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Deciding on a website platform can be a bit confusing to say the least. With so many options out there, we’ve decided to look at 3 of the most popular options to see how they compare.
Starting with Wix, they’ve been established since 2006. About 2% of all websites on the web are built with Wix using their proprietary custom website builder.
Pro’s
Simplicity – Wix comes equipped with an easy to use drag and drop website builder. Creating a website is as simple as deciding on a design and picking from their templates or dragging and dropping.
Free Options – For those looking for a simple free solution, Wix offers free plans with basic servers to host your site on a Wix url http://yourbusiness.wix.com.
Security & Updates – Wix websites are self hosted by Wix. They will manage your servers and website security entirely for ease and simplicity. You only need to worry about creating your site.
Con’s
Speed – Wix has a general reputation for being on the slower side of website speeds due to sharing your server with many others. During high traffic sessions, users may experience slow downs which could impact performance.
Ownership – When you decide to go with Wix and design your site, you are essentially licensing the design templates for the duration of your subscription. Wix sites cannot be exported as you do not directly own the website design so if you ever decide to move, remember that you will need to recreate your site from scratch with a new host.
Plugins / Apps – Wix have about 300+ apps and 800+ design templates for you to use, which is significantly less than on other platforms like wordpress.
Pro’s
SEO Optimised– Optimizing SEO for wordpress sites is a breeze. Not only is wordpress built around offering the most up-to-date SEO practice designs but you get access to a range of free/paid plugins like Rankmath, Yoast, and more to help you tweak every element of SEO.
Plugins – Working similiarly to apps on your phone, plugins make it easier to create specific design or function elements on your site without the need to code. At the time of writing, there are over 60,000 plugins available to wordpress users. Most of them are free with some offering premium plans.
Ownership Rights! – Unlike other website builders, WordPress is an open-source website design tool. You maintain full ownership of your site and you are able to move between hosts as you wish without losing your site in the process.
Themes – WordPress sites can be individually customized at will but themes make the whole process that much easier. If you would rather buy or use a free premade design template, you can!. There are an estimated 65,000+ wordpress themes available to choose from.
User Friendly CMS – The WordPress content management service is designed for ease of use. Easily navigate between posts and pages to edit what you need.
Con’s
Maintenance – You are responsible for the upkeep of your website. This means updating your plugins, PHP, website builders, backups, WordPress versions to the latest version. Sites will continue to function without updating but you will miss out on the latest security, optimization without staying up to date. Fortunately, there are companies like us (Blaze Hosting) that offer Managed WordPress Sites to help remove this worry.
Upkeep – You’re in charge of your website. This means tasks such as security, backups and updates fall under your responsibility. Various companies (including us) offer Managed WordPress Hosting where we take care of this for you.
No drag & drop page builder – Out of the box there is no easy drag & drop page builder. There are some free page builders available to make your life a little easier though. We recommend Elementor.
Coding Knowledge – Whilst knowledge of HTML and CSS is not essential, they do come in handy and makes life easier in the long run. You’ll find you’ll pick up basic skills as you use WordPress.
Vulnerability – Being an open-source platform, WordPress is an attractive target for hackers. To mitigate against this risk ensure your WordPress version is up to date as well as any installed plugins. Ensure you take backups before any website updates! A good firewall plugin to help protect your site is WordFence.
Wix has been around since 2006 and is aimed at those after a simple point and click website builder. Wix is not as popular as WordPress only holding 1% of the internet but still remains an attractive option for those after simplicity. There are multiple plans available on Wix which can be found here.
Expensive – To use your own domain with Wix, the lowest plan at the time of publishing is £6 a month. This is quite expensive and you can get better value for your money and more features with self-hosted solutions.
Lacking in third party plugins – Compared to WordPress the amount of plugins and apps available for your website is lacking in comparism. Wix however are adding new plugins all the time.
Squarespace have a 1.5% share of the internet. This is more that Wix but still not a touch on WordPress. Squarespace has been around since 2003 and is another simple website builder aimed at those after a simple point and click website builder.
In Conclusion
While all of them are great choices in the own rights, they all offer something better suited to different users and websites. WordPress occupies a market of 44% of all websites. It is open source and has a huge userbase to providing the widest expanse of plugins, blog features, security and overall builders.
Contact us to find out more