you would be using.
WordPress
WordPress is very flexible and its users love the extent to which they can modify existing templates, introduce new themes or change to an entirely different design. There are no limitations with respect to design possibilities on WordPress.
There are over 35,000 plugins which you can use. Some of these are obsolete, but most of them are free. Even premium plugins are feature-rich. This allows you to create more value on your website and introduce new design details which may not be possible or may be limited on Wix.
Since WordPress is open source and anyone can develop themes, plugins and templates for WordPress, flexibility is high. At the same time, security can become a concern since plugins may have low security or dangerous code.
WordPress vs Wix on Performance and Website Maintenance
Wix
Wix claims to offer an uptime of 99.98%. But there is no uptime guarantee. The data centers are spread all over the world, including Europe and U.S. Overall performance is good if you use Wix for hosting. But there are many hosting options available which can provide you with more features than Wix.
Maintaining your website on Wix is relatively easy. Since the drag and drop builder can be customized anytime and content can easily be updated, customers find it easy to manage their websites on Wix. If you choose to bring in a developer at a later stage to improve the design and look then Wix allows developers to use Wix code to tweak or change things under the hood.
WordPress
When compared with Wix, WordPress is far more advanced. It offers a higher performance and better website maintenance. WordPress is good for businesses of all kinds. Once you get used to the control panel, you can comfortably navigate through the different pages and check for details and content which needs to be changed or updated.
WordPress’ servers work very efficiently as well ensuring that websites enjoy fast loading speeds and very low downtime. This is one reason why WordPress has grown in popularity over the years. However, WordPress Speed or performance is also decided by the performance of its web server, so choosing a reliable and fast WordPress Hosting is important on this factor.
It is easy for beginners as well as advanced developers to use WordPress with relative ease. Some of its design options may seem difficult to handle, but it can usually be learnt through tutorials and forums.
WordPress vs Wix on SEO
Wix
Wix has greatly improved SEO for its website owners. SEO is now built into the system, making it easy for you to create SEO-friendly content. You will also find it easy to integrate your website with Google Analytics and Google Search Console. Overall, managing content, creating new content and ensuring that your website is SEO friendly is easy on Wix.
WordPress
When it comes to SEO, WordPress has been doing it way before Wix. WordPress closely covers all aspects of SEO, ensuring that your content is optimized for search engines. At this time, Wix has been able to catch up to the features offered by WordPress, but there are lots of plugins and additional options like Sitemap, which give WordPress and edge.
Needless to say, in both Wix and WordPress, the actual content plays a big role.
WordPress vs Wix on Setup costs
Wix
Building a website and even hosting it can be done without any cost at all. Premium plugins cost relatively less and overall quality is maintained by the Wix developers. Starting and running a website on Wix can be very budget-friendly.
WordPress
A lot of things of WordPress are free, including the themes and plugins. But for lack of uniqueness, most people choose paid themes and premium plugins. This can greatly increase the overall cost of setting up WordPress. Since there are some beginners, who may find it difficult to set up a website on WordPress, if you hire a developer to get the job done for you, the cost can increase.
WordPress vs Wix on Learning curve
Wix
Wix’s drag and drop builder makes everything extremely easy. There is literally no learning curve and even a beginner can get started with Wix and easily build a website. Even complex websites can be built with relative ease.
WordPress
WordPress can be relatively difficult. It has a steeper learning curve with respect to Wix. This is because WordPress provides access to more plugins, more themes and is intended to cater to a larger audience, which involves experienced developers.
Verdict
Both WordPress and Wix have their own customer base who have been loyal to each of these platforms. WordPress is, however, a lot better in terms of features, flexibility and versatility. While some website owners may think that WordPress is expensive, ROI from WordPress websites can be significant enough for you to recoup the expenses on setting up the website in a short time.
Wix, on the other hand, is user-friendly and very easy. It does not make learning too difficult and website building, as well as maintenance, does not require technical knowledge. Small businesses can benefit from both WordPress and Wix depending on how scalable they want the website to be, would they want to change themes and templates in future and if they plan to manage it themselves or bring in a developer to manage the website.
With these things in mind, we hope you will be able to pick the one that is most suitable for your website requirements.
