Hi everyone, hope you are doing well.
Before we get into the comparison, let’s talk about what WordPress and Wix are.
WordPress and Wix are two website builders. Website builders are tools that allow the construction of websites without manual code editing.
Choosing what website builder to use when building your own website can be very difficult when there are tons of options available on the market.
When you’re building your website, you need to be sure that you’ve selected the best platform to build with. The last thing you want to do is be surprised that the platform you chose does not do what you want it to.
In this article, we will do an unbiased assessment of WordPress.org and Wix to decide which platform is better for you.
WordPress vs. Wix: Which is better for building Website?
WordPress
WordPress is an open source software system used by millions of people around the world to create beautiful websites and blogs. It is completely customizable by the use of themes and plugins. Because it’s an open source system, anyone can develop WordPress themes and plugins and sell them.
WordPress is not only for creating a blog so that you can have a digital diary attached to your vanity URL; it has evolved into a full-fledged content management system used by individuals and enterprises alike.
The popularity of WordPress is well recorded:
As of April 2016, WordPress was used by more than 26.4% of the top 10 million websites.
WordPress is the most popular blogging system in use on the web- more than 60 million websites.
Wix
Wix.com is a basically cloud-based web development platform that allows users to create HTML5 websites as well as mobile sites through the use of their online drag and drop tools.
Users may add functionalities such as social plugins, e-commerce stores, contact forms, e-mail marketing, and community forums to their websites using a variety of either Wix-developed or third-party applications.
Wix has over 1,040,000 sites in use on the web. It requires no development skills and no coding for users to create a beautiful, professional, and functional web presence.
Here you can see the comparison of WordPress vs. Wix and interest of users over time (Google Trends):
This comparison is categorized into five simple categories:
1. Pricing
WordPress
WordPress is an open source software system which means that the original source code of WordPress is freely available and may be redistributed and modified. You don’t need to pay for WordPress but you need to invest a small amount on buying hosting for WordPress & domain name. Here is a good resource that shares the investment require to create a WordPress site.
Translation:
You don’t have to pay to use WordPress.
Wix
Wix is built on a freemium business model, earning its revenues through premium upgrades.
Users must purchase premium packages in order to connect their sites to their own domains, remove Wix ads, add e-commerce capabilities, buy extra data storage and bandwidth, and add other functionalities.
If you are using Wix’s free website builder, it includes advertisement logos on the side and at the bottom of the website after you publish.
All free website builders have their own advertisement credits (understandable since they’re providing services for free), but Wix’s are really quite prominent. To remove the advertisements, you will need to upgrade to at least their “Combo” premium package.
2. Ease of use
WordPress
The standard configuration contains the basics, but you also can extend WordPress with a lot of interesting and powerful plugins. Because WordPress is a flexible platform, it’s easy to suit your needs.
To use WordPress to its full extent and make use of all of its features, you have to familiarize yourself with different sections like menus, visual post editor, CSS, etc. This means that WordPress requires a learning curve for beginners.
But there are plenty of themes and plugins to help.
Wix
Wix Customizer
Wix offers a great and very easy to use drag and drop website builder.
You can insert, edit, or delete content pretty much anywhere on the website without any limitations in a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) interface.
In this case, Wix is easier to use than WordPress for any non-coder or person without any technical knowledge.
3. Design and Development
WordPress
WordPress Plugin Directory
WordPress is a powerful website software framework that can help you power a simple blog and can be customized to power much more complex websites.
WordPress’s design, for the most part, is based on what WordPress theme you are using; different plugins also contribute to the design of the website. So using a great WordPress theme and great plugins are really important in the final product of a website.
WordPress has a large community of developers, so there’s always new themes and plugins making it easy for everyone to build great websites.
Wix
Wix’s website building platform comes with great HTML5 capabilities, 500+ designer made templates, hosting, innovative apps, and tons of free features.
All Wix designs are very responsive and written in HTML5. Using the built-in tools, you can easily customize your website design, change the layout, and rearrange items as you see fit.
One of the main drawbacks of Wix is that once you have selected the template, you cannot change it. You can customize and modify it, but you cannot change or switch to a different template.
4. Community Support
WordPress
WordPress Support Forum
The WordPress Codex is one of the largest and best resources available for WordPress. It is essentially an online manual for WordPress users.
The WordPress Support Forum is another great resource. This support forum is powered by bbPress.
You can visit the support forum here at the official URL:
https://wordpress.org/suppport/
WordPress has an active chat room on IRC (Internet Relay Chat) & Slack. To join the chat room, you will need to install an IRC client on your computer.
These IRC chat rooms are a great resource for getting real-time help. Many WordPress experts, including myself, hang out in these rooms regularly and love to help out other WordPress enthusiasts. This is a great place to expand your knowledge of WordPress. For joining WordPress slack group, follow this link.
Wix
Wix has an awesome support center with a 24/7 support system.
The official support URL for Wix is:
https://www.wix.com/support/
This is a great place to get all of your queries answered and resolved.
Wix also has a chat system for real-time help.
You can also contact the Wix support team by phone for your higher level queries.
5. Customization
WordPress
WordPress Theme Customizer
WordPress consists of a large variety of beautiful, highly customizable themes and plugins so that you can customize your own website.
Both free and premium themes (the premium themes comes with more features and better support) can be found on various theme developer and plugin developer websites as well as on the official WordPress website.
You can easily customize any WordPress theme with the help of a theme customizer which is based on a WYSIWYG interface.
Wix
There is a wide range of templates available in Wix for every website you can possibly make. You can easily customize any template by just dragging and dropping the component feature.
You can readily see your results while editing right in front of your eyes.
WordPress vs. Wix- Which one to use?
If you are a non-technical person and you want to build your website quickly, then you can start with Wix.
But if you are ready to spend some time learning the basic WordPress features and you want more control over your website along with the availability to add a lot of features, then WordPress is the right choice for you. For launching a blog, WordPress is indeed the best option. Here is a guide that shows how to launch your WordPress blog in next 15 minutes.
If you do spend some time learning WordPress, you will bear a much better fruit in the long run. I like to say that WordPress is both free and priceless at the same time.
What are your opinions on WordPress vs. Wix? Which one do you use and why? Let me know in the comments!
Did you like this comparison of WordPress and Wix? Share it with your friends on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus!
Subscribe on Youtube
WordPress vs. Wix – Which is Better For Your Next Website? is a post from ShoutMeLoud - Shouters Who Inspires