Wix vs WordPress: Which Is Better for a Business Website?

Wix vs WordPress comes down to one question: will this site stay small and simple, or will it grow? Wix is the quicker, lower-effort choice for a small site you’ll edit yourself and are happy to keep on Wix for good; WordPress is the better choice when the website needs more features, more content, or the freedom to change hosts and developers later.

We build websites on both platforms, so we have no reason to push you either way. This guide is for business owners deciding before a build or a rebuild. It covers the real three-year cost, the price of leaving Wix later, what the new Wix Harmony editor changes, SEO, online selling and upkeep, and ends with five questions that settle the choice.

Wix sites can’t leave Wix, and that shapes everything else

The biggest difference between Wix and WordPress isn’t the editor or the price. It’s what happens when you want to move. Wix’s help center says a Wix site must be hosted and operated on Wix’s servers, because it runs on Wix’s own technology. You own the content you create, and you can connect a domain bought elsewhere, but the site itself can’t be downloaded and hosted by anyone else.

Blog content is locked in the same way. On the help page for exporting a Wix blog, Wix states that exporting blog posts to other platforms is currently not possible; the feature is listed as a request customers can vote for. For a business with 80 articles, that means copying each post by hand or paying someone to do it.

WordPress works the other way round. The software is open source, published by the WordPress.org project, and you can take a full copy of the files and database to any host at any time. If your developer disappears or your host raises prices, you move. That portability is why we build most growing business sites on WordPress, and our WordPress development packages start at $890 for up to five pages.

None of this makes Wix a bad choice. It makes Wix a commitment. Choose it when you’re confident the site will stay a size and shape that Wix handles well.

Wix vs WordPress pricing: plans, builds and the exit cost

Wix is usually cheaper in cash for a simple site, and we’ll show the numbers. The part most cost comparisons miss is the price of switching platforms later, which only applies to one side.

What the Wix plans include

Wix plan	Per month, billed yearly	Storage	Can take payments?	Site collaborators
Free	$0, with Wix branding and no custom domain	Limited	No	–
Light	$17	2 GB	No	2
Core	$29	50 GB	Yes, basic eCommerce and scheduling	5
Business	$39	100 GB	Yes, standard eCommerce	10
Business Elite	$159	Unlimited	Yes, advanced eCommerce and developer platform	100

Read the terms before you compare. These are yearly subscriptions paid in full upfront, before tax, and Wix sets prices by location. The free domain lasts one year and only covers a new domain bought through Wix. Booking, store and payment features start on Core, so a service business that takes bookings or deposits should budget from $29 a month, not $17.

Wix plan prices and features come from the Wix plans page as captured on October 29, 2026, which shows USD prices for reference. Check the live page from your own country before you buy.

What it costs to have the site built on each

Most business owners pay someone to design the site, whichever platform they pick. These are our published prices for comparable builds, from our pricing page:

Build	On Wix	On WordPress
Small site, up to 5 pages	Wix Starter: $790, about 2 weeks	WordPress Starter: $890, about 2 weeks
Larger site, up to 12 pages	Wix Business: $1,490, with bookings or store setup, 3–4 weeks	WordPress Business: $1,690, fully custom design previewed in Figma, 3–5 weeks
Ongoing upkeep	Handled by Wix inside your plan	Optional care plan from $49 a month per site
Platform costs paid by you	Wix plan	Hosting and domain, plus any premium plugins

A worked example over three years

Picture a physiotherapy clinic that needs about ten pages and online booking.

1. On Wix: our Wix Business build at $1,490, plus the Wix Core plan at $348 a year. Over three years: $2,534, with hosting, security and updates included.
2. On WordPress: our WordPress Business build at $1,690, plus the Essential care plan at $588 a year. Over three years: $3,454, plus hosting, a domain and any booking plugin licence paid to those providers.

For this clinic, Wix costs less, and if the brief stays the same for years, it’s a sound choice. The calculation changes if, in year two, the clinic wants patient intake forms connected to its practice software, a members area for exercise videos, or a second location with its own pages. If Wix can’t do what’s needed, the site has to be rebuilt elsewhere. Our Wix to WordPress migration costs $890 for up to 30 pages and 50 blog posts, or from $1,690 when Wix Stores, bookings or member areas must be rebuilt. That is the exit cost to weigh against the savings.

Wix Harmony, Wix Studio and the classic editor: which Wix are you comparing?

Wix is now three products, and many comparisons still describe only the oldest one.

• Wix Harmony is the AI website builder Wix launched in January 2026. You describe the site, an AI agent called Aria builds it, and you refine it by hand in the visual editor. Wix’s launch announcement describes it as combining AI generation with hands-on editing.
• The classic Wix Editor places elements freely on the page, which feels easy at first. The mobile layout is adjusted separately, so on larger sites each change can mean two checks.
• Wix Studio is aimed at agencies and freelancers, with responsive layouts, client handover tools and custom code.

The AI builder makes the first draft faster, but it doesn’t change the trade-offs in this guide. A Harmony site still runs only on Wix, still uses Wix’s apps and still follows the same plan limits. On the WordPress side, the equivalent first-draft speed comes from starter themes and block patterns, and the real time goes into content, as it does on any platform.

Day-to-day editing: Wix is easier to start, WordPress scales with a team

Wix is easier for one person building a first website. Everything lives in one dashboard, there’s nothing to install, and Wix runs the software updates. If you change your mind about a layout, you drag it somewhere else.

WordPress asks for more decisions upfront, which is why most business owners have it built for them. Once it’s built well, the day-to-day work is filling in structured blocks: a new service, a team member, a case study. Editors can’t break the layout by dragging things around, which matters more than it sounds when three or four people update the site. User roles let a junior editor draft and a manager publish.

From our projects: For a Danish plumbing and heating company, we built a six-page WordPress site with Elementor Pro in two to three weeks, centered on urgent service access, transparent pricing and local trust. It includes an Offer of the Month page the team can update themselves, and Wordfence for security. On WordPress, the team can add pages, offers and features later without changing platform.

Wix vs WordPress for SEO

Both platforms can rank, and for a small local site the platform is rarely what holds rankings back. Wix handles the technical basics for you: SSL, a sitemap, mobile layouts, editable titles and descriptions, and a redirect manager. That’s enough for many service businesses, whose rankings depend far more on their content, reviews and Google Business Profile.

WordPress gives you more control when SEO becomes a main sales channel. You choose the hosting, so you can tune server speed. An SEO plugin gives page-level control of canonicals, indexing rules and structured data. Developers can build custom templates for services, locations or products, and you can restructure a large site with a full redirect map.

There’s also a long-term SEO point that has nothing to do with features. Content is the asset that earns rankings, and on Wix it can’t be exported in bulk. If you plan to publish weekly for years, keep that work on a platform you can take with you.

Apps, plugins and custom features

Wix covers common needs with built-in tools and its App Market: forms, bookings, events, a store, email marketing and a blog. They work well together because Wix builds or approves them. When a need falls outside them, your options narrow to Wix’s developer platform or an embedded third-party widget.

WordPress has tens of thousands of free plugins, and almost every CRM, booking system, payment provider and marketing tool offers a WordPress connection. Anything without a plugin can be custom-built, such as a quote calculator, a dealer locator or a sync with your inventory system. The cost of that freedom is curation: every plugin you add is something to update and test, so a lean, well-chosen set beats a long list.

Selling online: Wix Stores or WooCommerce

Wix Stores suits a small catalog sold in one market with standard shipping. It needs Core or higher, and the higher plans add more eCommerce features. Setup is quick, and payments, inventory and order emails live in the same dashboard as the website.

WooCommerce, the free store plugin for WordPress, fits stores that expect to grow into hundreds of products, wholesale or subscription pricing, multiple currencies, or connections to accounting and warehouse systems. You pay your payment provider’s card fees and your hosting, and the store needs careful maintenance. Our WooCommerce development starts at $1,490 for a store with up to 30 products.

Maintenance and security: who carries the work

With Wix, the platform patches its servers and software, monitors security and keeps the site online. Your job is strong passwords, two-step login and your content. For owners with no developer, this is the best argument for Wix.

With WordPress, someone must update the core software, theme and plugins, keep off-site backups and watch for problems. WordPress security problems usually start with software nobody updated, which is a maintenance failure rather than a platform flaw. You can do the updates yourself on a small site, or hand them to a WordPress care plan that tests updates on a staging copy first and keeps daily backups.

Five questions that decide between Wix and WordPress

Answer these honestly. If you answer yes to two or more, choose WordPress. If you answer no to all five, Wix will serve you well and cost less.

1. Will the site need a feature Wix doesn’t offer? Think client logins, calculators, directories, or links to your CRM or industry software.
2. Will more than two people publish content? Roles, approvals and fixed content blocks favor WordPress.
3. Is search traffic a main source of leads, now or later? Long-term content work belongs on a platform you can move.
4. Could you outgrow your current developer or host? WordPress lets you change either without rebuilding.
5. Will you sell more than a small catalog? Larger or more complex stores fit WooCommerce better.

If you’re also considering Squarespace, the same questions apply, and our Squarespace vs WordPress comparison covers its export rules and prices. For a full breakdown of a WordPress budget, see how much a WordPress website costs.

Get a fixed quote on the platform that fits

Attors Technologies is a web development agency that builds and maintains WordPress and Wix sites for businesses in the US, UK and Europe. Tell us what the site needs to do now and in two years, and we’ll recommend a platform and send a fixed written quote before any work begins. If Wix is the better fit, we’ll say so and build it on Wix.

Request a fixed quote for your WordPress website