When it comes to building a website, the two most used platforms for these tasks are Wix and WordPress, without a doubt. For the past few years, WordPress has been the best platform to create blogs, business sites, and portfolios (all except e-commerce back then but incorporated later) until Wix made itself available to the users.
The purpose of both these platforms is similar; however, the approach and the site’s work differ from one another in many aspects. Wix is a website builder suitable for you if you are a beginner with no coding experience because it provides sample templates to work with. Whereas WordPress is a content management system (CMS) that requires a little more scalability and know-how since you will be developing a site from scratch.
Moving further in the post, we will have side by side comparison of Wix and WordPress to help you pick your appropriate and relevant platform for your next website development.
Wix or WordPress?
1. Wix and WordPress cost
Wix offers various plans to create a website; there is a free plan, but it is not suitable for professional projects, but it does provide you with a program to test. The premium Wix plans’ cost varies with their bandwidth and storage space. An annual cost might be within $60-$420 depending on the plan making itself cheaper than WordPress.
WordPress is available for free, but there are many additional features and server space, such as hosting and themes that one needs to pay before. If you are good at programming, then you won’t require a developer, or else you’ll have to invest in that too. A bundle of host, theme, e-commerce integration and plugins can cost a user around $1,175 initially with $600 annually.
2. Security
Wix handles the security aside from the basic signing up with email and password. As long as you pay for the premium plans standardly, Wix will keep in check of the updates and other insights for you and alert you if some error requires personal assistance.
The security is your headache in the case of WordPress. You are made responsible for the daily updates, error detection, picking the relevant hosting space, and basically everything else. As tiring as it may sound, this is a more secure approach to building a site.
3. Ease of Use
After its two-factor authentication as the initial step, Wix asks you a series of questions about the type of website and the theme you want to create. Based on these answers, Wix will send in some sample templates to choose from. You get to pick your favorite and customize, preferably with its drag-and-drop feature.
With WordPress, the entire foundation of the site is up to you. Although there are tons of content on the web related to starting with WordPress, it does not provide much help itself. From setting up the site to its theme, security, and additional features, it’s all on you, and it all can be intimidating to a non-programmer.
4. Wix Apps and WordPress Plugins
Wix has over 200 apps, some are premium, and some are freemium for you to use for your site. These apps let the user modify and customize their site with additional forms, pictures, marketing, comments, etc. Even when it has a limited collection of apps, these apps nearly fulfill all the basic and essential features that a site would need.
WordPress holds a directory of plugins in which more than 50,000 plugins are free and many more in their premium package. These plugins are third party extensions similar to Wix’s apps and offer all the features and functionalities you could think of to help you build your dream website.
5. Customer Support
Wix offers a very cooperative customer service available for the users in all their packages through phone, chat, and email. And a VIP Support that doesn’t make you wait in line is provided to users with an expensive premium plan.
WordPress, being open-source, does not provide customer support to the users. However, purchasing a plugin or a theme might include customer service but mainly only for that theme or plugin.
Final verdict
There is no winning or losing when it comes to which platform is better since it all depends upon the kind of website and the purpose of the website that you want to design it for. A beginner with zero to little experience would appreciate and work best with Wix, a professional, or maybe even a potential learner, can make WordPress work for them.
