Wix Review

Alexandra Anderson

By: Alexandra Anderson

Alexandra Anderson

Alexandra is a web marketer, Agile Product Owner, and die-hard wordsmith who's contributed to HostingAdvice, InMotion Hosting, HostGator, and other prominent hosting and technology blogs, as well as Forbes. She has a master's degree in information technology from Virginia Tech and more than 10 years of experience building websites, advising on web and mobile app design, and crafting content that engages and converts. Her primary subject matter expertise spans WordPress, UX design, Agile project management, and, of course, web hosting.

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Editor: Lillian Castro

Lillian Castro

Lillian brings more than 30 years of editing and journalism experience to our team. She has written and edited for major news organizations, including The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and the New York Times, and she previously served as an adjunct instructor at the University of Florida. Today, she edits HostingAdvice content for clarity, accuracy, and reader engagement.

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OVERALL RATING 4.6 / 5.0
★★★★★
Features4.8 / 5.0
Ease of Use4.8 / 5.0
Pricing4.2 / 5.0
Reliability & Support3.8 / 5.0
Discount for Our Users See Deals

Wix offers one of the quickest and easiest means of getting a website online — free of charge to start. They've got a robust feature set that is growing every day as Wix leads in the browser-based web builder niche. While the support is subpar compared to that of the top hosts' web builders, the customization and ever-growing list of templates is hard to beat.

Category Ratings

We had one of our resident hosting experts, Alexandra Anderson, sign up for a Wix account and take it for a spin. Below are Alexandra’s ratings of the Wix experience, broken down by the types of hosting Wix offers.

If you decide to go with Wix, you may get a discount by using our link to sign up. While we often make commissions on purchases made through our links, this had no bearing on Alexandra’s review.

Here’s what Alexandra found in reviewing Wix:

Disclosure: When you sign up through links on our site, we often earn referral fees from partners. For more information, see our ad disclosure and review policy.

Wix's Overall Rating (4.6 / 5.0)

Best Overall Rating

4.6
★★★★★

Price:

Setup Time:

Alexandra Anderson

Alexandra Anderson (HostingAdvice.com):

As a web builder, Wix is an industry leader when it comes to ease of use, setup time, and available features. The browser-based, WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) site-building service is hands down one of the foremost brands in this industry niche, and that's not without just cause.

Getting started and familiar with the platform is a straightforward process, and the resulting websites you can build are in keeping with industry standards, as far as design and customization go.

While you're not going to get the same level of support as you would from a leading web hosting service, the feature set available and included in this free service is a pretty exhaustive list. All it takes to sign up — and said signup is free — is an email or a Facebook account.

Once you're in, you can preview thousands of templates, which are all broken up into categories and then further classified by design or industry type.

For example, choose the Online Store category with the Clothing & Accessories subcategory to start selling your custom-printed t-shirts. Your garage band can showcase your latest performances and let family and friends know of upcoming shows by utilizing the Music and Band categories.

You can browse the most popular templates and check out the newest additions. Once you've made your pick, you may feel a tad overwhelmed at the interface — but that's only because the functionality exceeds that of your typical drag-and-drop builder.

You can manipulate and edit virtually any facet of your new website, until it perfectly matches the picture in your head.

Finally, get your finished creation noticed by search engines (and the millions of web surfers that they send to websites) using the Wix SEO Wizard. Just tell the Wizard the words or phrases you want people to search for and find your site, and Wix will spit back out a full SEO report — so you know where you stand in terms of relevant visitors being sent to your site.

Wix premium plan customers can also benefit from $300-worth of search engine advertising credits, upping the chances of increased site visitors.

Anyone could find themselves wanting a website at some point in their career or personal life. Whether you're a stay-at-home mom with a creative writing habit to share or a serial entrepreneur ready to profit from your next great idea, you don't want building your own website from scratch to be a strain — on your wallet, your time, or your brain.

With Wix, you can be your own web designer, developer, and marketer. The interface is easy to use and the end designs are up to snuff with industry standards. When it comes to code-free website building, Wix is a leader and an innovator.

  • FREE signup with email or Facebook
  • Drag-and-drop designing is super easy
  • 1-year domain free with most plans
  • Up to $300-worth of ad credits
  • Access to 1,000s of templates and additional tools in the App Market
  • Get started on Wix now.
Money Back Guarantee
14-day FREE trial
Disk Space
2 GB - Unlimited
Domain Name
FREE (1 year)
Setup Time
4 minutes
Wix's Cheap Hosting (4.8 / 5.0)

Cheap Rating

4.8
★★★★★

Price:

Setup Time:

Wix is known as a web-leading site builder service that's one of the most affordable — because getting started is absolutely free and about as easy as processes get.

You can log in via Facebook or your Gmail account and be editing your new web property within minutes. All but the most basic of plans include a free domain name voucher for your first year of service, and with Wix comes the wealth of templates to be customized within the Wix Editor.

This interface is extremely intuitive, once you take a few minutes to familiarize yourself with it. Once you're comfortable, you'll find yourself dragging and dropping images, text, menus, sliders, and more — all without any code — and feeling like a full-fledged web designer extraordinaire.

All of the template designs are up to the latest industry standards, including parallax layouts, a mobile display editor, and responsive designs, and there are thousands of themes to browse.

If you've read our reviews and seen the multitude of features that can be had for a mere few dollars a month, you've probably realized that Wix is not the cheapest on the list. With Wix, you're paying for the user-friendliness of the no-tech-skills-needed platform, as well as the speed at which you can get your new site up and running.

You're paying for accessibility, so to speak. That doesn't mean you're not getting a lot for the price.

Premium plan holders, in particular, can benefit from $300-worth of ad vouchers, free apps for building forms and boosting your site's SEO status, and even priority support.

Bottom line: There is tremendous value in the offerings of Wix plans. Things like 24/7 expert phone support, stellar uptime rates, and mega-powerful servers are not features they tout, but that's intentional. Wix is an awesome website builder service, and if that's what you're looking for, you've come to the right place.

  • Start designing for FREE
  • FREE domain with most plans
  • Drag-and-drop templates, specific to industry
  • Exhaustive knowledgebase of articles
  • Huge app market available
  • Get started on Wix now.
Money Back Guarantee
14-day FREE trial
Disk Space
2 GB - Unlimited
Domain Name
FREE (1 year)
Setup Time
4 minutes
Wix's Dedicated Hosting (not yet rated)

"We haven't evaluated Wix for this type of hosting service — yet. Either the company didn't offer this option at the time this review was written or this section of the review hasn't made it to the top of our editorial queue just yet. Either way, check back later, as we're always working to keep our reviews up to date and as comprehensive as possible!"

Alexandra Anderson

Alexandra Anderson, Tech Expert

Want Alexandra to review your hosting service? Request a review.

Wix's VPS Hosting (not yet rated)

"We haven't evaluated Wix for this type of hosting service — yet. Either the company didn't offer this option at the time this review was written or this section of the review hasn't made it to the top of our editorial queue just yet. Either way, check back later, as we're always working to keep our reviews up to date and as comprehensive as possible!"

Alexandra Anderson

Alexandra Anderson, Tech Expert

Want Alexandra to review your hosting service? Request a review.

Wix's WordPress Hosting (not yet rated)

"We haven't evaluated Wix for this type of hosting service — yet. Either the company didn't offer this option at the time this review was written or this section of the review hasn't made it to the top of our editorial queue just yet. Either way, check back later, as we're always working to keep our reviews up to date and as comprehensive as possible!"

Alexandra Anderson

Alexandra Anderson, Tech Expert

Want Alexandra to review your hosting service? Request a review.

Wix's Website Builder (4.9 / 5.0)

Website Builder Rating

4.9
★★★★★

Price:

Setup Time:

Website building is where Wix shines. The thousands of templates, the intuitive editor, the industry-leading designs that cater to a variety of specific fields and use cases — all these facets represent a platform that excels at facilitating easy web design for the non-tech-savvy user.

Sign up with your Facebook account or email address and get started for free. I'll admit, the Wix Editor may appear daunting when you first meet it, but get to know the interface.

Once you familiarize yourself with the environment, you'll realize that what first comes across as overwhelming is actually empowering — the customization functionalities to be had are many, and they're awesome.

There's no need for coding of any kind. Just drag and drop elements of your new site and BAM: What You See Is What You Get (i.e., Wix is a WYSIWYG website builder!). You don't have to design your website from scratch with Wix, though blank templates are available.

There are thousands of templates, each one categorized by design need and further classified into industry niches, and the site's look can be molded to match your brand or personality very easily.

Layout and design options include parallax themes (where the viewer scrolls down the screen and one page rolls seamlessly into the next), custom sliders, multiple columns, mobile-specific and mobile-responsive displays, and tons of button and menu navigation tricks.

While Wix isn't our favorite host in terms of expert support or top-of-the-line hardware, it's an industry-leading platform for website building.

It's popular for many reasons: the simple startup process, the ease of use, the array of customization options, and the WYSIWYG results, as examples. Its reputation precedes it, and we can totally see where the rave reviews are coming from.

  • No coding skills needed with drag-and-drop builder
  • 100s of templates with niche-specific designs
  • Add features via the App Market and Wix Events
  • Easily create ecommerce functionality easily
  • Great way to build small sites on a budget
  • Get started on Wix now.
Money Back Guarantee
14-day FREE trial
Disk Space
2 GB - Unlimited
Domain Name
FREE (1 year)
Setup Time
4 minutes

Features

(4.8 / 5.0)

WYSIWYG Website Building

  • Choose from thousands of premade site templates, which are categorized by industry type and design need — e.g., Online Store, Creative Arts, or Landing Pages.
  • The Wix Editor allows you to drag and drop elements of your site into place. WYSIWYG means that what you see in the editor window is how your site will appear once it's live.
  • Add buttons, visual sliders, a background image, or just begin blogging. It's that easy!

260+ Apps in the App Market

  • The Wix App Market contains hundreds of apps that infuse additional functionality and/or customization into your site. Apps are available in free and premium forms, and should be considered an ample part of Wix's offering.
  • Call attention to your site with apps for social media marketing, search engine results boosts, and other promotional services.
  • There's also a wealth of Wix-made apps, such as Wix Music or Wix Bookings, which are designed with this platform in mind, and helpful to a variety of industry niches.

Create a Mobile Site or Online Store

  • Wix's design tools are on par with the latest in web-building trends, i.e., parallax templates and mobile display editors.
  • You can even modify the mobile version of a site independently of the desktop design.
  • Online stores included in eCommerce and VIP plans. Plus, you'll get up to $300 in ad credits to call attention to your eShop or mobile store.

Google-Friendly with SEO Features

  • The Wix SEO Wizard is an optimization and monitoring tool that simplifies the art of making your website appear in search engine results.
  • You can get started by typing in phrases you'd like for people to search for in Google, Yahoo!, or Bing and find your website in the results.
  • Wix reviews SEO aspects of your site based on the terms you'd like to rank for, and spits back out a report for you to use to improve.

Ease of Use

(4.8 / 5.0)
Templates By Industry Need
Wix Review
Intuitive Editor for Easy Blogging
Wix Review
Apps Enhance Functionality
Wix Review

Pricing

(4.2 / 5.0)

Free website

Combo Plan

Unlimited Plan

Gain access to an industry-leading website builder like Wix without paying a dime. You can run a website — on a wixsite.com subdomain — free forever. You'll have to deal with slightly reduced features, but you'll get the full set of design tools Wix is famous for.

The somewhat pricey Combo or Unlimited plans, plus the packages for businesses, ecommerce, and enterprises, remove Wix ads and include a free domain name. The Unlimited plan comes with, as you'd expect, unlimited storage and bandwidth, but at that point you're paying three times the amount of some of the cheaper (and top-rated) web hosts and web builders out there.

All in all, Wix wins when it comes to taking advantage of a free website builder tool for very basic websites. If you're serious about your web building needs, it's worth looking into one of the more economical and efficient website builder services.

Reliability & Support

(3.8 / 5.0)

Unfortunately, support tops the list of Wix reviews complaints made by users. Keep in mind, millions of folks are using these services, many of whom are using the free account or cheapest plan. You can't expect the same level of customer service for a free offering as you would for a premium provider. You're also not going to get the uptime guarantees that the best web hosts will offer. So, service and reliability aren't Wix's fortes, but you certainly can get your money's worth of uber-easy design-related features. That's always a huge perk for website builders.

Wix Includes:

Phone Support and Help Center with Trending Discussions, an Extensive Knowledgebase, and FAQs

Does Not Include

Uptime Guarantee, Email Support, or Live Chat

Other Hosts vs. Wix

Wondering how Wix stacks up againt other web hosting services? See our host-vs-host reviews below and compare them side by side.

Wix vs. Web Hosting Hub

We’re switching things up this round by comparing a tried and trustworthy hosting provider with one of the world’s most popular website builders: Web Hosting Hub and Wix.

See full comparison »
Web Hosting Hub vs. Wix

Overall Rating

★★★★★ 4.6/5.0
Web Hosting Hub vs. Wix

Overall Rating

★★★★ 3.8/5.0
Web.com vs. Wix

Overall Rating

★★★★★ 4.6/5.0
Web.com vs. Wix

Overall Rating

★★★★ 4.3/5.0

Wix vs. HostGator

Get ready to cast your ballot.

See full comparison »
Wix vs HostGator

Overall Rating

★★★★★ 4.6/5.0
Wix vs HostGator

Overall Rating

★★★★★ 4.5/5.0

Wix vs. Shopify

Wix versus Shopify — two wildly popular service providers, duke it out in this host comparison.

See full comparison »
Wix vs Shopify

Overall Rating

★★★★★ 4.6/5.0
Wix vs Shopify

Overall Rating

★★★★★ 4.6/5.0

Wix vs. WordPress

In this match, WordPress and Wix duke it out for the title of “best host.

See full comparison »
WordPress vs Wix

Overall Rating

★★★★★ 4.6/5.0
WordPress vs Wix

Overall Rating

★★★★★ 4.7/5.0

Wix vs. Volusion

Wix and Volusion pack their plans with some outstanding features.

See full comparison »
Wix vs Volusion

Overall Rating

★★★★★ 4.6/5.0
Wix vs Volusion

Overall Rating

★★★★★ 4.7/5.0

Wix vs. GoDaddy

GoDaddy and Wix are both fantastic providers to introduce newbies to web hosting.

See full comparison »
Wix vs GoDaddy

Overall Rating

★★★★★ 4.6/5.0
Wix vs GoDaddy

Overall Rating

★★★★★ 4.7/5.0

Wix vs. Hostinger

In the left corner sits Hostinger — one of the market’s most affordable, beginner-friendly hosting providers.

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Hostinger vs. Wix

Overall Rating

★★★★★ 4.6/5.0
Hostinger vs. Wix

Overall Rating

★★★★★ 4.8/5.0

Wix vs. GreenGeeks

This host battle has the looks of a David versus a Goliath.

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GreenGeeks vs Wix

Overall Rating

★★★★★ 4.6/5.0
GreenGeeks vs Wix

Overall Rating

★★★★★ 4.8/5.0

Wix vs. 1&1 IONOS

In this host comparison, we’re looking at two reputable providers.

See full comparison »
1&1 vs Wix

Overall Rating

★★★★★ 4.6/5.0
1&1 vs Wix

Overall Rating

★★★★★ 4.8/5.0

Wix vs. InMotion

There’s a reason Wix and InMotion Hosting are two of the most respected web hosts in the industry.

See full comparison »
Wix vs. InMotion

Overall Rating

★★★★★ 4.6/5.0
Wix vs. InMotion

Overall Rating

★★★★★ 4.9/5.0

Wix vs. BoldGrid

We rarely see such a well-matched fight between web service providers.

See full comparison »
BoldGrid vs Wix

Overall Rating

★★★★★ 4.6/5.0
BoldGrid vs Wix

Overall Rating

★★★★★ 4.9/5.0

Wix vs. Weebly

Similar to the foundation of a home, your website is the sturdy base your business rests on.

See full comparison »
Weebly vs Wix

Overall Rating

★★★★★ 4.6/5.0
Weebly vs Wix

Overall Rating

★★★★★ 4.9/5.0

Wix vs. Bluehost

Comparing Wix and Bluehost is similar to comparing a McFlurry to an ice cream sundae.

See full comparison »
Wix vs Bluehost

Overall Rating

★★★★★ 4.6/5.0
Wix vs Bluehost

Overall Rating

★★★★★ 4.9/5.0

Wix vs. iPage

Wix is a small business owner’s bread and butter.

See full comparison »
iPage vs Wix

Overall Rating

★★★★★ 4.6/5.0
iPage vs Wix

Overall Rating

★★★★★ 4.9/5.0

Wix vs. SiteGround

Wix is the godfather of site builders, so SiteGround must pull out all the stops to top this host in the site building category.

See full comparison »
SiteGround vs. Wix

Overall Rating

★★★★★ 4.6/5.0
SiteGround vs. Wix

Overall Rating

★★★★★ 5.0/5.0

Wix is the winner
4 out of 16 times.

The Rundown

Alexandra Anderson

Alexandra Anderson

Hosting Expert:

To recap, here's a rundown of what Wix has to offer

Wix is easily one of the most popular website builders on the market today, and our review reveals the platform lives up to the hype of its reputation. Getting started is as easy as inputting an email address, the cost to sign up is nothing, you can get a 1-year domain registration voucher included, and you can be designing in minutes. Within the Wix Editor, you can quickly and easily customize one of thousands of industry-specific themes via drag-and-drop, and you can even edit your mobile site display. Add more functionality with any of the hundreds of apps and tools found in the Wix App Market, e.g., Site Booster or Form Builder. Finally, get your new blog or online business noticed with the help of Wix's SEO Wizard and up to $300 in search engine ad credits. Wix has certainly mastered the wonder that is carefree, code-free website building.

Wix review

Overall Rating

4.6 / 5.0
★★★★★

About The Author

Alexandra Anderson’s interest in website administration was sparked in her teens, priming her for a fast-paced career in managing, building, and contributing to online brands, including HostingAdvice, Forbes, and the blogs of prominent hosting providers. She brings firsthand experience reviewing web hosts, perfecting website design, optimizing content, and walking site owners through the steps that add up to a successful online presence. With a master's degree in information technology from Virginia Tech, she combines her extensive writing experience and technical understanding to unpack some of the most complex topics that daunt novice website owners, as well as the subjects that excite veteran technologists within the HostingAdvice readership.
Alexandra Anderson
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