The importance of choosing the right website builder when you start a blog is super important. Like seriously, it can kinda change the path that your blogging career takes! We get it though, it is SO easy to feel overwhelmed by all of the options! It can be hard to know what’s right and which platform will suit your needs long term. You don’t want something that’s just easy to manage right now, you want something that can scale with your brand!
So today, we are going to help you simplify the decision-making process when it comes to choosing the right website builder. In this blog post, we will be specifically looking at Wix vs WordPress. We’ll explore their unique features, so you can find out which platform best fits your needs and sets you up for the online success you deserve. Whether starting an online store or successful blog, you’ll find your answer below. Let’s go!
Wix vs WordPress
Wix and WordPress are both very popular platforms for building and managing a website. Wix is very much a user-friendly platform, known for its easy drag-and-drop interface. A Wix site usually appeals to those who want a straightforward way to create a visually appealing website without diving into more complex and advanced web design features.
WordPress, on the other hand, has a huge array of customization options and plenty of basic and advanced. It is favored by people who want to go far, with greater scalability and flexibility! Despite their differences, both websites do offer great ways to get up and running.
In this post, we’re going to take a look at what sets Wix and WordPress apart, exploring their strengths and limitations. Whether you’re after simplicity or scalability, we’ll guide you through the key things that should go into your decision making.
What Is Wix?
To put it simply, Wix is a cloud-based website builder that launched back in 2006. It is known for being super easy to use, and even the least tech-savvy people can pretty easily create a visually captivating website with the drag-and-drop editor. Yep, that means you don’t need ANY coding skills to get started.
Wix is popular amongst both bloggers and small business owners wanting an easy way to establish an online presence. With millions of users all over the world, Wix will continue to be a popular choice for those who value convenience and ease of use.
What Are The Features Of Wix?
Drag-and-Drop Editor
Drag-and-drop page builders are super helpful. And with Wix, it is definitely one of the most popular features. It makes it a piece of cake to easily place elements like text, images, and videos onto their pages without any coding. This is a great tool for bloggers and brand owners who want to customize their site layout quickly and efficiently.
Easy Templates and Design Flexibility
Wix has plenty of professional-looking templates that you can choose from and customize with ease. From something more modern to something more quirky, there’s something on there for everyone. This design flexibility makes it so much easier to get started and create a blog or website you love!
App Marketplace
Wix’s apps are all about giving your website more functions and features without having to hire a web develop or learn code. These apps cover plenty of bases, ensuring that everything is where you need it, when you need it. From social media integration and email analytics to digital storefronts and customer service chats, the app marketplace is full of tools to help you run your blog or online business efficiently.
SEO Tools
Wix only really has a basic range of search engine optimization (SEO) tools. These basic tools can help users to optimize their sites for search engines. You can expect simple built-in features like customizable meta tags, URL structures, and alt text. Bloggers and brand owners can use these features on their Wix website to improve their site’s visibility in search engine results. However, if looking for high-quality SEO tools, there are much better options out there.
Wix Blog
The Wix Blog feature is super helpful as it allows users to easily create and manage a blog directly within the Wix website itself. It includes tools for writing and publishing posts, managing categories and tags, and engaging with readers through comments. Bloggers can easily customize the blog layout, create a content calendar, and utilize post-sharing options. Get the most out of the blog by consistently adding fresh content!
How Much Does Wix Cost?
Wix offers several pricing plans to cater to different people and needs. Here’s a brief idea of what you can expect from each plan.
- Free Plan: You can build a website with Wix branding and very limited features. This is great for exploring the platform, but not good for growing your brand.
- Combo Plan: At only $16 per month, this plan not only gets rid of ads, but also gives you a free domain for a year (you NEED a custom domain). It also offers more storage and bandwidth, suitable for personal blogs and smaller businesses.
- Unlimited Plan: Priced at $22 per month, this plan provides unlimited bandwidth and increased storage great for all those blog posts you’ll be uploading! It also has a site booster app and analytics tools, making it great for people who are looking to grow their brand!
- Pro Plan: This plan is $27 per month and includes advanced features such as a professional logo and helpful social media integrations. It’s a great plan for serious bloggers as well as small businesses.
- VIP Plan: At $39 per month, this plan includes all of the aforementioned things, as well as priority support and extra marketing tools. It is designed for people who need extensive support and the whole “shabang!”
What Is WordPress?
WordPress is a super versatile and widely-used content management system (CMS). Essentially, it powers a huge part of the web thanks to its popularity and efficiency. It launched back in 2003 as only a simple blogging platform, and has since evolved into an insanely versatile website-builder AND web host that is used by millions of individuals, businesses, and organizations all over the world.
In fact, it is THE most popular web platform in the world. According to recent statistics, over 60% of websites are built on WordPress. This shows just how powerful, versatile, and user-friendly a WordPress website really is!
What Are The Features Of WordPress?
Extensive Customization Options
WordPress has THOUSANDS of themes and plugins. This allows users to create a WordPress site that is hugely customizable. Bloggers and small business owners can personalize their websites in terms of both visuals and functions. This allows you to create a genuinely unique site that matches your brand and business perfectly!
Like Wix, using all these customization tools is super user-friendly. However, if you want to dive into the code for even deeper customization, you can! The possibilities are seriously endless.
Advanced SEO Capabilities
WordPress is very well-regarded for its great SEO features. In fact, it’s the best of the best! With WordPress, you can optimize the basics like meta tags, URLs, and alt text. But, you can also manipulate your sitemaps, mobile usability, page loading speeds, schema markup, security and more to ensure that your website ranks near the top of those search engine results pages. These SEO features are essential for cultivating lots of organic growth to make your blog or business the next big things!
Here’s more on SEO for bloggers and SEO for small businesses if you need more convincing that search engine optimization is one of the most important features to consider when choosing a web host!
Scalability and Flexibility
WordPress is highly scalable, making it perfect for brands and blogs with big goals! Sure, you may be starting from nothing with no followers, but every influencer started somewhere. You need your web platform to support you now and ten years from now when you have thousands (maybe even millions) of followers or customers. WordPress has the capabilities to handle your brand efficiently when it’s big or small!
User-Friendly Content Management
The WordPress editor has been intentionally designed to be super user-friendly. This makes it much easier for bloggers to create and manage content effortlessly. This is a pretty big deal if you’re going to be posting 1-5 times a week, right? The Gutenberg block editor provides an easy, visual way to arrange content, while the classic editor has a traditional text-based interface. This means you can pick from multiple easy-to-use editors for the most organized and optimized blog possible.
Community Support and Resources
WordPress has a HUGE community that provides extensive support through tutorials, forums, and documentation. This makes it so much easier for users to discover new features, find solutions to issues, and stay updated with the current best practices. To get the best out of the community support, make sure you participate in forums, attend meetups or events, and read blog posts.
How Much Does WordPress Cost?
WordPress is an open source platform, meaning that it is free to use. However, running the site itself involves several costs such as:
- Domain Name: $10 to $20 per year.
- Web Hosting Platform: Up to $300 per month.
- Themes: $15 to $100 one-time fee or annual subscription.
- Plugins: $0 to $300 a month depending on your needs.
- SSL Certificates: $0 to $150 per year.
Is Wix or WordPress Better?
WordPress is by far better than Wix and no matter your reason for starting a blog or online business, it should be your top choice! Not only is it super user-friendly, but it supports any every function you could possibly need whether you need a massive media library or an expansive online shop. WordPress is also extremely customizable and totally scalable as your brand grows and changes. Most importantly, though, WordPress can be optimized to rank high on the search engine results pages to ensure your website gets seen by your target audience.
Shall we say more? It’s got it all! To get you started, here’s how to set up a blog in WordPress. As you start building your website, learn all about how to format your web design for SEO. Once your website is built, start writing optimized blog posts and start uploading once you have about 15 blog posts ready to go. Then, you’re ready to launch!
Choose WordPress for your website building needs!
Choosing between Wix and WordPress is your choice, but when it really comes down to it, WordPress is the much better option between the two. While Wix is very user-friendly and great for beginners, WordPress has far more advanced features and flexibility. This makes it a better choice for serious bloggers who want to grow and create their own brand. WordPress also has a more substantial armory of SEO tools to get your content in front of your target audience!
Speaking of SEO, to make sure you get the most of your SEO efforts, head on over and read even more posts on the InfluencerSEO blog! We’ve got everything you need to reach all your blogging goals! And, if the whole SEO thing or the process of website building is just too overwhelming, we got you. We offer SEO services as well as blog tech support to help you with whatever you need!
Jordan Becerra, founder and Lead SEO Strategist at InfluencerSEO, has spent almost 15 years in the creator internet space, the last nine building InfluencerSEO into the go-to SEO partner for content creators, with 500+ creators served from pre-launch to massive publication. She learned creator monetization and community building strategy from the inside working for Lauryn Bosstick of The Skinny Confidential prior to founding InfluencerSEO, so she understands both halves of the game: how search actually works AND how creators actually build a strong community online and make money. Her job now is to stay ahead of where search engine optimization is going, especially as AI rewrites the rules, and to make sure the creators she works with get there first.
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