Wix vs GoDaddy (2023): The Battle of The User-Friendly Website Builders

Wix and GoDaddy are two of the industry's biggest hitters for web hosting and website building. But which is better? This Wix vs GoDaddy review plans to answer that very question.

We're taking their: core features, design flexibility, search engine optimization, and customer support under the microscope to help you get a feel for which (if either) platform's better suited to your needs.

But first, it’s essential to set the stage. Both providers claim to offer cheap, fast, and easy website building solutions without any technical know-how. So, let's take a quick look at who these companies are…

What is Wix?

Wix is a website builder (read our Wix Website Builder review) with a massive emphasis on user-friendly creativity and customization. Its drag-and-drop editor is nothing short of intuitive. Wix provides everything small businesses need to create professional-looking websites with hundreds of free customizable templates to choose from.

Established in 2006, Wix has lots of experience offering website owners a first-rate service. Fast forward to today, and Wix is trusted by over 200 million users across 190 countries. Impressive, right?

What is GoDaddy?

In contrast, GoDaddy's primarily a web domain name registrar, offering a site builder as an add-on service.  In 2014 GoDaddy launched its GoCentral eCommerce solution, a hybrid website builder and online shopping cart host. Like Wix, GoDaddy's website building tools (including its Artificial Design Intelligence (ADI) are best described as user-friendly.

Wix vs. GoDaddy: Ease of Use

For many people, including yours truly, ease of use is essential. Let's take a peek at how Wix and GoDaddy compare:

GoDaddy

If quick results are the aim, the GoDaddy website builder may have the edge. Users claim that GoDaddy's website builder is straightforward, making it easy to go live fast. However, this may be because GoDaddy offers fewer features and design flexibility than Wix.

GoDaddy uses ADI to populate a customized website for you within minutes. You just give them a few pieces of information, and they handle the rest!

However, when it comes to editing your GoDaddy site's design, that's when things get a bit trickier. GoDaddy is much more rigid with what you can modify, so editing specific website elements is challenging.

Wix

That said, Wix is also incredibly easy to navigate. Still, unlike GoDaddy, this doesn't come at the cost of creative freedom.

Where website creation is concerned, you have two choices:

1. Wix ADI
2. Wix Editor X

Like GoDaddy, Wix ADI asks you a few questions, then, based on your answers, provides you with a customized site. From there, you can edit the final website design.

Alternatively, Editor X focuses on its drag-and-drop functionality. This does what it says on the tin. You’re free to choose a template to start with. From there, just click on the website elements you want to use, drag, and then drop them into position. Simple, right?

As we've already hinted at, due to the numerous features available, it may take a little longer to go live than GoDaddy. Still, Wix is by no means difficult for novices to navigate.

Wix vs GoDaddy: Pricing Plans

The section you've all been waiting for – which offers the best value for money: Wix or GoDaddy?

Wix

Wix offers a free plan, whereas GoDaddy doesn’t. Here, you can build, create and publish your own website at no cost. Of course, you'll have to put up with Wix's subdomain and branding on your site. So, this doesn't work for professional-quality websites. Still, it's undoubtedly a great way to test out the platform to see whether you like what Wix has to offer.

If you find Wix's freemium version too limiting, there are seven paid plans to choose from. These range from $14 per month to $49 per month. Only the three highest programs permit online selling, so that's something to bear in mind. This removes Wix's branding; you can use a custom domain and enjoy a minimum of 1 GB worth of bandwidth.

GoDaddy

GoDaddy offers a free month-long trial before you have to commit to a paid plan. There are four paid-for packages to choose from, ranging from $9.99 to $24.99 per month, billed annually.

If you want to create a basic, personal site, their Basic plan is ideal for you. However, if you're going to grow a business, consider GoDaddy's Standard or Premium plans. However, regardless of which plan you opt for, all include GoDaddy Insight, which provides advice on how to improve your online presence.

Wix vs GoDaddy: Design and Customization Options

We've already touched on design above, but it's so important, we're digging deeper and dedicating a whole section to design flexibility:

Wix

Wix boasts an impressive 500+ templates to choose from – but don’t feel overwhelmed; they're organized into easy-to-navigate categories to help you find a template to suit your needs.

Some of the Wix website template categories include:

• Business
• Photography
• Music
• Online store
• Restaurants

…There’s also a blank page option, which may come in handy if you want to design your website from scratch.

You can play around with these templates using Wix's drag and drop editor and preview them before committing to using one for your website. Unfortunately, you can’t switch templates once you’ve published your website. If you do, you’ll have to re-add all of your content and start from scratch. So, choose your template carefully!

You also get access to an impressive library of stock photos (over 1,000) from Unsplash and Shutterstock. Some of these are pretty good quality, so they're definitely worth a browse!

Wix’s Editor X

In February 2020, Wix released its Editor X (read our full review here). Despite still being in beta mode, this feature got lots of hype. Editor X still features Wix's drag and drop interface, as well as loads of responsive design capabilities, including:

• Text Scale: You can create scalable font sizes
• Grid Layouting: A CSS-based system that enables you to anchor elements as the user's viewpoint changes. You can also scale and stack media for a more responsive, seamless design
• Flex layout: This reconfigures content automatically
• Custom breakpoints: Here, you can customize designs to any viewpoint with no restriction on devices.

Best of all, you get access to these advanced web design features without having to dig into the CSS coding yourself. The result: you can create designer-level websites without being a techno-whizz.

Here are the pros and cons of Editor X, so you can see clearly whether it offers what you need:

Pros	Cons
It's easy to create aesthetically-pleasing designs	Still in beta, so there could be a few glitches or bugs to be ironed out.
Extremely customizable	It only supports the English language
Fully responsive	In contrast to Wix's regular editor, it's more suited for the experienced user
You can quickly preview your designs and layout for multiple devices	In contrast to Wix's traditional  editor, there are limited templates

Please note: while Editor X is a product of Wix.com, it's essentially a different website builder entirely. To use Editor X instead of Wix's traditional interface, you’ll have to head over to editorx.com and sign up there!. In this review, we'll primarily look at Wix's standard editor.

Wix Velo

If you know your stuff when it comes to web development, you may find Wix Velo comes in handy. This is a full-stack development platform that empowers you to build and deploy professional web apps. You get access to Wix’s API in a zero-setup environment. Velo also comes with a visual UI editor and development tools that save you time when coding and designing.

Again, this is a superb additional product of Wix's to be aware of. Still, it isn’t necessary for making the most out of Wix's intuitive, beginner-friendly website builder.

GoDaddy

As we've already said, GoDaddy uses an ADI. If this sounds complex, don’t worry! All this means is that GoDaddy designs your website based on the answers you give to a set of questions. Like whether you want to integrate with social media, the purpose of your website, whether you have an existing site, etc.

This isn’t as magical as it might initially sound. Providing these answers helps GoDaddy choose an appropriate template for you. From there, they add the bare essentials. You’ll still need to populate your site with content and customize the design!

Like Wix, instead of using GoDaddy's ADI builder, you can choose from one of the 100s of GoDaddy's industry-specific templates to work from.

GoDaddy also comes with theme filters. These enable you to easily apply over 20 different layouts, font, and color options to a theme.

Again, similar to Wix, you can customize your chosen template using a simple drag-and-drop editor. You can also edit your web designs on the go with GoDaddy's mobile app.

At this point, it's also worth noting you have access to the following web-design features:

• Promotional banners
• Drop-down menus
• Backups
• Calls to action
• Contact forms
• A centralized image library – keep all your images in one place, even if you’re managing multiple sites

In the future, GoDaddy's looking to add Members-Only pages that are password protected into their mix of features. This is already a feature in Wix.

The Over App

Over is a content creation app GoDaddy has acquired. This tool comes included with GoDaddy's website builder and enables you to create content for various web channels. This is a neat tool for formatting social media content. It's easy to download Over onto your smartphone and start tweaking content from there.

Ecommerce Functionality

Though neither Wix nor GoDaddy was explicitly designed for eCommerce, both platforms enable you to sell physical and digital products via a simple online storefront.

You can process customer payments using PayPal, Square, Apple Pay, and Stripe, accept multiple currencies and manage your store through your mobile app.

More specifically, with Wix, you can:

• Enable abandoned cart recovery campaigns
• Sell subscriptions
• Automatically calculate sales tax
• Sell on social channels and marketplaces
• Showcase unlimited products
• Showcase and sell unlimited products
• Source and dropship products
• Create a multi-lingual storefront

👉 Read our Wix Ecommerce review.

Whereas with GoDaddy, you can:

• Publish up to 5,000 products with a maximum of 20 product images per item
• Sell products on your Facebook page
• Easily sell on mobile, with GoDaddy's mobile-optimized checkouts and responsive stores
• Let customers book appointments with you and accept payments for services
• Create discounts and promotions

👉 Read our GoDaddy Online Store review.

Blogging

Having a blog on your website gives customers a glimpse of your business's personal side. Both platforms offer good options when it comes to blogging, though Wix offers more in this department. Most notably, you can:

• Social bookmark
• Categorize your blog posts
• Use analytics to track the performance of posts
• Embed features like a search bar

GoDaddy's blogging engine is also quite good. Similarly, it offers analytics, and you can split posts into categories too. You can also create an RSS feed so readers can subscribe and keep up with your latest content.

Wix vs GoDaddy: Email Marketing

Now, let's turn our attention to what both platforms offer where email marketing is concerned:

GoDaddy

GoDaddy comes with limited email marketing capabilities. On its cheapest plan, you can send up to 100 emails a month, which increases to a maximum of 25,000 on the most expensive package.

GoDaddy offers a premium add-on to expand upon these features to flesh out their complimentary email marketing functionality. Of course, this comes at an additional cost. There are three plans available, starting at $9.99 a month. This extra service includes:

• Custom reports
• Drag and drop email editor
• Access to a library of stock images
• Access to mobile-friendly, professional templates
• GoDaddy handles unsubscribes automatically.
• It's easy to convert blogs into emails.
• GoDaddy’s email marketing integrates with Facebook, Etsy, and more.
• You can automate your email campaigns.

It’s worth noting: GoDaddy’s basic email marketing plan only allows for a max of 500 subscribers, and even on its most expensive plan ($29.99 a month), there's a cap of 5,000 subscribers. If your list grows beyond these numbers, GoDaddy won’t scale with you; as such, you’ll have to look for a new email marketing provider.

Wix

With Wix, you can choose from their growing number of email templates to create professional and seamless email designs. Their email marketing functionality includes the following features:

• Email editor: A user-friendly email builder where you can either start from scratch or customize one of Wix's email templates by playing with backgrounds, colors and fonts. You can even incorporate videos into your email content.
• Email automation: Automate and personalize email campaigns to include the recipient's name.
• Data analytics: Use Wix’s real-time analytics to track your email campaigns' success and use this data to improve future campaigns.

You can also create an email address specific to your domain using G Suite. You can send up to 5,000 individual emails throughout 3 campaigns or mailings each month.

To get more out of your email marketing with Wix, you'll have to sign up for the Wix Ascend plan. This is Wix’s business solution that comes with more marketing features. Most notably, like lead capture forms, scheduled chat hours, and more email marketing functionality. For instance, you can set automation rules to automate email workflows and social campaigns.

Social Media Integrations

Wix is big on social media. They have a widget called Social Media Stream, which integrates all major social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, Youtube, and Tumblr. You can connect all these through one widget embedded onto your website and display them using ‘follow' buttons, image galleries, and live feeds.

GoDaddy also integrates with Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, but on a much more simplistic level. You can make use of the Over app to format social media content. Still, we wouldn’t say this is an exclusive feature to GoDaddy since it's available on the app market for anyone to download.

Analytics

Any website owner worth their salt will want to monitor their site's performance. This is where website analytics is crucial. Let's see how GoDaddy and Wix compare:

GoDaddy

With GoDaddy, your best option might be to rely on Google Analytics. However, they offer an ‘InSight' tool that analyzes your business efforts and provides data-driven suggestions for improving outreach, primarily using social media and email campaigns.

Wix

With Wix, you can choose between Google Analytics or adding their free Visitor Analytics widget to your site. Here you see where your website visitors come from, which pages they clicked on, and when they were active.

Search Engine Optimization

The strength of your website’s SEO will decide your ranking in search engine results. Needless to say, this has a massive bearing on the amount of organic traffic you'll drive to your website. That said, let's see what Wix and GoDaddy have to offer in the way of SEO tools:

Wix

Wix emphasizes that you're in control of your SEO. You can edit meta descriptions, URL slugs, meta titles, and header code. If this seems like a daunting prospect, don’t worry, there are plenty of apps you can use. For instance, SiteBooster tracks your SEO performance and offers keyword support through their SEO Wiz.

GoDaddy

GoDaddy offers you the same control over your meta descriptions, URL slugs, meta titles, and header codes. You also benefit from SEO tracking and built-in keyword suggestions. Still, as they don’t have an app store like Wix, you can’t benefit from any third-party SEO plugins.

They also create and submit a sitemap to search engines. Essentially, this a blueprint of your website. It helps search engines find, crawl through, and index all of your website content.

Customer Service

Good customer service cannot be underrated. Your website builder must be there for you when you encounter a problem or want to raise a question. That said, let's see how Wix and GoDaddy compare:

Wix

Wix offers 24/7 phone support for their English and Spanish-speaking customers. For most other languages, this phone service is available during the day.

There's also a helpful forum where you can raise and search for any already answered and asked questions. This is an excellent place to network and trade tips and tricks with other Wix users.

However, Wix’s online help center is where they really excel. Here you can search a query or issue, and you're near-on guaranteed to find handy tutorials to help you out.

Wix also has an in-editor help function. Suppose you encounter a problem while editing your website. In that case, you can click the question mark bubble and find the answer without having to leave your editing page. Pretty useful!

GoDaddy

GoDaddy's 24/7 live chat is first-rate. This is something Wix is yet to provide its customers. Live chat is invaluable for customers with pressing needs but can’t phone and/or don’t want to scroll looking for an answer. Like Wix, GoDaddy also offers 24/7 phone support.

Wix vs GoDaddy: Which is The Better Website Builder?

Both Wix and GoDaddy target a similar audience, i.e., personal users, small to medium-sized businesses, and modest online stores.

Have you got any experience using either GoDaddy or Wix? Or are you considering one of their competitors like Weebly, Squarespace, or WordPress? Either way, we'd love to hear all about it in the comments box below – speak soon!