This is my Wix review. As a business owner and web designer, I do not recommend Wix for other businesses, but scroll down to find out why! (Nor do I really recommend it for anyone really, but this video is specifically for businesses.)
Today, I want to save you some time and help you hopefully avoid using Wix. Again, this post is for business owners. If this is a website you’re creating just for fun, it’s not a business–that’s fine. Use it.
Now, if you do some Googling or watching other videos, you’ll hear a lot of people talking about how Wix isn’t always great for SEO or that Wix isn’t the fastest. (There’s a few other like technical things that people will point out about Wix, which are true.) But those things can also happen on Squarespace and WordPress, and all these other platforms.
But there are two main reasons that I don’t recommend Wix.
The first is that, yes, they do now have Editor X, which is their fully responsive builder for websites. So previously, before they created Editor X, their websites were not fully responsive. The problem is that you have to pay more for Editor X to have a fully responsive website. Now, it’s about 10-ish dollars more than their lowest average plan on Wix.
So it’s not like hundreds more, but it is more than Squarespace or WordPress. So, it is costing a little more. The fact that in 2021, you are having to pay more to have a responsive website on this platform, is not okay. And yes, Wix does have a mobile editor, but that doesn’t mean it’s fully responsive. Their old website builders are not fully responsive. So, depending on your screen size, things may disappear, things may not be visible on your website, depending on where you place them on your screen.
But the fact that they are charging more is ridiculous. I get it, it took more engineers and designers, developers to roll out this editor, so they kind of need to recoup the cost. I get it. But it’s 2021. Responsive design is a standard. It’s not a “nice to have” anymore, like bare minimum, everyone should have this. So I don’t like that they are charging more so that you can have a fully responsive website and have a good user experience for your clients and customers to be on your website.
And the second reason probably the biggest reason that I tell people to avoid Wix is that they make it impossible to leave Wix.
I mean you can but you have to start over. They do not have an export feature. There is a really complicated like RSS thing you can try to do, and there is one service out there that says they can migrate you. But I’ve used it, and it doesn’t work well. It’s not perfect.
So you don’t have full control over your content. And many online business owners now are content creators–they create YouTube videos, they write blog posts, they have podcasts, they put all these things on their website. And if you’re like me, and you’ve been doing this a long time, I have upwards of 300 posts, and videos and podcast on my website.
Luckily, I use WordPress and you can just export. I’ve been on Squarespace before and you can just export. It was simple. When I moved from Squarespace to WordPress, it was like a click of a button, another click of a button. We’re done. Tada, I’m on WordPress.
With Wix, it’s not that easy. You have to manually copy over your content because they don’t have a good export feature. That is a deal breaker. I think business owners should have full control and ownership of their content. And I know that people are also like, WordPress is harder to learn or SquareSpace is not as intuitive. Not everything’s going to be easy and business.
Wix may be super easy to use. But I don’t think it’s a good platform for business owners. I don’t for those two reasons that I already talked about, plus some of the other technical reasons that other designers and developers have talked about online. I don’t think they you are setting yourself up for success in the long term, when you want to move off the platform.
And I know some people are like, well, what if I don’t ever want to move? Okay, you might not want to, but I’ve been in business for 10 years, and I see so many business owners changing website platforms, changing email marketing platforms, changing into Instagram schedulers, changing everything. Anytime a new shiny platform comes out, people want to hop over and try it out.
So the fact that it’s not easy for you to move off of Wix, and they just make it difficult to leave because they just want you to keep paying them every month. Not okay. Squarespace does have a learning curve, but I think it’s the most similar to Wix and it is easier to use.
People who hate WordPress, it’s usually the theme because WordPress itself is very basic. It’s the theme that lets you design and create pages and move things around. So if you get frustrated by WordPress, it’s really your theme that you’re frustrated by. So you might want to try a different theme.
I would love to hear if you have questions about Wix, Squarespace WordPress, other platforms website questions in general. Or, if you’re looking for a web designer to work with, check out my web design services!
