WordPress vs. Wix
Individuals and SMBs use website builder solutions to create professional websites without code and run their ecommerce businesses. In a market filled with many different website builders, it can be difficult to determine which is the best for you and your small business.
We’ve created this guide to help you understand the key differences that set WordPress and Wix apart from one another. Below, we discuss each solutions’ pricing, features, usability, and the types of website creators each is best suited for.
All of our recommendations are based upon extensive research, discussions with website creators, and dozens of hours spent hand-testing the leading website builder software platforms. The details of our research process can be found on our website builder category page.
Comparison Summary
WordPress and Wix are two very popular website builder solutions. We rated WordPress 85 out of 100 and Wix 92 out of 100, respectively.
Wix was rated higher than WordPress because it is more robust in terms of features, offers greater website design flexibility, and can support beginner website creators and ecommerce business owners. WordPress was rated lower because its platform can be intimidating to use, and you would need to download different plugins to optimize the platform’s functionality.
This breakdown shows our review criteria and the ratings that WordPress and Wix received for each category.
| Criteria | Analyst Rating | Features | Usability | Pricing | Customer Support |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| WordPress | 85 | 8.5 | 8 | 9 | 8 |
| Wix | 92 | 9 | 10 | 9.5 | 8 |
In terms of pricing, Wix is slightly more affordable than WordPress, and offers a wider range of differently priced website and ecommerce plans. Wix’s most popular website plan costs $23 per month and its most popular ecommerce plan costs $27 per month. WordPress’s most popular website plan costs $14 per month and only offers one ecommerce plan priced at $59 per month.
Both solutions offer standard website builder features – including a drag & drop website builder, a WYSIWYG blog editor, ecommerce tools, SEO optimizations, and traffic and sales analytics. However, Wix includes features that are only available in WordPress through the download of a plugin, like abandoned cart recovery and automatic shipping.
Compared to WordPress, Wix is much easier to use, more feature-rich, and is better for customizing the visual design of your website. In contrast, WordPress is better for intermediate website creators who want more control over their website’s functionality, and know the best WordPress plugins to install.
Here’s a quick way to determine which solution is best for you:
- You have more experience building websites
- You want higher quality traffic and sales analytics
- You want to customize your platform through the installment of plugins
- You want greater design flexibility – i.e. you don’t want your site elements restricted to a grid layout
- You want a solution that is friendly for first-time website builders
- You want stronger native SEO tools – including sitemaps, site verification, and a URL redirect manager
Table of Contents
- Comparison Summary
- WordPress & Wix Price Comparison
- WordPress & Wix Feature Comparison
- WordPress & Wix Top Feature Comparison
- Bottom Line
WordPress & Wix Price Comparison
Overall, Wix is slightly cheaper than WordPress and offers a wider variety of differently priced website and ecommerce plans. WordPress’s most popular website plan costs $14 per month and the platform only offers one ecommerce plan that costs $59 per month. In contrast, most Wix customers pay $23 per month for its website plan, and $27 per month for its ecommerce plan.
WordPress Pricing Details
WordPress’s pricing ranges from $7 to $59 per month. It offers both website and ecommerce plans. You can also save ~40% if you pay for the annual subscription upfront.
| Plan Type | Pricing |
|---|---|
| Personal | $7 per month |
| Premium | $14 per month |
| Business | $33 per month |
| Ecommerce | $59 per month |
Wix Pricing Details
Wix pricing ranges from $14 to over $500 per month. Wix offers website plans, business & ecommerce plans, and enterprise plans at different price points. Here’s an overview of Wix’s plans and pricing:
| Plan Type | Plans & Pricing |
|---|---|
| Website |
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| Business & Ecommerce |
|
| Enterprise | Starts at $500 per month |
WordPress & Wix Feature Comparison
WordPress and Wix both offer the standard features found in most website builder solutions. This includes a website builder, a WYSIWYG blog editor, ecommerce tools, SEO optimizations, and traffic and sales analytics. However, as shown below, there are many features Wix offers that are not available in WordPress.
For a full analysis of each solution’s features, read our WordPress review and Wix review.
| Feature | WordPress | Wix |
|---|---|---|
| Automatic Tax Calculations | Yes | No |
| Email Marketing | No | Yes |
| Abandoned Cart Recovery | No | Yes |
| Automatic Shipping Rate Calculations | No | Yes |
| Social Media Marketing | No | Yes |
| Visitor Engagement Analytics | No | Yes |
| Drag & Drop Website Builder | Yes | Yes |
| WYSIWYG Blog Editor | Yes | Yes |
| SEO Tools | Yes | Yes |
| Mobile App | Yes | Yes |
| Comments | Yes | Yes |
| Displaying Most Recent Posts on the Homepage | Yes | Yes |
| Plugins/ Extensions/ Applications | Yes | Yes |
| Contact Forms | Yes | Yes |
| Coupons | Yes | Yes |
| Traffic Analytics | Yes | Yes |
| Sales Analytics | Yes | Yes |
WordPress & Wix Top Feature Comparison
Below we provide our in-depth analysis of five key features that are included in WordPress and Wix – website builder, WYSIWYG blog editor, ecommerce tools, marketing tools, and analytics. Overall, Wix reigns superior in most of these categories due to ease-of-use, quality, and ability to support beginner and semi-experienced website creators.
Website Builder
WordPress and Wix both offer a drag & drop website builder, but Wix’s is much more flexible and easier to use. Overall, we recommend using Wix’s website builder if you are a beginner website creator and really value the visual aesthetic of your website.
An advantage of Wix’s website builder is that it includes grid lines that let you arrange your site elements symmetrically on screen. Wix also lets you design pages specifically for mobile and desktop.
A disadvantage of WordPress’s drag & drop builder is that the arrangement of your site elements are restricted to a grid layout. This means you have less control over how your elements are arranged on screen, which ultimately limits your design.
WYSIWYG Blog Editor
WordPress and Wix offer WYSIWYG blog editors, which let you edit your content as it will appear when published. Overall, Wix’s WYSIWYG blog editor is more user-friendly and better for SEO.
WordPress and Wix let you add different forms of multimedia to your blog posts. You can also tag your blog posts through both platforms, which help search engines better understand your content and readers locate specific content on your website. Wix’s blog editor, as shown above, also lets you optimize your posts for SEO by editing each post’s URL slug, title, and description.
Ecommerce Tools
Besides website building, you can also use WordPress and Wix to run an ecommerce business. They both include tools that help manage your inventory, orders, and calculate tax and shipping rates. Overall, Wix’s ecommerce tools are easier to use and better for beginner ecommerce business owners.
Advantages of Wix for ecommerce include:
- An in-platform abandoned cart recovery feature
- Automatic shipping rates for USPS
- Information icons that define certain shipping terms that might be confusing for first time ecommerce business managers – for example, handling fees
Marketing Tools
WordPress and Wix offer tools that let you market your website and ecommerce business once they are published and live. Overall, Wix offers superior in-platform SEO optimization, emailing marketing, and social media marketing tools.
These features are technically available in WordPress, but you would need to download and install certain plugins. We’ve listed popular plugins in each category below:
| Marketing Tool | Plugin |
|---|---|
| SEO |
|
| Email Marketing |
|
| Social Media Marketing |
|
Wix’s SEO Optimization Tools
SEO is one of the most important factors to consider when creating your website. This is because the search channel is the largest traffic driver for most websites. Especially when compared to WordPress, Wix offers a wide variety of tools that help optimize your pages for SEO. Below we describe them and why they are important for SEO:
| Tool | Description |
|---|---|
| Sitemaps | These help search engines find the most important pages of your site. |
| Robots.txt File Editor | You can edit this file to tell search engines which pages of your site to crawl. |
| Site Verification | You can add meta tags from the search engines below to verify and claim ownership of your site. |
| URL Redirect Manager | This feature lets you send site visitors and search engines from an old URL to a new URL. |
| SEO Patterns | With this you can edit your site's default SEO settings here and they'll automatically update across your site. |
Wix’s Email Marketing Tool
Email marketing is a powerful marketing channel that you can leverage to connect with your audience. Wix lets you build basic email campaigns that can encourage visitors to consistently visit and interact with your website.
You can design an email campaign from scratch or use one of Wix’s templates. Wix also lets you insert different kinds of multimedia into your emails, including images, text, buttons, social media links, and videos.
Wix’s Social Media Marketing Tool
Using social media is one of the best ways to connect with your audience and increase brand awareness. Wix offers an in-platform social media marketing tool that lets you create still and video posts, which you can share on platforms like Facebook and Instagram.
For still posts, Wix lets you include images, different color layouts, text, and shapes. For videos, Wix lets you upload images and your own videos, choose a layout, and include text and your business information.
Analytics
WordPress and Wix both include tools that let you monitor website and ecommerce performance in terms of traffic and sales. Overall, WordPress’s traffic and sales analytics are more advanced because they provide more data points.
Traffic
Both WordPress and Wix let you view your traffic over time, including visitor count, top referers, and traffic by location. However, WordPress gives you additional data – for example how many times your videos have been played, most popular search terms, and which pages get the most clicks.
Sales
If you run an ecommerce business through WordPress or Wix, both offer dashboards that display your sales information. Both platforms let you view your total sales, number of orders, and average order value.
However, WordPress also lets you view the percentage change from previous days, months, and years for all data points listed previously. You can also view trends for the number of products purchased, coupons used, and refunds given.
Bottom Line
Overall, Wix is more user-friendly, robust, and is better at supporting beginner website creators and ecommerce business owners. It’s also a good fit for those who prefer greater design flexibility in their website builder, and do not have coding experience.
WordPress is better for intermediate website creators who want the most control over their website’s functionality. Since the WordPress platform itself does not come with many features, WordPress customers must research and implement the best plugins in order to get the most out of the platform.
If you’re interested, visit WordPress or Wix today to get started.