Wix is a highly intuitive web design platform that gives the user complete freedom of design and development. Surrounding the platform, Wix has built several verticals to enhance the user experience.
About 2 months ago in May 2018, I was offered an extremely exciting opportunity by Wix. They had invited me to come speak at their first ever WixCon 2018. While there, I had a chance to meet with the CEO, Avishai Abrahami and discuss how Wix started and where he can see the future of Wix going. (Check out the brief video I was able to get with him)
Choosing a web design platform is a vital process to the success of your project. This task should be handled with care and be well-thought-out.
When choosing a web design platform, you typically review 5 main areas.
Cost
Products/Features
Reliability
Ease Of Use
Community
Before diving head first into this important topic, let me first explain who I am and why you should be listening to what I have to say.
My name is Michael Strauch and I am involved within several Wix communities. I am part of the Wix Design Experts program, became a Wix Certified Trainer, won the 2017 Wix Megastar Award for making a meaningful impact on the community, became a member of the Wix Community YouTube Council, was invited to be a keynote speaker at the first ever WixCon 2018 and won an award for being the Largest Global Wix Influencer online.
If you'd like to read more about me, check out my story.
Let me preface this article by saying, although I am highly involved in Wix, I will provide you both pros and cons to this platform.
Cost
There is no doubt that Wix is one of the most cost effective web design platforms on the internet.
When you build a website with Wix, you are required to keep that website hosted on Wix. However, your domain name can be purchased at a third-party domain seller such as GoDaddy. Wix is currently running deals for their "Unlimited Plan" hosting that includes a free domain name.
Wix has several different premium plan options:
"Free" (includes Wix branding and does not have all of the added features below)
"Connect A Domain" starting at $5 a month
"Combo" starting at $11 a month + free domain name
"Unlimited" starting at $14 a month + free domain name
"Ecommerce" starting at $17 a month + free domain name + ability to accept payments on your website. This plan is required for any type of eCommerce website on Wix.
"VIP" starting at $25 a month + all previous plans features + priority support
They have created a good variety of premium plans to suit users at different stages in their website. Being a small business owner, I would recommend the "Unlimited" or "Ecommerce" plan. However, if you are just building a simple website with not much functionality, the "Combo" or "Connect A Domain" would work.
When determining the cost of your web design project, many questions must be taken into consideration.
Will I build the website myself, join the Wix Training Academy or hire a web designer?
Will I need to use any external or internal apps?
Will I market the website myself, join the Wix Training Academy or hire an agency?
How much time will be needed on my part? (Time = Money)
Once you have crafted answers to these questions, it will give you a much better understanding of the total cost of your web design project.
There are a few internal applications on the Wix App Marketplace that require a small monthly fee, but the most popular apps used in Wix websites are completely free. This will help you assess the cost of apps needed on your website.
If we take a bird's eye view of the costs associated with Wix, it is fairly impressive compared to some of its competitors. You must also weigh the products/features you receive on one platform to another.
For comparison purposes, the Wix "Ecommerce" plan is $17 a month compared to Squarespace's "Basic Ecommerce" plan starting at $30 a month. Each plan is different in its own ways, but this is a clear direct competitor comparison.
Overall, if I were to rate Wix on their cost compared to the value you receive out of ten, I would rate it an honest to God 10. I truly believe Wix goes over and above the value I would expect when paying $14 a month for a quality hosting plan.
Products/Features
Wix refers to their different products as "verticals," so you may see me mention that throughout this section.
Unfortunately, when people are first seeking Wix as a platform of choice for their business, they end up hearing from others what Wix was two years ago. I can say that two years ago, Wix was a completely different company and platform than it is today. They made massive and I mean massive improvements to the user experience.
Most of the improvements and additions made to Wix happened on the product side of the company. In 2016, they began rolling out their own Wix Apps to the Wix App Marketplace. Each and every one of these apps was well thought-out and executed beautifully. In fact, if you have dabbled around in Wix, some of their more popular in-house apps are:
Wix Bookings (allows you to create courses, classes or coaching sessions available to your user to register)
Wix Stores (the complete Wix Ecommerce experience)
Wix Events (allows you to sell tickets and collect RSVP's to an event you're hosting)
Wix Forum (creates a social element to your website)
Wix Blog (gives the user power to efficiently and neatly create blog posts)
Wix Get Subscribers (allows you to collect emails from opt-ins)
Wix Restaurants (create menus + take reservations + add online ordering)
Wix Video (Charge a monthly subscription for your video series or stream live video straight through your Wix Video app)
Wix Music (easily sell or offer free downloads of your music)
These are just a few of the most popular Wix applications made in 2016. At the time, these were an absolute blessing. However, as time continued to pass, the demand for more complex higher-functionality websites was increasing.
Wix decided they needed to create an additional platform that gave the user the same freedom of functionality development as it does with complete design freedom. It was at this point that the phrase "Wix Code" was being tossed around.
Mid-2017 arrives and Wix opens a Beta group for a new addition called "Wix Code." I was invited to be a Beta tester and was eager and curious to find out what this platform was. Little did I know that Wix Code would change the web design market forever. Any prior argument that Wix did not offer the ability to customize functionality was out the window.
January 2018, Wix changed the market forever. Wix Code was released! People were going gangbusters for this mysterious new addition to the HTML Editor.
So, what is Wix Code?
Wix Code is an addition to the Wix HTML Editor. It is an interface that was designed to give the user complete freedom of the functionality in their website. It allows users to quickly create robust databases, create custom user input forms, incorporate dynamic pages and more. Best of all, they added a JavaScript coding engine to the editor. This means you can create any piece of functionality imaginable by using JavaScript code.
Let me offer you a few real life examples of websites that can now be built on Wix.
Airbnb Style (Create a peer-to-peer rental marketplace)
Twitter (Create a social media style website)
Amazon Style (Create a completely custom Ecommerce website)
Those are just a few examples of more in-depth and complex websites that can be accomplished using the Wix platform.
I had a previous client call me up a few days ago and said, "have you seen Wix's new capabilities?" I asked him what capabilities he was speaking of and he noted it was Wix Code. He proceeded to tell me, "Two years ago I would have never considered building the advanced website I am about to build in Wix, but with Wix Code released, they have my business. I am truly impressed and shocked with what they have been able to create over the past two years."
It was in that moment that I realized how spectacular of a job Wix had done integrating Wix Code into their platform.
Listen, I can talk your ear off for hours on Wix Code, but what you need to takeaway is that there is no more argument for "this type of website isn't possible in Wix." Any website imaginable is possible on Wix now.
I just shared with you the highlights of the HTML Editor and Apps, but Wix did not stop there. They set out on a mission to provide an exclusive business suite for your online marketing efforts.
Wix now provides all users with an intuitive dashboard for each website you create. In that dashboard, you can expect to find a variety of 'verticals.'
Wix Shoutout (Wix's email marketing service)
Wix Contacts & CRM (A customer relations management system that links to every aspect of your website)
Tracking and Analytics (Add any marketing, tracking or analytics codes to your website)
Wix SEO Wiz (The step-by-step SEO wizard to get your website ranking on Google)
Each of these verticals have various robust features included in them. There is also work to be done with some of these products as well.
Wix Shoutout
Wix Shoutout is Wix's email marketing system that allows users to pick an email template or design their own and send out marketing emails to their list. Shoutout does integrate completely into the Wix CRM, so any form of contact that occurs on your website will be tracked in the Wix CRM and Wix Inbox.
The Pro's:
Wix Shoutout is very easy to use
It integrates with your existing list in the Wix CRM
It is cost effective
They have automated email options
It is reliable
The Con's:
They don't offer drip-campaigns
There are limitations to personalizing each email
Overall, I believe Wix Shoutout is a good platform that needs work. However, I ultimately love it because it integrates with everything else on my website, thus saving me time.
Wix CRM & Contacts
Wix offers an entire back office CRM to all websites built on their platform. This CRM is intuitive and offers great integration into your website, but also lacks in some areas.
The Pro's:
It integrates with your entire website
It is easy to use
It makes contacting your list and contacts super simple
It allows you assign access to certain contacts on your website
An easy import/export of contacts
The Con's:
It lacks reporting, tags, tasks, etc.
It is not very advanced
Overall, the Wix CRM & Contacts is a great product because it integrates so nicely with your website. It makes live chat, contacting your contacts and managing your contacts a seamless process. On the flipside, it needs some work.
Thankfully, I had an opportunity to meet with the Wix Product Manager for the CRM and a lot of their current limitations are being changed, added to or fixed completely. This is definitely a silver-lining.
Wix SEO
Wix has taken their SEO products and efforts to a new level. Over the past year, Wix went from being known as a platform that offers poor SEO for its users to being a leader in the SEO department.
They have several different features that allow you to manage the SEO of your website. I will not go into very deep detail about each every one, except one.
The biggest and best SEO product that Wix provides to its users is the Wix SEO Wiz. This is a program within Wix that will analyze your website for the effectiveness of SEO on Google in its current state and then prepare you a step-by-step guide as to what to add, change or remove. From the SEO Wiz, you can also connect your website to the Google Search Console to continue adding working on your SEO in Google.
I can say that one of the most impressive features of the Wix SEO Wiz is the ability to instantly index your website on Google. No other platform allows you to do this.
In fact, Wix has made such large strides in the SEO department that Google even mentioned them in their Google I/O Conference.
I'm sure you can understand why this is so important to Wix. The largest search engine in the world just explained how cool it is for Wix users that they can instantly see their website in Google search results after indexing.
If you had any question or concern about not ranking on Google because you have a Wix website, those concerns should disappear. I have no problem saying that I believe Wix has become one of the better platforms to offer SEO capabilities to their users.
You can now see that Wix has a fairly large and dominant product and feature selection. This is one of the best qualities of Wix as a company. They also release several amazing 'verticals.'
I had the opportunity to speak with several of Wix Upper Management of Wix at WixCon and I can tell you that the products and features are not stopping here. They released a preview of what 2018 looks like in terms of products, and WOW!
Therefore, my overall rating for the Products and Features category on Wix would be a 10. I believe for what you are paying for, Wix has gone over and above what anyone could imagine.
Reliability
When choosing a platform to build your website on, you need to know if that platform is reliable or unreliable. If you begin building on a platform that is unreliable, you will surely regret it fairly quick.
Here are a few questions to ponder when considering reliability:
Do Wix servers crash often or at all?
Are Wix websites secure?
Do Wix websites load fast?
Is the Wix editor reliable?
Did you really think I would leave you hanging to go out and find answers to these questions on your own time?
No, I would not do that. Let me take some time to address each of these questions to put your mind at ease.
Do Wix servers crash often?
Very rarely do I see Wix servers crash. Has it happened before? Yes. However, the majority of the time Wix servers crash is when they are running account-wide updates.
My personal or client websites have never been affected by this issue and I do not foresee this becoming a future issue either.
Are Wix websites secure?
This is actually a two-prong question. You have to look at both points of view. You have to look at the perspective of you (the website owner) and the visitor or customer.
I will address you first. Since your website is hosted on Wix, the safety of your backend information is completely reliant on Wix. Thankfully, Wix has the top of the line security for all of their websites. Neither my clients nor myself have ever had any security issues. On top of that, Wix has never been hacked and they take extreme measures to prevent that.
To flip the perspective, Wix is also extremely safe for your user. Wix just switched to an "https" system for domains. The "s" stands for secure, so Wix is now a very secure platform for all websites. This includes any transactions made on their platform as well.
If you are using any external apps or programs on your website, the security is reliant on that company.
Overall, I have never had any issues with Wix having security issues.
Do Wix websites load fast?
Wix has been tackling their load speed issue for a very long time. They had major issues with websites taking upwards of 15 seconds to load on desktop and mobile which is absolutely ridiculous.
Thankfully, Wix has just about accomplished their load speed issues. When Wix Code was released, Wix added SSR (Server Side Rendering) to speed up any websites using Wix Code. In addition to that, Wix added some major updates in their backend to increase load speed.
When I went out to England a month ago to meet a new partner for a large project we are working on alongside Wix, we ran a speed test for multiple Wix websites. We were shocked to see what Wix's brand new load speed updates had done. 4 out of the 5 websites we tested beat Wordpress for load speed.
I believe with that in mind, it is safe to say that Wix has come closer to finalizing their issues with load speed.
Is the Wix Editor reliable?
It comes as no surprise that I love the Wix Editor since it is the backbone of their entire platform. However, I do have to get real and critical for a minute.
The Wix Editor has its ups and downs. The majority of the time it is all up moments. Unfortunately, there have been several occurrences where the Wix Editor froze up or went wonky on me. This does happen occasionally.
Usually you can best prevent this by using Wix on an updated browser and system. Also, after saving your work, close out of the editor every so often. Sometimes Wix will run updates to the editor and this will cause some issues, but if you close out of it and come back the issues are usually resolved.
Lastly, if you are consistently saving your work like you should be, Wix has a Site History feature. So, if for some reason the editor bugged out on you, there is a site history tab to go back to your most recent save.
When taking a look at the overall reliability of Wix, I would say it is very good. As mentioned, they do have some occasional issues with the editor and sending updates to all Wix accounts across the platform. Other than that, I have never experienced any other reliability issues on the site.
Overall, I would rate the reliability of Wix an 8 out of 10. Due to the occasional editor glitches, I cannot rate the reliability of Wix a 10. Although, everything else mentioned above is absolutely reliable and I would highly recommend.
Ease Of Use
When you are deciding on what web design platform to build your website on, you should highly consider the ease of use. The last thing you are going to want is to hire a web designer or agency to make every change you need to your site.
I will tell you from working with clients myself that I hear all the time how excited people are that they can make changes to their Wix website by themselves. Wix is hands down one of the most easy to use web design platforms on the Internet.
The Wix Editor is referred to as a WYSIWYG editor which stands for (What You See Is What You Get). To put that into terms, you have control over every element on your website. You can add a body of text and move it, rotate it, change the styling or animate it. This is just one example of a very minimal element.
The other common reference to the Wix Editor is "drag and drop." This term is fairly self-explanatory, but it goes hand-in-hand with the WYSIWYG concept. You can add an element to your Wix website and drag it and drop it anywhere on the page.
Due to these two concepts, Wix is often referred to as a very easy to use editor.
When considering your options, think about these questions:
Will I be able to make changes to my own website?
Are there ways to learn how to use the Wix Editor?
Once again, I will not leave you hanging to answer these questions alone.
Will I be able to make changes to my own website?
Wix has made it very easy for a non-technical or non-coding website owner to make changes to their website without the help of a web designer or agency.
In short, if you have decent computer skills, making minor changes to your website should not be an issue for you.
Are there ways to learn how to use the Wix Editor?
Funny you ask! This is what I do on a daily basis. I have been lucky enough to be a Certified Trainer and to have been awarded the Largest Global Wix Influencer.
So, I offer several outlets to learn how to use the Wix platform.
The platform that I started using many years ago was YouTube. If you are a visual learner and like to follow step-by-step tutorials, I would highly recommend you watch me on YouTube.
However, I didn't want to stop there. I love making a meaningful impact in the lives of other entrepreneurs. So, I just recently added a major resource to the Wix user base. It is called the Wix Training Academy.
The Wix Training Academy has the following uploaded to it every month:
An extensive training library full of courses, workshops and webinars
A 12 Step Wix Website Roadmap
A Member's-Only archive of exclusive apps, programs and discounts
A Monthly Mastermind/Q&A livestream with me
An action driven community of like-minded entrepreneurs
If you are interested in these training materials, I would look into enrolling in my Wix Training Academy.
When determining the ease of use of the platform, you also need to compare it to other platforms.
I can tell you Wordpress is much more difficult when making changes to your website. Squarespace is easier than Wordpress, but still not as easy as Wix. I would say the closest ease of use competitor would be Weebly. Although, Weebly has no where near the capabilities of Wix.
Collectively, I would argue that Wix is the easiest to use web design platform on the market. There are other amazing platforms out there, but they are much more difficult to make changes on.
Overall, I would rate the ease of use on Wix as a 10 out of 10. No other platform does what Wix does in terms of its ease of use across the entire site.
Community
The final aspect you should consider when choosing a web design platform is the community surrounding it. You should analyze the demographic of people that currently use Wix and determine if those people share common goals with you.
I have been using Wix for almost 7 years now and I can say the community and culture surrounding Wix is contagious! I understand that I am deeply involved in the community and have more experience with it, but if you take a moment and stake it out, I believe you will be pleased.
When examining the community, ask yourself these questions:
Is this community like-minded to me?
Are there several communities to tap into?
For the last time in this article, I will not leave you hanging to answer these questions alone.
Is this community like-minded to me?
Great question! Unfortunately, the one thing I cannot do is enter your mind to determine if the Wix community is like-minded to you.
However, what I can tell you is that the Wix community is full of entrepreneurs, small business owners, web designers and Wix Design Pros. Each of these demographics have their unique angles as to how they use Wix, but if you feel like you fit into any of those markets, you will likely enjoy the Wix community.
Are there several communities to tap into?
I personally believe that Wix has several communities to tap into. Once again, it is highly dependent on what market you are in along with where you stand on your website.
If you are a web designer looking to start using Wix for your business, I would recommend the following communities:
Wix Design Experts (This is the main Wix community I am involved in. To be eligible for this community you must have 6 premium client websites built in Wix and submitted to the Wix Arena.)
The Wix Training Academy (This is the training academy that I built that focuses a strong emphasis on community and engagement)
If you are an entrepreneur, founder or small business owner, I would recommend the following communities:
The Wix Training Academy (A massive training resource to expanding your growth on Wix)
Local Wix Meetups (Most of us Wix Design Experts host local Wix meetups to provide more information and training on Wix. This is called the Wix Ambassador Program. See if there is a meetup in your local area.)
Why do I stress the power of community in your decision process?
I have been lucky enough to watch the power of community in action. About 6 and a half years ago when I started using Wix and uploading tutorials on YouTube, I was doing it solo. However, through this process I began building my own community of like-minded entrepreneurs learning how to use Wix.
Late 2016, I got involved with all of the Wix communities mentioned above and my experience with Wix increased ten-fold. I became much more excited and happy using the Wix platform.
I thought my experience was cool, but I mine didn't compare.
What I failed to realize at the time was the culture and experience I was building for my community. Now, I do not say this to brag, but I built an amazing community of people learning Wix. I started to realize the power of community when people in my community began reaching out to me and telling me how my community and I changed their lives and businesses for the better.
For me, I felt an overwhelming sense of honor. I was touched by these amazing comments.
So, I stress community in your decision process because I have seen the first hand difference it makes.
Overall, I would rate the community on Wix a 10 out of 10. They have so many opportunities to get involved and I would recommend getting involved with all of them.
Conclusion
There you have it! You are now equipped with the proper facts of Wix when determining if Wix is good for websites.
Hopefully you will find this article to be a good resource and reference when finalizing your decision on whether or not to use Wix.
Every platform has its pros and cons, but I truly think Wix has identified most of flaws in the market and set out to fix and improve them with their platform.
If you have any questions at all, don't hesitate to comment down below.
In addition, utilize all of your resources when making this decision. My following outlets will provide you fantastic insight into if Wix is right for you:
The Wix Training Academy (Best for getting involved and learning how to use Wix)
My Wix YouTube Tutorials (Best for learning what you can build and how to build it in Wix)
The Wix Talks Podcast (Interviews with fellow Wix Design Experts)
The Wix Website Roadmap (Step-by-step guide to get your Wix website started)