Wix Review

Update on 9/1/2024

Wix Review 2024 – Is It Worth Your Money?

Today, there are plenty of website builders that anyone without coding knowledge can use. Many of these services feature drag-and-drop building to help users construct websites in mere minutes. Out of the extensive list of names, Wix is one of the biggest.

Whether you’re making a personal website or a professional site for business, Wix website builder can do it all. There are free plans for simple pages, but those who wish to keep their domain names must purchase a subscription.

Today, we’ll walk you through Wix’s various features, pros and cons, and much more on your way to an online store.

What Is Wix?

In short, Wix is a website builder with a focus on accessibility and ease of use. As a result, even users with no prior coding experience can create a website in just a few short minutes.

Wix currently powers at least 4.5 million websites around the world. Competitors, such as Squarespace and Weebly, are nowhere close to this number, even in 2021. It is trusted by more than 200 million users across 190 countries.

The founders introduced Wix to the world in 2006 from Israel, and since then, its popularity has only grown. Today, Wix is used to publishing lots of new sites every day.

With Wix, making your very own website is simple. Sign in, customize the theme, add the features you want, and your website is ready to go. You can also use search engine optimization (SEO) to drive traffic and boost visitor numbers.

Here’s a features table for Wix, including ratings for each feature on a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being the highest score:

Feature	Rating	Comments
Ease of Use	⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐	Wix offers a drag-and-drop interface that is extremely user-friendly, even for beginners with no coding experience.
Design Flexibility	⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐	Provides a high level of design flexibility with over 800 customizable templates and advanced design features.
Themes & Templates	⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐	A wide variety of professionally designed templates covering many industries and styles. All templates are fully customizable.
E-commerce Capabilities	⭐⭐⭐⭐	Strong e-commerce features suitable for small to medium-sized stores, but lacks some advanced features available in specialized e-commerce platforms.
Payment Options	⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐	Supports multiple payment methods, including PayPal, credit cards, and other third-party payment gateways.
SEO Features	⭐⭐⭐⭐	Offers solid SEO tools, including customizable meta tags, alt text, and a SEO wizard, though lacks some advanced features like auto-generated sitemaps.
App Market/Integrations	⭐⭐⭐⭐	Extensive app market with hundreds of third-party integrations, but some advanced apps require additional costs.
Customer Support	⭐⭐⭐⭐	Provides 24/7 customer support via email, live chat, and phone, though response times can sometimes be slow.
Pricing	⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐	Offers a variety of pricing plans, including a free version, making it accessible for all budgets.
Scalability	⭐⭐⭐⭐	Suitable for small to medium-sized businesses. While scalable, it may not offer the same level of growth support as some more enterprise-focused platforms.
Blogging Tools	⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐	Excellent blogging features with customizable layouts, tagging, and advanced media management.
Multilingual Support	⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐	Strong multilingual support, allowing users to create websites in multiple languages with ease.
Analytics and Reporting	⭐⭐⭐⭐	Provides basic analytics and reporting tools, with more advanced features available through integrations with tools like Google Analytics.

Summary:

Wix is a versatile website builder that excels in design flexibility, ease of use, and affordability. It’s particularly well-suited for small to medium-sized businesses, creatives, and individuals who prioritize aesthetics and ease of use. While its e-commerce capabilities are solid, they are more geared toward smaller operations. Wix’s extensive app market and excellent multilingual support make it a strong choice for a wide range of users.

Wix Advantages

Wix boasts many advantages that competitors may not have or even come close to. Let’s talk more about some of these features.

Plenty of Templates

Wix has more than 800 templates to choose from, and even free users can use them all without restrictions. The template designs are highly acclaimed, and there is something suitable for any industry or sector. Other than themes, you also get pre-built layouts, which you can customize as well.
check Wix templates here.

Incredible Customization

We already mentioned that Wix allows for drag-and-drop website building. Many competitors limit how much you can move the objects on a page, but Wix doesn’t. You can adjust the positions of text, images, and more, down to the pixel.

When you click an object, you’ll find that there are resize handles and dragging buttons. There’s also a toolbar to help with formatting, alignment, and overlapping. You can even animate any object when the website loads, creating a stunning first impression.

Right-clicking objects will do something in Wix that other builders don’t have: you’ll get menus containing options such as changing images, adding new pages, and more.

For those who focus on mobile-friendly websites, Wix has you covered too. It might not be the best, but you can adjust the objects without much trouble using the flexible customization options. In most cases, a mobile Wix site will have no problems.

Large App Market

Your Wix site can support many third-party apps and widgets. From newsletter tools to analytics, there are enough options to keep you occupied for days. However, consider that Wix doesn’t offer support for any third-party apps, should they malfunction.

Wix Disadvantages

No product in the world is perfect, and there are disadvantages to every tool. Fortunately, the developers of Wix are always working hard to fix and address them.

Wix Pricing

Wix isn’t the most affordable website builder available, as other competitors offer cheaper plans. For example, Wix’s cheapest ad-free plan starts at $17 per month.

Impossible to Change Templates

The biggest problem with Wix’s customization is that you can’t change templates after publishing a website. The only way to change it is to copy all the content on the website and paste it into a new one. When you’re making the new page, you can then swap the template for the desired one.

Doing so may not be hard for smaller websites, but larger websites will find this inconvenient. Large sites have many pages to edit, and web admins will think doing this is a pain. Wix’s competitors are mostly free from this issue, as you can change templates any time you wish.

Slower Mobile Loading Speeds

In the past, Wix struggled immensely with mobile page loading speeds. While the situation isn’t as dire anymore, it hasn’t gone away entirely. Occasionally, mobile devices take longer to load objects.

The templates are attractive but are geared more towards aesthetics than performance. PC users may not notice the slower times, but smartphone users might.

Slightly Overwhelming at First

When users first get acquainted with the Wix Editor, they might feel lost. It’s not too surprising considering how many options there are. Fortunately, the accessible controls make learning the editor’s functions less daunting.

Up Time for Wix Websites

Websites made by Wix have a 99.8% uptime, meaning that they will only be down and inaccessible 0.2% of the total time they’re active. These numbers are pretty impressive, but they’re just an average based on aggregated data.

This demonstrates how robust Wix’s servers are, and you can rely on them for nonstop service. E-commerce thrives on active websites, and you don’t want your site going down randomly.

On this note, Wix sites are pretty responsive, with an average response time of 120ms. Spikes are sporadic and can affect this, like with any website.

Visitors will appreciate sites that load quickly, especially when they’re looking at a product. However, it’s important to remember that site response times are also affected by how many objects you add and your theme. Having too much going on will cause lag spikes, souring the experience.

Payment Processing

For Wix ecommerce sites, payment processing is straightforward. You’ll need to verify your website before withdrawing your earnings becomes possible. Once you get your first payment, it takes around seven days to be eligible for a payout.

After the first payout, you’ll be able to schedule regular payouts. There are three schedules:

• Daily payouts, as you can probably guess, are added to the next day’s payout after a set amount of time.
• Weekly payouts are usually sent on Mondays. You can also pick a different day through the relevant settings.
• Monthly payouts are sent on the first day of each month by default (though the day is also customizable). For months with fewer than 29 days, Wix will send payments on the last day of the month.

It takes Wix two to five days to process a payment, and the process has two steps. First, the settlement period takes a day or two, and next is the pending period. During this time, the money is held by Wix for two to five days and will be available after.

Payouts take three to five days to reach your bank account, though other factors can affect this number. Examples include weekends, different currency types, and bank holidays.

Wix also keeps 10% of each payment as reserve funds. These funds can help protect you from risks and even cover refunds. After 90 days, your reserve funds become available in the closest scheduled payout.

Wix Analytics

Wix websites have a built-in analytics report feature. These reports are highly customizable. You can view data in the following forms:

• Tables
• Pie charts
• Line charts
• Maps
• Heat maps
• Bar charts

Not all data can be viewed in every format, but most types have at least two options.

Each report you receive has information divided into multiple categories. Depending on how you use your Wix website, you will see a number of these sections:

• Wix Blog
• Wix Bookings
• Wix Events
• Wix Stores
• People
• Marketing & SEO
• Behavior
• Traffic
• Sales
• Accounting
• App members

To customize existing reports or create new ones, site owners must purchase a Business VIP Premium Plan.

There are also partial reports for GDPR-compliant websites. These sites require visitors to consent to analytics cookies before data is collected. On such sites, reports are likely to contain partial traffic and behavior statistics.

Is Wix SEO-Friendly?

Before 2020 and 2021, Wix was often criticized for how difficult it was to rank highly with its sites. Some problems included site admins adding unusual characters that ruined SEO, Wix Blogs having unalterable title tags and meta descriptions, and more. In particular, Wix used to be based on Flash technology, which didn’t help things at all.

Today, these are no longer issues, as the developers added new SEO features in 2019 and have continued to improve technical SEO functions to this day.

“Is Wix SEO-friendly?” Yes, but not the best choice on the SEO market. Wix will work fine for many sites, but it might fall short for the most competitive ones needing highly specialized SEO tools.

Wix doesn’t have as many in-depth SEO features as other builders, but they’re still quite powerful. And they’re all built-in, which is a big plus. What’s more, connecting your Wix site to Google Analytics and Google Search Console is incredibly simple.

Here’s a list of features you can take advantage of:

• Optimize meta titles, meta descriptions, headings, image alt text, and much more.
• Customize URLs, though product pages and blog posts will have short strings added to the end.
• Set up 301 redirects without an issue, as it’s built into the dashboard.
• SSL encryption is available.
• Integrate with many social media platforms.
• Customize search engine instructions for each page.
• Set up canonical tags.
• Excellent image SEO overall.

Wix’s biggest SEO flaw is the lack of many advanced options.

However, you also gain access to several unique features that you can’t find elsewhere. Of note is how Wix allows users to bulk import and export 301 redirects. Another rare quality is page caching, as site builders don’t tend to have this available.

Even if Wix isn’t the best choice for SEO and some of its competitors do offer better SEO functions, it still has its place. If you don’t need lots of in-depth SEO, you’re likely to be happy with Wix’s toolkit.

Support

Like many website builders, Wix has a dedicated customer service department that offers different methods of assistance. The Help Center is where most customers find walkthroughs and tutorials for Wix, but even these don’t solve every problem. If needed, you can contact customer service directly.

Here are the supported languages in the Help Center:

• English
• Spanish
• Portuguese
• French
• German
• Italian
• Russian
• Japanese
• Korean

Wix first asks you to talk to an AI chatbot to solve most simple problems when submitting a ticket. You’ll have to give it some of your website information, and it should provide you with instructions to solve your issue. When the bot can’t help you any longer, you’ll be able to contact customer service directly.

The “Contact Us” area has two options. Users can either submit a ticket or talk to an agent. The support ticket system is quite good, as the experts tend to respond quickly.

Where Wix shines is in its agents’ response time. Once you request a call or dial the relevant number, you don’t have to wait long. An expert will talk to you and work to understand your problem.

They’ll offer detailed steps and advice to walk you through the process of resolving the issue.

Both the chatbot and live support systems are beneficial with quick response times and in-depth assistance. If the written information doesn’t help you, feel free to ask for help.

Wix Prices

People often ask the question, “Is Wix free?” or similar variations. Yes, there’s a Wix free plan you can use to make simple websites. However, e-commerce users will find the dedicated package a more attractive choice.

Here are all of the Wix Business pricing plans:

• Business Basic at $17 a month
• Business Unlimited costs $25 a month
• Business VIP for $35 a month

All plans, including the professional website plans, are paid every year in full.

Business Basic contains all you need for e-commerce projects, such as secure online payments and customer accounts. However, Business VIP has several advantages that the other plans don’t have:

• Priority customer care
• Unlimited video hours
• Unlimited Modalyst dropshipping
• Smile.io loyalty program

Video hours are how much video content you can upload to your site. Unfortunately, unlike many other builders, you can’t embed video files onto your site directly. However, with a VIP plan, you can upload as many hours as your storage space allows.

Overall, Wix’s pricing plans are pretty reasonable. Even the Basic plan will serve many small businesses’ needs well. However, if your e-commerce business is more extensive, consider getting the VIP plan for its many unique features.

Inventory Management

Inventory management with Wix is straightforward. The website builder offers you two ways to do it: tracking inventory directly or using in-stock/out-of-stock labels on your product pages.

You can set it up by heading to the Products tab on your website dashboard. After selecting a product, choose to either track inventory or not. If you do, you can choose to enter SKUs or barcodes and the amount of products left.

If you don’t wish to track inventory, you can disable the toggle and manage it manually. If the item is in stock, select that option from the drop-down menu. You can change it to “out of stock” once that becomes a reality and you need to restock your products.

SKUs and barcodes are available even when you don’t track your inventory.

Shop owners can also set up back-in-stock notifications. Customers will receive an email asking them if they would like to be notified once an item has returned to the shelves.

Some things to note about Wix’s system:

• Item counts of 300 or more must be updated manually.
• However, you can edit the “Out of Stock” text.
• In addition, you can set whether the inventory updates after orders come through or payments are received.

Security

Wix has many of the standard security features most websites today have. However, due to how many e-commerce  businesses use Wix for their shops, there are noticeably more robust options as well:

• SSL Certificates for all websites
• Level 1 PCI-compliant protection to protect transactions
• ISO 27001 and 27017 Certificates for maximum personal information protection and risk management.
• TLS 1.2 protection for increased privacy, especially for transaction information.
• DDoS protection against hacking attempts and for keeping your website up all the time.
• 24/7 website monitoring.
• Two-step verification to prevent unauthorized access to your website and accounts.
• Wix is a SaaS product, meaning all of its security updates are applied to your site automatically.
• Wix is GDPR and CCPA-compliant, adhering to privacy laws all around the world.

As you can see, Wix’s websites are highly secure. They even ask hackers to test their systems regularly. But, of course, there are other advanced security solutions not listed as well.

Is Wix the Right Choice for Me?

Wix is an excellent choice for beginning entrepreneurs and e-commerce newcomers, as you can start small with the Basic plan. When you eventually grow or want better options, the Unlimited and VIP packages will satisfy your needs.

Even though there are some better options for SEO, Wix remains competitive with its straightforward UI, robust preference suite, and unrivaled history of quality service. Plus, its SEO capabilities will be sufficient for the job, especially for smaller businesses.

Overall, Wix is perfect for starting your new e-commerce journey.

Read our review of Wix vs. Shopify