Will WIX Work For Me?

If half of our enquiries are from unhappy Yell.com customers, then the other half are from disgruntled WIX or Weebly escapees. They have what seems like a lovely website that performs very badly, or they’ve outgrown it. Is WIX a good choice for you?

What is WIX?

WIX is a website building service where YOU can create a website or online store without having any knowledge of coding. Web hosting is included, you don’t need to understand databases or how to setup emails and hosting. They take care of it all so you can just build a website and it’s easy to do. It’s enticing because it seems so simple to create what looks like it should be a good site.

Pros of using WIX

You don’t need to have any coding experience to build a website

If you have a moment, right click your mouse and click “view source”. A new tab will open and show you the coding that is used for the web page to load. And yes, we know it looks a lot like gibberish. 

This is basic coding – mainly HTML and CSS. Web developers (front-end web developers to be more specific) need to know how to code like this to make a site look and feel the way it should. But content management systems like WordPress, help small businesses to make changes to their website without knowing too much about it. However, even WordPress requires a little knowledge of some coding. 

When it comes to WIX, you don’t need to know any coding. The system is large drag and drop or click and fill. This is hugely advantageous for start-ups that don’t want to hire an agency to test if their new venture is going to work. 

You have creative control within boundaries

WIX are also great if you don’t want to use an agency. You get creative control with the WIX templates and some of their templates are genuinely stunning. The templates are easy to amend, and you could have a website up and running in a matter of days. 

WIX prices can be cheap

There is no arguing with the prices that WIX charge. They offer a great price for a website starting from free to £18 month depending on what your needs are. 

They offer a few different packages to suit different needs. We shall go into them briefly

Free plan

For if you’re setting up a personal page for a wedding let’s say, or baby shower.

Connect Domain plan

Costing £3 a month (£36 year) this included WIX advertising on your site. Probably best for those just beginning your business venture.

Combo plan

Costing £6 a month (£72 year) the main difference is this removes WIX advertising. You get increased bandwidth too and storage space. 

Unlimited plan

Costing £8.50 a month (£102 year) this plan is the most popular and designed for entrepreneurs and freelancers. You get unlimited bandwidth, 10GB of storage and 1 hour of video. The video function is allows you to charge for people to view the video. 

VIP plan

Costing £18.50 a month (£222 year) this plan offers even more storage space and 5 hours of video time. This solution is good for a start-up venture where you want to do vlogging or sell video content, such as educational videos.

Cons of using WIX

You are in with them for life

WIX is a genius business idea and is making millions from their monthly subscription plan. It’s a bit like Spotify or Deezer. You build your playlists and library of music. Then you realise you can’t take them if you want to leave. 

The effort to migrate the 1,000s of songs you’ve added over time to a new platform feels like such hard work, you end up squashing the idea. Plus, the cost of buying all of the songs or the time it takes to rebuild everything on another service are just so off-putting. Therein lies the WIX conundrum. 

You invest in a website that is ideal for you as a startup, but like most startups, you will quickly outgrow WIX. When that time comes, you face the choice of either losing everything because you can’t take your website because you don’t actually own it, which means you halt growing your business or you must re-invest in a new website. 

You won’t own your own website

WIX own everything associated with your website. All of the images you upload (awful if you’re a photographer!) and videos, any content you’ve written, it all belongs to them. This means that if WIX were to go bankrupt or decide to change their business model and sell their intellectual property, you could have put your business at a colossal risk. Oh, and this includes any emails sent and received by your site.

A good web design agency like us will state who owns what, so you know where you stand. For example, we state clearly from the moment we send you a proposal that you will own everything. We are proud to say we are an ethical company that wants SMEs to use us because they want to, not because they’re tied into a contract with us. 

We can host your website, but we make sure that you can move it into your name if you want to. You own your website, your text, images and your email account. This has been a big issue for clients moving away from WIX. They lose their email history too. 

SEO Optimisation isn’t brilliant

WIX is making improvements. Over the past few years they have introduced alt tags functionality so you can help Google to understand what your image is, which in turn will help your ranking. But in our opinion, they are still behind the times. 

SEO isn’t something that can be taught overnight, it’s ever changing too. This means buying a book on the subject would be a waste of money come next week. It’s an agency’s job to stay with the times, read new trends and try to help their customers to meet new requirements that Google sets. WIX isn’t there yet.

Is SEO a big deal? Well yes, it’s all the deal really. The way we describe it is like hosting a dinner party on Come Dine With Me. You are trying to compete to win the prize. You invest your time into creating an exciting menu, make it look thoroughly appealing, but come 10pm, you’re still wondering where everyone is while you watch the food go cold. This is because they couldn’t find your address and went to another place to eat instead. SEO is how people find your address to come and sample your food. If you don’t have a website with good SEO, your efforts will be in vain.

End Result

We find that when clients come to us, it’s because they’ve dipped their toe in the water and realised their business has potential to grow. They have already worked out the limitations with WIX and want to invest in good quality ingredients, and make sure that Google helps people to visit their beautifully crafted website, designed with the customer in mind. 

If you’re setting up a brand-new venture and you don’t have the technical skills to create your own website, give WIX a go. If you are looking at how to take the next step and build something beyond just a template for your business venture, speak to an agency like Digital Paw.