OK before I start I just want to put the usual disclaimers in - this isn’t an invitation for a bun fight, I respect your right to prefer another platform, I’m not going to be convinced otherwise and I’m entitled to my opinion!
Can you tell I’ve pissed people off with this before?
I’m always being asked what is better WordPress or Wix.
I wanted to wait to answer this as I don’t design often in WP anymore and wanted to come at this in a place of balance.
So as you can probably tell I my preference is for Wix over WordPress for a number of reasons:-
Reasons I prefer Wix over Wordpress
It’s just incredibly easy in Wix for my clients to be able to update their own website themselves, negating the need for ongoing monthly maintenance contracts.
The software updates itself in the background so you don’t manually have to update anything (and this includes plug-ins).
It almost never goes down.
Because it is an all in one package it’s core features and plug-ins work seamlessly together there’s no clashes between them all.
The next Wix 2.0 editor is a bit buggy still but makes it so easy for people to edit their own websites. It was always easy now even a toddler would be able to use the editor to make changes.
The mobile editor in Wix has come a long way and when I was designing in WP every time I got a section looking great, as soon as I tried to get it looking OK on mobile it threw everything all over the place and the work around that I was sent by DIVI was horrifically long and complicated.
However, it’s not all sunshine and flowers with Wix, so to give balance this is some reasons why WordPress is better than Wix.
Reasons why Wordpress is better than Wix
Divi and Elementor do take away a lot of the pain of designing in WP, they aren’t ideal solutions and in many instances I’ve had people coming to me saying they can’t edit their own websites even now.
WordPress does now automatically update but you still need to make sure the plug-ins work.
Wix can be a bit too basic, and some of their plug-ins are really pants - for example, their hotels module and their bookings calendar just don’t work as you’d expect them too. Most of the apps are very basic. They are fine if you don’t have complex needs but if you do then it’s likely I’ll say Wix isn’t for you.
Ecommerce again is basic, it is fine if you sell standard products with a few options (such as clothes) but it isn’t great if you need greater stock control or complex variables.
There’s also a lot of talk about SEO on Wix vs WordPress - Yoast for WP is good, the paid version is better. I do have a lot of sites that rank on page one for their search terms but as with everything else it is a lot more complex than this post could allow me to go in to. What I will say is that Wix doesn’t perform as well as it could on mobile. Wix are very aware of it and working with partners like me to see what can be done to improve this.
It was just a nightmare to manage.
Originally I moved all my clients off WordPress about 7 years ago because I was sick of downtime. I was royally sick of denial of services attacks, totally and utterly hated having to keep umpteen sites updated - not just the WP but all the plug-ins as well - and often a plug-in would clash with another plug in or wasn’t compatible to the newer version of WP etc. It was just a nightmare to manage. The problem is that because it is open source it means that anyone can build a plug-in or a theme and not all are equal in terms of quality.
Quite often there are clashes between two plug-ins that were built by different people etc. With Wix because the Wix plug-ins are built in-house that doesn’t happen and no app makes it into the app market without being thoroughly tested to make sure it’s not a security risk and it isn’t going to break something else so there’s a lot of peace of mind in that.
For the reasons above I still think for most of my clients that Wix is a better option, it is a cheaper option for sure especially when you think that you don’t need to worry about paying someone monthly for maintenance. Wix also includes a security certificate which a lot of hosts charge for.
In terms of cost, it is swings and roundabouts there’s really not much in it. Unless you have a crazy cheap hosting but then the security issues come into play.
I didn’t hate it that much that I wouldn’t use it again
I didn’t however totally hate my WP experience recently, apart from the mobile resizing issues the build was pretty easy and the design experience between Wix and Divi wasn’t too dissimilar - still building in blocks but the way you get the blocks to do things is different - again WP isn’t as easy to manipulate as Wix but I didn’t hate it that much that I wouldn’t use it again. In fact I purchased a copy of Divi so that I can build in WP again!
Feel free to reach out with any questions but again, this is my opinion and my experience and I am not going to get into a debate with WP users, it is very much each to their own.
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