WordPress sitebuilder vs Wix – Which One Is The Best Website Builder?

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Are you searching for the best website builder?. Today we are going to explore about wordpress sitebuilder vs wix via this article to find out which one is the best website builder.

 

WordPress sitebuilder vs Wix : Overview

You might have heard of Wix by this time atleast once because of their endless massive ad campaigns collaboration with  A-list movie stars, pyrotechnics, and million-dollar budgets.

Their platform is also flashy and has that cool, fun vibe. They are like the Apple of the web builders.

Whereas on the other hand, WordPress, is the old school and is more like Windows. It is a  popular content management system with more customization and rooms to play in.

Since, the launch of Wix, there have been many talks about who is the better Website builder. Many people stating their own opinion and ideas to it.

Personally, I think there are no clear winners here. Each has its own downside and advantages.

In this article we are gonna differentiate and states their features, their benefits and downsides of each platform in simple terms so that you can see that both Wix and WordPress are favorable options, but for different purposes.

We’ll try our best to keep the technicalities nomenclature as minimum as we can and explain it in plain simple English.

 

Reminder: This WordPress which we are gonna discuss here is about WordPress.org (and not .com) which is the self-hosted CMS.

So without further ado, let’s get right into which one is right for you, Wix or WordPress

 

WordPress sitebuilder vs Wix – Features Comparison

Wix is a website builder with a more gentle learning curve. The UI and design of Wix are elegant, simple and modern.

In Wix, you cannot build a large and very complex site such as -social media, directories, etc.

That is where the WordPress comes in.

In WordPress, you basically can do everything and create whatever you want. The range of customization option is huge.

You can create from a Simple website to a very complex website although some sort of technical knowledge and programming skills may be required.

Therefore, the decision between Wix and WordPress will depend a lot on what you need and how much time you are willing to sacrifice for your website.

 

1. WordPress sitebuilder vs wix – Ease of Use Feature

Wix:

In Wix, the visual and the intuitive have a user-friendly interface.  You can do a lot of dragging, clicking and dropping.

No need to learn or know how to code, The website builder comes in quite handy in that area as it will make it quick and painless to design and publish your site.

You can simply drag and drop items anywhere on your site, edit, delete or rearrange things on your post or pages, write blog post or content, and then add media.

Many beginners would find this feature to be a blessing as it will save them a ton of time and hassle from dealing with coding and all that stuff.

For a beginner, this would be a blessing and they will be able to create a website with Wix with not much experience.

 

WordPress:

WordPress also comes with a visual editor to write your content. However, by default WordPress does not come with built-in drag and drop page builder.

One thing WordPress is known for is its excessive plugins and extensions.

It also has a theme customizer which allows you to edit your theme properties in a WYSIWYG environment.

And when things go wrong (not if), finding the fix can also become a bit of an issue.

WordPress is trying to develop and move into a more user-friendly direction with the Gutenberg update that added a building block editor. However, compared to Wix, the visual editor isn’t for a match as of now.

 

Winner:

In this WordPress sitebuilder vs Wix Ease of use Feature comparison, we would like to say that Wix is one of the best website builder specifically designed for user-friendliness in mind and making it extremely super easy.

 

2. WordPress sitebuilder vs wix – Design and Layout Feature

Your website’s layout and design is very important and play an important role in your website success.

Every site owner needs not only to market it but also to make it as good looking as possible along with user-friendliness to make it stand out from the crowd.

Wix:

They have tons of beautifully and fully-customizable templates of more than hundred in over 70 niches and categories. Templates are divided into categories like business, eCommerce, hobbies, arts & crafts, personal, etc.

All of the Wix designs are fully responsive and are written in HTML5.

There are also magazine style template as well as one-page templates (landing pages) and blank templates that define your future site’s structure but with no content on it.

You can further customize your site design, change the layout, and rearrange items as you see fit by using the built-in tools

The Wix’s templates are undoubtedly elegant and gorgeous, but there is one massive drawback of it and that is users can’t switch templates once you have selected a template.

Although You can customize it and modify it as much as you want using only the built-in tools, however, you cannot switch to another template. That is a big No-no.

All Wix templates are also mobile-friendly and you can even change the mobile look of your site using the Wix’s Mobile Editor.

 

WordPress.

In WordPress, There are literally thousands of free and paid themes available.

You can find them on places like the WordPress.org theme directory, which is the biggest and the official place of WordPress to get a theme, and 3rd part or independent marketplaces and theme shops such as ThemeForest, Themify, CSSIgniter, StudioPress, and more

You can use either the free theme or the premium theme. Paid themes generally come with more premium features and support options.

Most of the themes come with their own built-in customization options for more flexibility.

Unlike Wix, WordPress doesn’t support the WYSIWYG editing, so before you try to attempt to edit any WordPress theme file, you’ll have to know some basics of coding or editing theme file.

Also, there is no one stopping you to change your theme, you can change as much as you want. Although that is not recommended. Stick to one theme  It can effect User experience and your Business.

 

Winner:

In this WordPress sitebuilder vs Wix Design and Layout Feature comparison, we would like to inform that as WordPress has a much larger range of themes and design layouts than Wix and the ability to change whenever you like without any restriction, WordPress wins this round.

 

3. WordPress sitebuilder vs wix – Plugins and Apps Feature

Plugins and Apps are necessary third-party extensions to make your website more functional and add more features, WordPress called them Plugins wheres Wix called them Apps.

Let’s compare apps and plugins available on both platforms and see what you can do with them.

WordPress:

As of writing this article, there are more than 55,000+ free plugins available in the WordPress.org plugin directory alone.

That is just on the Directory and  Not to mention, premium and individual plugins are also available on other marketplaces.

Anything can happen with WordPress, whatever you want chances are WordPress already have a plugin for that function.

Whether you want to insert an ad, create Newsletter or contact form, build a membership website or sell products online, there’s a plugin for that.

WordPress is so flexible that you can literally do anything and create what you like with WordPress.

 

Wix:

With Wix, the app number doesn’t look that impressive. As of now, Wix has over 200+ apps that you can add to your site and compare to WordPress that is nothing.

Some of these apps offer a wide range of features like adding social media buttons, adding contact forms, gallery, comments, etc

Most of the apps are free or have a lite version. Some apps may be charged in monthly payments and also vary in prices.

Even though there are not many collections of apps, they cover basically all the most commonly requested features by site owners.

 

Winner:

In this WordPress sitebuilder vs Wix Pugins and Apps Feature comparison, WordPress wins. Even though Wix’s app library is growing it is still nothing compared to the huge choice available to WordPress users.

 

4. WordPress sitebuilder vs wix – Ecommerce Feature

If you wanna start your own e-commerce store online. Which one do you choose? Let’s find out right now!

Wix:

With the Fee plan, Wix users cannot create an e-commerce store. They need to upgrade the plan to use this feature.

The payment party is also limited as to only PayPal or Authorize.net.as of now which is not the best as most of the e-commerce store gives 3 or 4 options of the payment system to increase the conversion rate.

There are a few paid app to help you with your e-commerce store which cost extra money.

 

WordPress:

With, WordPress you can create an e-commerce store easily. The plugin called WooCommerce helps WordPress to powers more than 42% of all e-commerce websites in the world.

Not to mention, there are tons of other eCommerce plugins available for WordPress that you can use to either digital or sell physical goods, services, subscriptions, and more.

The Themes are also available to choose from hundreds, It’s really up to you to choose which theme you wanna use for your store.

 

Winner:

If you are serious about your store and sell your products, I would recommend WordPress plus with WooCommerce offers which provides much more features, flexibility, freedom, and choices when compared to Wix which are much more restricted. 

In this WordPress sitebuilder vs Wix Ecommerce Feature comparison, we declare WordPress as Winner.

 

Blog: What’s the best blogging platform?

Wix:

Wix’s blog options are pretty good. Wix has all the basic blogging features you’ll commonly use such as categories and tags, photo and videos, archives, etc.

One really cool option of Wix that I like is that you can choose an alternative title only for your mobile readers (in case it’s too long and takes up much of the screen).

The writing interface for blog posts is not the same as Wix website builder (e.g. no drag and drop), and the posting features are decent but are also limited. It uses a plain text editor which is very limited in case of formatting options.

It also does not have a native commenting system like WordPress, CommentLuv Instead, it simply uses the Facebook comments and those comments are not portable. So, that’s a problem.

 

WordPress:

WordPress has always been mainly focused on blogging options and powers nearly 33% of all websites.

It has all the necessary features required such as tags, categories, RSS, etc…

It also has all the blogging features that are missing from Wix such as native commenting system and all other advanced features essential for Blogging.

 

Winner:

In this WordPress sitebuilder vs Wix Blog Feature comparison, we declare WordPress as Winner. Wix is still ok but WordPress just seems to be better.

 

5. WordPress sitebuilder vs wix – Data Portability Feature

In case you wanna move your website away. Your existing website data needs to be exported so that it can be restored later on.

Wix

With Wix, you just cannot move away and it comes with just a little or nothing at all when it comes to moving your content to another platform. You can only export your blog posts in an XML format and You’ll have to manually download your pages, files, images, videos other content and manually re-upload again to your host.

According to a statement on the Wix documentation, it says that all your content is hosted exclusively on Wix’s servers and cannot be exported elsewhere.

So, This makes it an extremely difficult to move your content to another platform if need be and if you decided to do so, it’s gonna require a lot of manual work and lots of time.

 

WordPress

WordPress makes it super easy to export your file and your contents. It comes with a one-click exporter that will allow you to download your content in XML format.

Since you are on a self-hosted platform, you can also create your complete WordPress backups, download your backup files, and even manually export your WordPress database too

Next, you can then easily migrate or move your WordPress site to even a new host.

 

Final Words

Hope you really enjoyed reading this article about wordpress sitebuilder vs wix.

The perfect website builder really depends on what type of website you need.

However, WordPress is far superior to Wix as a web publishing platform or as an e-commerce platform.

You can start your website using WordPress by following this step by step guide.

WordPress may beat them in many fields but still, Wix is also a great website builder and better suited to smaller, informative websites.

And it’s also better for complete beginners in drag and drop tools and good dedicated support to jumpstart his/her website.