Wix vs WordPress: Choosing the Right Platform

Give me more comparisons, they said, and I obliged.

Well, here comes yet another comparison. This time it is Wix vs WordPress.

Until now, I have done many comparisons, before I continue, let’s list them out below:

WordPress needs no introduction. It is the world’s most used CMS, perfect for blogging and other purposes such as opening an eCommerce website or a portfolio website. It has an excellent community and open source.

Wix, on the other hand, is a popular free website builder that resembles Weebly. It is a popular cloud-based platform that offers users to create a website free of cost(with premium services) and is quite handy for many small scale business out there. It offers a drag and drop tool and offers free templates for the users.

With the introduction over, we are going to start the battle between Wix and WordPress? Are you ready? Let’s get started.

Wix vs WordPress

1. Learning Curve Or Ease of Use

Choosing a platform for your website development starts from a user experience. In many of the earlier comparison, I stressed on how ease of use can be different for different users.

For Wix:

Wix offers a drag and drop builder and offers a visual approach to building website. This is the easiest way you can build a website, and yes you can publish a site in a matter of minutes. There are tons of tutorials to go through and you will find building website very easy with Wix.

For example, you can add a background, edit website text, create a homepage all through using the drag and drop builder.

For WordPress:

WordPress is often regarded as the most easiest CMS for beginners, but it do carry a slight learning curve with it. And, yes it can take some time for the newbie to catch the platform and not everyone has the time to go through all the technicalities.

WordPress does offer a visual approach, but there are some themes that only does it. Not all themes are visually editable and that’s why it is safe to say that WordPress drag and drop feature comes at a cost.

Wix Vs. WordPress Summary: Depending on what you prefer, Wix is always a faster and easier way to get started with website building. If you are ready for some experimentation, then you can easily choose WordPress over Wix.

2. Templates and Themes

The design element comes first, so let’s see what the both platforms have stored for us.

For Wix:

Wix offers more than 500+ HTML5 templates for creating your website. The idea of creating the website from pre-defined templates is not new and Wix do use it its advantage. You can choose any of the templates and get started with website building.

The drawback here is that you cannot edit the HTML5, CSS under the hood, and eventually lose any customization feature. Also, once you have chosen your template, you can not change to any other template and that’s outrageous!

For WordPress:

WordPress is awesome in this respect. It offers free and paid themes. It has more than 3000 themes in the WordPress directory and you can buy themes from the marketplace. The quality of the theme ranges according to its developers. Remember, it is a community and anyone can contribute.

Customization is great and you can choose theme whenever you like.

Wix Vs WordPress Summary: WordPress is a better choice if you are looking for more choices in theme selection compared to Wix.

3. Apps and Plugins

Functionality determines how your website will behave. For functionality purposes, Wix offers apps. On the other hand, WordPress offer Plugins. Let’s go in-depth what each platform has to offer.

For Wix:

With 223 apps in the marketplace, Wix offers decent functionality. There is both free and paid version of apps and you can grab anyone of them. The paid apps range from $3 to $50 per month — yes monthly charges on apps.

With diverse functionality, you can find anything for your need. But, if you are looking for advanced functionality, then Wix has a lot to disappoint.

For WordPress:

WordPress is quite awesome in this respect. It offers 38,000+ plugins for enhanced functionality of your website. But, the number of the plugins doesn’t signify the quality of the plugin.

But it does offer quality plugins for a decent numbers of functionality. WordPress plugin ecosystem also offers free and paid plugins.

Wix Vs. WordPress Summary: Wix has a lot to improve in this respect. WordPress offers a lot of plugins and you can always find a free alternative to premium plugins.

4. Support

For Wix:

Wix support is more streamlined compared to WordPress. You will get 24/7 hours support and the reason for the awesome support is centralized control of the company. They control themes, apps and other features of the platform and hence provide better and accurate support.

For WordPress:

WordPress, on the other hand, offers a bigger community. This doesn’t mean that they are not streamlined — some plugin or theme developer do offer excellent service, but you might need to struggle more to find information and support from the community.

There are also paid maintenance services you can use that will cost you anything from $100 to $200 per year.

Wix Vs WordPress Summary: Both have their own advantage. Wix offers more streamlined support compared to WordPress, but that doesn’t mean that WordPress support is worse.

5. Price

For Wix:

Wix offers flexible plans for users. The free plan comes with ads, but it also offers advanced plans for entrepreneurs and freelancers.

The plan ranges from $4 to $25 per month.

If you are looking for an unlimited plan, then you can grab it for $12.42 per month only. It offers tons of feature and you can check the product page for more information.

For WordPress:

WordPress is open source and free, but it also have some cost associated with it. The most basic cost is the hosting cost. There are also other costs that are associated with WordPress website development and maintenance.

If you are trying to build an authority website, then it can cost you a good amount of money. The range of investment can be from $100 to $1000+ per year.

Wix Vs WordPress Summary: Wix seems to be much cheaper when compared to WordPress on the grand scale.

Final Verdict: Which one to choose?

If you are looking for creating a small website, I would always recommend Wix over WordPress. Also, if you are new to the internet and wants to get started as quickly as possible, Wix is the right choice.

For all other requirement, WordPress can really solve your problem. It is open source, free, flexible and customizable.

So, which platform are you choosing for your next website project?

Comment below and let us know. Also, share the article as much as you can!

Editorial Staff
mail@85ideas.com

Editorial Staff at 85ideas is a team of WordPress experts led by Brian Harris. Here to share amazing tuts, guides and collections.

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