Wix Review 2022
One of the most affordable and easy-to-use ecommerce builders available. Drag and drop page building with fully functioning pre-built templates.
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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 |
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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
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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+ |
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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.
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:
- Visit your dashboard.
- Select the Store Product tab
- Click on Collections
- Select the collection you need
- Click on Add Products
- 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 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:
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.
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.