Building a website to brand your business seems like an oversight to many small business owners but the implications of having a well maintained and efficient website can do wonders for your business. For example lets say you are a local bagel shop that offers delivery, your website should have: hours of operation, delivery times, menu, maps and locations on how to get to the deli, phone number, and online ordering, if you choose to do so. Now you may choose to hire a web design company to help brand your online presence and if you do so make sure to do your research on the company you choose to hire. For example are they reputable, do they have good reviews on google, yelp, yahoo, Do they have a social media presence and whats the average cost of building a site. Once you look into all these possibilities and find a reputable web design company in NJ like www.designitupnow.com you can hire them to create your website for you. Chances are they are going to use platforms like WordPress or Wix to build your site dependent upon your needs. Or you may simply choose to for go the web design company (not recommended) and build the site yourself! In that case the two most popular web design platforms will still be Wix or WordPress. So which one is better? What are the pros and cons? To the answer the age old question of which one is better Wix or WordPress we have to take five key points into consideration and they are Cost, Ease of use, Design and Layout, Plugins and Apps. and eCommerce.
Cost
WIX: So lets start with cost shall we? Wix.com offers to is users a free version that runs light adds on the top right hand corner and bottom of your page. Now while the adds are unprofessional for a business they are not glaring or gaudy or make the page look any different. However using the free version of Wix you will not be able to connect your domain name. For example if you have www.bagelboys.com as your domain you would have to use bagel boys.wix.com as your domain unless you pay $4.08 to connect your hosted domain to Wix . To remove ads and get additional features, you will have to upgrade to one of the premium plans they offer. Each Wix premium plan has different storage and bandwidth limitations. You can pay monthly or choose a yearly plan. For a complete pricing plan for wix.com see the image below:
Wix Pricing
WordPress:
The WordPress software is available for free for anyone to use. What’s the catch? Well, the biggest catch is that you need your own domain and hosting to install it. There are several WordPress hosting providers that you can choose from. Depending on your budget, you can start with a basic plan with a WordPress hosting provider like Siteground that will cost you $3.95 per month. If your budget permits, then you can use a managed WordPress hosting provider like WPEngine which costs $29 per month. The cost of a WordPress site will increase if you decide to use premium WordPress themes or plugins. However, there are thousands of free WordPress themes and plugins available that you can use to reduce costs. You can add any feature to your WordPress site using a plugin without upgrading your hosting plan.
Conclusion: WINNER WIX
WordPress may seem cheaper and beats Wix with flexible plans available from a variety of web hosting companies. The cost depends on how much resources you use, and you are free to use your WordPress site in any way you want. However Wix offers set pricing and easy to follow instructions on connection a domain if you need to as well as coupons to drop the price by 50% on most promotional periods. Wix also offers $350 in Ad vouchers for most of their paid plans which will offset the cost back to free. Adverting vouchers with Google and Bing can be costly so that combine with 2 premium free apps that they allow will stray our final opinion to WIX being the Winner on Pricing.
Ease of Use
Most beginners don’t want to spend too much time learning new skills. Both Wix and WordPress allow you to create websites without having to learn to code.
WIX: Wix comes with very powerful and easy to use tools to build your own website. It offers a simple drag and drop interface where you can select any element on your site and start editing it in a WYSIWYG (What you see is what you get) interface. You can drag and drop items anywhere on your site, rearrange things on your pages, write content, and add media in a user friendly environment. Many beginners would find this feature a blessing as it saves them from dealing with code.
WordPress:
WordPress comes with a visual editor to write your content and theme customizer which allows you to edit your theme properties in a WYSIWYG environment. However, by default WordPress does not come built-in with a drag and drop page builder.Editing a post in WordPress visual editor. To get the full control of the appearance, users will have to familiarize themselves with different sections like menus, customizer, visual post editor, etc. This means that WordPress requires a small learning curve for beginners. On the other hand, there are thousands of themes that makes customization really easy. However with clearing caches to not bog down the server and checking boxes to make sure your featured images are set and other little technical things, there is a lot going on with the WordPress editor.
Conclusion: WINNER WIX
Wix is clearly the winner here. Users don’t need to spend much time to learn the platform or install any plugins before they can start building their website. On the other hand, they will need to understand WordPress basics and may need help of plugins to build their site. As it goes, with more power comes a more responsibility.
Design and Layout
Your site’s design and layout plays an important role in its success. Every site owner needs a design that’s not only good looking, but also user friendly and makes their brand stand-out.
Wix: Wix comes with more than 500+ pre-made templates to choose from. All Wix designs are fully responsive and written in HTML5. Using the built in tools, you can further customize your site design, change layout, and rearrange items as you see fit. Wix uses templates and there are designs available for every kind of site. Templates are divided into categories like business, eCommerce, hobbies, arts and crafts, personal, etc. One big disadvantage is that once you have selected a template, you cannot change it. You can modify it and customize it as much as you want using only the built-in tools, but you can switch to another template if you decide to but will have to start over with the work. You can also choose a blank template and build your own with some more advanced experience with WIX and there are plenty of videos on youtube to show you the way.
WordPress: There are thousands of free and paid themes available for WordPress. Free themes come with limited support, but they also go through a strict review process. Paid themes generally offer more features and come with premium support options. WordPress themes range from small personal sites to full fledged eCommerce sites. Most themes come with built-in customization options of their own. You are also free to further customize them using your own child themes and plugins. Users can download free themes from WordPess.org directory. For paid themes there are several WordPress theme shops like ThemeLab, StudioPress, Headway Themes, Themify, etc. Furthermore, you can hire a developer or learn to create a completely custom theme for your company.
Conclusion: WINNER WORDPRESS
WordPress has a much larger range of themes and design layouts than Wix. WordPress users can also switch themes or customize them as much as they want without any restrictions.
Plugins and Apps
Plugins and Apps are third party software that you can use with your platform to add more features. Wix calls them apps, and in WordPress ecosystem they are called plugins.
Wix: Wix comes with nearly 200+ apps that you can add to your site. These apps offer a wide range of features like adding contact forms, gallery, comments, email list and so on. Most apps are free or have a lite version. Other apps require monthly payments and vary in prices. Even though there is a limited collection of apps, they cover most commonly requested features by site owners.
WordPress:
Has over 40k free plugins available in the WordPress.org plugin directory alone. Not to mention, premium plugins available on other marketplaces. The saying goes: if you can think of it, there’s probably a WordPress plugin that makes it happen. Whether you want to create a contact form, build a mailing list, create galleries, or add sliders, there’s a plugin for that. You can do just about anything you like with WordPress. There are plenty of plugins both free and paid which you can utilize on your site immediately.
Conclusion: WINNER WORDPRESS
WordPress easily beats Wix in this area as well. Even though Wix’s app library is growing, it is still limited in comparison to the huge choice available to WordPress users.
eCommerce
Selling things online is another important feature that most beginners look for. Lets see how WordPress and Wix compare in eCommerce.
Wix: Wix online stores are easy to set up and easy to maintain. You can create a store with all your products simply and quickly with wix, without having to download third party apps or plugins. With the WixStores, you can only accept payments using PayPal or Authorize.net. This isn’t such a terrible thing as most parties recognize PayPal and with that you can accept most credit cards paid directly to your site. With Autorize.net there will be a monthly fee or you will need to have your own Merchant account. There are a few third party apps that you can use for selling things online, but those apps would cost you even more money with their monthly fees. Setting up the payment gateway is easy and takes only a few clicks with accounts set up.
WordPress: WordPress has several free plugins that you can use to build your online store and sell anything you want. Each of these plugins have their own addon plugins which you can use to add any payment gateway you want. Most eCommerce plugins for WordPress even have their own dedicated themes and have plenty of themes designed specifically to work with those plugins. However good luck installing these plug ins with beginner or novice level web design skills and connecting a plugin to the payment gateway can be quite confusing.
Conclusion:WINNER WIX
If you want an easy online store that you can manage yourself then Wix is the clear cut winner.
Summary
Wix is far superior than WordPress as a web publishing platform for any kind of website with ease of use, simplicity and even overall feel once you fully customize your theme. While Wix offers an easy to use website builder, you can accomplish a lot more with WordPress over the long run with more knowledge of website design or hiring a web design professional. Which ever choice you make call us for a free consult and we can go over the options for you to build and brand your online presence. Hire a WIX certified professional when you call 201-747-2191 to build your website. We also build WordPress sites for our clients as well. wwww.designitupnow.com