Is Wix a Good Website Builder? Wix Review for Business

We have found that the Wix is one of the most popular website builders for small businesses. With its templates and ease of use, Wix users can create sleek and sophisticated websites in no time.

In this Wix review we will go over Wix pros and cons, Wix pricing and plans, and answer the question “is Wix free?” We will also look at what type of businesses could get the most out of having a Wix site.

Recommended: We think Wix has a lot to offer the busy business owner. Get started with Wix.

Wix Website Builder Review — Summary

The Wix website builder is an excellent tool. We think it’s particularly great for creative types who want control over the layout of their website.

The drag and drop functionality of this builder is simple enough for anyone to use and allows you to put things right where you want them. No need to fumble around with sliders to position images or text. This is why we rank Wix in the top five in our Best Website Builders Review.

Pros

• Super easy to use
• Offers true drag-and-drop website building
• Over 800 templates are available
• Includes a variety of capabilities, such as online appointment booking, membership, and ecommerce
• Free version available (requires displaying a Wix ad at the top)

Cons

• Wix websites must be hosted on Wix servers — which may not be the fastest available
• The free version requires displaying an ad
• Only one site is included with Premium plans

Wix Pricing

The pricing for Wix can be somewhat confusing because it offers multiple plans in two separate categories: Website Plans and Business and Ecommerce Plans. The biggest difference between the two categories is that you can accept online payments with Business and Ecommerce Plans. 

Wix is a little more expensive than some other options, but its pricing remains competitive and is not significantly higher than most other similar offerings. Squarespace, WordPress, GoDaddy — whatever option you choose, you will likely pay between $10 and $50 a month for your website plan. 

All of the plans include a domain for one year and most include $300 in ad vouchers to advertise your website on places like Google.

If you want to compare other cheap website builders, check out our Best Cheap Website Builder review for more options.

Wix Website Plans

Note: Like with most other website builders, the prices shown reflect the monthly fee when you choose annual billing. If you choose to pay monthly, the prices will be higher than shown here.

Wix Combo Plan — $16/Month

The Wix Combo plan is the least expensive option offered by Wix. 

Even the least expensive tier from Wix offers several quality features:

• Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) Certificate: You can identify secure sites by their address in the address bar. A secure site will start with hypertext transfer protocol secure (HTTPS) instead of hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) to show that it’s protected. Search engine optimization (SEO) is improved with an SSL certificate.
• Custom Domain: The address of your website, also called the URL, will show that you purchased your domain without any branding from Wix.
• Free Domain for One Year: Your subscription includes the cost of a domain for a year, which is worth around $15.
• 2 GB of Storage Space: This plan allows you to store up to 2 GB of data on your website. This is enough for a simple site, but if you plan on using larger multimedia files, the Wix Unlimited plan is a better option.
• 30 Minutes of Video: This gives your website the capacity to host up to 30 minutes of video on Wix. Videos embedded on your site from sites like YouTube are excluded from this limitation.
• 24/7 Support: As with all Wix plans, you get 24/7 customer support from Wix experts. They can help with any issues you have with your website.
• Wix Mobile Editor: All Wix plans give you access to the Mobile Editor, so you can customize your site for mobile use.

Who Is the Combo Plan Best For?

The Wix Combo plan will work for any business owners, freelancers, bloggers, or other professionals who don’t require anything fancy from a website. But if you need to accept online payments or store multimedia files on your site, consider a more robust plan. 

Get started with the Wix Combo Plan for just $16 per month.

Wix Unlimited Plan — $22/Month

For another $6 per month, the Wix Unlimited plan includes everything in the Combo plan along with more storage space and extra tools for your website. With this plan, you get:

• 5 GB of Storage Space and One Hour of Video: The Wix Unlimited plan adds another 3 GB of storage and another 30 minutes of video. This extra data storage lets you utilize more multimedia on your website for just a little extra money each month. 
• Website Analytics: The Wix Visitor Analytics app is free for a year with the Wix Unlimited plan. It lets you see where your visitors come from and how long they stay on your site, among other useful information. This kind of data is worth the extra cost of the plan on its own.
• $300 Ad Credit: You can use this credit to purchase advertisements on Google and Bing to put your website in front of a bigger audience.

Site Booster App: The Site Booster App is included in the Wix Unlimited plan for a year. It boosts the visibility of your website by listing your business in various places online. You get an SEO boost which should increase traffic.

The Wix Unlimited plan costs $6 more a month, but the features you get for that $6 more than pay for the price increase. Increased visibility, ad vouchers, and analytic capabilities all add up to a great value for most business users. 

Who Is the Unlimited Plan Best For?

We recommend this plan for most small businesses. The only exception would be businesses that take appointments as part of their daily operations. For most other businesses, the features included in the Wix Unlimited plan are a great value and will help you get more out of your Wix site. 

Get started with the Wix Unlimited Plan for just $22 per month.

Wix Pro Plan — $27/Month

The Wix Pro plan includes everything in the lower-tiered plans and adds some extra features — however, it’s the same price as the Wix Business Basic plan, which gives you more for your money. If you are considering upgrading to the Wix Pro plan for the online booking platform, consider the Business Basic plan instead. 

The three main features you get with the Wix Pro plan are:

• Calendar App: This plan includes the use of a third-party calendar app so your customers can book appointments. However, if you're looking for a more feature-rich app, we might suggest signing up for the Wix Business Basic plan instead.
• Wix Logo Maker: You get access to Wix’s logo maker to generate logos for your business. This is the only feature that makes the Wix Pro plan different from the Business Basic plan. Since you can find other free logo makers out there — like ours — we still think the Wix Business Basic plan is a better deal. 
• 50 GB Storage Space and Two Hours of Video: You get a lot more storage space with the Wix Pro plan than you do with the Unlimited plan, and twice as much hosted video. However, for the same price, you can get 50 GB of storage space and five hours of video with the Wix Business Basic plan. 

Who Is the Pro Plan Best For?

If you want more than the Wix Unlimited plan offers, the Pro plan can give it to you — but you get even more with the Business Basic plan. Better online booking, more storage, and ecommerce capabilities all make the Wix Business Basic plan the way to go.

Get started with the Wix Pro Plan for just $27 per month.

Wix VIP Plan — $45/Month

The Wix VIP plan includes everything in the Pro plan and adds two extra features:

• Priority Support: You get priority support with the Wix VIP plan. That means you can talk to someone on the phone more readily than other plan holders — not just through email and chat — and your support tickets are moved to the front of the line.
• 100 GB Storage Space and Five Hours of Video: This plan doubles the amount of storage you get with the other plans and gives you five hours of hosted video. Don’t go with the Wix VIP plan for the storage or the video, though. The Business Unlimited plan gives you the same amount of storage and 10 hours of video for $32.

The VIP plan is not the best deal Wix offers. Sure, you get priority support but you can solve most problems with the standard support and video tutorials available for free. And you get the same amount of storage and more video storage for less money with the Wix Business Unlimited plan. 

Who Is the VIP Plan Best For?

The Wix VIP plan is best for those who want priority support. But if you are just looking for more storage and/or video, there are better options in Wix’s Business plan category. 

Wix Business and Ecommerce Plans

Wix Business Basic Plan — $27/Month

The bottom tier plan in the Business category, the Wix Business Basic plan includes a lot of value for a relatively low price. For the same cost as the Wix Pro plan, you get a better online booking platform and ecommerce capabilities, among other features. 

This plan’s key features include:

• Unlimited Product Listings: With this plan, you can list and sell physical and digital products directly from your Wix site. You can also import products from an existing web store.
• Abandoned Cart Recovery: This is a very useful feature for operating an online store. It lets you send an automated email to customers who leave their carts with items in them  — hopefully encouraging them to finalize their purchase.
• Flexible Payments: You can use Wix’s payment processing platform or other popular options like Square, PayPal, and Stripe.
• Online Booking Platform: This is an improvement on the platform offered with the Pro and VIP plans. You can accept payments, send SMS notifications, add staff hours, list unlimited services, and more.
• 50 GB of Storage Space and Five Hours of Video: This plan gives you as much video as the Wix Pro plan and more than twice as much video.

The Business Basic plan is one of the best values Wix offers. It includes a full-fledged ecommerce platform, the option to accept online payments, and an improved booking platform.

This package is so attractive because it costs the same as the Wix Pro plan but you get so much more. 

Who Is the Business Basic Plan Best For?

This plan is ideal for entrepreneurs and small business owners that want to accept online payments or need a solid online booking platform. 

For businesses that are primarily online stores, there are better options like Shopify. But the Wix Business Basic plan will work well for those seeking a simple solution to build a website. 

Get started with the Wix Business Basic Plan for just $27 per month.

Wix Business Unlimited Plan — $32/Month

This plan includes everything in the Wix Business Basic plan and adds some significant improvements:

• Social and Marketplace Selling: This powerful feature lets you sell your products on major marketplaces like Etsy, Amazon, and eBay, by connecting the listings on your website with those on the other marketplaces. That means you won’t accidentally sell the same thing twice. You can manage it all from your Wix dashboard.
• Subscriptions: You can create subscriptions to make billing customers monthly easy and automated.
• Multiple Currencies: Display the prices of your products and services in the local currency of your site visitors.
• Automated Sales Tax Calculations: Automatically calculate the sales tax in the US, Canada, and most other countries. The Wix Business Unlimited plan will automatically calculate sales tax for up to 100 transactions per month.
• Advanced Shipping: Allows you to print shipping labels, manage end-to-end order fulfillment, and connect shipping apps.
• Kudobuzz Reviews App: Includes access to third-party app Kudobuzz, allowing you to collect reviews for products on your site. This plan includes up to 1,000 reviews.
• Modalyst Drop-Shipping App: Includes access to third-party app Modalyst, which helps you drop-ship products — avoiding the need to manage inventory for those items. This plan lets you list up to 250 products with Modalyst.
• 100 GB of Storage Space and 10 Hours of Video: Doubles the amount of storage and video compared to the Wix Business Basic plan.

Who Is the Business Unlimited Plan Best For?

The Wix Business Basic plan offers all the core features you need to start an ecommerce website. The Wix Business Unlimited plan enhances many of those features and adds others that help you expand your online store and save money. 

Get started with the Wix Business Unlimited Plan for just $32 per month.

Wix Business VIP Plan — $59/Month

The Wix Business VIP plan is Wix’s most expensive option. This plan includes everything in Wix’s other plans while adding priority support, increased storage space, custom reports, and access to the Smile.io loyalty program.

• Priority Support: Get phone support and have your help tickets move to the front of the line.
• Unlimited Storage Space and Video: No need to worry about storage space or video hosting space with this plan. You can use as much as you want.
• Custom Reports: Gain the ability to create custom reports, including charts and graphs, to see what the data tells you about your site’s performance and areas for improvement.
• Smile.io Loyalty Program: Lets you create loyalty programs for your customers.
• More Automated Sales Tax Calculations: Get automated sales tax calculations for up to 500 transactions per month.
• More KudoBuzz Reviews: Get up to 3,000 reviews from KudoBuzz.

This is Wix’s most comprehensive package, so it includes everything the company has to offer for business owners to build a successful ecommerce website.

Who Is the Business VIP Plan Best For?

The Wix Business VIP plan is best for larger ecommerce sites that require a lot of support and don’t have time to wait in line. It’s also ideal for businesses that need all the storage capacity they can get. 

Get started with the Wix Business VIP Plan for just $59 per month.

Wix Free Plan — $0/Month

There is a Wix Free plan, which means you can start using the Wix website builder without paying anything. The Free plan lets you play around with the builder to see what Wix can do for you. However, we don’t recommend using this option long-term because there are too many limitations that will prevent you from building a successful business website. 

The Wix Free plan is quite limited in several ways, including:

• It Requires Wix Ads and Branding: The Wix Free plan will place ads all over your site for Wix. All your website visitors will know you used Wix to build the site which can make you look less professional — and the ads will compete with your marketing messaging.
• It Doesn’t Allow Custom Domains: Your site URL will appear as “mybusiness.wixsite.com” instead of “mybusiness.com,” which can make your business appear less professional.

We don’t recommend Wix’s Free plan to anyone who wants to build a legitimate business website. Instead, we recommend that you get a custom domain for your business as soon as possible so Google can index your site. Google pays attention to how long your business has been around, so the sooner you get a custom domain the better. 

However, the Wix Free plan is a good starting point if you want to try out different templates and different website builders. Wix doesn’t let you change templates after you create your site, so it’s a good idea to try out different templates before you purchase a plan. 

Who Is the Free Plan Best For?

This plan is a good fit for anyone who wants to test out Wix and see what templates it has to offer. 

How Simple Is the Wix Website Builder?

Wix is one of the simplest website builders we have found through our review process. The builder is so simple, you can have a basic site up in a few minutes. With over 800 premade templates, you have plenty of options for how your site will appear and function. And you can move around nearly anything you like. 

Wix makes the sign-up process easy and helps guide your initial creation by asking you a series of questions. Based on your answers, Wix will recommend templates it thinks will suit your needs. 

At that point, you can pick a  template and start designing. And changing various elements is easy, including images, colors, organization, and positioning. 

Wix’s biggest strengths are simplicity and flexibility. Not only is it easy to use, but it’s also customizable. You don’t need any technical skills to build and customize your website. 

As with anything, some drawbacks come with all these benefits. We will cover those later.

Getting Started

There are two ways to begin building your website:

1. Let the Wix Artificial Design Intelligence (ADI) tool create your website for you.
2. Create a website using the standard editor, beginning with a template.

Option 1: Use the Wix ADI Tool

If you go with this option, you will answer a series of questions and then the ADI tool will automatically design a site for you based on your answers. Essentially, the tool draws content from a library of draft content and places it on a premade template, then adds your business name. 

Once you have your draft website, you can begin editing it with a basic editor. However, this basic editor can be difficult to use and is not as powerful as the standard editor. If you start your site with the ADI tool, we recommend switching to the standard editor by clicking “Site” at the top of the page and clicking “Go To Editor.”

The ADI tool will get you a finished site more quickly than you would by building it using a template and the standard editor. But you lose out on most of what makes Wix stand out — customizability.

Option 2: Choose a Template and Use the Standard Editor

The second option is to pick a template you like and customize it with the standard editor. You can pick your template from over 800 options in a wide variety of categories. This option is best if you want to build a site that really represents your vision and your brand. 

Using the Standard Wix Editor

Like other visual editors, the Wix standard editor is easy to use. To edit an object, you just need to click on it and make the changes you desire. Read on for an in-depth look at the features of the Wix editor. 

Adding Elements To Your Site 

It’s easy to add elements to your site. Just click the “+” button on the left side of the editor. 

It will open a dropdown menu with numerous elements you can add, including text, images, strips, boxes, buttons, and more. Once you find an element you want to add, drag and drop it where you want it to be on your site. 

It’s also very easy to change the position of elements on your site. Click it and drag it where you like. You can also change the size of each element by clicking it and then using the resizing buttons on the edges of the element. This may seem like a simple thing, but most website builders don’t make this task so easy.

Editing Text

To change text, click the element you want to change and click “Change Text.”

Adding New Pages

You can add additional pages to your website. The pages that come with your template are a good start, but you will probably want to add more as you flesh out your site. 

To see a list of pages all sites need, check out our How to Build a Website article. 

To add a page, click the “Menus and Pages” icon on the left, the one that looks like a piece of paper. Click the “+ Add Page” button at the bottom to add the page of your choice and start customizing it.

Making Your Site Mobile-Friendly 

These days, customers are more likely to find you on their mobile devices than on their laptops or desktops. That’s why your website must be mobile-friendly. Wix lets you edit your site to make it work well on mobile devices — although in a more limited way than some other website builders. 

To edit how your website appears on mobile devices, click the phone icon towards the top left of the editor.

This will take you through a series of prompts to refine your site for mobile. Once you are done with the prompts, you will see what your site will look like on mobile. You can edit the layout to improve its appearance, such as changing fonts, hiding elements, changing the locations, and/or sizing of specific elements.

A Note on Responsive Design With Wix: Wix does give you the ability to create mobile-friendly sites. However, this platform has more limitations than other platforms regarding mobile-friendly sites. It can be frustrating to use the Wix editor in mobile design because you need to keep your elements within the dotted lines and it seems like you are leaving a lot of unused space. 

This is the price you pay for a true drag-and-drop website builder. Other builders can feel more restrictive in where they let you put elements — but that ensures your site is truly responsive to all screen sizes.

Tasks More Difficult Than They Should Be

We tried out every aspect of the Wix website builder and found a few things that are more difficult than they should be. These include:

• You Can’t Add Mobile-Only Elements. To optimize your website for mobile use, you sometimes need to have elements or sections that only appear on mobile devices. With Wix, you can only hide elements that appear on mobile — you can’t hide elements from appearing on the desktop version of your site. You can try hiding elements behind other sections or images, but a “hide on desktop” option would be much easier.
• You Can’t Switch Themes After Building Your Website. This is probably the most frustrating flaw with Wix’s website builder. Once you pick a theme and design a site, you can’t switch to another theme — unless you want to start all over. You can edit any theme to mirror other themes to an extent, but you can’t just switch themes if you change your mind. 

Wix Flexibility & Expandability

Our definition of flexibility and expandability answers this question: Can this website builder effectively grow alongside the needs of your business and your website?

The needs of every business and website differ. For us, the easiest way to rate a tool is to compare it to the gold standard of website development tools: WordPress. 

WordPress is an open-source tool that powers over 30% of the websites in the world. It has a huge plugin (third-party add-ons) market and extensive paid and community support options. You can build pretty much anything with WordPress, as long as you have the skills or are willing to pay a professional. 

We can assume that WordPress is the most flexible and expandable option and that all other website builders are less flexible and expandable.

Included Tools

Wix has been around for a long time, which means it has a wide variety of tools that you can use on your website. It doesn’t have nearly as many tools as WordPress, but it does have quite a few options. 

Part of what gives Wix extra flexibility is that it allows third parties to create apps for its platform. You can purchase some of those apps to add functionality to your site. Wix will also let you edit your site’s code and embed new code to expand its functionality. 

Wix is a relatively flexible tool that will meet the needs of many small and even some medium-sized businesses. However, if you have more complex needs, you might need to look elsewhere. 

Some of the tools you can find within many Wix website builder plans include:

• A custom ecommerce platform
• Custom theme fonts and colors that you change with the click of a button 
• Lightbox pop-up windows
• Online payment tools (e.g., Wix Payments, Stripe, PayPal, and more)
• SEO wizard tools to help you improve your site’s SEO
• Site history tools that save all the changes you make to your site so you can revert back to an older version at any time 
• Widgets for embedding images, videos, and hypertext markup language (HTML) files 
• Online booking tools that allow your site to accept appointments and send reminders
• On-site chat functionality
• The Wix app — great for communicating with site visitors and managing your site
• Blogging tools 
• Online ordering tools — great for restaurants
• Membership page tools for creating pages only site members may view
• Statistics and analytics tools that provide insights on your site’s performance
• Email marketing tools, which allow you to send newsletters from your Wix dashboard 
• The Wix Video Maker enables you to create and edit custom videos for your business
• Wix automation tools that support automated SMS and email campaigns 
• Custom coupon tools enable you to create custom coupon codes and promotions that offer visitors a discount
• Marketing integrations that allow you to connect Facebook pixel and Google conversion tracking, among other tools, to your site
• Custom form tools

This is not a complete list of Wix’s features, but it gives you a good idea of what Wix has to offer. If you think these features will work for your business, then Wix is the right choice for your needs.

Apps and Plugins

There are numerous apps and plugins you can take advantage of to add features to your site. The app library is not as large as that of WordPress, but it is big enough for most users.

If you don’t see what you need in the Wix website builder, you might be able to find it in the Wix app store. However, there could only be a few solutions available — unlike with WordPress, where you would likely find many different options.

Flexibility & Expandability Summary

We consider Wix to be somewhere in the middle when it comes to flexibility and expandability. It does have third-party apps that can add a lot of functionality, but there are far fewer apps than you would find with WordPress.

The lack of hosting options is another limitation of Wix’s flexibility. WordPress lets you host your site wherever you like. Wix only lets you host on Wix. A growing business can reach a point where it needs to switch hosts. If you reach that point you won’t be able to continue using your Wix site. 

Compared to WordPress — which is 100% flexible and expandable — Wix sits somewhere around 80%.

Wix SEO

SEO is an art and a science. You want your website to rank as high on search engines as possible. The higher you are in Google’s results, the more likely searchers are to click on your site. 

SEO is a big topic that is beyond the scope of this article. Our goal is to tell you how the Wix website builder SEO performs. 

Basic SEO Features

Here are some of the most important basic features of SEO and whether Wix has them or not:

Web.dev Score

Web.dev is a tool created by Google to measure web pages across four different categories: performance, accessibility, best practices, and SEO. It is a tool used by SEO pros, marketers, and developers to check their website performance. 

We measured the homepage of a site built with Wix to see how it scored:

As you can see, the site had excellent scores in three out of four categories. The only problem area was Performance.

There is a lot that goes into these scores but for simplicity’s sake, we can say that Performance is a measurement of how fast the site loads. The Performance category is a problem for sites built with the Wix website builder. 

Most Wix sites we tested fell somewhere between 50 and 80 on the Performance score. A score of 59 is certainly acceptable. However, it’s important to note that Wix sites don’t do exceptionally well in the Performance category. There are things you can do on your end to improve this score, like compressing large image files and deleting unused content. But you are going to be limited on how fast you can make a Wix site. 

This is where the issues with Wix hosting come in — if you could use a different web host, you could get better scores.

Wix Website Builder SEO Summary

Overall, Wix is in the middle when it comes to SEO capabilities. Most of the features you need for SEO are included — and it even gives you an easy-to-follow checklist inside the builder to improve your SEO. But, you are going to run into problems if you need a faster site to maximize SEO.

Wix Support

Good support is a necessity, especially for small business owners building their first websites. Fortunately, Wix makes support readily accessible. It’s just one click away. 

The Wix Help section gives you a variety of resources to assist with the building of your website. It includes a library of video tutorials and guides as well as a help section for the Wix Editor with multiple FAQs. And if you can’t find what you need in the help section, you can take advantage of Wix’s 24/7 support. 

As far as live support goes, Wix does not have the best reputation — just like most other larger companies. The customer support reps often don’t speak English as their first language, so your ability to get specific help may vary by the representative. 

Wix has a score of 1.7 out of 5 stars on Trustpilot — not a score to inspire optimism. However, that score is from a little over 3,000 reviews. Wix has over 200 million users. Most of those users are at least satisfied enough to not leave a negative review on Trustpilot. 

We tested the response time of Wix’s customer service using the live chat feature. Wix got back to us in about 15 minutes, not bad at all. 

If you pay for a plan with priority support, you can expect faster response times and have your issues moved to the front of the line. 

The support Wix provides is adequate, if limited. You are likely going to have better results figuring out things on your own. But if you need help, someone will assist you if you give them time.

Wix Alternatives

To compare different website builders, check out TRUiC’s Best Website Builder 2024 guide. 

	Best Website Builders
GoDaddy 4.7/5	Best Website Builder Overall Affordable pricing and flexible features Easy-to-use professional templates Extensive marketing features Visit Site
Web.com 4.5/5	Intuitive editor for easy set-up Access to professional photos Positive customer reviews Visit Site
Squarespace 4.4/5	Versatile marketing features Sleek and customizable templates Functional ecommerce services Visit Site
Wix 4.4/5	Secure payment processing Scalable storage space 24/7 customer support Excellent customer support Visit Site
Shopify 4.3/5	Best for Ecommerce Excellent ecommerce capabilities List unlimited products Advanced and understandable analytics Visit Site
WordPress 4.1/5	Highly customizable Cost effective Wide range of integrations Visit Site

Wix Review - Conclusion

We used the Wix website builder for a while and determined that it’s a great website builder for many users. Simple and easy-to-use, Wix makes it possible for anyone to build a quality website without a big learning curve. 

This website builder is designed for small and mid-sized businesses. Wix does not allow for the kind of customization and expansion that bigger businesses need. If you are going to need significant customization and flexibility, WordPress is a better option. But, bigger businesses have bigger budgets, which means they can hire professionals to use WordPress for them. 

Overall, Wix is excellent for small business owners who like the DIY approach. If you need a simple, attractive, and functional website, Wix is a good choice.

Who Shouldn’t Use This Tool?

• Large businesses
• Large ecommerce stores
• Businesses with complex needs
• SEO-focused businesses

Who Should Use This Tool?

• Small businesses
• Coaches and consultants
• Freelancers
• Photographers
• Restaurants
• Real estate agents
• Emerging or new businesses

Additional Resources

How To Build a Website

Best Website Builder 2024

Wix Website Examples