Wix Comparison and Review

Pros:

• Limited free account available
• Offers month-to-month plans in addition to annual plans
• Large number of templates available
• 14 day free trial for this and other premium plans
• Several preiuim plans available for different user needs

Cons:

• Poor/minimal guidance for website creation
• Can't edit HTML of the website template
• No ability to accept online payments with this plan

Conclusion:

Wix’s Combo plan is very easy to use. Wix provides users with a setup wizard that guides you seamlessly through the process of developing your website in order to get your site live quickly and also offers a variety of tutorials and how-to’s provide much guidance for their already intuitive website builder. Their builder is  more flexible than many competitors, allowing you to edit all sorts of details in a free-form manner. If you are looking for an intuitive and easy to use website builder Wix is a great choice as long.

Ease of Use

Wix’s “Combo” website builder received 5 out of 5 stars for Ease of Use. The builder provides very good guidance with many tutorials and how-to’s for your convenience. The layout of the builder is simple, making it easy to design and manipulate your website. However, they do not offer a setup wizard or an introduction to guide you through the initial process of creating your website. Wix provides both direct editing and drag-and-drop features that make it easy to customize your site. Adding site elements is as simple as clicking on what you want to add and dragging it to where you want to place it on your webpage. Uploading images requires just a few clicks of the mouse. Wix offers 1500 images to choose from in their image library, as well as over 500 fully customizable website templates.

Wix has a very powerful editor which lets you edit all sorts of details. You can start from scratch and utilize the content blocks or you can use a predesigned template. You can also upload your own HTML, but you are unable to edit the HTML code of the templates. The website builder’s high flexibility distinguishes it from some of the other builders. While other builders stack content blocks in a linear format, not allowing them to overlap, Wix lets you place content blocks wherever you want, regardless of where the other blocks are placed. Wix allows you to insert your site title, description, and keywords, and provides a metatag editor for the purpose of optimizing your sites for search engines. The builder also lets you add several types of content to your site easily, including pictures, galleries, music, video, clip art, navigation, widgets, and flash.

Customer Support

Wix  received 4 out of 5 stars for Customer Support. Phone support is available Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. PST. During testing, we found their phone support to be of high quality due to their staff correctly answering each test question we posed regarding their service. Wix also provides email support but does not offer a live chat support option. Overall customer support is above average quality. They offer FAQs and forums, as well as extremely helpful tutorials and a searchable knowledgebase.  

Account Features

Wix does not provide you with any email accounts with their website builder service.  But, if you want to set up an email account related to your domain name (i.e. yourname@yourwebsite.com), you can easily set up a business account through Gmail or YahooMail. They do offer Google Analytics, which is a visitor tracking tool that records activity on your website, such as how people found your site, which particular pages they visited, how long each visitor spent on each web page, whether or not they bought something, and which outbound links they clicked on to leave your website.  Wix does not provide Privacy Protection which is the removal of your information from the WHOIS database. The WHOIS database is a publicly searchable database with information about the registrants of domain names.

Pricing

Wix’s Combo plan costs the equivalent of $11 per month, but Wix requires you to sign up for an annual payment plan and pay $132 up front for the entire year. If you do not want to pay the annual upfront fee, Wix offers a month-to-month payment option for $14.95 per month. Wix includes a custom domain for free for the first year with all annually (vs monthly) paid plans. Renewal rates for those domains after the first year start at $14.95/ year. If you have already registered a domain name through another service, you can just point your domain name server (DNS) to Wix and they’ll host your site.  Wix offers a 14-day free trial period to test their service.  Additionally, they offer a free account option, but it requires you to use a Wix subdomain (e.g. wix-account.wix.com/business-name) instead of your own domain (e.g. www.yourdomain.com).                     

Upgrades

Wix  offers additional plans ranging from $14 to $35 per month that provide you with increased storage, bandwidth, and e-commerce tools if you need more storage space or functionality. Additionally, Wix doesn't provide business email, but makes it very simple to connect a Google G Suite business branded email account to your Wix domain.