If you want to build a website or business for your blog, there are different website builders to choose from. The most popular options are WordPress.com and Wix. Although WordPress is used by 43.2% of all websites, Wix is becoming more common.
Both platforms have distinct features that you need to know before making a choice. To compare WordPress vs. Wix, we’ll look at the functionality, user experience, customization options, and pros and cons of each website building tool to allow you to choose the best one according to your needs.
If you need more information before making a decision, be sure to check out our article on “What is WordPress?”
- Wix requires less technical knowledge compared to WordPress, which offers more flexibility for customization
- WordPress is an open-source content management system, while Wix is a website builder that includes web hosting
- WordPress and Wix have different levels of on-page, off-page, speed and security features, mobile optimization, and customization
- Although Wix has a drag-and-drop interface that makes it easy to use, its customization options are limited
- Before choosing between the two platforms, you need to consider design flexibility, mobile responsiveness, user interaction, and accessibility
- Consider the server location when choosing because it affects the website’s performance
- WordPress.org is a self-hosted solution, which means you will need to find a hosting provider
Choosing the Right Platform for Your Website
Building your blog or website requires a platform that meets your needs. Consider whether the platform is easy to use, offers customization options, is affordable, has security features, and has a level of functionality.
One of the most important factors to consider is what you intend to do with the website. For instance, if you need a website builder that gives you full control over the site, you should go with WordPress.
Let’s look at some of the factors you need to look at before making a decision.
1. Functionality
Website functionality refers to how easy it is to navigate a website, purchase a product or get information. To boost your functionality, the site needs to have an easy-to-understand web design, simple navigation, well-defined CTAs, and quality product descriptions. A more functional website will attract more visitors.
Therefore, you should choose a platform that maintains the functionality of your website. For instance, if you are building an e-commerce site, consider which platform has the best features for an online store that make it easy for customers to shop.
2. User Experience
User experience is an essential part of any successful website design. It ensures that your visitors have a positive experience when they visit your platform. In addition, it also leads to more conversions because users are more likely to buy items from a site that’s easy to navigate.
To improve your user experience, you first need to choose a platform that offers features that make the website functional. This will allow you to optimize speed, add well-designed content and visuals, and build a responsive and mobile-friendly site.
3. SEO and Site Speed
SEO improves your site’s visibility and helps you reach more people. Your website will be more successful if it has features and in-built plugins that allow you to optimize it. Additionally, you need the option to customize your pages for search engines. Your audience will rank higher on the SERPs, in turn leading to more visits.
On the other hand, you also need fast loading times to boost user experience. If your website loads slowly, customers are more likely to abandon it without making any purchase or taking action.
4. Scalability and Flexibility
If you want a platform that allows you to customize your website, you need to choose a tool that will enable you to scale. Flexibility is important because you can control all the aspects of the website.
For instance, WordPress supports personal blogs and online stores; therefore, you can use it if you plan to scale your online business. Flexibility gives you the freedom to design your website according to your needs.
5. Security and Maintenance
Once you start building a website, you need to protect it from malware and cyberattacks. You need to choose a secure platform to protect all your data. Fortunately, these website-building tools come with in-built security features that protect the site against vulnerabilities.
In addition, you also need a site that’s easy to maintain. Choose a platform that allows you to keep your website updated with the latest features and security protections. This ensures that your website is in top-notch condition at all times.
6. Cost and Resources
The cost of building a website varies depending on several factors. According to WebFX, the average cost of building a website ranges from $12,000 to $150,000. These costs can change based on whether you hire a developer or do everything yourself.
Here are the different costs associated with building and maintaining a website:
- Website domain registration
- Web hosting
- SSL certificate
- Design
- Website theme or template
- Extension
- E-commerce functionality
- Apps and integration
- SEO and marketing
- Maintenance
When choosing a website building platform, you must first determine whether you can afford it. The main goal should be to ensure that you stay within the budget. Here are the key things to consider.
- Choose the free plan if you are a beginner
- Confirm the features you get on a free plan
- Pay for the premium plans to get add-ons
- Get the right hosting provider.
SEO WordPress vs. Wix
SEO optimization is essential because it can help your website rank higher on search engines. This will drive more visitors to your site and help you reach more customers. Fortunately, both Wix and WordPress have multiple features and capabilities that are useful for SEO.
- Wix: Wix is ideal for basic SEO and marketing. It offers different features, such as customizable page titles and descriptions, integration with Google Analytics, and the ability to add alt tags to images. However, it’s not as flexible or customizable as WordPress when you need to optimize your website for search engines.
- WordPress: On the other hand, WordPress is popular for SEO because it comes with in-built features and plug-ins that can optimize your website for search engines. You can install WordPress SEO plugins like Yoast SEO to improve your SEO all in one place. WordPress also allows you to customize page titles and descriptions, add alt tags to images, and support structured data.
On-page SEO
Both WordPress and Wix allow you to optimize specific website elements for your website visitors. The on-page SEO features on both platforms include:
- Adding alt tags to images
- Ability to change meta descriptions and page titles
- Generation of sitemaps for easier crawling
- Short and friendly URLs
- Mobile friendly
- Integration with Google Search Console and Google Analytics
However, WordPress is more powerful than Wix because it’s customizable. You can get all the basic SEO features, select an SEO-friendly theme, enable breadcrumbs, customize your permalink structure, and create categories.
Additionally, once you install Yoast SEO, you get an on-page analysis of every post and page on your website. From here, you can add a focus keyword and get some recommendations for improving your SEO.
Off-page SEO
Wix comes with an SEO Wiz tool that you can use to plan and implement strategies to improve off-page SEO on your website. With off-page SEO, the strategies involve using backlinks, social media posts, or guest posts to drive traffic to your website.
If you compare the two platforms, WordPress excels much better than Wix because you have more control. You can control factors like site speed, crawling, and indexing directly impacting your rankings and SEO.
According to a study by Ahrefs, out of more than 6.4 million websites, WordPress websites get about 8.26% organic visits, while Wix websites receive 0.06% organic visits.
WordPress gains more traffic when content is linked from high authority sites. Although Wix can improve your site’s SEO, it’s easier with WordPress. Once you install a dedicated plugin on WordPress, you can manage your SEO and access automatic checklists.
Mobile Optimization
WordPress and Wix are both designed to be mobile-friendly. Therefore, you can easily optimize them for your audience to view them on smartphones and tablets.
WordPress themes are responsive; therefore, they adjust to the design and display well on different screen sizes. Additionally, this tool comes with some mobile plug-ins that you can use to fully customize your website for your audience. If more people can view your site on mobile, they are more likely to interact with your content or purchase items on the go.
On the other hand, Wix also has templates and design elements created to be mobile-friendly. What’s more, you can create a separate mobile version of your website using Wix. It also allows you to hide some elements for mobile devices based on the design of your website.
This mobile responsiveness boosts your visibility and, eventually, rankings on search engines.
Customization Options WordPress vs. Wix
You need a website builder that offers you customization options. Customization allows you to add new functionality or tweak some things when necessary. In addition, you can also access more design options, themes, and templates to develop your site further.
In this section, we’ll compare the available customization options in WordPress and Wix and compare the different features.
WordPress Customization
WordPress has no limits on how much you can customize. It offers multiple design options including.
- Over 200 WordPress themes
- More than 5,000 WordPress third-party themes
- Over 55,000 plugins to enhance your site
To get quality themes, it’s advisable to purchase them for the site itself. Fortunately, some of the in-house WordPress themes are free. However, to get a better aesthetic on the site, it’s better to invest in a premium theme. With WordPress, you have more flexibility because there’s a wider selection of professionally designed templates and themes.
Additionally, the platform has an array of free and premium plug-ins that add functionality to your site. For instance, you can add features like contact forms, SEO, or e-commerce. You are more likely to get updated plug-ins and more support from WordPress because they have a larger developer community.
The disadvantage of WordPress is that it’s more complicated than Wix. It requires a certain level of technical knowledge if you need to customize your site with more options than the provided themes and plugins.
Wix Customization
Although Wix is considered more friendly to use, it’s less flexible when it comes to customization. The platform has a selection of premium and free templates that can be used to provide more design options. Premium templates come with more design capabilities.
Wix has a drag-and-drop editor that makes it easy for users to customize their websites. With this feature, you can move different elements, such as images, text, and media, around the page to customize it without using any coding language.
In addition, the site has a selection of built-in features that add functionalities like e-commerce. You can also use plug-ins and add-ons to add social media integration, online bookings, and contact forms. Although Wix is easy to use when you need to design a professionally-looking website, it has limited flexibility compared to WordPress.
Speed and Security
Before choosing a website platform, you need to consider the level of speed and security. Both WordPress and Wix offer different features, but which is the best? Let’s compare.
WordPress Speed and Security
WordPress’s design is created with security in mind. The platform has built-in features such as password hashing and user authentication. Additionally, you can rely on firewall protection or SSL encryption. Various security plug-ins can be used to protect your site from any malware attacks.
To protect your WordPress site, it’s important to update your plug-ins and themes. This will provide you with the latest security protections and security features. In addition, if you get web hosting services, select a secure host to keep hackers out of your system.
On the other hand, the page speed varies depending on the website’s configuration and hosting provider. Speed optimization is necessary, and it will be affected by factors such as external integrations, plug-ins used, and the number of elements on your page. All these security and speed features make WordPress more flexible. However, you’ll need technical knowledge to keep the security features updated.
Wix Speed and Security
Wix has security measures such as daily malware scans, firewall protection, and SSL encryption to protect your site from any malicious attacks. Since it’s a hosted platform, you won’t have to install your own security measures. Compared to WordPress, it’s simpler and has fewer vulnerabilities because you can’t edit the core software.
It has automatic updates, so the platform doesn’t operate on outdated software. Additionally, a dedicated security team keeps track and responds to all potential threats. However, despite all these benefits, users have limited control over server settings. They can’t adjust these settings to suit the specific website.
Server Location
Server location is essential when looking for web hosting services. If your server is located close to you, you can transfer data much faster. This means your web pages will also load much faster.
With Wix, all the data is stored on the Wix servers; therefore, users can’t transfer it anywhere else. This means users can’t embed or export files or pages created using Wix Editor to an external destination. You have to use third-party tools. But with WordPress, you have control over all your data. You can import, export, and manipulate data on your site.
Because of this, WordPress may perform much faster than Wix because the server’s location makes it easier to access all the data.
User Experience Comparison
As you create a website, you need to consider how easy it will be for your users to navigate. So, how do WordPress and Wix stack up against each other? Let’s examine their differences and similarities.
1. Mobile Responsiveness
According to data by Statista, mobile devices generated about 59.16% of all global website traffic in the fourth quarter of 2022. More users now prefer to use their smartphones and tablets to browse; therefore, your site needs to be responsive.
Both WordPress and Wix have been optimized for mobile viewing. Wix uses a different approach, where all the design elements and templates are created for mobile devices first. Additionally, you can use Wix to create a separate mobile version of your website and hide some elements.
On the other hand, WordPress is also mobile-friendly. Most themes are responsive; therefore, they will adjust and look good on mobile screens. In addition, WordPress offers mobile-specific plug-ins that can be used to optimize the site to boost user experience.
2. Design Flexibility
A flexible design makes it easier to navigate and use a website. This is an advantage for your users because they can shop or find information on your site without much hassle. In terms of design flexibility, Wix is considered more user-friendly. It has pre-designed templates and drag-and-drop features that make it easy to use. This makes it ideal for beginners.
On the other hand, WordPress needs you to have some technical knowledge. Although you can use it without any coding knowledge, you’ll need some experience to customize it with more themes and plug-ins. While Wix allows you to sign up and start using the site right away, you’ll need to take some more steps with WordPress.
3. User Interaction
User interaction refers to how your customers navigate and act on your site. This includes the pages they visit, links they click on, and how staff responds to customer inquiries. User interaction is important because it determines whether visitors interact with your content or leave the website without converting.
If you compare WordPress vs. Wix, they both have been designed to be easy to navigate. The pages load fast and are mobile responsive to ensure users get what they need. Wix provides 24/7 customer support for users to get immediate solutions to any questions. WordPress also provides support options through documentation, FAQs, and support forums.
4. Accessibility
Website accessibility ensures that everyone, regardless of their physical or mental limitations, can access information from your site. Accessible websites come with all elements, including text, visuals, and audio components, to enhance user experience.
Both WordPress and Wix have features that make it possible to add images and visuals that everyone can access. In addition, you can use the plug-ins to download additional features to make the website accessible to everyone.
Conclusion
Both WordPress and Wix can help you build a professional website. However, WordPress is more customizable than Wix if you are looking for more features. On the other hand, Wix does not need any technical knowledge, making it ideal for beginners.
Next Steps: What Now?
- Compare the costs of the top WordPress hosting providers before choosing one.
- Find the Best WordPress Hosting Provider
- What are the other users saying? Here are some Wix reviews.
