How do we work out the overall scoring and star rating? This is a combination of the in-depth
analysis rating and the user reviews. But it's more than just an average of all the reviews.
We take into account many factors, like the age and number of user reviews.
Wix Website Builder is a no-code website design software equipped with an intuitive interface and highly effective drag-and-drop feature. The platform includes more than 800 customizable templates and over 300 app integrations for small and medium-sized businesses.
Wix is a web development company creating software that helps small and medium-sized businesses establish an online presence through responsive website builders. The tools provided by Wix enable the seamless integration of SEO and digital marketing applications by average business owners with minimal technical experience. Founded in October 2006, and headquartered in Tel-Aviv, Israel, Wix has grown into a significant player in the global website development landscape. As a major milestone, it went public on the NASDAQ Global Market on November 6, 2006, with an estimated value of over $3.4 billion.
Wix offers a free plan for users. With the free plan, you can use any of the 800 customizable templates to build your website, add products, and integrate the necessary apps to give your website the spark it needs.
However, this Free plan has its limitations. Your website visitors might have to deal with a small “Created with Wix” ribbon hanging on the top of your web pages. Nevertheless, this Wix ad ribbon isn’t intrusive.
Free plan users are assigned random domain names. To change this random domain to your custom domain, you should consider upgrading to one of the paid plans.
The Wix website builder plans highlighted in this section do not support secure payment processing. So, if you are looking to operate a full-blown online business with secure payment and tax processing features, you should check out the Wix Business and E-commerce packages.
Fast-loading websites have higher conversion and lower bounce rates. According to a 2019 study, the first 5 seconds of your website’s load time has the highest impact on conversion rate. However, the faster the better. The same study showed that a website with a 1-second page load speed will gain 3x more conversion than one with a 5-second load speed.
Interestingly, a majority of Wix websites have a decent page load time below 5 seconds. This is because the Wix website builder has built-in tools to optimize the elements of websites, making them lightweight. Also, Wix has a global content distribution network (CDN) that facilitates quick delivery of website content to users regardless of the user’s location of access.
Here’s the speed test result of my Wix-powered website that scored 3.09 seconds on the page speed index, with the largest content on the website taking 4.3 seconds to load completely.
A good page load speed is crucial to your website’s performance. According to the Search Engine Journal, page speed plays a vital role in a website’s search engine ranking. Experts equally believe that faster load speed is key for an outstanding user experience. However, a website performance index is an important metric to track since a high-performance score puts you within the good grace of search engines.
Websites built with the Wix website builder have a decent performance score on a large scale. The performance score of my Wix-powered website hovers around 56, which is about average.
While Wix has built-in tools to optimize websites, as the website administrator, I’m tasked to take measures to improve my performance score. As a part of their support efforts, Wix has provided a checklist to help me figure out where (and how) to make these improvements.
Uptime
Using the Wix website builder guarantees users up to 99.98% uptime. This means that Wix servers are up and running almost all the time and your websites will be accessible to visitors 99.98% of the time. With a 0.02% downtime, I’ve never had a first-hand experience of my website being down and inaccessible to visitors.
Uniqueness
Among several website builder brands, Wix is an industry leader. Its intuitive and user-friendly interface makes it stand out from competitors. Also, its powerful app integrations, feature-rich platform, and professional logo design services are rivaled by none.
Ease of Use
Setup
One of the standout quality of the Wix website builder is its intuitive and easy-to-use interface. From setup to launch, every aspect of building a website is as simple as it can be. From personal experience, the setup is a 4-step process. All you have to do is answer 4 questions to help set up the right dashboard for you and preinstall the apps that your website will need to perform at its best.
Designing
Once you are all set up, you can jump straight to designing your website. You can pick any one of the 800 free customizable templates provided by Wix or simply build from scratch. For ease, it’s often best to pick a template and make it your own by designing the elements the way you want them.
Text styling
Text styling is important to every brand. Apple uses the SF Pro font style for its products (Mac, iPhone, iPad, etc) while Google uses the Sans Serif font. Wix understands how important this is to your website, so its Wix website builder was designed to keep various text styling functions within reach. Styling a text on Wix is similar to using a word processor (like MS Word and Google Docs). They use the same shortcut keys for bolding and italicizing texts.
Form customization
Forms are an important part of web pages. Businesses need them to collect leads and vital customer data. The Wix website builder has ready-to-use forms that you can customize to fit your website style and business needs.
Using the Website Editor, you can simply click the “Add Section” icon on the left corner of your screen. The “Form” category is right beneath. It features a variety of customizable forms.
From the list, you can drag and drop one of the forms into your website. Then, click the “brush” icon and customize your design just how you want it. The process is pretty much straightforward and intuitive. You can also change the settings of your form right on the Editor. That way, you’ll configure how the form interacts with your users and conveys information to you, the website administrator.
Button design
Buttons are part of forms. They also appear on almost every part of a web page. They are the actions that customers take, one of the few ways that they actually interact with your website. Therefore, they have to be designed to match your brand identity and inspire actions at the same time. Customizing buttons normally will require you to know the fundamentals of HTML and CSS. However, with the Wix Website Editor, you just need to pick from various button formats, combine a few elements (text style, color, border and corner styles), and make your own unique button style.
Customer Support
Without a doubt, a company as reputable as Wix isn’t lacking in its customer service department. Right from the onset, every Wix user enjoys a well-guided journey, characterized by readily available support materials throughout their time with the platform. Personally, I consider the customer service provided to be far above average in all the available channels. Here are some of my personal experiences with the available support channels.
FAQs
Wix webpages are populated with relevant FAQs. I find this section of the webpage very essential for new users to understand what the company is offering through its Website Builders. It provided vital information that helped me build my expectations of the product. The answer to each question was straight to the point and easy to follow.
Wix Learn
Wix also provides online courses and classes for all categories of users. Wix Learn is built to help users learn all they can about running a successful online business. It’s really impressive, if I may add, because it reveals the company’s intention to help online businesses succeed.
Wix Partner Community
Although the platform was built to help business owners with little technical background, Wix’s over 200 million users include developers, marketers, designers, and certified experts. The company has a partners’ community forum where users can share their challenges and receive insightful suggestions and workarounds from fellow users and experts. Browsing through the questions asked on the community forum, I realized that any issue raised by a user is resolved within 24 hours. The screenshot below is an example of a user-generated challenge that was resolved within 24 hours.
Phone Support
Phone support is also available for Enterprise users and prospects. However, you have to request a call back from the experts. That doesn’t take long. Whenever I request a call-back, a Wix expert gets gives me a phone call in less than 5 minutes.
Setup Guides
One thing that makes Wix Website Builder a standout product is the massive library of interactive guides that anyone can follow to build a spectacular website. It doesn’t really matter whether you are new to web design, the guides explain every step in the simplest way possible.
Blog
Wix has a culture of information sharing. So, several certified experts contribute to its blog. Each expert shares new, innovative ways to use the products and position your online business for success.
The information in the Wix Blog is always updated. With the various expert contributors sharing their knowledge, the Blog receives 10-15 posts every month. Yes, that’s a lot of helpful information and the search bar is right there to help you find whatever you are looking for.
24/7 Help & Support
Offers 24/7 support via email and chat.
Phone Support
Allows phone call booking at any time.
Email
Shoot an email using Wix contact form and get a response ASAP.
Video Tutorials
Video tutorials available on Wix Support.
FAQ
Easily accessible FAQ library.
Blog
Wix has an up-to-date blog
Features & Functionality
Design
Using the Wix Website Builder brings everything you need to run a successful online business in one place. Unlike several other website builders, Wix allows you to store customer contact details, run your email campaigns, sync social media campaigns, SEO, and manage your Google Business profile in real-time. This eliminates the need to hop between apps to track data.
Among these interesting features, Wix stands out because of its Site Speed tracker and Automation features.
Offline Designing
When working with some other website builders, fluctuating internet connections can pose frustrating challenges to your productivity. You are probably familiar with an error that reads somewhat in the line of “You’re offline. Connect to the internet to continue working.” For designers, this is a nightmare. With Wix, it doesn’t have to be.
You can continue working on your website even when your internet connection is cut off momentarily. However, you won’t be able to publish or save your changes until you are back online.
You might worry about what would happen to your changes if your computer shut down unexpectedly. The truth is that nothing bad will happen. When working offline, the Wix website builder saves your changes locally as caches. So, as long as you continue working with the same device, your changes are safe. The best thing to do, nevertheless, is to connect to the internet and save your changes as soon as possible.
Mobile Responsiveness
Users can install the Wix Owner app locally on their Android and iOS phones. Although a desktop is required for building or designing your website, the mobile app allows users to monitor everything about their online business on the go. The app’s push notification informs you as things happen on your site including new page visits, orders, messages, and several other interactions between your website and visitors.
Here’s what the mobile notification looks like when I get a website visit.
Process Automation
Wix website builder lets you save more than 30% of your time by automating mundane and repetitive tasks like sending “thank you” emails after order, and timely invoice and payment reminders to customers. There are dozens of prebuilt automation on Wix that would fit into your business processes like lock and key, but you can build your own automation from scratch if you prefer to do that.
Workflow and task management
Business operation is herculean without an effective workflow process. Some business owners use workflow management software, like Trello and Asana, to stay on top of business activities. This requires them to manually create tasks as cards (on Trello, for instance) and move these cards between columns as the tasks move through a predefined workflow process. Wix provides an in-built workflow and task management tool. When properly configured, you don’t need to create tasks manually. Tasks can be automatically created when a customer moves through the sales funnel either by ordering a product or booking your service. An efficient workflow system on Wix will let you keep track of all the stages for completing an order without missing a beat. With the Wix website builder, you can choose from several categories of customizable workflow templates or build one from scratch. Customizing a workflow template is intuitive. Wix’s signature drag-and-drop functionality makes it easier than unwrapping a lollipop.
Features
100+ Templates
Add HTML Code
Blog Templates
Portfolio
Drag & Drop Editor
Multi-lingual Website
Fully Customized
Mobile-friendly
Marketing
Using the Wix Website Builder brings everything you need to run a successful online business in one place. Unlike several other website builders, Wix allows you to store customer contact details, run your email campaigns, sync social media campaigns, SEO, and manage your Google Business profile in real-time. This eliminates the need to hop between apps to track data.
Among these interesting features, Wix stands out because of its Site Speed tracker and Automation features.
SEO
Many websites are powered a CRMs which require users to install third-party SEO applications, like Yoast SEO. This attracts extra expense since Yoast encourages users to opt for its premium package. The Wix website builder comes with a free SEO tool characterized by an actionable checklist of SEO best practices to help position your websites within the good graces of search engines.
Analytics and Reporting
As a vital part of its website builder, Wix offers a full suite of business and website analytics tools to track everything happening on your website. These tools actively collect activity data to track website traffic, sales, site uptime, security threats, individual page speed, and visitors’ behaviors.
With all the data collected, you can also generate analytics reports in a few clicks, and gain insight into your customers and how your business is meeting their needs. The analytics tools also provide various industry benchmarks, generated from its more than 3.3 million websites. You can easily compare your website performance against these benchmarks to find improvement opportunities.
Here’s what a typical website benchmark report on Wix looks like.
App integration
Unlike several other website builders where app integration requires you to copy a bunch of codes from third-party software and paste them on your website, the Wix website builder lets you integrate apps in only a few clicks without touching any code. Most of the apps that you might need are already in the AppMarket, so you don’t have to run multiple APIs to complete an integration. You can simply find an app in the AppMarket and click the “Add to Site” button on the top right corner of the page. Voila! The app is integrated. This is especially easy for apps that are provided by Wix.
For third-party app integrations, you may be required to connect your website to your personal account on the third-party platform using public and private/secret keys. These keys can be easily generated and revoked in the “My Account” or “Settings” sections of most web applications (e.g. MailChimp). After you input these keys, click the “Connect” button and the integration is done. Easy-peasy!
AppMarket
The Wix AppMarket has over 300 apps to supercharge your website and customize your user experience. However, a majority of these apps are designed to help you do more with your website.
Some of the apps in the marketplace are cross-platform integrations. They allow you to send data from the website to third-party software, like MailChimp and HubSpot. The AppMarket allows you to integrate 45 third-party marketing tools into your website but you can do more.
Some of these apps are connectors, syncing data between your website and third-party applications. For instance, you can use the QuickBooks integration to relay financial data from your website to your QuickBooks account.
The AppMarket consists of several other categories of apps, designed to improve the interaction between your website and its users, track and automate marketing activities, process payments, and manage media and content. Whatever you’re trying to accomplish with your website, the Wix AppMarket has integration to make it possible.
Apps on the Wix AppMarket are sorted into categories for users to browse similar apps. It also has a search bar to help you comb through the available options and find exactly what you’re looking for.
Features
SEO Tools
Social Media Integration
Widgets + Apps
Newsletter Tool
Monetization
Visitor statistics
Hosting
Features
Multiple Sites
Free Custom Domain
Unlimited Space
Unmetered Bandwidth
Multimedia
Features
Free Stock Photos
Video Plug-Ins
Audio Plug-Ins
Good For
Features
Blogging
Online Stores
Automatic Website Building
Verdict
From personal experience, building and managing my websites on Wix was a bang for my bucks. I could set up a simple website in one weekend, eliminating the delays from developers. And managing activities afterward from my mobile phone, on the go!
Inasmuch as I have to buy a new premium plan for each website that I own, I still consider it a fair deal. At least, Wix offers me a free registered domain with every premium plan that I buy as well as free SSL certificates. All these, including the secure payment processing and several other features that Wix provides, it’s pretty difficult to find a better deal elsewhere.
Augustine is a freelance writer with a focus on organizational productivity; diversity, equity & inclusion (DEI); marketing and sales; and startup ecosystems in developing economies. He plays 8-Ball Pool when stressed and Chess when anxious.
Overall, Wix is my favorite website builder. For someone who doesn't know HTML and CSS, Wix makes creating a customizable and unique site extremely easy.
M
Mark S
11-50 employees
Used for: 2+ years
15 Jan - 2021
1
Powerful tool for SMBs
I've been using Wix for the past 6 years for several of our businesses' websites and I have to say its an absolute blessing! The features have increased every year and the security level is fantastic. The Ease of use is wonderful and you can do literally
Pros
The ease of use is remarkable with Wix
D
Daniel W
51-200 employees
Used for: 2+ years
24 Jan - 2021
Simple & Easy to use
We’ve used the free and premium versions of Wix for years and it has greatly simplified our business website without costing an arm and a leg. You’re able to design a website to your liking without ever having to code and it has a suite of apps and other
Pros
- The time from editing to going live is only a few seconds -The team is responsive and always open to feature suggestions - Built-in SEO wizard
Cons
- The inability to create subpages
K
Katherine A
11-50 employees
Used for: 6-12 months
21 Jan - 2021
Easy to launch websites
If you need a website builder to show the most important information about your brand in a way that’s attractive to visitors then Wix is a great solution. It is built for speed of implementation and if that is what you are after then you will not be disap
Pros
Very easy to register and get started on your first website Tons of professional designs and templates
Cons
Doesn’t have strong eCommerce features or APIs to give you advanced functionality
J
James P
11-50 employees
Used for: 6-12 months
14 Feb - 2021
The ideal tool for template users and novices
The Wix platform is fast and easy to use and has many templates that can be customized further.
