Is This Website Builder Right For You? (2020)
Wix is among the most popular and widely-used website builders for a reason. It allows anyone, regardless of website building experience, to build an online experience that rivals what was possible for whole design teams a decade ago. With all of the website builder options on the market though, you need to know whether it’s right for you, regardless of your background.
This review will break down what you need to know about Wix given all of their new features and capabilities in 2020. You’ll learn how easy Wix is to use, how affordable this option is, and what types of users will gain the most benefit from Wix. Use the index below to jump to a section you’d like to learn more about or read on for the only review of Wix you’ll need before you make your website builder choice.
Wix Website Design: Choose From 600+ Templates
One of Wix’s strongest suits is its massive selection of customizable templates for nearly every occasion and cause you can think of. Whether you’re building a website for your flooring company or upcoming wedding, Wix has a beautiful template for you to choose and customize.
Wix offers over 600 templates to choose from, all of which are easily searchable and broken down into categories for you to peruse like Online Store, Music, and Fashion. These websites, for the most part, look highly professional and will impress your site visitors whether they’re coming to buy new flooring or read your latest thoughts on Beatles cover bands.
As you review templates, be sure to double check in the preview that it’s a template you’ll be using for the long term even if you want to make minor modifications. While Wix offers many, great templates that are highly customizable, it can be difficult to move content from one template to another and you risk losing much of it in the move. For this reason, make sure the template you choose is the one you’ll stick with.
As the next section will cover, customizing templates can get complicated but many of the templates require little modification if the intended purpose matches your intent.
Wix Website Construction: Drag-And-Drop Heaven
One of the main selling points here is that Wix offers easy website construction. While website builders like WordPress and Squarespace limit users’ ability to move elements around webpages, Wix lets users move elements like text, buttons, and images around pages to their hearts’ content.
When customizing your Wix website, you have the option of snapping elements to grids of your website template or freeform drag and drop elements across pages. Users who value website construction freedom flock to Wix for this drag-and-drop ability which sets this website builder apart from other major options.
Intuitive Public and Members Only Pages
Wix gives users complete control over their website’s pages, allowing them to create, hide, or customize pages with ease. As you map out your website’s navigation, you can quickly select which pages should be displayed and which should be found elsewhere on your site. If you’re still editing pages, you can hide them temporarily then make them public later.
Wix also makes it a breeze to create Members Only Pages whose content is walled unless a visitor signs in. Creating Members Only Pages will be particularly useful for your website if you’re building an email list and include an email opt in during website sign up. If you’d like to monetize your website with paid membership subscriptions, this Members Only ability will be particularly useful.
Simple Mobile View Editing
Unlike website builders like Squarespace which offer responsive websites that adapt to your screen size whether on desktop, tablet, or phone, Wix offers mobile views for your website which could differ in construction and design if you so choose.
With Wix’s mobile editor, you can edit and remove sections to your specifications so the mobile view looks as similar or different from your website’s desktop view as you wish. With the mobile editor, you can also adjust font size, text, and other page elements to make your mobile website look great.
One suggestion: try to keep branding constant across your main and mobile websites so visitors aren’t too confused when visiting either.
Drop Page Anchors Anywhere
With Wix’s editor, you can place anchors anywhere on the page you like and have page visitors be brought to these sections seamlessly. This ability is useful if you have longer pages and wish to draw visitors’ attention to a particular section immediately rather than providing complicated instructions.
For example, you can link to different sections of your website with ease with the anchor linking ability, bringing visitors right where you’d like them to visit.
Wix Pricing: The Right Plan For You
Wix has plans with pricing for everyone, from a free option to four regular website options to an additional four business and ecommerce options. These options have varying ranges of features and perks from a free year of domain hosting to a free logo to dedicated customer support.
When reviewing the pricing below and on Wix’s website, understand that Wix displays monthly pricing based on annual payment not month-to-month payment. This is tricky but bear in mind that you’ll likely have your website for a while so annual payment is more economical and makes a bit more long-term sense. If you sign up for a 3-year plan, you’ll also save about 30% even if you’re paying more upfront.
Wix’s Free Website Option
While many aren’t aware of this, Wix offers a free plan for basic websites. With this free version, users can access great Wix templates and customization for barebones websites that get the job done. The main drawbacks of the free plan is a lack of features that premium Wix plans offer, less storage than paid websites, and Wix ads which will be displayed on your site.
Still if you just want to launch a quick site for some short-term purpose or just mess around with Wix’s features, this is a good option to get started with.
Wix Regular Website Pricing
| Combo | Unlimited | Pro | VIP |
| $14/month | $18/month | $23/month | $39/month |
| Personal Use | Entrepreneurs & Freelancer | Complete Online Branding | First Priority Support |
Each plan which increases in price has an increased number of features and more storage. Combo starts with removed Wix ads and a free domain and Unlimited adds to this with features entrepreneurs would benefit from like the Site Booster app and Analytics as well as ad vouchers. Pro offers more branding features and added apps for free. VIP offers all this plus priority customer support.
If you operate a business, don’t feel obligated to opt for the business plans below. For many small businesses, a Pro or Unlimited plan will likely fit your needs. Just evaluate features for each plan and decide which best fits your needs and budget.
Wix Business and Ecommerce Pricing
| Business Basic | Business Unlimited | Business VIP | Enterprise |
| $23/month | $27/month | $49/month | $500/month |
| Accept Online Payments | Grow Your Business | Get the Full Business Suite | End-to-End Business Solution |
Business Basic offers Unlimited’s features plus acceptance of online payments. Business Unlimited offers the Unlimited plan’s features plus online payments. Business VIP offers the VIP plan’s features plus online payments and customer support access. Finally, Enterprise is built for large company’s website that require custom experiences and support, hence the huge jump in price.
At the date of publication, these prices are accurate but be sure to double check Wix’s pricing page for the latest pricing.
Wix Ecommerce and Apps
For entrepreneurs planning to launch an ecommerce store, Wix is a great option. Wix has dedicated website templates for different types of online stores from fashion and clothing to electronics. With these templates, you can quickly set up your store and begin selling digital or physical products with every online store feature you could want offered.
Wix has prioritized ecommerce apps in its App Market so you can quickly find and add abilities to your online store like email capture forms to build an email list, live chat for convenient answering of questions for customers, tools to reduce cart abandonment, and more. While Wix offers a lot for eCommerce, you may be interested in taking a look at out complete ecommerce comparison chart here!
In addition, the Wix App Market offers many apps for your website. Through the App Market, you can add social media feeds, weather widgets, hotel booking, Google Calendar events, and much more to your website.
Wix’s Core Features
In addition to Wix’s many apps, valuable features are built right into your website builder.
One of the most valuable you’ll be able to set up right from the Wix dashboard is email hosting with G-Suite. Custom emails are far more professional for your brand than using personal email addresses and with Wix’s hosting, you’ll have the convenience of Gmail but with your branded domain.
Members Only pages are another powerful feature. If you want to host exclusive content that’s either only available to signed-in users in order to add them to your email list or if you’re charging for membership in an organization or community, Members Only pages will allow you to gate content efficiently.
If you want to set up email marketing campaigns through Wix, you can use Wix ShoutOut. This email marketing service enables you to create customized stunning email templates and deliver them to your contact list with ease, all while tracking open and click-through rates.
With Wix Social Posts, you can also create beautiful social media images for posts and share them with your Facebook and Instagram followers. Through Social Post, you can also schedule posts on Facebook for the future.
Wix also offers site analytics including visits, post views, and post shares from your dashboard rather than having to use a third-party analytics service, unless you wish to have more advanced insights.
Wix SEO
Wix has a solid kit of SEO tools to optimize your website and gain valuable search traffic. This website builder makes SEO simpler for beginners and will certainly help your organic search presence.
Technical SEO features like instant Google indexing, XML sitemap maintenance, and customizable meta tags all make for a positive SEO experience. In addition, Wix offers a few guides for SEO beginners using their platform to ensure best practices are followed.
These features all make Wix well suited for local SEO but WordPress is still the gold standard for website builders who prioritize SEO above other features.
Blog
For those interested in creating a blog or hosting a blog on their new website, Wix is a great choice. With Wix, you can easily write posts, adding backlinks, images, gifs, and dividers, among other elements, and categorize these posts in different areas you wish to cover.
Like website builders such as WordPress, the blog editor is different from the primary website builder, so there’s a bit of a learning curve when you first get started editing the main site and blog. The blog editor is less freeform than the main site editor and could be improved with Wix’s drag-and-drop freedom as inspiration.
Wix is unsuited for larger blogs that host 40+ long-form posts because of limited navigation abilities. If you’re just interested in hosting a simple company blog with updates, this may not be problematic but if you plan for the blog to be a primary source of inbound marketing traffic, consider other website builders.
Verdict: Who is Wix for?
While Wix is a great overall website builder, some users will gain more benefit from using this platform than others. Here’s who should use Wix and who should reconsider using this website builder.
Who Should Use Wix
Wix is a great website builder for small businesses interested in expanding their online presence and sharing important information with customers. Some of the following businesses would benefit most from Wix:
- Restaurants who want to connect with existing and new customers by sharing a menu, their address, phone number, and reservation information, and gallery of their best dishes and shots of the restaurant. With Wix, businesses can also take reservations and display availability.
- Businesses including hair salons, hotels, landscapers, musicians, law firms, and other businesses that need to book appointments and share core information with potential customers.
- Photographers or other artists who wish to share their portfolio.
- Consulting websites who wish to acquire inbound leads online and showcase their services, case studies, and testimonials.
In addition, personal websites like wedding websites, and personal and career-oriented portfolios would also benefit from hosting on Wix.
Who Should Reconsider Using Wix
Wix may not be the best option for three types of websites.
- Online blog sites that plan on earning high amounts of traffic, publishing hundreds of long-form pieces, and wish for fast load speeds should reconsider using Wix. WordPress is the default CMS for large blog sites.
- While smaller ecommerce stores could certainly see success hosting their products on Wix, larger online stores hosting thousands of products should consider alternative ecommerce store website builders like Shopify or even a custom build.
- Businesses which wish to build a totally new experience for users like Facebook or YouTube should look at having a custom website and product built by professional software engineers.
Wix is an excellent website builder for personal and business websites because of its 600+ professional templates, customizability, and array of features like Members Only pages.
If you’re ready to take the leap with Wix or want to learn a bit more about this powerhouse website builder, watch our 2020 Wix tutorial for beginners: