How Easy is It to Use Wix
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In this Wix review, we take a look at one of the most web's most popular website builders. We've tested its interface, templates, ecommerce features and marketing tools in depth, and in this post we share all the key pros and cons of the platform.
So, read on to find out if Wix is the right fit for your project — or whether you'd be better off with an alternative.
Let's dive in with a key question…
What is Wix?
Wix is a website building tool that aims to let people without coding skills create their own website or online store.
It's a hosted solution, which means that it runs on its own servers ('in the cloud'). So, there's no software for you to install anywhere, and you don't have to buy any hosting.
So as long as you have a web browser and access to the internet, you can build, maintain and promote a Wix website.
Userbase / Wix statistics
Wix is one of the more established website builder companies — it was founded in Israel in 2006 and now has 5,000 employees. And it has a very big userbase — internet statistics company Builtwith.com estimates that it currently powers 7.8 million websites.
This makes it a bigger operation than many competing platforms including Squarespace, Jimdo and Weebly — all of which have considerably smaller userbases.
Wix's large size matters because it reduces the risk of the organisation folding, taking your website with it; it also means you can expect regular feature updates.
Core functionality
A Wix website can be used for:
- publishing text, image and video content
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blogging
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building an online store
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appointment booking
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collecting contact details
and more.
However, you will need to pay to use some of these features — which brings us on to Wix pricing.
Let's take a look at that.
Wix pricing
Is Wix free?
There is is a free version of the Wix website builder available that allows you to create a simple site. This is a good way to try the platform out, but it…
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is ad-supported (and the ads are quite noticeable)
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doesn't let you build an online store
- doesn't let you use Google Analytics to access your web stats
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prevents you from connecting a domain name to your website.
If you need a website to accompany a 50th birthday party, wedding, or small community garage sale, the free plan is totally fine — however, due to lack of features, and the in-your-face Wix ads, it's not really an option for professional users.
On the plus side though, the Wix free plan allows you to use all 800+ of the Wix templates, and includes hosting.
It also lets you use all of the images, clip art and icons provided by Wix, and add apps from the Wix app market (more on this later).
You get 500MB of storage, and 500MB bandwidth on the free plan. These limits should be fine for a small website with low traffic. And you can use the free plan without needing to provide any credit card details.
You can access the free Wix plan via this link.
Wix premium plans
Moving onto Wix's paid-for plans, the fees for these vary a bit by country, but they are usually named and priced in fairly similar ways.
In the USA there areeight paid-for plans available, divided into three categories: 'Website,' 'Business and Ecommerce' and 'Enterprise.'
Website plans
- Combo — $16 per month
- Unlimited — $22 per month
- Pro — $27 per month
- VIP — $45 per month
Business and Ecommerce plans
- Business Basic — $27 per month
- Business Unlimited — $32 per month
- Business VIP — $59 per month
Enterprise plans
- Wix Enterprise (from $500 per month)
All these plans let you connect a custom domain name to your Wix site (yoursitename.com etc.), make use of unlimited bandwidth and importantly, don't feature any Wix advertising.
Note: Wix advertises the above monthly fees on its website, but these prices only apply if you pay on an annual basis.
More expensive fees apply if you pay month-to-month, but on the plus side, paying upfront for 2 or 3 years' service brings very generous discounts.
Additionally, after starting a free trial, you will typically receive email offers from Wix containing very generous discounts (these can go as high as 50%).
The key differences to watch out for on the Wix premium plans are:
- Ecommerce— selling features are only available on the business, ecommerce and enterprise plans.
- Storage (text, video, images etc.) — this varies according to plan; the more you pay, the more you get.
- Access to certain Wix apps— the more expensive plans include a 'site booster' app which allows you to submit your site to directories; an events calendar app; and a logo-making app.
- Video hours— the more you pay, the more video content you can upload to, and sell from, your Wix website.
- Support — premium support is only available if you are on a 'VIP,' 'Business VIP' or 'Enterprise' plan.
- Domain names — if you pay annually for a Wix subscription, you can avail of a year's free custom domain name registration (yoursitename.com etc.).
- Ad vouchers — you can avail of $600 in ad vouchers (for Google and Bing's pay-per-click advertising services) on the 'Unlimited' plan or higher.
We'll dig into these differences in more detail as the review goes on.
A quick note about 'Wix Enterprise': this Wix plan is geared towards corporate users, offering advanced security features, more personalized support and access to web design consultants.
Most users won't really need to consider the 'Enterprise' plan, but if you are interested in it, you'll need to request a call with Wix to negotiate pricing for it.
What are Wix's 'video hours'?
Wix's 'video hours' feature lets you upload video content to your site, which you can then sell or rent. It's potentially useful for filmmakers, musicians or online course sellers who want to charge for access to their video content.
It's also quite an unusual feature in the website builder market, because lots of competing platforms typically only allow you toembed videos from Youtube, Vimeo etc. (rather than upload them).
Now, we've discussed how much Wix costs to use — but how do websites built with the platform actually look?
Let's find out.
Wix templates
Wix gives you a choice of over 800 templates. This is considerably more than key competitor Squarespace, which offers around 140; and all of the Wix templates are free, which is not the case with competing online store builders like Shopify and BigCommerce.
The templates look professional and are visually appealing — so, as long as you populate them carefully, Wix websites certainly don't have to look like a 'do-it-yourself' creation.
The templates also make good use of spacing and typefaces to create impact, and are particularly effective when used with high-quality photographs or video backgrounds.
And speaking of photography, Wix also provides a large library of professionally shot images, icons and vector art that you can use for free. If you're not happy with those, you can also buy Shutterstock images and videos directly from Wix, at discounted rates.
The templates are organised into intuitive categories, which means you should be able to find a template which meets your needs fairly easily.
And the large number of templates means you can get very specific: for example, in the online stores category, there are lots of sub-categories available — fashion, food, jewellery, electronics etc. The 'Music' templates have different sub-categories available for singers, bands and DJs, producers and more.
Once you pick your template, you'll find that the Wix website builder provides good-quality sample text, pictures, and layouts. These get you started, give you a sanity check about what content to include on your website, and help avoid writer's block.
However, you have to tread very carefully when selecting a Wix template because after you've picked one, you can't switch to another one.
Although you'll be able to change the color scheme and typefaces of your Wix template, if you want to change your design in more radical ways using a different template, it's a case of having to rebuild your entire website.
Many of Wix's competitors are much more flexible — Jimdo, for example, allows you to switch templates easily without losing any content, and the same goes for Shopify and BigCommerce.
Content management, ease of use and interface
Wix offers three main options for building websites:
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Wix Artificial Design Intelligence (ADI)
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Wix Editor
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'Velo by Wix'
(formerly 'Corvid')
(There's also a new version of Wix which has recently been released — 'Editor X.' I'll discuss this in more depth shortly).
When you start using Wix, you are given the option to choose either an 'Editor' site (the first option in the screenshot below) or an 'ADI' one (second).
Let's take a look at these different versions of Wix, starting with ADI.
Wix Artificial Design Intelligence (ADI)
The aim of Wix ADI is to make it easy to build a website, even if you hate computers and have no IT skills at all.
Wix ADI creates your website by asking you some basic questions and collecting whatever information is available from an online search of your business.
Editing is done via a drag and drop user interface that automatically lays out the pages for you (see video below for a demonstration). For absolute web design novices, who just need something simple, it's probably the best version of Wix to use.
A nice feature of Wix ADI is that you can convert sites created with it to Wix Editor format at a later stage — meaning that if you outgrow its capabilities, you can switch to one of the more 'grown-up' versions of Wix.
Wix Editor
Wix Editor is the 'standard' version of Wix, and offers you a lot more control over the design and features of your website than ADI. It's roughly equivalent in complexity to using Microsoft Word to lay out a newsletter — so fairly easy to use.
Velo by Wix
'Velo by Wix' (formerly known as 'Corvid by Wix') is the developer's version of Wix. It provides access to the Wix code, databases and APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) that let developers create more bespoke Wix websites and custom apps.
Is Wix really as mobile-friendly as it claims?
More and more internet users are accessing the web via smartphones, in some cases exclusively. This means mobile-friendliness is essential for your website.
Wix claims your website will "look amazing on every screen with a mobile-friendly version of your website", and makes much of your ability to customise the mobile view of your website.
However, the Wix CMS uses something called absolute positioning, which means web elements are positioned by pixel rather than relative to the user's screen.
Absolute positioning gives you more flexibility in positioning elements (text, images, forms and so on) — but means that your website will not adapt as well to different screen sizes.
Key competitors like Shopify or Squarespace use responsive design, meaning that page elements are positioned relative to the screen of the viewing device, and your site design will automatically adjust so that it displays nicely on any device it's being viewed on.
Google recommends responsive design too, stating that sites not using this approach may not perform as well as they could in search results.
The use of absolute positioning means that although Wix claims to provide some responsive elements, you can't build a completely responsive website with Wix.
In practice, this means that you have to pay a LOT of attention to how you position the elements of your website, to avoid any problems with how it displays across various devices.
A key alternative to Wix: Squarespace
It's worth focusing a moment on another key alternative to Wix — Squarespace.
Like Wix, it is a hosted solution, so it's easy to set up and comes with a lot of built-in features, like email marketing and ecommerce (and includes comprehensive support).
Unlike Wix, however, Squarespace allows you to create fully responsive sites, and its interface is arguably easier to use.
You can learn more about Squarespace and try it for free here.
That said, Wix does make it easy to hide, resize, and move elements on mobile devices (in ways that some competing products don't) and provides a 'mobile view' for you to do this. It also makes a reasonably good job of creating a mobile draft of your site automatically.
So in most cases you should be able to create a website that displays consistently well on mobile devices using Wix.
(And some users will appreciate the fine-grain control over how their site appears on a mobile device).
However, websites using absolute positioning will inevitably be a bit less mobile-friendly than a website built using responsive design — and depending on how you're laying out your content, can be more time-consuming to set up.
Wix 'Editor X' — a way to build responsive websites using Wix?
Wix recently released a new edition of their platform, called 'Editor X.' Importantly, this does allow you to build responsive websites.
This is currently aimed at agencies and developers, but hopefully some of the mobile-friendly functionality it provides will make its way into the other versions of Wix soon.
Accessing website code / exporting your website
Wix doesn't allow you to access the code for your website, change or access the CSS files, or export your website to another provider.
A workaround for exporting your site is possible by copying and pasting the content from it into another platform — fine for small to medium sites, but not so good for large ones.
You can export products however — up to 5,000 of them — so long as they are physical ones.
(More on products and ecommerce shortly!).
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Multilingual capability
If you're hoping to create a site in lots of different languages, Wix may work well for you. It gives you dedicated tools to create versions of your website in multiple languages (so long as you are using Wix Editor — Wix ADI doesn't support translations).
To build a multilingual website in Wix, you need to add the appropriately-named (and free) 'Wix Multilingual' app to your site. Once you've done that, you can create different language versions of your website — over 180 of them — via manual translations or automatically using the Google Translate service.
One thing to be aware of however is thatnot all Wix apps support translation — so if you rely on a lot of them you may find that certain bits of your site appear in the wrong language. Examples of apps whose content can't be translated include Wix Bookings, Wix Forum, Wix Hotels, Wix Members Area, Wix Restaurants and Wix Music Player.
But overall, Wix offers a reasonably good (and cost-effective) way to present your site content in lots of different languages.
Blogging with Wix
Publishing quality blog posts is a key way to drive traffic to (and sales from) your website.
So how does Wix stand up on this front?
Well, Wix's built-in blogging tool isn't bad by comparison to some of its competitors — it provides autosave and version history features, for example, which not all similar platforms do; and it lets you make use of both categories and tags.
However, Wix doesn't let you export your blog posts terribly easily (there's no dedicated export option and you may end up having to resort to a workaround involving RSS feeds to get your blog content out of the platform).
In essence, Wix is fine for basic blogging — but if I was looking for a platform to start a professional blog on, I'd look elsewhere (and most probably in the direction of WordPress).
Now, so far in this Wix review we've mainly explored visuals and content management.
But what about selling stuff?
Ecommerce in Wix
You will need to be on a Wix Business Basic plan ($27 per month) or higher to sell products on your Wix site.
If you are, you'll find that the platform does a good job of making ecommerce accessible and 'non-scary' for entrepreneurs trying online selling for the first time.
Getting started is quick and straightforward: just enter your product data, set up payment options, and off you go.
Core ecommerce functionality in Wix
Wix provides a reasonably good range of ecommerce features for small to medium-sized businesses.
The platform lets you:
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sell an unlimited number of products (digital or physical)
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allow users to filter and sort your products
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manage your store from your phone, using the 'Wix Owner' mobile app
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enter tracking information to your store orders
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use an abandoned cart saver tool (this allows you to automatically contact people who leave your site mid-purchase — usually with a discount code or other incentive to complete their transaction)
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facilitate dropshipping (using apps like Modalyst, Spocket and Syncee)
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provide customers with real time shipping calculations (Brazil and the U.S. only)
- track profit margins accurately by letting you add 'cost of goods' information to each product.
Not all these features are available on the cheapest Wix ecommerce plan ('Business Basic') however — and you'll probably need to upgrade to a 'Business Unlimited' or 'Business VIP' plan to make the most of them.
Let's zoom in on a few key ecommerce features:
Selling physical products
Wix lets you sell an unlimited number of physical products; these can come in 6 options (size, color, material, etc.) and in up to 1,000 variants.
(Variants are combinations of product options — a large blue suede shoe would be one variant, a small red leather shoe would be another etc.)
These limits compare positively against competing solutions — Shopify, for example, limits you to just 3 product options and 100 product variants; Squarespace limits you to 6 product options and 250 variants.
You can import 5,000 products at a time via CSV with Wix, up to a total of 50,000 products.
Selling digital products
Wix makes it particularly easy to sell digital products — a complete novice can build a website and start selling digital goods in an hour or so.
The platform provides built-in functionality for your customers to download their products, and sends automated emails to acknowledge purchases.
And, as discussed above, Wix is a useful tool for selling or renting video content.
The file limit for (zipped) digital files is 1GB, which stacks up reasonably well against the limits imposed by Squarespace and BigCommerce (whose limits are 300MB and 512MB respectively), but it's not as generous on this front as Shopify, which lets you sell files of up to 5GB in size.
You should note however that you can't export digital goods from a Wix store or use product options and variants when selling them. You can't bulk import them either.
Tax and shipping
Wix has reasonably flexible tax and shipping options. You can set up tax on a per-region basis, which you may need to do in order to adhere to different tax rules in US states and Canadian provinces; or support VAT MOSS (VAT Mini One Stop Shop) when selling digital goods to European customers.
Automated tax calculations are now available in Wix too, so long as you're on a Business Unlimited plan or higher. However, rather ungenerous limits apply: 100 transactions on 'Business Unlimited' and 500 on 'Business VIP.' This may cause you problems if you have a high number of monthly sales.
You can also set shipping rates per region, and configure rules to calculate shipping based on weight or price, as well as flat rate and store pickup.
Point of sale (POS) features
Point of Sale lets you use Wix to sell not just online but in physical locations too, and sync your inventory as you do so (i.e., if you sell a product in a physical location, your inventory levels will be updated accordingly in the back end of your online store).
There are three main ways to use POS in Wix.
If you're based in the US, you can use the 'Wix Owner' mobile app in conjunction with a card reader to accept payment for your products in physical locations.
However, this option brings with it some significant limitations – the 'Wix Owner' app doesn't let you:
- offer refunds
- collect tax
- sell subscriptions
- edit the payment total.
Alternatively, you can use a third-party POS system in conjunction with your Wix store — the options available are Square or SumUp.
Square is supported by Wix for users in Australia, Canada, the Falkland Islands, France, Ireland, Japan, the UK and the USA.
SumUp is supported for Wix users in Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.
And finally, you can use Wix's new built-in POS system, "Wix Point of Sale."
Designed to compete with Shopify's 'out of the box' POS platform, it aims to 'unify' selling online and in person using Wix.
Accordingly, Wix Point of Sale offers users a wide range of hardware (including not just card readers but scanners, receipt printers and so on) and integrates very tightly with the Wix online interface.
You won't have to pay extra to use Wix's point-of-sale features — however, you'll need to buy hardware to make them work. A complete Wix point-of-sale hardware setup comprising a tablet, card reader, receipt printer, cash drawer and barcode scanner currently costs $850.
The key thing to note about Wix POS is that it is currently only available to 'select users' in the US and Canada.
Selling in multiple currencies
So long as you're on a Business Unlimited or Business VIP plan, and not using Wix ADI, the platform allows you todisplay prices in different currencies via a currency converter drop-down menu (picture below).
It's important to note however that store visitors can't yetcheck out in their own currency.
This matters because the checkout page is a crucial part of the sales process, and a non-local currency being displayed at this stage can put people off completing a purchase.
So, if multi-currency selling is an important feature for you, you're much better off with BigCommerce or Shopify, both of which offer much better multi-currency features.
Dropshipping with Wix
Dropshipping is a business model where you don't make, buy or stock any products — you take orders from an online store and then pass these onto a supplier for fulfilment (who will then charge you for doing so).
Dropshipping with Wix is facilitated thanks to integrations with quite a few well-known suppliers, including Modalyst, Spocket, Printful and Syncee (at time of writing, a total of 36 dropshipping apps are available for Wix).
The Modalyst integration is bundled with the 'Business Unlimited' or 'Business VIP' plans — but watch out for the 250 product limit that's applied on the 'Business Unlimited' one.
The Shopify dropshipping starter kit
If you're interested in dropshipping, I'd recommend that you take a look at Shopify's dropshipping starter kit — with this, you get 14 days of free access to Shopify plus lots of bundled resources and tools that show you how to launch a successful dropshipping Shopify store.
Payment gateways and transaction fees
A payment gateway is a piece of software that processes transactions on your online store.
Wix works with a large number of third-party payment gateways. The options vary depending on your location, but in total, around 85 are available, and these include big hitters such as Paypal, Stripe, Square, and Worldpay.
Wix's payment gateway offering is slightly less impressive than that provided by rival Shopify (which works with 100+ payment gateway options), but is much more extensive than Squarespace's (Squarespace integrates with just 2 — Stripe and PayPal).
There's also the option of using Wix's built-in payment gateway, which is currently available in the following countries / currencies:
- Austria (EUR)
- Belgium (EUR)
- Brazil (BRL)
- Canada (CAD)
- Finland (EUR)
- Germany (EUR)
- Ireland (EUR)
- Italy (EUR)
- Lithuania (EUR)
- Netherlands (EUR)
- Portugal (EUR)
- Spain (EUR)
- Switzerland (CHF)
- United Kingdom (GBP)
- United States (USD)
In terms of transaction fees for Wix Payments, they are as follows:
- European Union: 1.9% of the transaction amount + 0.30 EUR
- Switzerland: 2.3% of the transaction amount + 0.30 CHF
- United Kingdom: 2.1% of the transaction amount + 0.20 GBP
- USA: 2.9% of the transaction amount + 0.30 USD
- Canada: 2.9% of the transaction amount + 0.30 CAD
Alternative online store builders to consider: BigCommerce and Shopify
Although Wix does a reasonably good job when it comes to ecommerce, there are some dedicated ecommerce platforms that you should also consider if your primary goal is to create an online store — particularly BigCommerce and Shopify.
Both these platforms work in a similar way to Wix, in that they are hosted store builders that run in a web browser.
But they provide significantly more advanced ecommerce functionality than Wix, especially where point of sale, multi-currency selling and real-time carrier shipping are involved.
Our BigCommerce vs Shopify comparison highlights all the key differences between these two products.
Find out more about Shopify here — or read about BigCommerce here.
Integration with other apps
Wix has an app store — its 'App Market' — containing over 300 apps, some made by Wix and some by third parties.
The App Market is easy to use, and gives you access to lots of additional functionality for your website, including online chat, popups, reviews and ratings, social media integrations and calendars.
Another way to add functionality from third-party apps is by using a HTML block to insert a widget from one of those apps.
The range of integrations in Wix's app market is less impressive than what you'll find from other website building tools (Shopify, for example, has around 8,000 apps available; BigCommerce has around 1,200), but you'll find a decent selection of integrations and add-ons here nonetheless.
Data capture and email marketing
Wix gives you a wide range of form types that let your visitors send you a message or provide contact information. You can use the templates provided to capture contact details, applications, feedback, donations and more.
Wix also lets you to install a variety of different form apps which provide more features, including pop-ups, autoresponders and integrations with popular email marketing apps.
Contact data captured on your Wix website is automatically added to your website's 'contact list'. You can also import contacts or add them manually to this list.
An interesting Wix feature is built-in email marketing, something which is not yet provided by all of its key competitors.
Wix allows you to send three e-newsletters per month to up to 5,000 emails. This is actually pretty generous — not many email marketing apps provide you with this kind of free functionality.
If you want to do more sophisticated email marketing with Wix, this means purchasing the 'Ascend by Wix' suite. This lets you broadcast more emails per month (between 9500 and 1,000,000) and make use of a variety of automations — emails that are triggered in various ways by actions made by visitors on a Wix site (purchases, form completions, live chat etc.).
Oddly, the pricing for this isn't made publicly available; you have to log into your Wix account to access the costs. During our tests of Wix, we were shown the following prices for Ascend:
| Ascend plan | Price per month |
|---|---|
| Free | $0 – 3 campaigns, 5,000 emails per month |
| Basic | $10 – 5 campaigns, 9,500 emails per month |
| Professional | $24 – 20 campaigns, 50,000 emails per month |
| Unlimited | $49 – unlimited campaigns, 1 million emails per month |
It's worth pointing out that based on these prices, the 'Unlimited' Ascend plan is particularly generous – you'll be hard pressed to find a standalone email marketing tool that let you send 1 million emails for just $49 per month.
The below video gives an introduction to the feature.
You can also connect Wix to an external email marketing tool provider (e.g. GetResponse, AWeber, MailChimp, Campaign Monitor etc.) by adding an HTML block to your website.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and analytics
Wix SEO tools
Wix search engine optimziation features are generally good — the platform allows you to easily perform key SEO tasks, including:
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adding alt text
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adding and editing meta descriptions
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editing page URLs
- customizing robots.txt files
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creating 301 redirects
.
The platform also integrates neatly with Google Search Console and Google My Business, allowing you to get your site indexed by Google quickly, and shown on maps easily.
One SEO feature which may particularly appeal to SEO novices is Wix's 'SEO Wiz' tool (pictured below). This walks you through the key steps for optimizing your website for search engines, helping you to to update your page titles, meta descriptions, alt text, and so on.
If you have no idea what all these SEO terms are, not to worry — Wix's SEO Wiz explains what you are doing, and more importantly, why.
If you're on a premium Wix plan, the SEO Wiz can also help you register your site with Google Search Console.
However, there is one issue to be aware of — and one that we've already touched upon: how mobile versions of Wix sites display.
As I discussed earlier, Wix creates separate views of your site for desktop and mobile, rather than using responsive design. And responsive design — where you are dealing with one template that adapts its size automatically to the device it's being viewed on — is preferred by Google to Wix's 'absolute positioning' approach.
Despite this omission, Google's Webmaster Trends Analyst John Mueller is on record as saying Wix websites 'work fine' in search, and it's important to remember that the performance of Wix sites in search results will not be exclusively about technical SEO.
Google will also factor in:
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the keyword research you've carried out for your Wix site (check out our Semrush review, Ahrefs vs Semrush comparison, our guide to Semrush pricing or our Moz versus Semrush post for more about all that)
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the quality of content on the site
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the number of quality links pointing to your site
.
Tip: if you are new to SEO, you might find our post on increasing site visibility in Google helpful.
What about Wix and Core Web Vitals?
Core Web Vitals are a new set of Google targets relating to the speed, responsiveness and visual stability of a website — and sites that meet them can receive preferential treatment in Google search results.
In common with other leading hosted site builders, Wix didn't perform great on this front initially, but improvements to the platform have since been made which seem to be making a difference.
As a Wix user, you will have to take quite a few steps to help your site meet Core Web Vitals targets (this typically involves formatting images in a certain way, and not overusing web fonts).
To help you with this, Wix have created a video guide about what you need to do to improve your Core Web Vitals scores on your website.
Analytics and conversion tracking
Wix has good support for analytics tools, providing built-in integrations for:
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Google Analytics
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Google AdWords
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Google Tag Manager
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Facebook Pixel
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Yandex Metrica
.
You can use Google Tag Manager to implement any other third party code or pixels, or add custom code directly to your Wix site to track conversions.
A built-in analytics tool is also provided by the platform.
NOTE: I am not a lawyer, so please note that the below observations should not be interpreted as legal advice, but I'm going to do my best to spell out some of the key GDPR issues facing Wix users below.
In the light of the EU's relatively new GDPR laws, there are many steps that website owners now need to take to ensure that they are adequately protecting EU customers' and visitors' privacy.
There are serious financial penalties for not doing so (to the point where it's sensible to consult a lawyer about what to do); and even if your business is not based in the EU, you still need to comply with the regulations if you are targeting EU users with your website.
Based on my understanding of the GDPR rules, the key priorities for prospective Wix store owners are to:
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provide an adequate privacy policy and cookie notices
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process and store data securely
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get explicit consent from people signing up to mailing lists that it is okay to send them e-newsletters
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provide a means to opt into cookies before they are run, or revoke consent to use of them at a later date
Many hosted solutions like Wix let you meet the first three requirements easily enough, but often don't give you the tools to handle cookie consent properly.
However, unlike many of its competitors, Wix actually handles cookie consent reasonably well — a built-in cookie consent banner lets you block cookies for quite a few popular marketing products before they are run.
These include cookies from Hubspot; apps created by POWr; and tracking cookies from Facebook Ads, Google Analytics and Google Ads.
However, you may struggle to achieve GDPR compliance if your cookie originates from:
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social tools added from Wix's 'Add' panel
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a third-party app from Wix's app market
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custom code.
Security and reliability
One of the biggest advantages of using Wix is the fact that other than taking basic precautions around passwords, you don't have to worry too much about security — this is fully taken care of for you, and you don't have to worry about any complicated technical features.
This emphasis on security is particularly important if you're running an ecommerce site, as the cost of a site failure in this context can be extremely high.
By contrast, if using a self-hosted platform like WordPress, you or your developer will not only have to have a strong understanding of security issues, but configure your site manually to ensure that it is robust on that front.
Wix provides a lot of security features as part of your subscription, but the most important ones are as follows:
- An SSL certificate – this gives your site visitors an encrypted connection between your website and their browser, meaning any details a user provides to you via your site (form completions etc.) remain secure.
- PCI compliance — this lets you process credit card transactions safely and securely
- Two-factor authentication — this lets you protect your account not just with a password but with another method of verification (SMS, email or authenticator app).
- Automatic disaster recovery — if Wix detects unusual activity in a particular region, it will proactively shift user traffic to the nearest stable one, meaning that your site is much less likely to experience any downtime.
In short, the security features in Wix are comprehensive and, thanks to its fully-managed infrastructure, the platform is extremely reliable. In short, the way that Wix takes care of all the security and reliability issues on your behalf is one of the key reasons to consider using the platform.
Customer support
When testing Wix, I was able to find answers to almost everything I wanted to know by searching Wix's Help Center. This contains a large library of support articles in English, Danish, Dutch, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish and Turkish.
There is also excellent contextual help provided throughout the site, and a comprehensive 'SEO Hub' that contains a library of SEO-specific help articles and videos.
In terms of the kind of in-person customer support that's available from Wix, the company provides it via phone, email and live chat.
Not all of Wix's key website builder competitors provide phone support — Squarespace and Jimdo being cases in point — so a thumbs up to Wix for doing so.
Phone support is available 24/7 in the following languages:
- English
- French
- Portuguese
- Spanish
And office hour phone support is provided for:
- Danish
- Dutch
- German
- Hebrew
- Italian
- Japanese
- Korean
- Polish
- Swedish
- Turkish
You can also submit an email ticket to Wix. Wix Support doesn't commit to a timeline for answering these, simply promising to get back to you 'as soon as possible'.
When I submitted a question, a member of the Wix customer service team got back to me at the start of the next business day.
If you are paying extra for VIP support, then you will jump the queue — so long as you use the email address associated with the account.
Wix's policy on use of its platform after the invasion of Ukraine
As a result of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Wix is scaling back its offering in Russia, making all its premium plans and support services unavailable to Russian users.
In a bid to support free speech however, the free version of Wix will remain available to Russian users, with the company while monitoring and removing sites that support war or violence.
Wix review: conclusion
It's not without its flaws, but overall Wix is a well-featured product that allows a small business on a low budget to create a website with a lot of functionality. Its main plus point is the 'bang for the buck' it offers: for a relatively small monthly fee, you can build a site that features an online store, a blog, email marketing, galleries, appointment booking and much else besides.
The platform is reasonably easy to use — there are lots of well-designed wizards, support tools, training videos, and help files that provide very effective hand-holding for even the most nervous of users.
In terms of the drawbacks, the fact that Wix doesn't create responsive sites is probably my biggest concern. This can mean it's a bit harder to build your site with Wix than other platforms, and it also makes things a bit less effective from an SEO point of view (as discussed earlier, Google prefers responsive websites).
Another negative aspect of Wix is that it makes it difficult to change your mind — you will have to stick with the template you picked when you first built your website, or rebuild it completely.
And, although Wix offers you a way to create a decent online store easily, you can only sell your products in one currency.
So, should you build your website with Wix?
Ultimately, Wix is a good choice for small business owners or individuals wanting to quickly create an attractive website with a lot of useful features without spending a lot of money — if you find yourself in that category, you'll be really pleased with the range of 'out of the box' features that Wix provides.
It's also a relatively affordable and simple solution for creating an ecommerce site.
Professional online merchants would probably be better off considering solutions like Shopify or BigCommerce, however, as the ecommerce features on these platforms are considerably stronger.
Below you'll find a summary of the key pros and cons of Wix.
Our overall rating: 3.9/5
Wix pros and cons
Wix Pros
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It's a relatively affordable, easy way to build a website — and won't require developer support.
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A large range of templates is provided (800+), which are of a high quality and feature useful sample content.
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Whilst not quite in the same ecommerce league as platforms like Shopify and BigCommerce, a Wix ecommerce plan nonetheless gives you a wide range of selling features.
- The security setup is extremely robust, and the platform is extremely reliable too.
- It's good option for those needing to create different language versions of their website — 180+ languages are supported.
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Built-in email marketing tools are provided with your Wix
account, and the paid-for ones included in 'Wix Ascend' are sophisticated and good value for money. -
Wix includes a wide range of professionally-shot photographs for use on your site.
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You can enhance basic functionality easily thanks to a good range of integrations in Wix's app market.
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Phone support is available, which is not the case with several other leading website building tools.
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The 'ADI' version of Wix is very easy to use and well suited to website design novices.
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A free domain name is included with on most plans
(you pay for this after one year). -
A totally free version is available.
In the long term, a premium plan is a much better bet, but Wix's free plan represents a good way to try the platform out.
Wix Cons
- Although workarounds are available to make a Wix site display correctly on a mobile device, the sites that you build with Wix are not fully responsive.
- Although displaying prices in multiple currencies is possible, multi-currency checkout is not facilitated with Wix — if you want to sell internationally, there are better ecommerce options available to you.
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You can't bulk import or export digital products.
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You can't switch templates once you've built a site.
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You can't export blog posts.
- Although all paid plans come with unlimited bandwidth, storage is capped at various levels (the more you pay, the more you get). Many key competing platforms don't limit storage like this.
Alternatives to Wix — the other site builders available
Wix is one of the best-known site builders, but it's not the only one! There are lots of really good alternatives available.
If you're looking to build a largely content-driven site, then Squarespace is a superb alternative to Wix — check out our Squarespace review, our Squarespace free trial guide or our post on Squarespace pricing for more details on this platform.
Squarespace is aimed at a similar 'small business market'; the main advantage it has over Wix is that it provides truly responsive websites and (in my view) has a slicker interface.
However, it is slightly more expensive and its ecommerce functionality is not quite as comprehensive as Wix's. Check out our Squarespace vs Wix comparison to see how the two tools stack up against each other, or access the free Squarespace trial here.
If your main interest is in online selling, then BigCommerce or Shopify are likely to meet your needs considerably better than Wix. Check out our in-depth BigCommerce review / Shopify review for more details, or our YouTube review of BigCommerce.
Check out our Wix vs Shopify comparison for more details on how Wix stacks up against Shopify, or read our 'How to start a Shopify store' guide for more information on how to get a Shopify website off the ground.
Amazon and Etsy are also options to consider — both these platforms work in a different way to Wix in that they are not standalone website builders but online marketplaces where you can list your products. Have a read of our Shopify vs Amazon comparison and our Shopify vs Etsy shootout for more information on selling on these sorts of platforms.
If you're on a very low budget, Big Cartel or GoDaddy might be worth a look; these platforms are not as fully-featured as Wix but are very affordable. Check out our Big Cartel review, our Big Cartel vs Shopify comparison and our Shopify vs GoDaddy comparison for more details on these platforms.
Canva is also an interesting option for those on an extremely low budget who need a brochure site (the advantage of using Canva is that you also get a wide range of tools for designing other marketing materials, both online and offline). Check out our Canva review for more details, or learn more about the Canva free trial here.
If you're somebody who really wants to edit your design to the nth degree, you might want to consider Webflow, which comes with some stunning designs that you can edit extensively. Some coding knowledge is usually required to get the most out of the platform, however. See our Webflow review for more details.
And finally there's WordPress, which can serve as a great platform for both showcasing content and facilitating ecommerce. There's two versions available — hosted and self-hosted.
Hosted WordPress, available at WordPress.com, works in a similar way to Wix — it runs in a browser, hosting is included, additional functionality is available via apps (or 'plugins' to use the correct WordPress terminology).
Self-hosted WordPress typically requires a bit more configuration and ongoing maintenance on the user's side (see our WordPress web design section for more information on how we can help on this front).
Our Wix vs Wordpress comparison is worth a read if you're interested in seeing how Wix and self-hosted WordPress compare. Similarly, our Shopify vs WordPress and Squarespace vs WordPress posts let you take a look at how Wix's main competitors stacks up against WordPress.
Now…over to you!
Got any thoughts or questions on our Wix review? Are you likely to choose Wix — or try another platform? Please do leave any observations or queries you have in the comments sections below. We read them all, and we try to answer your questions wherever possible.
Wix review FAQs
Can I use Wix for free?
You can use a cut-down version of Wix for free, and this is a good way to try the platform out. However, it displays prominent Wix ads on your website, and doesn't let you sell any products.
What are the advantages of using Wix?
The main advantages of Wix are that it is affordable, feature-rich, user friendly and comes with a well-rounded set of ecommerce features. This makes it a good website building option for a small business owner on a low budget.
What are the disadvantages of using Wix?
The main disadvantages of Wix are the fact that you can't produce truly responsive websites with it; it doesn't let you switch templates; and it doesn't facilitate checkout in multiple currencies.
Is Wix better than WordPress?
Technically, the self-hosted version of WordPress is a much more powerful and ultimately more flexible tool. However, creating a website with it usually involves a steeper learning curve, and unlike Wix, it doesn't feature built-in ecommerce tools or come with support. If you are building your website yourself, and don't have any technical skills, the easier option is usually Wix.
How we tested this product
We tested Wix via detailed independent research and, more importantly, hands-on experience of it.
We regularly help clients build online stores on a variety of platforms, including Wix. So this review is based on building fully-fledged Wix websites from scratch (and testing them extensively before publishing); installing apps on them; and maintaining them for clients.
You can learn more about the criteria we typically use when evaluating website building products in our ecommerce platforms buyer's guide.
Did you know? This article is now available in French. Check out our 'Wix Avis' post.
Source: https://www.stylefactoryproductions.com/blog/wix-review
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