Wix Website Builder Review (2024) – Everything You Need to Know

Will WIX fit your needs?

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Itโ€™s 2024, and for a business idea to take flight, you need to establish yourself on the world wide web.

So, you guessed it; a website is an absolute must-have.

Luckily, you don't need any coding or web development experience these days to create a stunning website on your own.

This is where website builders like Wix are often praised for being so user-friendly. With affordable pricing plans and hundreds of apps and templates, building just what you need is a breeze. Wix allows you to get online with very little time and effort, with its drag and drop editor that's one of the most intuitive on the market.

All that to say, it's no wonder Wix powers millions of websites.

But does Wix provide all the features and functionality you need to build the website of your dreams? To help you decide, we've taken an in-depth look at Wix's capabilities and compiled this comprehensive Wix website builder review.

Let's dive in!

Website Builder Pros and Cons

Sometimes the easiest way to evaluate whether a service is right for you is to draw up a quick comparison of the pros and cons, so below, we've done exactly that:

Wix Pros:

  • Wixโ€™s editor is intuitive and very beginner-friendly thanks to its straightforward drag-and-drop interface.
  • There are hundreds of templates available in Wix's library.
  • Wix is very affordably priced.
  • Wix boasts excellent customer support via a variety of channels, including phone support.
  • The drag-and-drop editor provides lots of control over your design, allowing for the flexible positioning of all elements.
  • Wix's free plan is great for testing its editor
  • You can modify your site while you're on the go using Wix's mobile app.
  • You'll enjoy access to an extensive app market.
  • With Wix Corvid, web developers can use Wix's visual editing interface while simultaneously editing their source code, which makes adding javascript a breeze.

Wix Cons:

  • Wix's eCommerce functionality is limited. Generally speaking, it's best suited to smaller stores. So, if youโ€™re serious about eCommerce, another platform, like Shopify, might be better.
  • Wix heavily relies on third-party apps to extend its core functionality.
  • Wix's blogging features aren't extensive – you don't have much control over categorizing or editing your posts. Layout options are also limited in comparison to other website builders like WordPress.
  • Once you've chosen a Wix template, you canโ€™t switch to another. Swapping erases all your content from your website, leaving you to rebuild everything!
  • There's no live chat support.
  • The cheaper plans offer limited storage and bandwidth.
  • Wix doesnโ€™t offer advanced navigation options; as such, it's best suited to those that just want a simple site. So, if you're planning to launch a content-heavy website, where you organize your web pages into categories, you might find Wixโ€™s options a little limiting.

About Wix.com

Like WordPress, over the last few years, Wix has become somewhat of a household name. It's a true giant in the website building industry, and one of the go-to options for many inexperienced web designers.

Wix reached over 180 million users in 2019, making it one of the most popular choices on the market. The tool is best known for its smooth and intuitive drag-and-drop editor that allows users to build a Wix site fast with zero prior experience.

Wix caters to a wide range of markets, with over 500 templates to choose from, and each template explicitly designed for a specific industry or style, entrepreneurs are bound to find something to suit their niche.

Each and every one of Wix's features are designed to be as easy to use as possible to get your website up and running ASAP. It's also easy to expand upon Wix's core functionality with its extensive app store; there are hundreds of add-ons for you to download and use.

Wix Website Builder Review: Main Features

When you choose a website builder, you need to ensure it has everything you need to build, manage, and scale your site. So, letโ€™s take a look at Wixโ€™s core features:

Templates

As we've just said, Wix has over 500 templates to choose from. So, there's no shortage of designs to inspire you as you start your website design journey.

There are several template categories on offer, including:

Business websites and services, specifically for brands in the following industries:

  • Restaurant and food
  • Travel and tourism
  • Fashion and style
  • Health and wellness
  • General business
  • Beauty and hair

Online store templates, with presets for:

  • Fashion and clothing
  • Jewelry and accessories
  • Arts and crafts
  • Home and decor
  • Beauty and wellness
  • Food and drinks
  • Sports
  • Electronics
  • Kids products
  • Books and publishing
  • Pets and animals

Creative templates, including portfolios, for:

  • Photography (events, portraits, editorial, travel, and documentary)
  • Music (singers, musicians, DJs, music industry, producers, bands)
  • Design (graphic and web design, art, illustration, fashion, branding)
  • Resumes and CVs
  • Video (film and TV, vlogs, education)

Community templates:

  • Education (schools, universities, classes, and courses)
  • Communities (religious, non-profit, online forums)
  • Events (weddings, holidays, conferences and meetups, event production)

Blog templates for:

  • Personal blogs
  • Food and travel
  • Art
  • News and business
  • Fashion and beauty
  • Sports and wellness
  • Podcasts

All templates are mobile responsive and feature modern design elements. So, if you want a sophisticated-looking website that looks great on mobile devices and desktops alike – we're sure Wix will stand up to the task.

Wix Website Builder Review

Customizability

With so many templates at your fingertips, achieving a unique site is only a few steps away. You can easily replace texts and images to ensure your website reflects your brand's aesthetic.ย On top of this, the drag-and-drop editor allows you to place elements anywhere on your site.ย With a few easy clicks, you can customize colors, fonts, background images, scroll effects, etc.

You can add extra pizzazz to each website element by adding parallax scrolling, slow reveals, zoom-in, and/or fade-in scrolling. We also love that Wix provides over 100 fonts for you to work with, and allows you to add your own.

To spruce up your images, Wix enables you to add a variety of filters from inside the Wix editor. However, at this stage, it's worth mentioning that Wixโ€™s image editor isn't as advanced as some of its competitors. For example, you can't adjust brightness, contrast, or saturation with Wix's image editor.

Wix Website Builder Review

Wix Corvid

Released in 2019, Wix Corvid is a relatively new feature. It's an open development platform that allows you to use Wixโ€™s visual interface to create your website. You can then access the source HTML and CSS code within the editor to fully customize everything on your site.

So, in short, Corvid enables you to design the front end of your website at a rapid speed with clean Wix code at the backend of things.ย Most importantly, Corvid makes it easy to add snippets of code from third-party solutions. Plus, if you have any web development knowledge, there's no limit to what you can create. Where customizability is concerned, your only restriction is the bounds of your imagination, which is a significant feature for web developers!

Wix Website Builder Review

Editor X

Wix is currently trialing Editor X in Beta mode.

The traditional processes adopted by web designers inspired the creation of Editor X, with CSS grid layouts, built-in responsive behaviors, video backgrounds, and fully designed website sections.

This is ideal for design-savvy users that can handle (and want) more complex functionalities from their website builder. This is excellent news for anyone with existing web design or development experience, who prefers traditional workflows with the freedom you need to bring your vision to life.

Wix Website Builder Review

Wix Website Builder Review: Ease of Use

If youโ€™re new to web design and development, building a website might seem like a daunting task. But rest assured – website builders make the process incredibly easy. This is especially true of Wix, which emerges victorious when it comes to ease of use.

Hereโ€™s why:

You Can Freely Drag and Drop Website Elements

Wix‘s intuitive drag-and-drop editor is the jewel in its crown. Simply put, you just pick up an element with a click, drag it, and dop it wherever you want on your web page. Wix doesnโ€™t limit where you can place these elements; you have complete freedom over the positioning.

Editing the appearance of each section of your web page is just as easy. Just click on an item, and its customization options will appear. If youโ€™re unsure about anything, there are in-editor help buttons for every aspect. Just click on these if and when you need them to load any relevant support documentation.

Build Your Website Using a Template or Wix ADI (Artificial Design Intelligence)

If youโ€™re still unsure about designing your own website, donโ€™t worry. Wixโ€™s templates are sleek and beautiful; all you need to do is choose a website theme you like the look of, edit it and upload your content.

OR, you can go one step further and use Wix ADI. This is an AI-fuelled website creator that asks a few simple questions about the kind of website you want.

Then using this info, it builds a tailor-made website just for you, producing a unique site every time. If speed and simplicity are your primary concerns, use Wix ADI to create a site in minutes – how handy is that?!

All Wix templates and their ADI created websites are also mobile-friendly – so that's one less thing to worry about!

Wix Website Builder Review

Wix SEO Tools

Wix doesn't stop where web design is concerned; they also make SEO just as easy. Wix SEO provides you with an in-built SEO strategy. Here, you're walked through everything you need to do to improve the page's SEO.

You can edit meta descriptions and meta tags, and Wix SEO prompts you to choose appropriate titles. It lets you define your keywords, and you can also edit each image title to boost your SEO.

The Wix App Market

The Wix app market offers more than 250 apps and widgets for you to use. These are easy to download and work wonders for extending your website's functionality.

DISCLAIMER: Some of these apps come with a price tag. However, many are free, or, at least, have free plans where you can access their most basic functionalities.

You can browse apps made and tested by Wix or use plugins created by third-party apps. Apps are categorized by functionality, including:

  • Marketing
  • Selling online
  • Services and events
  • Media and content
  • Design elements
  • Communication

Wix recommends plugins that help you collect leads, analyze traffic, and interact with your visitors. You can integrate an events calendar, contact forms, visitor trackers, form builders, email marketing tools, etc.ย  You can also integrate with popular services like MailChimp, QuickBooks, Google AdSense, and much, much more.

Wix Website Builder Review

Wix relies on the app market to make up for some of the features Wix doesn't have in-built. Without these plugins, Wix's software would be somewhat basic.

Some of Wix's must-have apps include:

Visitor Analytics. This tracks customer information, like where they're from, which pages they frequent the most, and how much time they spent on your website, etc. This is a beginner-friendly tool and less complex than Google Analytics – plus, it's GDPR compliant!

Wix Pro Gallery: This has been downloaded more than 2,5 million times, and as its name suggests, this allows you to add beautiful galleries to your website. You can optimize the size of your photos, choose from over 12 layout options, add video and/or text elements.

Wix Chat: As you may have guessed, this app enables you to use and offer live chat on your website. This is amazing for directly connecting with visitors and creating auto-replies to automate some of your customer service tasks.

ย Wix Website Builder Review: Pricing

If you're planting your flag into website-territory for the first time, you might be on a tight budget.ย Luckily, Wix is amongst the most affordable options out there. Wix also offers a limited free plan that unlocks access to its core features. This is amazing for taking Wix's platform for a test drive.

The Wix Free Plan

The free package enables you to launch a website on Wixโ€™s subdomain, with a maximum of two web pages, and the following limitations:

  • Storage and bandwidth restricted to 500MB.
  • You canโ€™t accept online payments.
  • Your website will display Wix's ads on its pages, and in the favicon of the URL
  • Google Analytics isn't included.
  • Wix's customer support is slower to respond to users of the free plan than premium plans.

As you can probably tell, you wonโ€™t achieve website stardom with Wix's free plan. So, once you're familiar with its editor and want to get serious about your site, itโ€™s probably time to upgrade. For this, Wix offers two categories of premium plans: website plans and business and eCommerce plans.

The website packages are intended for users that need a portfolio, informational website, blog, or content platform. Whereas, the business and eCommerce plans enable you to accept online payments and build an eCommerce site.

Here are the Website Plans:

The Combo plan is available for $13 a month. This package, like all the other paid plans after that, comes with a free domain (for one year) and free Wix hosting. The Combo plan is intended for personal websites and/or portfolios.

It includes:

  • 2GB bandwidth
  • 3GB storage
  • 30 video minutes (embedding videos is always free. However, this feature enables you to upload videos directly to your site.)
  • The removal of all Wix ads and branding

The Unlimited plan, for $17 a month, is recommended for entrepreneurs, freelancers, and small businesses that want to start advertising themselves online.

In addition to the previous benefits, this plan also includes:

  • Unlimited bandwidth
  • 10GB storage
  • One video hour
  • $300 worth of ad vouchers: split into $100 each for Google Ads, Bing Ads, and Local Listings.
  • The Site Booster App (valued $60): This plugin helps you get found on search engines and get listed in top-tier directories.
  • The Visitors Analytics app (valued $60). This tool enables you to track and analyze visitor statistics, such as where they're from, what pages are the most popular, and much more.

The Pro plan allows you to take control of your online branding, available for $22 a month; it boasts the following features on top of all the previous ones:

  • 20GB storage
  • Two video hours
  • A professional logo ($50 value). Use the Wix logo maker to create a unique and professional logo for your business and website. You receive full commercial rights and all the file types you might need.
  • Get your logo in 40 different sizes, so it's ready to use on all social media.
  • Add the ‘Events Calendar' ($48 value) to display your upcoming events on your website. You can connect with your external calendars to synchronize everything in one place automatically!

The VIP plan for $39 a month unlocks priority support and extra assistance. If high-quality customer support is important to you, this package is ideal. The features are the same as the Pro Plan, with the added benefits of:

  • Priority response: Your question tickets are pushed to the top of the line and viewed quicker.
  • VIP support: Your telephone call is made the first priority during opening hours.

Wixโ€™s Business and eCommerce Plans

These packages allow you to accept payments via an online shopping cart, on top of some of the other benefits that mirror the higher tier website plans. Plus, all business plans also come with Google Analytics integrated as standard.

The Business Basics Plan is available for $23 a month. This makes it possible for you to start selling online, with unlimited bandwidth and all of the features listed in the website Pro plan. Additionally, the Business Basics package allows you to upload five video hours. This plan also includes the Site Booster app and the Visitor Analytics app. All in all, it's a fab program for small business owners.

The Business Unlimited Plan for $27 a month includes the Wix logo maker and social media files on top of all the previous benefits. It also ups the storage to 35GB and includes ten video hours.

Business VIP for $49 a month offers the full suite of tools available with the highest tier website plans. This includes priority response and VIP support, as well as unlimited video hours, and storage is raised to 50GB.

Established eCommerce sellers can request a callback from the Wix sales team to discuss their enterprise solutions. These include onboarding and scaleup support. Users can consult with industry professionals and receive assistance with planning, launching, and developing their projects with the help of Wix Professionals. This plan also comes with additional security audits and advanced web protection.

It's worth noting: The listed price for the Enterprise plan is $500 a month.

Wix in Other Countries

๐Ÿ’ก Please bear in mind: pricing plans look a little different if you're browsing from the UK or Europe. Here, Wix offers a much cheaper connect-domain plan for just a few dollars a month. This allows you to connect your domain and use 500MB storage and 1GB of bandwidth. However, the higher pricing tiers offer less ad credit, and it only applies to Google ads. Also, there's no enterprise plan for UK users.

The moral of the story: Check the Wix website from your country to pursue the most up-to-date pricing tiers for the region you're residing in.

Wix Website Builder Review: Customer Service

When youโ€™re building a website, performance is likely to be at the forefront of your mind. A broken site could deter customers and visitors alike. Even though Wix is very easy to use, sooner or later, you might run into a technical issue…and you might not know how to deal with it. When that happens, you need to be sure you can rely on Wixโ€™s customer service to get you back up and running.

You can reach Wixโ€™s customer support team through a variety of channels, including – email, a user forum, and social media support. Phone support is also available between 6 am to 5 pm PST, and there's a dedicated online support center that walks you through common questions and issues.

At present, Wix doesn't offer live chat support. However, this is a feature they're in the process of exploring.

One nifty service feature Wix offers is their in-editor knowledgebase. You can access important info and how-to guides straight from inside the editor. If you click on an element you're unsure about, a question mark button in the corner will lead you straight to relevant information. This saves you plenty of time, as there's no need to search through the help center yourself to find appropriate resources. Wix does a fantastic job of incorporating user support into your workflows from the get-go – making for a seamless onboarding experience.

Wix Website Builder Review

Wix Website Builder Review: Hosting

Your hosting provider has a massive impact on the reliability of your website, how fast your content displays, and whether your website is secure and safe. Wix doesnโ€™t give you lots of flexibility on this point. If you choose to build a website with Wix, they automatically become your hosting provider too.

On the one hand, this is a huge perk because you have everything you need to design and launch your website from the start. There's no further research required!

Wixโ€™s Turbo feature promises its servers will always offer fast and reliable speeds. Overall, Wix websites load at reasonable rates, and provides a secure hosting platform, complete with SSL certificates. So, you don't need to waste time and effort in researching and purchasing web hosting and website security.

BUT, we have to say, that some of Wix's website elements, like its video backgrounds, aren't optimized as well as they could be, and, as such, can slow down your website.

Wix also doesn't offer any tools to help you with website transfer. So, should you wish to migrate to a different platform later down the line, you might require the help of a web developer. Or, you might be forced to start completely anew.

Also, if you don't already have a web domain, you can purchase one through Wix. Alternatively, if you already have a custom domain, you can connect it with your Wix account.

Wix Website Builder Review: FAQ

Do you still have questions about Wix? Maybe the answers to these FAQs will help:

Do Wixโ€™s Premium Plans come with aย  free trial?

Yes!

You can try any of Wix's premium plans for free for 14 days. If, during this time, you don't think Wix is for you, cancel to receive a full refund with no questions asked.

Please note: This only applies to Wix's paid-for plans; it doesn't extend to their web domains, mailboxes, or apps.

If you cancel your plan after the fourteen-day trial period, you can still apply for a refund. Just message Wix to tell them why and they'll review your request.

Can I get my own personalized business email address?

Once you have a web domain of your own, you can purchase a mailbox from the G Suite. Wix partners with G Suite via Google Cloud to provide 30 GB of inbox and drive storage, as well as Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Calendar. If you go down this road, you'll receive a custom email address that looks like this: [email protected].

Wix uses G Suiteโ€™s standard pricing, which is based on a per email address basis – $5 monthly or $50 annually.

What backup options does Wix offer?

Your website is safe with Wix. The platform automatically creates backups of your website, which you can restore at any moment. This is very similar to Appleโ€™s time machine system, so, never fear, you won't lose any of your crucial information. You can also use Wix's site history feature to restore any previous version of your site.

Does Wix cater to developers?

Wix allows you to add HTML code through an app called HTML iframe. On top of that, Wix's relatively new feature, Wix Corvid, caters to those with more extensive coding experience. Here, you can set up custom API interactions and databases through Javascript.

Of course, none of this know-how's essential for creating a Wix website. Rather, users that don't have any programming experience can rely on Wix's intuitive visual editor instead.

Can I purchase a domain through Wix?

All Wix premium plans come with a free domain name for a year. After that, you can purchase your domain from Wix. Domain names cost $14.95 a year, but this doesnโ€™t include WHOIS privacy, which costs an additional $9.90. Domain names usually require public contact information, but by purchasing WHOIS privacy, you can anonymize this info.

Final Thoughts on This Wix Website Builder Review: Is Wix the Best Website Builder for You?

We hope you enjoyed this in-depth Wix review. With everything you now know, do you think Wix is the right platform for you?

With its many templates, apps, and features, Wix is a great way to get started online, presenting your services, portfolio, and/or products to the masses. We recommend Wix if you're new to website creation. Its smooth and intuitive drag-and-drop editor and selection of beautiful templates allow anyone to create a website.

Wix is also a great option if you're on a budget and want to get online fast and easy. The plans are very affordably priced so that you can design and launch a professional-looking website without a hefty price tag.

BUT

If you want to launch a sophisticated ecommerce website, you should look to other website builders, like Shopify, who provide more extensive features for eCommerce. Wix also isn't the best choice if your sole focus is blogging, as again, you might find this platform somewhat restricting.

Instead, look towards Wix for a robust all-round website builder that provides an excellent experience for newbies wanting to launch a sophisticated-looking but straightforward website.

Have you used Wix before? Are you thinking of signing up? Let us know in the comments below what you think of the Wix website builder. Or, do you think you'll go for one of their competitors like Weebly or Squarespace? Either way, let us know – we'd love to hear from you!

Rosie Greaves

Rosie Greaves is a professional content strategist who specializes in all things digital marketing, B2B, and lifestyle. She has over three years of experience crafting high-quality content. Check out her website Blog with Rosie for more information.

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