WiX can be a great platform for those starting out, but you really understand what you are getting yourself into.
Let’s say, you run a business. You need a website. You don’t have a ton of money to spend on website design and development. So, you see the advertisements stating you can build a great looking site with WiX, with no coding experience necessary. All of this is TRUE.
So, why is WiX a bad choice for your business/website? Let’s take a deeper look…
WiX seems like a great platform, at first. Until you start to dig deeper. If you are new to web sites and/or web development, you may be overlooking some very important things when you choose to use WiX for your web presence. Such as, control of your content, how WiX pages function when it comes to SEO, or how Google’s search algorithms determine how your site gets ranked based on technologies like JavaScript and AJAX.
Let’s take a look at 5 reasons why WiX is a poor choice for your business/site:
Reason #1: WiX controls your content. Not you.
While you have complete control of what content you put on your site, WiX can use, distribute, reproduce, modify and adapt your content. Don’t believe it? Here’s proof:
“Wix does not claim any intellectual property rights over the User Submissions. However, under the Wix.comTerms of Use, you grant Wix worldwide, royalty-free and non-exclusive license to use, distribute, reproduce, modify, adapt, publicly perform and publicly display such User Submissions.”
That is scary. By signing up for Wix.com web services, you are allowing Wix.com to modify your site and your site’s content simply by agreeing to the Terms of Use.
Reason #2: SEO with WiX is a nightmare.
When you decide to use WiX for your site, you are forced into using their proprietary on-page SEO tools. It serves the basics, but that’s it. Adding to this nightmare, WiX uses “hashbang” URLs being served by JavaScript.
A search engine optimization (SEO) strategy is one of the most important pieces of any website. It’s one of the first things our clients focus on, before aesthetics and before traffic analytics. The question always comes back to, “How do I rank higher?” SEO is easy to tackle when building a website in a content management system (CMS) such as WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, or HubSpot. You develop your strategy and you implement it across every page, blog post and portfolio piece. It works and it’s a proven system. With a Wix.com site, implementing an SEO strategy is nearly impossible. You do not have the ability to download an SEO boosting plugin. Instead, you simply have the on-page SEO that Wix.com offers. Yes, you can get the basics done here, but it doesn’t offer you any Search Enginge previews or any help along the way like one of our favorite SEO plugins, WordPress SEO by Yoast, does. For a tool that caters to beginners, Wix.com is really missing the mark.
Reason #3: Once you’re on WiX, you’re stuck.
Making the commitment to start with WiX, means you’re stuck with WiX, forever. Should you decide you want to change platforms or hosting services because you want features that WiX doesn’t offer, it means you’ll have to start all over from square one. There *are* some ways to move your site and content away from WiX, but none of the options are easy or quick.
Here is what it takes to convert a site from WiX to WordPress. Warning: there is a LOT of reading ahead…
As we shared in our look at WordPress vs Wix, both platforms have advantages and disadvantages, but if you’re moving from Wix because of the restrictions, WordPress should arguably be your next step. Unfortunately, Wix doesn’t make it easy to export your data, so it might seem like your only option is to start over with a new site.
Reason #4: No admin page and limited plugins.
Unlike WordPress, Joomla, drupal, or other CMS platforms; WiX does not offer an Admin back-end for controlling your site. Everything on WiX is controlled with widgets and floating windows. This makes it impossible to customize your site, adding plugins or features that are not already supported by WiX.
Wix comes with nearly 200+ apps that you can add to your site. These apps offer a wide range of features like adding contact forms, gallery, comments, email list and so on. Most apps are free or have a lite version. Other apps require monthly payments and vary in prices. Even though there is a limited collection of apps, they cover most commonly requested features by site owners.
At the time of writing this article, there were more than 38,000 free plugins available in the WordPress.org plugin directory alone. Not to mention, premium plugins available on other marketplaces. The saying goes: if you can think of it, there’s probably a WordPress plugin that makes it happen. Whether you want to create a contact form, build a mailing list, create galleries, or add sliders, there’s a plugin for that. You can do just about anything you like with WordPress. There are plenty of plugins both free and paid which you can utilize on your site immediately.
Reason #5: eCommerce on WiX is not free, and doesn’t scale well with growth.
There *are* plugins you can use with WiX that will allow you to run a eCommerce site. Altthough, these plugins cannot be used on the free version of any WiX sites. Not to mention, you’ll be limited to using pre-selected payment gateways, such as PayPal or Authorize.net.
WordPress, on the other hand, offers server free plugins that allow you to create your own online store and sell anything you want. Each of these plugins has their own features and limitations, while major players like WooCommerce, will allow you to use any payment gateway method of your choice. Even handling credit card processing in-house/on-site.
Wix offers eCommerce with their paid plans. This means users with the free plan cannot run their eCommerce store on Wix without upgrading to a paid plan. With the WixStores, you can only accept payments using PayPal or Authorize.net. There are a few third party apps that you can use for selling things online, but those apps would cost you even more money with their monthly fees. Not to mention you have limited payment gateways and limited functionality.
WordPress has several free plugins that you can use to build your online store and sell anything you want. Each of these plugins have their own addon plugins which you can use to add any payment gateway you want. Most eCommerce plugins for WordPress even have their own dedicated themes and have plenty of themes designed specifically to work with those plugins. If you want to build a proper store and be ready for growth, then WordPress offers much more flexibility, freedom and choices.
In Conclusion…
WiX offers a platform that might be a great solution for start-ups, and non-technical people. WordPress has it’s limitations also. As well as all CMS platforms, such as: Joomla, drupal, and Concrete5… just to name a few of the major players.
This article is meant to point of some of the limitations of deciding to use WiX for your business or personal website. Not everyone can afford to hire a web designer to build them a custom one-off website, and that’s okay. Just be aware of what you are getting yourself into, and make educated choices about where your business is currently, and where you see it heading.
Feel free to leave any comments or discuss this article below!
