Wix.com Review 2023 The Flexible Website Builder
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We awarded Wix our Best Website Builder badge for 2023!
Find out why in this detailed review of its product.
Wix has become pretty well known over the last few years, in part due to budget-busting marketing campaigns featuring stars like Heidi Klum, Jason Statham, and Wonder Woman herself, Gal Gadot. But let's start with the basics. Today, Wix is the biggest player in the website building landscape and boasts a whopping 200 million users.
Wix Review: Summary
The App Market makes it easy to add extra functionality such as photo galleries, booking forms, members areas and online stores. However there are a few drawbacks that make it less than ideal for larger sites. Wix is also not the cheapest option.
Check out our Brand New Wix Video Review:
- Go to the Wix website and select a template you like
2. Click on Edit
3. Sign up with your email address and choose a password (or even easier: sign up via Google or Facebook)
4. You are now in the website editor. Start replacing text and images with your own ones.
Tip: find a much more detailed Wix Tutorial here.
Who Should Use Wix?
Their visually impressive layouts are designed for small businesses, restaurants, online stores and artists such as musicians and photographers. They are optimized for mobile devices and can be spiced up with one of the numerous apps available from the Wix App Market.
In a way you can compare Wix to a prefabricated house: the fundamental structure already exists and can’t be changed. You can, however, paint the walls to your gusto (choose a theme) and add the furniture you love (photo galleries and other apps - you can learn how in our Wix tutorial).
Compared to other website builders we've reviewed, like GoDaddy and Jimdo, Wix gives you a ton of freedom. So if you are generally happy with a more standard looking web design, you may find it easier with the aforementioned site creators.
Our very own Wix Case Study
In fact, I used Wix to create my own portfolio website and blog on robertbrandl.com. I had a particular design in mind and just needed a quick way to build it. Also, I didn’t want to have to think about security updates etc. which meant WordPress wasn’t an option.
In the end, I considered both Weebly and Wix (our top-rated builders) and went for Wix. With Weebly there was just no perfect way to make our design look good on mobile devices.
I also tried using Squarespace, which I was very keen on for its great blogging feature. But compared to Wix, I found the editing process more cumbersome (for starters, the editor doesn't auto-save), and I just couldn't get the design quite right.
In contrast, working with the Wix editor was a breeze, offering handy tools such as photo filters and animated texts. The editor also constantly saves your progress and lets you revert to a previous version if needed. This is extremely helpful! Also, the mobile website editor helped to get exactly the smartphone-friendly website version I was aiming for.
But before getting ready to swipe your credit card, keep in mind that every website has different requirements.
Videos
- Wix Ecommerce
- Wix vs Squarespace
- Wix Tutorial
- Wix in 1-Minute
Wix offers a free plan. Sign up for it here (link will open in a new window)
Screenshots
Wix Pricing
Free
Create a free website with a Wix banner displayed. Not included: your own domain name.
Connect Domain
Connect your own domain with your Wix site. Your site will still show a Wix banner. (Plan is not available in all countries).
Combo
Ideal for smaller professional websites. No banner and plenty of storage.
Unlimited
The right plan if you need a lot of web space (up to 10 GB included).
Business & eCommerce
Best plan to create an online store or use premium apps like Wix Bookings or Wix Hotels. Higher plans (VIP & Unlimited) available too.
Monthly prices for 1-year contracts; Domain included in selected packages.
Tip: Save 10% using discount code “TOOLTESTER10!”. Applies to monthly and yearly plans.
Which plan should I choose?
No Wix review would be complete without a close look at the pricing:
The Wix platform is available for free for as long as you want. If you need professional features like your own domain name or ecommerce, you must choose from one of their premium plans ranging from “Combo” to “Business VIP”. The cheapest ad-free plan with a custom domain name costs $16 per month.
In our view, Combo is by far the best plan for regular websites without ecommerce. It is ad-free, includes a domain name for 1 year and provides enough storage for most needs. Find our detailed analysis of Wix’s premium plans here.
Find the best Wix plan with the Smart Finder:
Now, you are probably wondering whether or not Wix is right for you. So let’s find out what’s good and what’s bad about this product:
Pros and Cons of the Wix Website Builder
- Pros
- Cons
Pros
Excellent templates
The most remarkable thing about Wix is its templates. The designs are exceptional and offer pre-built layouts for many different industries.
It’s extremely flexible
Whereas other website builder limit the extent to which elements can be moved around, Wix allows your to finish your work off “pixel perfect”.
Adding animations
Wix is one of the few site builders that let you animate text and other elements. But make sure not to overdo it!
App Market
There are hundreds of website apps that you can add to your website. There is a newsletter tool, live chat software, online booking widgets, etc. All of those can be easily integrated into your Wix website. But keep in mind: many of them are third-party apps—therefore, Wix doesn’t provide support for all of them.
Wix Artificial Design Intelligence (ADI)
Wix offers a (relatively) smart assistant to create your website with. But this is only available for some types of projects (e.g. portfolios, yoga sites, etc). For instance, it’ll automatically generate images and content, connect your social media, create a contact form for you or pick a suitable design for your audience. But don’t worry, if you don’t like something, you’ll be able to change it. More information.
Automatic Site Backup
Wix automatically creates backup points of your website that can be restored at any time (much like Apple’s time machine system). This way you will never lose any important information.
Rating Details
A More Detailed Look at Wix’s Top Features
If I am being honest I had my reservations about Wix at first as their product hasn’t always been easy to recommend. Back in the days it was Flash-based and always a bit different (like your old classmate who had that weird taste in clothes). However, thanks to the never-ending improvements they have become one of the cool kids, slowly climbing our ranking to now claim the top position.
Is Wix really that easy to use?
One of the things we really like about Wix is that it caters to users of all levels of technical experience. For complete beginners, there’s Wix ADI, Wix’s AI-powered website builder. All you have to do is answer a few quick questions, and it will build you a ready-to-go site in just minutes.
Most users, however, will probably feel pretty comfortable with using the regular Wix Editor. After picking a template, you’ll be able to use Wix’s drag-and-drop editor to customize your site pretty much any way you like. You’ll have close to full control over what’s included in your web pages, where it’s placed, and how it looks (you can customize fonts, colors, styles, interactions etc).
Using the Wix editor
Wix sites on mobile devices
The only real drawback with Wix’s designs is that they aren’t mobile responsive by default. Responsive means that websites dynamically resize themselves to accommodate different screen sizes like desktop computers, tables and smartphones. Most other website builders (e.g. Squarespace, GoDaddy and Jimdo) follow this approach, meaning that the resizing happens automatically in the background without you having to step in.
Wix uses a different approach: there are two separate editors, one for the desktop version and another one for mobile. You’ll mainly work on the desktop version, as Wix automatically converts your website into a mobile-optimized version. That usually works well, sometimes though, it needs a bit of tweaking as certain elements might fall out of place. Also, there is no specific tablet version. So depending on the screen size of the table, it’ll either display the desktop or mobile version.
There are a few advantages too: compared to most of Wix’s competitors, you can fully customize the mobile user experience. For example, Wix lets you add a Quick Action Bar with access buttons to your phone number, email address or Google Maps. You can also hide certain elements entirely for mobile visitors. In short: Wix offers much more customization but is not as hands-off as other website builders with responsive themes.
Enhancing your site with Wix apps
As we briefly mentioned, you can easily add extra functionality to any Wix site with the help of an app. The Wix App Market is one of Wix’s best features, as it includes around 300 apps that can be enabled with just a couple of clicks. These include not only external applications, but also Wix’s own extensive range of apps.
Ascend is one of Wix’s core apps – it’s aimed at small business owners and includes a CRM, email marketing, automations, forms, live chat and more. It’s useful as an all-in-one solution (and can be used on a limited free plan); however we think the premium packages could offer a little more. See our full review here.
The Inbox feature in Wix Ascend
Wix Bookings is handy for anyone who runs an appointment or service-based business (e.g. yoga studios, beauty salons, personal trainers, consultants). It’s a scheduling app that lets users book appointments or classes directly on your own website, and also takes payments. There’s integration with Zoom, and the ability to manage staff, calendars and even offer memberships. While it is normally a paid app, you can access a free version, and it’s also included in the price of Wix’s Business and Ecommerce apps (more on that below).
But Wix offers a handful of industry-specific and niche apps, too. Among these are Wix Hotels, Wix Restaurants, Wix Events, and more.
The ones not made by Wix can be a little hit and miss: we found a few that were not of really great quality and some of them are also pretty expensive for what they are.
What about SEO?
While a lot of criticism has been levelled at Wix’s SEO capabilities over the past few years, a lot of it isn’t really relevant any more. Wix has invested a lot into beefing up its SEO features, with new ones constantly being added.
Aside from the SEO Wizard – a personalized optimization plan that’s handy for beginners – you’ll also find advanced features such as an editable robots.txt file, customizable canonical tags, bulk 301 redirects, structured data, smart caching, support for Google AMP, and a whole lot more. You can read our full analysis of Wix’s SEO capabilities here.
Google’s John Mueller has publicly stated that Wix’s SEO capabilities are fine for their search engine. So unless you are planning on ranking for some insanely competitive keyword you should have no issues with Wix! In the end, SEO depends a lot more on your ability to create outstanding content rather than the website builder.
In short: Wix offers plenty to give you the best chance of achieving high rankings in Google. If SEO is important to you, our main advice would be to focus on creating high-quality content, and be mindful of not adding too much media – slow page speeds can sometimes hurt rankings, and Wix’s page speeds (especially on mobile) haven’t always been the fastest.
Wix for advanced users
Recognizing that their standard editor might be too limited for coding-savvy users, Wix introduced Editor X in early 2020, which is a completely different product. As an advanced editor aimed at more experienced users (in particular, designers and agencies), it allows you to build responsive websites for different breakpoints. Learn more about it here.
But, if you really want to get deep into your Wix website’s code, there’s Wix Velo. Unlike Editor X, it is part of the standard Wix package and is for those with serious technical know-how (read: developers). As an open development platform, it lets you build out advanced websites and applications by adding custom functionality to your website (via JavaScript and APIs), as well as the ability to develop databases. While it’s not something that most Wix users will need to use, it’s certainly handy to know that this functionality exists, in case you have big plans for your Wix site in the future.
Wix Review: Conclusion
The verdict of this Wix review is pretty clear: It’s the best website builder for smaller websites (not more than 30 pages) that have to look flawless. Why not also for larger projects, you ask?
Unfortunately the navigation menu doesn’t really accommodate complex site structures as there is only one sub-level. Weebly or WordPress usually work better for big websites. That being said, Wix’s Content Manager could be a potential workaround, thanks to its use of dynamic pages – however, this certainly adds more complexity.
Wix has the widest selection of prebuilt designs for any kind of industry. Similar to most other website builders these days, it’s not possible to switch to a new theme after your initial choice. This means you’ll have to redesign it manually or start from scratch. On the positive side, this limitation facilitates Wix’s greatest strength: unmatched flexibility within your chosen theme.
And even if sometime down the road you would like to get into the ecommerce game you can easily add a shopping cart at relatively little cost. Read our Wix Ecommerce review to learn more.
What Wix has created here is certainly impressive in many ways with a development speed that is almost breathtaking. Just make sure you try out the free plan before switching to a paid plan to find out if it’s the right choice for you.
Is Wix the right website builder for you?
- Recommended If
- Not Recommended If
You need cutting-edge templates with ready-made designs for your industry (e.g. architecture, fashion, advertising, jewelry, restaurant, hotel etc.)
You are a photographer and want to showcase your images in stunning galleries (and even sell your photos)
You are a musician or band and want to sell music online
You need a lot of flexibility customizing your design.
You want to be able to add additional apps easily (e.g. appointment scheduler for clients, event calendar, forum etc.)
You require an integrated newsletter tool
Real Wix Example Sites
Wix User Reviews
Read MoreFAQ
After logging into your Wix Account you will see the “Domains” menu. Here you can simply enter the domain name that you want to use. If you have already registered the domain name, they will show you how you can transfer it or point it to Wix (see screenshot). More information here.
Wix was founded in Tel Aviv (Israel) by Avishai Abrahami, Nadav Abrahami and Giora Kaplan. Tel Aviv is also where their headquarters are located. Furthermore they have offices all around the world: New York, San Francisco, Berlin, Sao Paulo and others. They are a public company, listed on NASDAQ: WIX.
Their customer’s websites are hosted on servers in the United States.
Learn more about Wix: What is Wix?
Yes. If you are worried about SEO and want to reach the top of Google’s rankings, you can do so with Wix. You have access to page titles, descriptions, 301 redirects and pretty much to all other relevant settings.
Where the Wix website builder falls short is ‘page speed’. While you can certainly influence your website’s loading speed, Wix doesn’t allow you to fully edit your source code as, for example, WordPress does. However, if you need this, you’ll probably be operating in a highly competitive industry. In this case, you should check out a more high-end solution, such as WordPress. But keep in mind that it’ll be much more complex to use.
Learn more about SEO for Wix here.
Yes, Wix is a legit company. Wix is a publicly traded NASDAQ company offering a 14-day money-back guarantee on all of its premium plans.
Since you can try out almost all features using a free plan, the risk of using Wix is minimal. Overall, Wix is a safe company to do business with.
Yes, Wix lets you activate a cookie consent banner where your visitors can select which cookies they want to allow (e.g. marketing cookies, analytics cookies, etc.). This will help you fulfill the GDPR requirements for visitors from the EU.
No, Wix is a hosted website builder. What that means is that by signing up they will provide everything you need for a complete website: the editor, the web space and a domain name. For a proper .com or .net domain you will have to purchase one of their premium plans.
No, Wix will not become the owner of your content when you build a website with them. Here is what their terms of service say: “Wix does not claim any intellectual property rights over the User Content[…]” (TOS: 15. User Content D.)
The same applies if you purchase a domain name through them. They will never own it and you are free to transfer it to another domain registrar.
Wix runs in your web browser (Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox or Microsoft Edge), it doesn’t matter if you are using a Mac or PC. Just make sure your browser is up to date!
Velo by Wix (formerly Wix Code) is a unique way to add custom applications and dynamic pages to your Wix website. An example would be a registration form, where artwork and text can be submitted. Using this data you can now create dynamic pages on your website that include this information.
Wix Velo allows you to create websites with a depth of features that currently only professional CMS can deliver. Find further information here.
You can integrate Google AdSense via their App store (the app is not available for Wix ADI). Another possibility is banner ads and affiliate links. It’s also possible to control which sellers advertise on your site by uploading an Authorized Digital Sellers file.
With Editor X, Wix especially approaches designers and advanced users, similar to Webflow.
You have even more customization options than with Wix’s regular editor. Editor X allows you to build your site from scratch or adjust the available templates to your taste, through e.g. advanced “Grid Layouting”, “Text Scaling” and setting up “Custom Breakpoints”. Like that, you can create perfectly responsive websites and you don’t even have to use CSS.
The implemented developer mode (Wix Velo) contributes to the editor’s great flexibility as well.
Wix’s accessibility features, which are compliant with WCAG 2.0, are some of the most advanced we’ve seen in any website builder. Its inbuilt Accessibility Wizard will scan your site and give you a list of potential issues/areas of improvement, which you can go through step-by-step to fix (these usually involve just the toggle of a button or some minor manual adjustments). What’s more, Wix also offers some templates that are already built for accessibility out-of-the-box. You can learn more here.
Techie Stuff (Mainly for Geeks)
In this section you can find a summary of some technical aspects about Wix.
- Wix Uptime & Response Time
- Wix Page Speed
This image shows the so-called “uptime” of our Wix demo website of a period of an entire year. When a website goes down, it means that no one can access it, which is bad for business. The closer the uptime is to 100%, the better it is. Anything less than 99.90% is considered relatively poor. Wix’s score of 99.95% is pretty decent.
The graph also shows Wix’s response time, i.e., the number of milliseconds it takes to get a response from their servers. A value in between 200-500ms is relatively good: more than 800ms can feel slow to the website visitor. Wix’s servers are located in the USA, which means that loading times are fastest there.
Find the current availability status on the Wix Status page.
Wix Alternatives
Squarespace is the one you should pick if you want to start a blog. Their fully responsive designs are sophisticated, and Squarespace’s support is more personal and less salesy. The editor feels a bit more complicated than Wix, though. Read our Wix vs. Squarespace article for more information. In our book, it’s the top Wix alternative.
Zyro is a relatively new contender with very affordable prices. Their website editor feels very similar to Wix’s but is lighter on features. We would recommend Zyro for anyone who is looking for a website builder like Wix but doesn’t have the budget for it. They also offer great designs, but you won’t find many apps or integrations with external services. See our full Zyro vs Wix comparison.
Jimdo is a lot lighter on features but probably the fastest website builder. It’ll take you no more than 10 minutes to create your first personalized website draft. Jimdo sites also load very fast. But don’t expect features like a blog or advanced SEO settings.
Weebly is a great Wix alternative as it’s extremely intuitive and easy to use. Its templates are not quite as stylish (or as numerous) as Wix’s. Weebly also offers a more structured editing approach than Wix that some users prefer. Read our Wix vs Weebly comparison.
Not sure what website builder you should use? Let our smart finder decide for you in 2 minutes.
The authors
Learn more about us
We keep our content up to date
31 Jan 2023 - Small update regarding load times
15 Dec 2022 - Added badge
16 Nov 2022 - Case study updated
15 Sep 2022 - Added Wix video review
03 Jun 2022 - New video review
02 May 2022 - Overall rating changed from 4.6 to 4.5 due to reduced affordability as a result of price changes
15 Apr 2022 - Example websites added
05 Apr 2022 - Conclusion changed
08 Mar 2022 - FAQ's updated
10 Feb 2021 - Subdirectories and subdomains can now be used for multilingual sites
22 Dec 2021 - New videos (Pros)
17 Dec 2021 - Mobile app rating added
05 Nov 2021 - Live chat support now available
12 Oct 2021 - FAQ's updated
01 Sep 2021 - Most recent price increases reflected
19 Aug 2021 - 1-Minute Review added
12 Aug 2021 - Small updates
14 Jul 2021 – General update
23 Jun 2021 – SEO advancements
28 Apr 2021 – Updates in ecommerce
18 Mar 2021 – General update with new features added
14 Dec 2020 – Smart Finder added
13 Nov 2020 – Wix now has a page limit of 100
24 Sep 2020 – Improved cookie consent banner
16 Sep 2020 – Paid blog subscriptions now available
10 Jun 2020 – Presenting Wix Editor X for Pros
19 Nov 2019 – Updates on Wix's loading speed
31 May 2019 – Price increase reflected.
30 Apr 2019 – Wix Code is now called Velo.
04 Feb 2019 – Small update in "Depth of navigation".
05 Nov 2018 – New feature for multilingual websites
28 Feb 2018 – Change to the uptime section
05 Oct 2017 – Thanks to their constant improvements and new features they are our new #1
26 Jul 2017 – Wix Code announcement
20 Apr 2017 – Alt images in post are now customizable (new rating)
03 Feb 2017 – SSL encryption available
17 Jan 2017 – The Backup & Restore section has been added
19 Oct 2016 – Wix launched ADI and improved the blog SEO features. New blog rating of 4
25 Aug 2016 – Wix allows you to use your own fonts now.
23 Jun 2016 – URLs are now clean. General rating upgraded to 4.4 and SEO rating to 4
01 Apr 2016 – Disqus integration possible
08 Mar 2016 – Update “Wix ShoutOut”
03 Feb 2016 – New Wix use case section
12 Jan 2016 – Wix Music and Wix Bookings added to the review
28 Oct 2015 – Wix allows to embed own background videos – new rating 5 stars
02 Sept 2015 – Wix introduced a multilingual app – new rating 4 stars
13 Aug 2015 – Video backgrounds and improved online store lead to a slightly higher rating.
04 Aug 2015 – Pros and cons added as well as server tests
30 Jan 2015 – General review update
13 Oct 2014 – New rating for blog, before 1,5
27 Aug 2014 – New rating for designs, now 4.5 stars
17 Jul 2014 – Wix introduced its own Newsletter tool “ShoutOut”.
30 Jan 2014 – H1 tags can be added.
09 Jan 2014 – More detailed information about domain names.
10 Dec 2013 – Review of the blog feature added.
24 Sep 2013 – More storage space.
19 Jul 2013 – Supports Google Adsense now.
08 Apr 2013 – Review of Wix’s new HTML builder. The review for the old Flash-based model can be found here.
14 Mar 2012 – Password protection information added
11 Apr 2012 – Initial review of Wix’ HTML5 website builder
22 Nov 2011 – We have tested Wix’ server performance.
07 Nov 2011 – Wix adds a blog module
20 Jul 2011 – Website builder for mobile websites reviewed reviewed, new eCommerce features added
17 Mar 2011 – General update
12 Jan 2011 – General update: support has not been reviewed this time.
THE BEHIND THE SCENES OF THIS REVIEW
This article has been written and researched following a precise methodology.
Our methodology
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