Wix vs WordPress: Comprehensive comparison guide for 2024

Final verdict

Wix and WordPress cater to different user needs and preferences, making them both valuable in their own right.

• 
  Wix (Overall Grade: 8.5/10)
  
  excels in user-friendliness, integrated marketing features, customer support, security, and AI capabilities. It’s ideal for users seeking an all-in-one platform that combines ease of use with a comprehensive set of features for website building and management. Wix’s approach to website design, with its drag-and-drop editor and ADI system, makes it particularly appealing to beginners and those looking for a straightforward way to create and manage their online presence.
• 
  WordPress (Overall Grade: 7.1/10)
  
  stands out for its extensive customization options, a vast array of plugins and themes, and a strong community. It’s the go-to choice for users who prioritize flexibility, control over their website, and the ability to scale and evolve their site over time. WordPress’s open-source nature and the ecosystem of themes and plugins make it highly versatile, suitable for everything from simple blogs to complex ecommerce sites.

Best for ecommerce

Verdict

: While Wix offers an intuitive and user-friendly platform for small to medium-sized ecommerce ventures, WordPress, with its WooCommerce integration, provides a more flexible and scalable solution for ecommerce, especially for users requiring extensive customization and integration options.

• 
  Wix
  
  : Offers a straightforward approach to ecommerce with an intuitive store builder, basic inventory tools, and a variety of payment gateways. It’s best suited for entrepreneurs and small businesses looking to quickly set up an online store without the need for extensive customization.
• 
  WordPress
  
  : Stands out for its robust ecommerce capabilities through WooCommerce, offering extensive customization, a wide range of themes, and a comprehensive plugin ecosystem. Ideal for businesses of all sizes that prioritize flexibility and scalability in their ecommerce solution.

Best for informational & business websites

Verdict

: WordPress stands out as the superior choice for informational and business websites, thanks to its higher score and extensive customization options.

• 
  Wix
  
  : Wix is a strong contender with its user-friendly interface and diverse templates, making it a good option for those who prioritize ease of use and quick setup for their informational sites.
• 
  WordPress
  
  : With a higher score and an open-source platform that offers unparalleled customization, WordPress is the go-to for users seeking depth, flexibility, and control in building complex informational and business websites.

Detailed comparison

🏆

Winner: WordPress.

If you’re looking for a platform that offers more creative control, a wide array of design features, and extensive customization options, WordPress is the preferred choice.

Wix stands out with its wide range of highly customizable templates suitable for various website types, not just ecommerce. It offers creative freedom in design, appealing to a diverse user base. While Wix doesn’t have a premium template marketplace, it has 3-rd party theme shops that allow you to get more sophisticated design choices.

Wix Themes

Compared to Wix, WordPress offers an extensive variety of templates and designs, catering to a wide range of website types beyond just blogs or ecommerce. Its open-source nature allows for high customization and creative freedom, appealing to diverse user needs. While WordPress itself doesn’t sell premium templates, numerous third-party theme shops offer sophisticated and specialized design choices, expanding the possibilities for users.

WordPress Themes

🏆 Winner: Wix

. With a score of 9.0, Wix is known for its user-friendly interface and intuitive drag-and-drop design, making it an excellent choice for beginners and non-technical users. WordPress, scoring 7.2, offers extensive customization options but requires a steeper learning curve, making it less intuitive for beginners.

Learning Resources

🏆 Winner: WordPress

. Both platforms offer a wealth of learning resources, but WordPress stands out with its extensive documentation, community forums, online tutorials, and courses. This makes it a great choice for users who are willing to invest time in learning to fully utilize the platform’s capabilities.

When it comes to ecommerce, both Wix and WordPress offer a range of features to help users create and manage online stores. However, WordPress, with its WooCommerce integration, scores slightly higher than Wix in this category.

Wix ecommerce features:

• Intuitive store builder
• Wix Payments and various gateways
• Basic inventory tools
• Multi-channel sales options
• Abandoned cart recovery
• Basic analytics and SEO tools

WordPress ecommerce features:

• WooCommerce Integration
• Multiple Payment Gateway Support
• Abandoned Cart Recovery
• Ecommerce Analytics
• SEO Optimization Tools
• Extensive Plugin Ecosystem

Ecommerce themes & templates

Wix provides around 120 free templates for ecommerce. However, these templates are not fully responsive and may need manual adjustments for mobile display. Wix allows for flexible website design but has limited options for in-depth customization using HTML or CSS. For advanced users, Wix Velo offers more detailed customization possibilities.

On the other hand, WordPress offers hundreds to potentially thousands of ecommerce and WooCommerce specific themes and templates, both free and premium. This gives users a wide range of options to choose from when designing their online store.

Product page customization

Wix allows for the inclusion of six options per item with a total of 1000 unique variations for products. However, the potential complexity of having customers choose six attributes for a single item is acknowledged, and it is recommended to consider splitting products with extensive options into different listings for a more user-friendly experience. Wix stands out for its ease of customization, allowing users to add features like ribbons, size charts, wishlists, and more. While Wix supports product videos in its themes, incorporating 3D models on Wix requires coding.

WooCommerce on WordPress offers extensive customization for eCommerce product pages, balancing plugins, page builders, and custom coding. Essential elements include quality product images, detailed descriptions, and effective add-to-cart buttons. Advanced features like product tabs, upsells, and related products are customizable. Tools like Elementor and the Ultimate Product Catalog plugin enhance functionality, but heavy plugin use may affect site performance.

Payment processing

Wix provides versatile payment options, generally around 2.9% + 30¢ per transaction, without additional commission fees. This makes Wix an attractive option for businesses using diverse payment processors. Wix Payments allows Wix users to manage transactions directly on their site, also supporting various payment methods and currencies.

WordPress doesn’t handle payments directly but offers plugin options for payment processing. Popular gateways include PayPal, Stripe, Authorize.Net, and Square. Choose a gateway based on transaction volume, currencies, fees, and security. Plugins integrate gateways with WooCommerce for a user-friendly setup. Consider options for recurring payments, offline payments, and fraud prevention. Research, read reviews, and start small, scaling as needed.

Winner: Tie

. Both Wix and WordPress scored 8.5 for their website editors, reflecting their robust capabilities and user-friendly interfaces.

Wix offers multiple editors catering to different user needs. Its standard editor is renowned for its drag-and-drop simplicity, allowing for extensive customization without needing to code. Additionally, Wix provides the ADI (Artificial Design Intelligence) editor, which creates a personalized website based on user responses to a few questions, and the Corvid by Wix editor, which allows for advanced web development with JavaScript and Wix APIs.

WordPress’ Site Editor offers a user-friendly interface with block-based editing, extensive styles customization, template management, page editing/creation, distraction-free modes, versatile saving options, and accessibility for users of varying skill levels. It provides a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) interface, with a Design panel on the left and a live preview on the right. You can edit styles, manage templates and pages, and use various blocks for customization. Changes can be applied globally, including Header and Footer templates. The editor also offers features like undo/redo, List View, Command Palette, and customization tools.

🏆

Winner: Wix

. Both Wix and WordPress offer mobile apps that allow users to manage their websites on the go. However, they cater to different needs and skill levels. Wix’s mobile app stands out for its user-friendly, drag-and-drop interface, making it particularly suitable for beginners. It excels in general website editing, allowing users to easily control various aspects of their website’s design and layout.

On the other hand, WordPress’s mobile app offers basic functionality, allowing users to create and edit posts, manage comments, schedule content, and analyze website traffic. However, it has some limitations compared to the web-based editor, including fewer advanced options, restricted code access, and limited design customization.

In summary, Wix receives a higher rating due to its user-friendly interface and versatility in general website editing, while WordPress’s mobile app is more limited in its capabilities.

Overall Result

:

Tie

. Both Wix and WordPress score 8.1, each with their unique advantages in product testing. Wix provides a free plan with basic features for an unlimited duration and occasionally offers opportunities to test premium features through promotions or limited-time trials. WordPress, being an open-source platform, is free to use, but it doesn’t offer a trial version or the possibility to test premium features. However, as it’s open-source, there are no payments required, so there’s no need for a money-back guarantee.

Wix offers a more straightforward pricing structure with clear plans and features, while WordPress is open-source and free, but requires separate purchases for hosting, domain, and website builder subscriptions.

Winner: Wix

. Wix offers various hosting plans to suit different needs, starting with a free plan that includes 500MB of storage and 1GB bandwidth, up to premium plans offering up to 50GB of storage and unlimited bandwidth. It has an uptime of 99.95% but does not guarantee uptime. It has 10 data centers globally. On the other hand, WordPress itself does not directly provide hosting services. The type of hosting, uptime, uptime guarantee, and data centers depend on the hosting provider chosen by the user. Therefore, Wix is the clear winner in this comparison as it provides hosting services with a good uptime and multiple data centers.

🏆 Winner: Wix

Both Wix and WordPress prioritize website performance and page speed, but Wix has a more structured approach to speed optimization and better average load times and PageSpeed scores.

Wix has significantly focused on enhancing website performance and page speed, integrating tools like the Site Speed dashboard with Google PageSpeed Insights to provide a holistic view of website performance metrics. Emphasizing media optimization, code simplification, content distribution networks, lazy load techniques, and mobile-first designs, Wix’s infrastructure includes globally distributed CDNs, improving content delivery. Wix saw a 25% increase in sites with good CWV scores over a year. Real-world performance analysis of Wix websites showed a wide range of page speed scores from 34/100 to 98/100, averaging 81.9/100, with the Largest Contentful Paint an important metric for website loading, ranged from 0.8 seconds to 3.5 seconds, with an average of 1.6 seconds.

WordPress, being an open-source CMS, provides extensive customization options through themes and plugins, which can influence the website speed. WordPress itself does not have a specific strategy for website speed optimization; however, there are numerous learning resources about how to optimize your website. WordPress provides valuable resources for enhancing your website’s Core Web Vitals (CWV): analyze CWV, choose a reliable host, optimize images, minimize plugins, use lazy loading, and employ a CDN. The load times and PageSpeed scores can vary widely, depending on the optimization.

🏆 Winner: WordPress.

WordPress, with a score of 8.8, offers over 60,000 free plugins, making it a clear winner in terms of the number and variety of plugins and integrations. Wix, scoring 8.2, also provides a good range of plugins, but it can’t compete with the sheer volume and diversity of WordPress’s offerings. Both platforms offer plugins that extend functionality across various domains, including advanced ecommerce tools, SEO optimization, social media integration, email marketing, website analytics, appointment scheduling, customer support, enhanced media galleries, blogging features, custom forms and surveys, diverse payment processing options, website localization, improved security measures, and the addition of custom widgets. However, the extensive customization options offered by WordPress give it an edge over Wix.

Wix Applications

WordPress Applications

🏆

Overall Winner: Wix

. Wix edges out WordPress with its integrated marketing features, especially in email marketing and analytics. WordPress, while offering extensive customization through plugins, requires more setup and management.

🏆 Winner: Wix

. Wix clearly outperforms WordPress in this category with a customer support score of 8.2 compared to WordPress’s 5.0. Wix offers phone support, live chat available 24/7 in English and other languages, and a large community forum. In addition, Wix Enterprise offers a dedicated account manager, VIP support, customized solutions, and additional resources such as flexible billing and early access to beta features.

On the other hand, WordPress, due to its open-source nature, lacks direct customer support. Users can find assistance through community forums, the WordPress codex, hosting provider support, and plugin and theme support. However, this is not as comprehensive or direct as the support offered by Wix.

🏆

Winner: Wix

. Wix takes a comprehensive approach to security, with built-in SSL certificates for encryption and authentication, a Web Application Firewall (WAF) to defend against common web attacks, and infrastructure that handles DDoS protection. Wix also prioritizes data security through secure servers, encryption, and compliance with privacy regulations.

WordPress, being an open-source platform, relies heavily on plugins for security enhancements. While this provides flexibility, it also means that the level of security can vary greatly depending on the plugins used and the hosting provider. This makes Wix a more reliable choice when it comes to security.

🏆 Winner: Wix

. Wix’s AI capabilities, particularly through its Artificial Design Intelligence (ADI)
system, are highly user-friendly and innovative. It excels in offering personalized website design suggestions, content
optimization, and streamlined site setup processes. Wix’s AI also assists in providing SEO recommendations and
layout adjustments based on user behavior.

WordPress, with a score of 6.1, does not have a built-in AI builder. However, its open-source nature allows for the integration of various AI plugins for specific tasks such as AI Engine, GetGenie for content writing, and AI Power: Complete AI Pack for various AI-powered features. While WordPress’s AI capabilities are not as comprehensive as Wix’s, they offer flexibility and customization options through the use of plugins.

🏆 Winner: WordPress

. Both Wix and WordPress offer different approaches to user management and editing access.

• Wix allows unlimited editors regardless of the plan, but caution is needed with 50+ editors to avoid potential backend performance issues. It excels for large, collaborative teams.
• The editing access for a WordPress.org website depends on user roles and additional controls. User roles, ranging from Super Admin to Subscriber, dictate the level of permissions, while plugins and controls such as role management plugins and revision control offer further customization for specific editing rights and collaboration.

Wix User Roles and Access Levels:

WordPress User Roles and Access Levels:

Additional Features

User Feedback

Wix, while highly rated, serves a diverse range of website needs beyond just ecommerce. This generalist approach appeals to a wide user base but may not resonate as strongly with users who prioritize advanced ecommerce functionalities.

On the other hand, WordPress receives praise for its user-friendliness, cost-effectiveness, extensive themes and plugins, customization options, and supportive community. However, users mention technical challenges, security concerns, a learning curve, and a lack of direct support. Despite these challenges, it remains a widely used and versatile platform, especially beneficial for startups and small businesses.

FAQ