What is the real difference between WordPress and Wix?
Wix is a closed system. Wix owns the servers, the editor, the code and the templates, and you rent access to all of it. WordPress is open source software you install on hosting you choose and control. That single structural difference explains nearly every other difference on this page, including several of the ones that favour Wix.
The practical effect is that Wix decides what your site can do and WordPress does not. Wix makes a small number of decisions badly and most of them well. WordPress makes almost no decisions for you, which is freedom if you have someone technical in your corner and a liability if you do not.
What does Wix genuinely do better than WordPress?
Nothing breaks on a Wix site because you ignored an update for eight months. Wix patches its own platform, renews its own certificates and keeps its own backups. A neglected WordPress site running out of date plugins is the most common route by which a UK small business ends up with a hacked website, and it happens constantly.
Cost is also predictable. One monthly fee covers hosting, security, the editor and support, and it does not change because a plugin developer moved to a subscription. For a five page site for a plumber, a hairdresser or a single site cafe, Wix will get you live in a weekend and the result will be perfectly respectable.
- No updates to install and no plugin conflicts to debug at eleven at night.
- Hosting, SSL and backups are included and handled for you.
- One bill instead of a hosting bill, licence renewals and a maintenance retainer.
- Templates that are difficult to make ugly, which matters if you are building it yourself.
- Actual support you can contact, which self-hosted WordPress does not have.
What does WordPress do better than Wix?
Content structure, first. WordPress lets you create your own content types and taxonomies, so a joinery firm can have a projects archive filtered by material and location, and a training provider can keep courses entirely separate from blog posts. Wix gives you pages, blog posts and a collections database. The blog in particular feels thin once you pass a few dozen posts.
Then the technical layer. You can edit robots.txt, write your own schema, change URL structures, add hreflang for a bilingual site, set canonical tags per page and tune caching at server level. Wix covers the common cases and blocks the unusual ones. If your plans involve anything past titles, descriptions and clean URLs, that ceiling arrives sooner than you expect.
- Connecting to a booking system, a CRM, an accounts package or a stock feed is a solved problem on WordPress and a support ticket on Wix.
- You can move a WordPress site to a different host in an afternoon without changing a line of content.
- Thousands of developers can work on it, so you are never dependent on one supplier.
- E-commerce scales past a simple catalogue without hitting a platform wall.
Is Wix actually bad for SEO?
No, and most comparison articles are dishonest about this. The reputation dates from a version of Wix that has not existed for years, when pages rendered in a way search engines struggled to read. Current Wix sites render server side and give you editable titles, meta descriptions, canonical tags, alt text, redirects and an automatic sitemap. They rank.
The honest limitation is narrower than the reputation suggests. Wix handles ordinary on-page work well. It struggles when you need bulk edits across hundreds of pages, structured data beyond its built-in types, or a site architecture its page model does not support. For a local business with twenty pages, none of that will ever matter to you.
Can you move a Wix site to WordPress later?
Not in any meaningful sense. You can point your domain elsewhere and you can copy and paste your text. Contacts and product lists come out as CSV files. That is roughly where it ends. You cannot export a Wix site as a site, because the design, the page layouts and the internal wiring do not exist in a format anything else can read.
So a move off Wix is a rebuild, at full price. That is the genuine cost of the platform and it lands three or four years later, usually at the point the business has grown into needing something Wix will not do. Budget for it honestly at the start rather than discovering it when you are busy.
What does each option cost over three years?
These are typical UK market ranges rather than quotes. On Wix, a business plan runs somewhere around £10 to £30 a month depending on the tier you need, plus a domain at roughly £12 a year. Build it yourself and three years costs a few hundred pounds. Pay a freelancer to build it properly on Wix and add perhaps £700 to £1,500 once.
WordPress has a higher floor. A professional small business build in the UK typically lands between £1,500 and £6,000. Hosting worth using is around £15 to £40 a month. Premium plugin licences add £100 to £400 a year. Maintenance, if you are sensible about it, runs £35 to £120 a month. Three years realistically totals £4,000 to £12,000.
| Cost | Wix | WordPress |
|---|---|---|
| Platform or hosting | £10 to £30 a month (business plan) | £15 to £40 a month |
| Domain | Roughly £12 a year | Roughly £12 a year |
| Professional build | £700 to £1,500 once (optional) | £1,500 to £6,000 |
| Premium plugins | Not applicable | £100 to £400 a year |
| Maintenance | Handled by Wix | £35 to £120 a month |
| Three-year total | A few hundred pounds DIY | £4,000 to £12,000 |
The conclusion most agency comparison pages avoid: if you genuinely need five pages and a contact form, WordPress is the more expensive way to reach the same result. We build WordPress sites for a living and that is still true.
Which should a UK small business choose?
The test is not which platform is more capable. WordPress is more capable and that settles nothing. The test is what the site has to do in three years and who is going to look after it between now and then. Answer those two questions honestly and the choice usually makes itself.
- Choose Wix if the site is under about ten pages, nobody in the business will maintain it, and you have no serious content programme planned.
- Choose Wix if the budget is under £1,000 and the alternative is a cheap WordPress build that nobody will ever update.
- Choose WordPress if the site is a lead channel you intend to invest in for years rather than a brochure you tidy up occasionally.
- Choose WordPress if you publish regularly, need custom content structures, or must connect to a booking, CRM or stock system.
- Choose WordPress if you would be unhappy to learn that leaving the platform means paying for the whole site again.