While WordPress is a wonderful blogging tool and a website creation software it does have some competition from providers such as wix.com and wordpress.com. Let’s compare the three options and custom development and discuss some pros and cons. This should help you arrive at an informed decision on which option suits your needs.
What are we comparing
- Wix – https://www.wix.com/
- WordPress.org – https://wordpress.org/
- WordPress.com – https://wordpress.com/
- Static sites – Hand-coded blazing-fast HTML sites – Static-site-developer
The article Which Should You Use, Wix or WordPress by HubSpot provides a good comparison which I dive into and provide my perspective in this video and in the post below.
Software
Wix is a proprietary web building software – it provides a great user experience that said it is proprietary so does it provide an option for you to export your content you should be aware that it doesn’t provide the flexibility in terms of being able to export your content. With WordPress, one can export all of site content and then import it into a different site in an XML format. When using wordpress.com, users can export their site set it up on their own custom site on own servers.
Flexibility
While the designs are amazing, Wix templates are more geared towards single page landing pages rather than multi-page sites right (lack of some flexibility). While WordPress used to be less flexible since its origins were as a blogging platform. With addition of custom fields and custom post types WordPress turned into a full fledged Content Management System (CMS). The launch of Gutenberg editor (block editor) in WordPress version 5 a year ago made WordPress an easy tool to create media rich pages and posts. Blocks are a great new tool for building engaging content. With blocks, you can insert, rearrange, and style multimedia content with very little technical knowledge (and no code needed). Even complete novices can create some amazing designs.
Plugins
Wix has 250 addons for common use cases. Since WordPress has been in active development since 2003 and is heavily supported by a large base of developers being open source has meant that there are tons of plugins (over 55,000 free plugins not to count all the paid ones with premium plugins or in marketplaces). These plugins provide unlimited flexibility in terms of functionality. So we can do a lot more with WordPress beyond just blogging. Create e-commerce site, build a Learning Management Systems or Mobile App or a an intranets. I have developed several types of sites with WordPress including things like for architecture/building industry, cafes, community sites, dentists, doctors, gardeners, scientists, small business and sports stores.
Templates
Wix is a flexible platform and their templates look great. While it is tempting to go with these templates a lot of Wix templates tend to be quite heavy in terms of how they built with a lot of styling and JavaScript that can slow things down. I use and recommend the GeneratePress theme since it is an extremely lightweight theme under 30 kilobytes, search engine optimized and provides unlimited possibilities in terms of design. Excellent support from Tom Usborne the theme author has made it my theme of choice. I tend to use the paid version though even the free version works well. Another theme that seems to be popular in the developer community is Astra. I pair the GeneratePress theme with SiteGround for hosting since they offer excellent uptime, customer service and strong security. They are more expensive than some of the shoddy hosting providers, you pay for them because they are the best hosting providers. For a comparison of all the hosting providers, please visit https://vjdesign.com.au/web-hosting/.
Pricing
While Wix and WordPress.com offer free plans with ads – initially it might look like Wix is a cheaper option but in the long term you end up paying a lot more right for and you don’t have a lot of flexibility but if you are thinking in terms of a single page site or a simple blog you could go either with Wix or even the free version of wordpress.com or just a personal version of wordpress.com for $5 per month if your needs are fairly limited or simple.
eCommerce
eCommerce Plans on Wix start to add up the price. If you are small business and are going down the e-commerce path I would highly recommend getting wordpress.org and setting up something like WooCommerce (a free plugin) with ability to receive payments via Paypal or Credit Cards and set up Shipping and much more.
SEO
Use free SEO plugins such as Yoast to get the right search engine optimization. WordPress becomes technically one of the best search engine optimized publishing tools. Wix is limited in its SEO options.
Blogging
Wix has a basic editor for creating blog posts and comments. WordPress started out as a blogging platform with a simple editor. With Gutenberg and all the new editing functionality, WordPress is one of the best drag and drop builders out there and it’s amazing what you can do with WordPress. View my post on How to build a Landing page using the WordPress Block Editor (Gutenberg).
Support
Wix has dedicated support available 24/7. While there is no dedicated support for wordpress.org since it is all community-driven, you can post questions in the forum. Or if you are happy to pay, you will get support through developers like me.
Static Sites
If your content does not change often, a plain HTML site hand coded by a web developer is the way to go. It will be lightweight and needs no maintenance. Also, cheap to host.
Do you want Blazing Fast Site hosted for free and with no domain charges? If your site gets rarely updated, I can build static sites at affordable rates and I also offer regular updates on an hourly basis.
In Summary
If you are after a basic site you could very well go with Wix or wordpress.com. However, if you are a small business then one of my affordable web design packages with wordpress.org setup for you in the way you want it to look is the way to go.
