Sometimes it is hard to make a choice when caught between the Wix vs WordPress battle. Both are amazing tools for building sites, and they have strong customer bases to back them up. But then, you only need one to build a site, and we are constantly bombarded with questions about which to choose.
As a result, we took the time to review both tools thoroughly in order to help you make the right choice. So, if you are interested in knowing whether to choose Wix or WordPress as your site builder, please continue reading this.
You may also read our in-depth review of Wix services for 2024 for a deeper understanding of the website builder. Now, let’s go!
Wix vs WordPress: Ease of Use Comparison
When choosing a website builder, ease of use is an important factor to consider. A site builder that is easy to use will make creating your website enjoyable and interesting. You will design like an expert without prior skills or experience.
Thus, we conducted an ease-of-use test to determine whether WordPress or Wix is the easiest website creator to use in 2024.
Building a Site with Wix
Wix is a great site builder and works on the What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) model. Meaning that you can drag and drop elements on your pages to make a complete and functional design. You will get exactly what you design, so there are no surprises.
The interface of the Wix Editor is quite intuitive. It is well-arranged, so you can access all the tools you need by looking around your screen. To add elements and sections, you can drag them from the left toolbar to anywhere you want on the page. There are gridlines and rulers on the page that can guide you in arranging your elements so that they will be mobile responsive automatically.
Besides, you can get all the customization options for elements and sections by just clicking on them. Their mini editors are also very intuitive, with simple and relatable controls that you can understand.
Furthermore, regardless of the website template you are working with, you will have access to several templates for every element or section you want to add to your web pages. Therefore, you don’t have to worry about designing many parts of your web pages from scratch if you don’t like their layouts from your chosen website template.
Additionally, you can easily find some settings in the editor by searching for a keyword. This serves as a shortcut and helps you design faster.
Creating a WordPress Site
WordPress launched its editor, Gutenberg, which works on a drag-and-drop model.
To use the Block Editor (Gutenberg), you have to deactivate the Classic Editor. With the Block Editor, you can build your pages by stacking different blocks on top of one another or arranging them side by side. You can easily group blocks and save them for re-usage. This saves you valuable time you could have wasted recreating the same blocks or design on another.
Even though the Gutenberg editor has a lot of blocks you can add to your website, it still relies on plugins. It does not have advanced features of its own. So you won’t have access to many design features that can make the process of creating a website with WordPress easier.
In addition, the available blocks lack meaningful customization options. Some have only alignment customization options for most of them. Also, you can move them up and down a level on your page.
One good news with the Gutenberg editor is that you will have access to some patterns. Patterns are predesigned sections you can reuse on a page and edit. You can import layouts from compatible plugins to your web pages this way. However, most of the patterns are too basic. They are just a combination of texts and some background colors.
Verdict on Wix vs WordPress: Ease of Use Comparison
After completing this WordPress vs Wix ease of use comparison, we saw that the latter is really better. With Wix, you will have more customization options, and you can easily build your web pages without relying on third-party apps and plugins.
If you use page builders on WordPress, you will have to learn many tools just to build a simple site. Besides, note that using third-party page builders on WP increases your overhead costs since you need a premium plan to access the good features. So unless you are ready to pay so much for some added ease of use in order to measure up to the rival, Wix is the right choice.
Wix or WordPress: Which is Better for SEO?
Search engine optimization (SEO) is another crucial Wix vs WordPress comparison. If you plan on showing up on search engine result pages (SERPs), you must choose a builder that implements SEO best practices. Furthermore, it must offer you features that you can use to set up and improve your SEO. This includes but is not limited to on-page SEO settings.
WordPress and SEO
WordPress is a great Content Management System (CMS) that implements the best SEO practices in its coding. However, the creator does not have a proprietary SEO tool. So you have to install plugins to access on-page and technical SEO features.
The CMS gives you access to many SEO plugins like Yoast and Rank Math that give you advanced settings that will help to improve the optimization of your web pages and website. You can install multiple plugins on your site for SEO purposes if one does not satisfy all your needs. These plugins let you set meta descriptions, SEO titles, Open Graph tags, URLs, heading tags, and meta tags and effectively do keyword optimization. So it is really great. Although, for some advanced SEO settings, you may have to purchase premium plugins.
Moreover, installing too many SEO plugins can cause harm if they are incompatible with one another. So it really sucks. The good news, however, is that there are many options, so you can choose the one with most of the features you need.
Additionally, WordPress does not automatically make your web pages mobile responsive, and there are no settings for that. Its mobile responsiveness depends on the theme you are using. Though, if you are tech-savvy, you can edit the code of the theme to improve its mobile responsiveness. Otherwise, you need a new theme. Probably, a premium one.
Wix and SEO
Wix has an outstanding SEO tool. The tool is in-built and has all the basic SEO settings and some advanced features you need for your site. It has an onboarding SEO setup guide for users, which helps them complete their initial configuration.
Moreover, the setup is interactive, and all the settings are in one place, enabling you to find them easily and do them correctly before, during, and after launching your site.
Additionally, Wix is mobile responsive. Its templates are all mobile-ready, and it has a setting to automatically adapt your web pages to smaller screens. This involves resizing your images and texts to facilitate a faster loading speed. In addition, aside from the fact that your designs on the desktop screen automatically adapt to smaller screens, you can design the mobile versions too.
Furthermore, you can connect your website to your Google Search Console (GSC) and Analytics accounts. This allows you to submit your sitemap.xml file and import search data to your Wix Dashboard. Consequently, you can use the data to improve your SEO strategy.
Verdict on Wix or WordPress SEO Comparison
Wix SEO is built-in and intuitive, so you can easily configure your site to rank well on SERPs. Besides, there are some SEO settings that are automatically set up for you. An example is the schema markup data that helps your pages get rich results on SERPs. Also, since you don’t need to purchase or install a third-party tool
WordPress, on the other hand, does not have much built-in SEO features. So you must install an SEO tool. Otherwise, you won’t be able to optimize your site for SEO. Although with all the SEO plugins WordPress gives you access to, you can use more features to boost your optimization. As a result, your site may rank better on SERPs on WordPress than on Wix.
Regarding the winner in the Wix vs WordPress SEO juxtaposition, the latter wins for the availability of advanced features. Nevertheless, the features Wix provides can help rank your website better on SERPs than most WP sites if you configure the settings correctly. It is not always about quantity but the quality of the setup.
Which One is More Secure, WordPress or Wix?
A website builder’s security provision is also crucial to your business. If your website is hacked, it exposes data and information about your business and your customers. This could compromise your business as you may lose access to your site.
Wix
Wix is a highly secure site builder. It gives free SSL certificates to encrypt data exchange on your site so that hackers can’t intercept it.
Additionally, you can enable two-factor authentication (2FA) on your account. Therefore, no one can access your account or hack your site, even if they have your login credentials. Although, this does not totally mean that your Wix account and website are immune to brute-force attacks. It only means it will take longer before your account or site is vulnerable to such attacks.
Moreover, Wix is not an open-source project but rather a closed system. Therefore, it is less vulnerable to hacking since hackers or perpetrators cannot inject malicious codes into the tools you use. They also cannot view or modify its codes or access your Wix server in any way. Besides, all the applications in the Wix App Market are vetted to ensure that they are bug-free and comply with the guidelines.
What’s more, your site will be automatically backed up weekly or monthly, depending on your hosting plan. You can manually back up your data as well. Thus, your site will be protected against data loss.
WordPress
Security on WordPress is a little different from Wix’s security. For instance, WordPress does not provide free SSL certificates. Thus, you must rely on your hosting company to provide it. If your host does not, then you have to purchase it. You can host your website on Hostinger for only $2/month and get a free SSL certificate.
Furthermore, your WordPress site is more prone to attacks because the CMS is open-source, so hackers can view and modify its code. As a result, they have mastered the art of exploiting the vulnerabilities in WP codes. Hence, basically, anyone with adequate knowledge of PHP can plan an attack on your WordPress site.
In addition, WP plugins increase your site’s vulnerability, especially when they are poorly coded or outdated. Hackers can hide malicious codes in the PHP files of your plugins and gain access to your backend right under your nose.
In order to protect your site against all sorts of attacks, you can install some trusted security plugins and use a host with commercial-grade security like Hostinger.
At the same time, you can install plugins to back up your site data occasionally to prevent data loss due to customization errors, hacks, or corruption. Although, some web hosts like Hostinger and SiteGround will automatically back up your site’s data often.
Conclusion
You can have a secure website on both website builders. However, a WP site is more vulnerable to attacks and can easily get hacked if care is not taken.
Besides, you have to rely on third-party solutions to secure your site. Unlike WordPress, Wix is rarely attacked. In fact, the only way someone can access your account is if they have your login credentials. Hence, regarding security in the WordPress vs Wix comparison, the latter is the winner.
Wix vs WordPress: Which Gives Better Website Speed?
Website speed is very important as it is one of the main determinants of a site’s SEO success and its ability to retain visitors. Google created the Core Web Vitals test to separate slow sites from fast ones. What’s more, it uses a web page’s performance in the test to rank it on SERPs.
WordPress
WordPress is a good CMS and uses the best practices to give your site a fast loading speed. Although, the loading speed of your site is not dependent on the CMS alone. The hosting company you use and the theme and plugins you have on your site greatly influence its loading speed.
Therefore, if you use an unoptimized theme, plugin, or a host with a slow server, your website will surely load slowly. Nonetheless, if your site is slow, there are many plugins you can use to increase its speed. Luckily, most of them have free versions that are powerful enough to give your site the loading speed improvements it needs.
Wix
The popular website creator has a good loading speed as well. Wix templates are optimized and mobile responsive, so the pages are lightweight and load quickly on all device types. You don’t need a third-party tool to improve the loading speed, and you can enable Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) feature for your web page so that they load faster for mobile users with slower processors.
Moreover, Wix has more than 9 data centers and 200 CDN nodes all over the world. So you will be able to provide the best possible speed to your visitors worldwide and get a good Core Web Vitals test performance for SEO.
However, there is no way to improve the loading speed of your site using a tool from the Wix App Market. If you wish to do that, you may have to hire an expert to optimize your web pages for you by editing the HTML of your website.
Conclusion
Both solutions will help you build a fast website. However, WordPress, with the aid of speed optimization plugins, gives you a better chance at improving your website’s loading speed. Therefore, you can have a faster site on WP.
Nonetheless, it is not to say that you cannot improve your site’s speed on Wix. It is just not as easy as it is on WP. Therefore, WordPress wins the loading speed comparison vs Wix.
Which is Better for Multilingual Sites?
Creating a multilingual website is essential if you have a business that serves a non-English-speaking country or region.
Of course, Google Translate is a real helper in translating sites to a reader’s language from a foreign one, but it does not always do the trick. This is with the assumption that you want to give your audience completely different content or have particular terms to use. Hence the need for a site builder that can help you create different versions of your site with the same domain name.
WordPress Multilingual Support
WordPress supports the creation of a multilingual site. However, this support does not come out of the box, and you need to use plugins to do that.
The good news is that there are many plugins that you can use to add the multilingual feature to your site. But all the helpful ones are premium in the sense that you must purchase a plan or API access to get some features. An example of such a feature is auto-translation.
Alternatively, you can manually translate your web pages if you are proficient in the languages or employ professional translators. So again, it requires you to spend additional money or make a bigger than necessary budget. Plus, it is quite stressful.
Furthermore, if your web host supports it, you could use the WP Multisite feature to create a completely different version of your site. With this, you can serve completely different content to users from distinct regions. A good example of such a site is 01net.com. Our French content resides at “01net.com”, while our English site is here at “01net.com/en”. Both serve completely different content in differing languages. The issue with the multisite method is that it does not automatically redirect visitors from one version to another. You have to do that manually, and you will need a developer for that.
Wix Multilingual Feature
Wix performs excellently in the multilingual support contest against WordPress. The builder supports the creation of a multilingual site too.
Here, you don’t need a third-party app because the feature is part of the main package. Once you are done creating the main version of your site, you can auto-translate all your web pages to your other languages. Afterward, you can then manually edit the web pages to ensure the translations are correct. Here, the auto-translation service is powered by Google Translate and is completely free.
You can change the URL structure of your site to a subdomain (en.example.com), subdirectory (example.com/en), or language parameter (example.com/lang=en). Besides, you can automatically redirect visitors to the version with the local language of their region, provided that you have it. Additionally, you can give them a language switch button to interchange between different language versions of your website.
The drawback of Wix multilingual support is that you cannot serve different content to your users from different regions in distinct languages. You can’t even redesign the pages.
Verdict on Using WordPress or Wix for Multilingual Sites
After a thorough and impartial comparison to know whether Wix or WordPress is great for creating a multilingual site, the former is our pick. This is because it is a much cheaper and easier way to create a multilingual site. WP is only great if you want to serve different content and you have dedicated teams to handle that. Of course, plus a sizable budget.
WordPress vs Wix: Blogging Tool Comparison
The blogging feature is crucial if you want to build a personal blog or a site with an optional blogging purpose. So, let’s find out if the popular CMS, WordPress, or the notable site builder, Wix, is the better tool.
Wix
The website creator has a very good blogging tool that is accessible from the editor page and your dashboard. Creating a blog post and doing all the required setups, including SEO and social sharing, is easy. Moreover, you can create categories and tags, optimize them, and add them to posts.
You can decide to restrict some posts to premium members and make money. Alternatively, you can embed AdSense ad codes inside your post’s content to earn revenue.
In addition, you can schedule your post for a later date and time or even earlier. You can check your blog post history to monitor changes to the content or restore a version.
Furthermore, Wix has several blog post templates in its editor that you can use. It helps if you are a beginner and you want to use a particular structure for your posts. You will get templates for recipes, product reviews, how-to/tips, etc. What’s more, you can create custom blog post templates.
Additionally, you can import blog posts from WordPress or another Wix site easily. The editor also allows you to create custom URLs, set featured images, enable commenting and ratings, and include related posts under the page’s content.
Overall, the editor is quite powerful and straightforward to use, so you will experience a smooth process.
WordPress
WordPress is a popular blogging platform, so undoubtedly, it has a good tool for that purpose. It lets you easily write posts with either the classic editor or Gutenberg.
The editors have a lot of features, including but not limited to creating categories and tags, setting featured images, creating custom URLs, and controlling commenting on your site.
However, naturally, you can only set image alt texts. Other SEO settings like meta descriptions and titles are not possible. It does not have any schema markup data either. Thus, you must install an SEO plugin to handle any setting. The only compromise you can make is using the “Excerpt” feature for the meta descriptions. But it is not a good practice since they don’t do the same thing.
Additionally, if you use Gutenberg, you can embed codes and videos from popular social platforms in your post. This feature, however, is not available when you use the Classic Editor unless you want to edit in HTML.
Conclusion on Choosing Wix or WordPress for Blogging
Unlike WordPress, Wix’s blogging tool is very powerful and relies on no third-party app to function fully. Truly, you have the opportunity to include more blogging features to your site with WP using plugins, but the same goes for Wix using the App Market. So it is a win-win for both tools.
Now, considering the built-in features, Wix has more relevant and useful ones than WordPress.
E-commerce Comparison
This is a WordPress vs Wix duel you should be interested in if you plan to create an eCommerce website. Luckily, both tools provide the feature. So let us find out which one does it better.
WordPress
The CMS is not bad for creating an eCommerce site. In fact, it is one of the best tools out there for it. Even though it does not have any eCommerce solution of its own, you can install many tools that do. Some of those tools include WooCommerce, BigCommerce, etc.
With WooCommerce, you can create any kind of eCommerce site on WordPress. What’s more, most of the features are completely free. Although, for some advanced features, you may have to pay for an extension or theme.
Wix
Wix is also great for creating an online store or eCommerce website. Unlike WordPress, eCommerce features on Wix are built-in. However, some of its features are restricted per plan, so you may have to upgrade to get them.
For the features that are unavailable, you can get third-party tools from the Wix App Market to add them. Some apps are free to install, while others require a subscription.
Moreover, Wix eCommerce Analytics is very powerful and links with other relevant tools like Google Analytics. It is really helpful in monitoring your site’s traffic, inventory, orders, and sales.
Wix vs WordPress: Verdict on Creating an eCommerce Site
Both Wix and WordPress are great eCommerce businesses as they give you access to several tools to make your business flourish.
Somehow, there is no way of telling the difference between the two tools regarding capacity or power. I mean, the only difference between them is that while Wix has its eCommerce features in-built, its adversary runs to a third-party tool, WooCommerce. Aside from that, it is a tie.
On-the-go Site Management
Being able to manage your website on the go is an underrated privilege. Now, I am not talking about being able to use a browser to access a site. I mean getting an application to manage your site without a web browser.
Unfortunately, WordPress does not have a mobile application. In the past, it was very common to use Automattic’s WordPress mobile app to edit sites on the go. But now, the connection is not as simple as before. Linking a WordPress.org site to the WordPress.com mobile app is automatically disabled for new sites because of the security issues associated with the method used. You can, however, re-enable it at the expense of the security of your site. Besides, you need some technical skills for that.
Unlike WordPress, its rival has a mobile application called the Wix Owner app, which is available for Android and iOS devices. This app is like an exact replica of the desktop site because it has most of the features the builder provides. You can write and manage blog posts, monitor sales and inventory, add new products, accept POS payments, chat with members and site visitors in real-time, share posts, etc.
Therefore, Wix wins the on-the-go site management contest against WordPress by and large.
Wix vs WordPress: Pricing Comparison
Another vital area to consider when contemplating between WordPress and Wix is pricing. You should always go for either the one that offers the better value for money or the one that falls within your budget. Now, let’s find out if you should choose Wix or WordPress for your business.
WordPress
The most popular CMS does not have hosting services. Therefore, you have to self-host your site by choosing a third-party hosting provider.
In that light, Hostinger is the number one web host we recommend for your site. It is extremely affordable and offers the best services. You can read our full review of Hostinger for more information about this company and its services.
Now, let’s look at Hostinger pricing. With only $2 per month, you can create a site on a server with 50 GB SSD storage and 100 GB monthly bandwidth. On top of that, you will get unlimited free SSL certificates, weekly backups, managed WP features, free email hosting, and a malware scanner. This plan has no restrictions regarding what you can do with your site. So, you are free to create anything.
Besides, you only need $4/month to get the most powerful shared server on Hostinger that has the best features. You can host up to 100 websites with 200 GB of SSD storage.
Wix
Wix is a closed system, so it has its proprietary hosting service. The cheapest plan, Light, on Wix costs $16 per month. This plan gives you only 2 GB of storage. You will get 30 minutes of video hours, monthly backups, 3000 inodes (the number of files or items you can have on your storage drive regardless of size), and a very restrictive lead-generation and marketing tool.
Despite being this expensive, you cannot use the Light package to create an eCommerce site.
Conclusion on the Pricing Comparison of Both Tools
Based on the above information, it is clear that WordPress far outweighs Wix in the price comparison. But you should note that there are some WordPress hosting providers that are more expensive than Wix.
Despite this, you will have more options and make a choice according to your needs and budget with WordPress. Wix doesn’t give you that kind of luxury.
WordPress Themes vs Wix Templates
Templates or themes are crucial to making the creation of your website as straightforward, fast, and easy as possible. They boost your website’s setup by minimizing how much design or customization you have to do. They make a beginner’s life easier.
Quantity and Quality
WordPress has more themes in its repository than the templates Wix has. In fact, Wix does not have up to half of what its competitor provides. So you will have more choices on WP.
Besides, WP themes are a lot better than Wix templates. So, you will get a better-looking and professional site. Of course, Wix templates are great too. However, most are basic and won’t have some essential features you would enjoy with WP themes.
Changing Templates and Themes
If you get bored of the look or skin of your website and need a change, WordPress’s got you covered. You can switch your website theme anytime without losing much or needing to start your design all over. All your web pages will merely adapt to the new theme you activate for the site. Besides, you can reactivate a previous theme, and your former customizations, provided you didn’t delete the theme, will be restored.
Unfortunately, that is not possible with Wix templates. You cannot change the Wix template you use for your site. The only compromise you can make is to design new layouts for your site or use the section layouts from the editor. Otherwise, you will have to delete your site, choose another template, and start your designs again.
Design Flexibility
Customizing Wix templates is a lot easier than WordPress themes. As a matter of fact, it is almost impossible to customize the latter with the WP Customizer. Moreover, the Block editor is not very powerful or beginner-friendly. Thus, you will have to rely on third-party page builders that are compatible with the theme. Remember that you will have to learn these tools too.
Verdict on Wix vs WordPress Regarding Themes and Templates
The comparison shows that WordPress themes win the battle of quantity, quality, and switchability against Wix templates. Hence, you should choose WordPress if you don’t plan on sticking with a theme or site template for a long time.
Wix vs WordPress: Which One is Better?
Wix is greater than WordPress, especially in simplicity, efficiency and ease of use.
WordPress’s dependence on third-party plugins to provide even the most basic features makes it more complicated to use and manage.
Contrary to that, Wix is more of a complete product with minimal needs for third-party. In actuality, with Wix, you don’t need any third-party tool to do most of the things WordPress can’t handle independently.
That said, if you want to have total control over your site, WordPress is the most appropriate tool. It allows a level of customization that you won’t find anywhere else.
WordPress vs Wix: FAQs
To make this WordPress vs Wix duel as complete as possible, discover our answers to some relevant questions on the subject.
How is Wix Different from WordPress?
There are so many distinctive features between the two site builders. For instance, WordPress is open-source and self-hosted. So, whether you like it or not, it requires a user to have coding or web design knowledge. Without one or both of these, the CMS might be hard to use, and you may have to spend a lot of money and time just to set up your site.
Wix, on the other hand, is a proprietary project and managed hosting. It aims to give beginners the easiest and a powerful site creation tool and unfailingly delivers that. You don’t need prior experience or coding or web design skills to use it.
Is Wix More Expensive than WordPress?
Let’s look at it this way. You can host a WordPress site for as low as $2 per month on Hostinger. Whereas Wix costs at least $16/month for hosting and creating one site. Therefore, Wix is more expensive than WordPress if you won’t need a page builder or a premium theme using WP.
But, if we have to consider some essential features like a good drag-and-drop builder and impressive templates or site layouts, expenses begin to increase on WP. As a result, WordPress could end up being more expensive than Wix.
You can find more information on this subject in our guide detailing the costs of a website.
Is Wix as Good as WordPress?
Of course. Wix is as good as WordPress in a few areas. It is easy to use and has many modern features than make sites look professional and stylish. In fact, Wix surpasses the prowess of WordPress in many ways, and the only advantage the latter has over the former is the availability of many advanced or third-party features through plugins.
However, in our experience, you can get everything you need to build a fully functional site from the Wix App Market. It somehow renders the need for additional plugins unnecessary since your site would have all the features it needs. Therefore, if you have to choose between Wix and WordPress, you will make the right choice by opting for the former.
