WordPress or Wix? Which is Better? Here’s Some Food for Thought
WYPIWYG, or to the non-acronym inclined, What You Pay Is What You Get. This seems to be the central tenet running between the website builders of Wix and Word Press. The average company, with a modest budget and internet experience, has heard of Wix, I’m sure. Its ease of use and design helps the novices amongst us get their company’s name and information out to anyone searching the internet. But as the axiom we started with states, you can do better.
This isn’t a WIX hit piece, mind you. The platform has great tools for those with limited time and budgets to fuss around with building a website. They have excellent pre-constructed templates and layouts for users to plug in their information and pictures. Wix even has customized layouts based on specific industries. Their customer support line helps in a jam and the sites automatically update any time Wix pushes them out. Most importantly to many of their users, it’s less expensive.
Now here’s where the WYPIWYG factor comes in. Yes, Wix is cheaper than Word Press. However with the lower price tag comes some issues for the user. Wix owns your site. Yes, you control the domain name, the site, the photos, and content. But if Wix as a company goes belly up tomorrow, your site is gone. It will need to be rebuilt again somewhere new, and that’s not going to be cheap. Ouch.
With Word Press, you’re in control. Your site will not go offline if Word Press ceases to exist. They are providing the structure not the actual site. You cho
ose your host, domain name, and themes.
To get more granular, professional SEO Managers prefer Word Press for a variety of reasons. Its coding is better. They can rewrite and tinker with the code to maximize results. Wix’s code is locked. Wix’s loading speeds are also slower. Your retention between pages will drop as users tire of the bloating time while clicking around. Word Press also allows your site to be exported between hosts. If you build out your site on Wix and a year later want to move it to another host, too bad. Blogging is also preferred on Word Press than Wix. It offers native comments and private posts in its blogging tools while Wix is lacking in those features.
So which is the better option for you? Well, remember WYPIWYG. Wix is cheaper and if you don’t want to spend a lot of time fussing with your site, it’s the right choice for you. But for a better long-term, overall value, more ways to interact with your consumers, and ownership of the site itself if outside factors change, WordPress is the better tool.