Wix Review 2022

Wix logo

One of the most affordable and easy-to-use ecommerce builders available. Drag and drop page building with fully functioning pre-built templates.

Value
Functionality
Features
Customization
Support
  • Responsive, modern and accessible pre-built themes straight out of the box.
  • Extremely intuitive backend system makes editing your website quick and easy. 
  • Pricing starts from just $5 and it's easy to upscale to larger plans. 
  • The Wix starter plan won't stop Wix ads from showing on your website.
  • If you need to stock hundreds of products, Wix isn't the platform for you.
  • Limited customization ability when compared to other website builders.

Wix makes setting up your website quick and easy

Launched in 2006 in Tel Aviv, Israel, Wix has gone from total unknown to major player over the last few years. To date, Wix hosts an incredible 110 million websites. A simple drag-and-drop website builder with its own hosting, its aim is to provide an easy way for the web design illiterate to create their own website with zero technical knowhow. All you have to do is sign up, choose a template, and get going.


Wix is primarily aimed at small business owners – eCommerce entrepreneurs, restaurant owners, artists, musicians, photographers. Their professional layouts are customizable, user-friendly, and optimized for mobile devices. The Wix editor is incredibly intuitive, giving users the option to edit photos, animate text, and change settings. While there is a free option, professional features like your own domain name and online store functionality are only available with premium plans.


Wix makes it possible for anyone to create a website, however basic your skills may be.


  • Thanks to Wix, now everyone can create a website of their own. Whatever your skill level, Wix’s powerful template editor gives you full creative control
  • Wix isn’t the only drag-and-drop website builder, of course. But it’s the best in the world today. It covers hundreds of industries – many more than any other website builder
  • It’s simple enough to let you build a site in minutes, but sophisticated enough to keep up with you and your ambitions 
  • As far as direct competitors, Wix competes with all-inclusive website builders like Weebly, Squarespace, and WordPress. 
  • Wix has historically been disliked by professionals while remaining the go-to “simple” solution for DIY website owners – they have since moved off Flash and significantly invested in their platform
  • Average 45,000 new sign-ups every day and is used in 190 countries

Benefits

  • Drag and drop website builder – ‘world’s most innovative’, you can customize anything you want, no need to worry about code 
  • Fast to set up (ADI) – Wix Artificial Design Intelligence (ADI) will instantly build a website personalized just for you—complete with professional text and images. All you have to do is answer a few questions
  • You can also have total control – Get advanced capabilities with all the design features of the Wix Editor. Build custom web applications and robust websites. It’s serverless, hassle-free coding. You can set up your own database collections, build content rich websites, add custom forms and change site behaviour with our APIs.
  • Industry-leading SEO – Follow your own personalized SEO plan to get your website found on Google
  • 200 apps and services – make it easier for you to grow your business or brand online. Easily send beautiful emails, start your own blog, get booked online, open your own online store and more

Wix Website Pricing

  • Wix's prices start at $5.00 monthly for the Connect Domain plan. Wix goes up to $25.00 a month if you opt for the VIP upgrade. When creating an online store, Wix's fees are at least $17.00 per month. An ad-free site costs $120.00 a year
  • Squarespace charges $20 per year (renewal fee + privacy) and Weebly charges $29.95 (renewal + privacy). So Wix lands right in the middle at $24.85 per year

VIP

Ecommerce

Unlimited

Combo

Connect Domain

$25pm

$17pm

$14pm

$10pm

$5pm

  • Unlimited bandwidth
  • Connect your domain
  • 1 year free domain
  • Remove Wix ads
  • Customized favicon
  • $75 ad vouchers
  • Form builder app
  • Site booster app
  • Online store
  • 10 email campaigns per month
  • Professional site review
  • Unlimited bandwidth
  • 20GB storage
  • Connect your domain
  • 1 year free domain
  • Remove Wix ads
  • Customized favicon
  • $75 ad vouchers
  • Form builder app
  • Site booster app
  • Online store
    • Unlimited bandwidth
    • 10GB storage
    • Connect your domain
    • 1 year free domain
    • Remove Wix ads
    • Customized favicon
    • $75 ad vouchers
    • Form builder app
    • Site booster app
  • 2GB bandwidth
  • 3GB storage
  • Connect your domain
  • 1 year free domain
  • Remove Wix ads
  • Customized favicon
  • $75 ad vouchers
    • 1GB bandwidth
    • 500MB storage
    • Connect your domain

    Wix pricing plans page is detailed yet simple and transparent. There are also other costs associated with building a website with Wix that you might have missed. On Wix’s pricing page, the monthly prices reflect annual plans. If you choose to enrol into a month-to-month payment plan, the monthly prices are slightly higher. If you decide to go with their annual plans, you save anywhere from 18% to 36%.

    Wix pricing plans are actually more economical when compared to their direct competitors (Squarespace and Weebly).

    Wix’s plans range from $5.00 per month to $25.00 per month, whereas Squarespace’s plans range from $12 per month to $40 per month, and Weebly’s plans range from $8 per month to $49 per month.

    Beyond paying the monthly subscription fee, there are other costs that you should take into consideration, including:

    Domain name – $14.95 to $24.85 per year
    Custom email addresses – $4.08 per month per email address

    Keep in mind that 24/7 support and hosting is included as part of your monthly plan, so you don’t have to worry about them.

    Features

    Putting Wix’s features under review is a simple process. Wix makes it easy for beginners to build a website and add the apps needed to make it more functional. Not only are the features easy to grasp, they are constantly being updated.


    New Wix Features By Date is a website that provides monthly Wix features updates. In July 2018 alone updates were made to these features:


    • Wix Editor
    • Wix Code
    • Wix Stores Test Purchases
    • Mini Cart for Wix Stores
    • Wix Mobile App for Wix Stores
    • Wix Bookings
    • Wix Blog
    • Wix Video
    • Marketing Integrations
    • Wix Inbox
    • Wix Forms
    • Wix Forum
    • Wix Restaurants Orders


    However, while there are plenty of easy to use features and helpful apps, the features do have limitations.


    Want to build an eCommerce store with over 10 products? Then you’ll need the help of a selection of apps from Wix’s Online Store section. Plan on setting up an online business with hundreds of products? Then Wix won’t work for you and you’re better off using Shopify, WooCommerce, or Magento.

    Ecommerce Comparison Features

    Shopify Logo
    Woocommerce logo
    Magento logo
    BigCommerce logo
    Wix logo

    Buy Now

    Overall Rating

    Price

    From $9

    Free to Install

    Free to Install

    From $29.95

    From $2.99

    From $5.00

    Themes

    100+

    1000+

    1000+

    120

    15

    500+

    SEO Tools

    Ease Of Use

    Functionality

    Customization

    Security

    Support

    Our Review

    Dashboard

    Wix’s dashboard is the behind the scenes element of your website. It allows you to control the main settings for your website, such as:

    • Site Basics
      • Site Name
      • Site Address
      • Publish Status
    • Professional Options
      • Plan
      • Domain
      • SSL Certificate

    It looks and feels very clean. Importantly, it’s quick and responsive to use. One of the best features of the dashboard is that you can customise the shortcuts on your dashboard. This is a great help to the novice website builders that Wix is aimed at.


    Wix supports multiple languages. You can select from the following:


    • English
    • Spanish
    • Portuguese
    • French
    • German
    • Polish
    • Italian
    • Russian
    • Japanese
    • Korean
    • Turkish
    • Swedish
    • Norwegian
    • Dutch
    • Danish
    • Hindi
    • Czech

    A major drawback to the dashboard is that you can’t access it via your mobile. This makes Wix a less flexible platform than competitors, like Shopify.

    Themes

    There are over 500 templates for you to choose from, covering a wide range of website types. Themes are geared towards:

    • Photographers
    • Bloggers 
    • Advertisers
    • Marketers
    • Musicians
    • Consultants

    And many more people.

    • 500+ themes
    • Pre-designed themes for a huge range of niches
    • Wix has a broader, deeper, and higher standard of themes than almost any other website builder 

    The themes are a real strength. No review of Wix would be complete without pointing out Wix has a broader, deeper, and higher standard of themes than almost any website builder. Checkout the templates you can select from here.


    There is also the option to create your own templates, by using the Blank Templates page. However, as Wix is geared primarily towards novices we think this is a feature that will be infrequently used.

    Luckily, the discerning ecommerce entrepreneur can import themes from elsewhere. BigCommerce has a range of recommended and reviewed designers that can create a bespoke theme for your online store, or you can look to a theme marketplace like Themeforest for cheaper options.

    Content Management

    The key question to ask when reviewing Wix’s content management capability is: “what are you using the platform for?”


    If you want to create your own blog, or build a basic website for you business, Wix is perfect. Download the Wix blog app and you get a wide range of features, such as:

    • Tagging
    • Categories
    • Automatic notifications

    However, it’s not essential that you use the Wix blog app. This is because any template you select has:

    • A blog
    • A page editor
    • A simple image upload process

    Adding products to your Wix store is easy, as long as you have picked the Wix eCommerce plan. You just follow these steps:

    1. Visit your dashboard.
    2. Select the Store Product tab
    3. Click on Collections
    4. Select the collection you need
    5. Click on Add Products
    6. Add the products you want and then save

    Plugins & Extensions

    The Wix App Market has over 250 apps and there’s a great range for you choose from. What’s really great about the Wix App Market is that each app is listed with:

    • Overview
    • Demo
    • Features
    • Reviews
    • Developer info

    This means you can really understand the power and benefit of the app before you decide if you want it – the reviews from your peers is a particular plus point. Installing an app is very easy:

    • Select App Market  
    • Click the categories to filter
    • Select an app
    • Press Add to Site
    • Select Add App

    You are able to build your own apps. Wix provides detailed guidance on how to do this.

    Checkout

    In order to add a checkout to your Wix website, you will need to choose the Wix eCommerce plan. The Wix eCommerce plan allows you to accept payments in a number of different ways:

    Method

    Type

    Setup Fee

    Transaction Fee

    Activation Time

    Countries

    Stripe

    Credit Card

    None

    Up to 30¢, varies per country, + 2.9% per transaction

    Instant

    See here for all countries

    Square

    Credit Card

    None

    From 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction

    Instant

    Canada & USA

    Paypal

    Wallet & Credit Card

    None

    Instant

    See here for all countries

    Moolah

    Credit Card

    None

    From 29¢ + 2.89% per transaction

    1-2 Business Days

    Australia, Canada, USA, UK

    MercadoPago

    Credit Card

    None

    4,95%

    Instant

    Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia Mexico,Venezuela

    PagSeguro

    Wallet

    None

    3.99% + R$0.40 per transaction

    Instant

    Brazil

    LeumiCard

    Credit Card

    None

    2.5% per transaction

    5-7 Business Days

    Israel

    Offline Payments

    Offline Payment

    N/A

    N/A

    N/A

    N/A

    Continued:

    Method

    Does It Allow Mobile Payments?

    Recurring Billing

    Is Checkout On-site or Off-site?

    Stripe

    Yes

    No

    On-site

    Square

    Yes

    No

    On-site

    Paypal

    Yes

    No

    On-site

    Moolah

    Yes

    No

    On-site

    MercadoPago

    Yes

    Yes

    On-site

    PagSeguro

    Yes

    Yes

    On-site

    LeumiCard

    Yes

    Yes

    On-site

    Offline Payments

    N/A

    N/A

    On-site

    Wix provide you with an SSL certificate, which lets your visitors view your website through a secure connection. Wix has published detailed guidance on SSL.


    One of the downsides to using Wix as your website builder is you can’t process a refund through your online store. You will need to process the refund through the payment gateway you have selected.

    Shipping

    It’s simple to set up the shipping for your Wix store but it does take a bit of time. Wix have published guidance on how to set up your shipping. Read through those points and watch the video below:

    The shipping process and features that you get from Wix are compare favourably with other eCommerce providers we’ve reviewed – Wix offers all you need to ship your items domestically and internationally.

    Inventory Management

    Wix let you choose how to manage the inventory for your store. To do this, simply follow the below steps:

    Our review of Wix’s inventory options and process? It offers everything you need and it’s very easy to put everything in place.

    Marketing

    Wix has integrations with the major marketing software providers:

    Wix Marketing integration
    Wix Marketing integrations

    Wix also has its own email marketing software, Wix ShoutOut, that is provided with even the most basic accounts. It’s a free tool that lets you create custom emails to send custom emails to your mailing list. It’s also pretty good:

    • The intuitive editor makes it easy to personalise your email templates
    • It’s simple to import your contact list
    • The reporting and analytics are detailed

    Overall, the marketing available is one of the most solid features of Wix.

    SEO

    Wix has some helpful SEO features to allow you to get your website ranking as high as possible:

    • It’s simple to add keyword tags
    • You can customize your URLs

    But where Wix gets a winning SEO review from us is through the Wix SEO Wiz. This is a brilliant feature that designs a personalised SEO strategy for your website. Check out the video below for more information:

    Hosting

    Wix comes with its own hosting. This means that, unlike self-hosted website builders, like WordPress, you don’t have to worry about sorting out the hosting for your Wix website.


    The hosting for your Wix website comes with up to 500MB bandwidth and up to 500MB of storage.

    Analytics

    Analytics is one of the Wix’s major shortfalls. In order to get the statistics that are provided as part of the service by closed-source CMS providers, such as Shopify, you need to integrate Google Analytic (or one of the apps offered by Wix).


    Adding analytics software to your Wix website – the example below shows how you can do this:

    Wix analytics

    However, the lack of pre-set reporting features from Wix left us feeling pretty unimpressed. This makes analytics one of the low points in our review of Wix.

    How to set up a Wix store

    It takes very little time to set up a Wix store. We tried it and we very impressed by how quick you can be up and running – as well as by having your hosting sorted for you.


    While Wix offer very helpful guidance throughout the setup process, using a set-by-step video made the process even smoother.


    Follow the guidance in the video below and you'll have your Wix store up in no time.

    Wix logo

    We really like Wix. It’s a platform that has everything a new entrant to website building, or eCommerce, needs to build a beautiful website or online store.


    This means Wix is best suited for the more basic website and eCommerce requirements. You won’t be able to sell thousands of products, like with Shopify, and its not as customisable as WordPress.


    So why chose Wix? It’s the best option if you want a simple drag-and-drop website builder with its own hosting.

    Frequently Asked Questions

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