WordPress and Wix are well-known web builders for good reasons,

Wix is a free, simple and fairly intuitive drag and drop web builder; you literally drag and drop elements where you want them.

WordPress is the world’s most popular content management system (CMS): there are around 70 million installations worldwide, give or take a million. WordPress lets you run, edit and host your own website yourself.

“Why would I want to control my own website”, I hear you ask.

Well, the ability to host your website yourself, for us, is the crux of the whole debate (apart from the fact that we know how to make really good-looking WordPress websites). The company that builds it, or the platform that it is built on, should not own or control your website.

The last thing you want is to lose your website, because it is owned by somebody else. Nor do you want to keep shelling out annual subscription fees for something you don’t own.

What about the easy-to-use drag and drop website builders?

Wix has tools, templates, and guidelines to help you design and build your own website, and it has a good selection of modern, responsive themes that do not require giant, professional photos to look good. Wix is an all-in-one hosted website platform where all the components you need for a website come in a single bundle. Wix provides the software to manage your website content; they provide the designs and functionality.

What does that mean? It means you build your site on their software with their tools. Your website lives on their servers. You can only access your site via the Wix admin panel.

Template website design

But, there are rules and building a site that looks good still takes work, thought, time and effort. Oh, and if you change your mind halfway through building your site, you can’t change templates. Change what you want midway through the editing process and you lose all the work you’ve already put in.

A freemium site

Wix is a freemium site builder. You can create and publish a free website. However, it will display advertising and you cannot use your own custom domain name. Your domain name will be an extension of Wix such as, this-is-not-really-my-website.wix.com. To use your own domain name and have full functionality, you have to pay for a premium plan. Wix’s paid plans start at US$4.08 a month, but that plan doesn’t remove Wix ads from your site. Wix plans cover hosting, themes and free extensions. And the prices go up if you install a paid application from the Wix app market. Using Wix for more than a few months adds up.

Wix is akin to renting an apartment in a block instead of buying and owning your own house. Having an apartment is great, the owner and the body corporate take care of all the construction and infrastructure side of things; if your toilet starts leaking, someone else has to pay for the plumber. But there is only so much they will let you change and there are all those rules to follow. It’s a trade-off between convenience and control.

Another crucial point is: what happens if you want to move out? What happens if you decide to move platforms. What happens to your data, designs, and content? With Wix, there is no way to export your data. You have to leave it all behind. It’s a bit like having all your furniture nailed to your apartment floor. If you move, you can’t take anything with you.

Customised Themes

When it comes to creating your website, we think looks are all important and we think you should be in full control of your site and your data without on-going subscription costs. That’s the difference between WordPress and Wix.

Your business needs to reflect who you are and what makes you special. The custom development of our WordPress themes means you get something that suits your business without it looking cheap, looking similar to all the other websites in your industry, or you having to pay high ticket prices.

Happy-website ownerThe smart business choice

WordPress and Wix, which one? For business, WordPress is a smart decision. The CMS itself is free and our developers can customise it to make your business site all yours, in every way. WordPress is open source, meaning that the back-end is simple to update and adding content is easy.

Your WordPress site is easily scaleable and can grow with your business. WordPress is, in our opinion, the most future-proofed solution because what you can do and add to it is almost limitless.

Our conclusion

WordPress and Wix: if Wix were a meal, it would be a lovely, tasty meal from a food hall. It would taste good, be fast, convenient, you could choose from a wide range of cuisines, and it would fill you up. That’s not a good or bad thing. But it is something to keep in mind.

A customised WordPress site, on the other hand, would be a gourmet fusion dinner served wherever suits.

We reckon that if you’re using the CMS the majority of website owners in the world are also using, then there has to be something damn good about WordPress.

When deciding on the best fit for your business, we suggest you think carefully about the trade-offs: convenience for control, customisable design, the ability to grow and the fact you own your own website. In our view, the winner would be WordPress.

If you get us to build your site using the WordPress platform and then host it, you own and manage all the pieces of your website.

Talk to us. Call 0800 686 237 . We’re a team of professional experienced New Zealand web developers, web designers, graphic designers, and internet marketers who help business owners, like you, achieve big results on the web in an affordable, effective way without stressing you out.