CHOOSING THE RIGHT PLATFORM SERIES
Part of our collection of practical guides designed to help business owners make informed decisions before investing in a new website.
WordPress vs Wix: Which Is Right for Your Business?
Two popular ways to build a website, but very different approaches. Here’s what to consider before choosing the one that’s right for your business.
Both can build a good website
If you’re choosing between WordPress and Wix, you’re already looking at two established platforms that can be used to create professional business websites.
The question isn’t simply which platform is better?
It’s about which approach gives your business the right combination of flexibility, control, ease of management and room to grow.
We’ve worked with businesses who are happy with Wix, as well as businesses who have reached the point where they want more from their website and are considering a move to WordPress.
Here’s how we see the differences.
Wix is designed to keep things simple
One of Wix’s biggest strengths is its simplicity.
It’s an all-in-one website platform, so hosting and many of the tools you need are provided within the same system. Its visual editing tools make it possible to build and update a website without needing to understand the technical side of hosting or website development.
For someone who wants to get a website online quickly and manage it themselves, that can be very appealing.
You don’t have to worry about putting all the individual pieces together.
WordPress gives you more freedom
WordPress takes a different approach.
Rather than being one closed website-building system, WordPress gives you a platform that can be extended and developed in many different ways.
That gives us much more freedom when we’re designing and building a website around a particular business.
We can choose how the website is structured, how it looks, what functionality it needs and how it can develop over time.
That’s one of the main reasons we choose WordPress for the websites we build.
Your website should fit your business, not the other way around. For the websites we build and support, that’s why we choose WordPress.
Design flexibility matters
A template can be a useful starting point.
But your business isn’t a template.
When we’re designing a website, we want to be able to make decisions based on your business, your customers and the message you need to communicate.
WordPress gives us a great deal of freedom to do that.
Wix also offers extensive design tools and a large collection of templates, so it’s possible to create something distinctive there too.
The difference is that WordPress gives us a broader set of options when we want to go beyond the limitations of a particular website-building system.
For us, that flexibility is important.
What about editing your own website?
This is often one of the first questions we hear.
“Will I be able to change things myself?”
With both platforms, the answer can be yes.
Wix is particularly focused on making website editing accessible without technical knowledge.
WordPress can also be very straightforward to edit, particularly when it’s built with the right tools and structured properly.
That’s important to us.
We don’t want to build websites that our clients are afraid to touch.
We build them so you can make the changes you’re comfortable making, while knowing that we’re here when you need something more involved.
SEO isn’t really about WordPress vs Wix
You’ll often see people claim that one platform is automatically better for SEO. It’s not quite that simple.
Both WordPress and Wix provide tools for managing important SEO elements. What matters much more is how the website is planned and built. A website needs:
clear structure
useful content
sensible navigation
well-written page titles and headings
good internal linking
fast, accessible pages
content that answers what people are searching for
The platform needs to support those things. But it can’t do the thinking for you.
Good SEO starts with a good website.
What happens as your business grows?
This is where the difference in approach can become more important.
You might start with a relatively simple website.
Then things change.
You add services.
You publish more content.
You want to create case studies.
You introduce new functionality.
You connect your website to other systems.
Or you simply want much more control over how the website works.
WordPress has a huge ecosystem of themes, plugins and integrations, giving us considerable scope to extend a website as requirements develop.
That doesn’t mean every website needs lots of functionality.
It means we don’t have to build tomorrow’s website today.
We can build what you need now and have room for the future.
Ownership and control
Your website is an important business asset.
With WordPress, the software itself is open source and can be hosted with the provider that suits your requirements. That gives us a high degree of control over how the website is hosted, maintained and developed.
Wix is a hosted platform, which means the website operates within Wix’s own system.
For many businesses, that distinction won’t matter.
For businesses thinking about their website as a long-term asset, control and portability can become much more important.
Which one is easier?
This is where Wix has a genuine advantage It’s designed to make the process of creating and managing a website straightforward.
WordPress has more moving parts, particularly behind the scenes.
That means there’s more flexibility, but it also means there’s more to manage. That’s one reason our clients don’t necessarily have to manage everything themselves.
We can look after the technical side while giving you as much control over your content as you’d like.
For us, that’s the best of both worlds.
So which should you choose?
There isn’t one answer for every business.
If your priority is getting a straightforward website online quickly and managing everything within one hosted system, Wix can be an attractive option.
If you want greater flexibility, more control over how your website is built and the ability to develop it over time, WordPress is the platform we prefer.
That’s why we build our websites with WordPress. Not because it’s the only platform that can produce a good website.
Because it gives us the freedom we want to create the right website for your business.
The platform is only part of the decision
what your website needs to achieve
who you're trying to reach
what your customers need to know
what pages you need
how visitors will navigate the website
what action you want people to take
That’s why we start our website projects with your business, not with a template or a technology choice.
Thinking of moving from Wix?
If you’re already using Wix and wondering whether it’s time for a change, you don’t necessarily need to start from scratch.
We’ve put together a separate guide explaining what happens when you move from Wix to WordPress, including your existing content, SEO, domain and the rebuilding process.
Continue learning
Understanding platform options gives you a more informed choice. Explore more practical guides to help you make the right decisions before you build.
Thinking about making the move?
If you’re frustrated with your current Wix website or feel that your business has outgrown it, we’d be happy to talk through what you need from your next website.
A quick conversation to explore your options.
07765 087 126