Wix

One thing I really like about Wix’s templates is that many of them come with apps you might need pre-installed. For example, most restaurant templates come with the Wix Restaurant Menus and Wix Reservations apps already installed so you can start using them immediately, and photography websites will have Wix Pro Gallery or other image-related features.

This makes your website building experience much smoother, as you don’t have to spend time hunting down the apps you need. Instead, you can spend that time chowing down on a carnitas burrito and watching Parks and Recreation for the 15th time (or whatever you do in your free time).

Wix templates do have a few drawbacks. While each one comes with a mobile-friendly version, the designs aren’t mobile-responsive, and they won’t automatically adjust to smaller screens. This means that if you make significant changes to your layout, you may need to edit the mobile view separately to ensure your content is still readable and looks good.

Once you choose a template, you can’t switch it, so you need to be sure of your selection before you get too far in customizing your site.

While these might seem like unnecessary limitations, they’re actually the secret to the amount of flexibility you get in designing your Wix site. The more freedom you have to create your own layout, the harder it is to convert those changes to a mobile site or a new template. Other builders limit your customization options so they can give you a mobile responsive design or the option to change templates without losing your work, but Wix puts a premium on complete design freedom. (The right choice, in my opinion.)

While you can’t change your template without starting over from scratch, there is a bright side – since Wix templates are so customizable, you can change your layout to make it look completely different.

If you can imagine something for your website, you can probably do it on Wix. You’ll find common features like blog management and an online store, but if you have more niche needs, you’ll likely find features and apps that cater to you too. (The restaurant features are some of their best, but you’ll also find great options for art and photography, hospitality, and a lot more.)

There’s no coding or technical knowledge needed to set up even the more advanced features – the hardest part is limiting yourself to only adding the features that are actually necessary, and not everything that sounds cool.

When I first dug into Wix Stores, which is Wix’s suite of native e-commerce features, I was amazed at how much it could do, especially since it’s so easy to work with.

Wix Stores is free and available in the Wix App Market, although you will need to upgrade to a business plan to accept online payments. It will come pre-installed if you start with an e-commerce template or use Wix ADI and select “online store” as one of your necessary features.

With Wix Stores, you’ll be able to sell your products not just on your site, but also on Facebook, Amazon, and other online marketplaces. Regardless of what payment methods you accept – you’ll be able to add credit and debit cards, PayPal, and AliPay – Wix doesn’t take any commissions from your sales.

You’ll find lots of flexibility in how customers can pay in your online store. There are apps for delayed payment options, like AfterPay, Clearpay, and Laybuy, so customers can buy now and pay later. You can use the Gifted app to sell gift cards for your site, or you can create product subscriptions that bill customers monthly for regular shipments of your product.

It’s not quite as robust as some other e-commerce tools, but it will be more than enough if you have a small to medium-sized online shop. And you’ll find that Wix Stores is an intuitive tool for setting up an online store with options for variations on product color or size, tracking inventory, and managing orders.

You’ll be able to customize product pages and your shopping cart and integrate your shop seamlessly into the rest of your site. You can adjust your store settings so your inventory automatically updates when orders are placed, making managing stock a virtually painless process. 

Wix Stores makes it incredibly easy to manage everything related to your products.

When it comes to shipping, you can set items to be fulfilled by you or a designated partner, and establish shipping rules and rates based on region, weight, or product. Apps like Shippo or ShipStation let you print labels and access competitive rates for shipping your products. 

There are even options to connect to dropshipping partners to expand your product offerings, which is a great example of a wonderful Wix feature popping up when you least expect it.

Everything you need for your online store can be managed directly from your Wix dashboard. You’ll manage orders, track payments, and keep an eye on inventory, among other things. When you add email marketing or other tools, you can almost run your entire online business from Wix.

You’ll find many exciting features in the Wix App Market, which offers more than 300 apps that expand your site’s functionality. You can set up your blog, customize contact forms, add an event calendar, and much more.

About 50 of these apps are created by Wix, but you can also access third-party apps, such as integrations with popular marketing tools like Google AdSense and social media ads. It’s pretty fun to browse and see what you can do with your site that you hadn’t previously thought of.

Most apps have a free version, although some will require a paid plan to access more advanced features. You can search for apps via categories like Marketing and Selling Online, or even by goal, like Collect Leads.

Wix-created apps let you add everything from a countdown clock to 24/7 online chat.

As previously mentioned, some of these apps will come pre-installed on your template, depending on which one you choose, but it takes literally one click to add any new app, and there’s no limit on how many you can use at once.

Here are some popular Wix-created apps that I find particularly useful:

• Wix Blog: Wix’s blogging functions aren’t anything fancy, but they seamlessly integrate into your overall site. You can customize your blog home page to fit your theme, add posts, and categorize them for easy navigation. You can even import posts from WordPress if you have existing content you want to use.
• Wix Chat: You can add a live chat option to your site so visitors can reach you 24/7. You get notifications for every message you receive, and can respond instantly from any device. You can also set up an automatic greeting for your site visitors.
• Wix Forms: This app lets you create custom contact forms from a variety of templates that you can modify to meet your needs. Your site dashboard will collect and manage all your responses, so you can create email lists or respond to customer queries as needed.

As a former SEO strategist, I really appreciate the depth of knowledge that Wix SEO Wiz provides – SEO is so much more than just changing page titles, and Wix acknowledges that. I often cringe when I see SEO tools in website builders, because I just know that businesses will believe that’s all they need to get a lot of traffic and they’ll end up at a digital marketing agency in a year or two wondering why the generic, built-in SEO tools didn’t work for them.

But Wix is different. It’s not perfect, and it’s still overcoming years of a bad SEO reputation, but currently, Wix just might have the best SEO tools of any website builder I’ve tested.

When you use the SEO Wiz for the first time, you’re asked to input three keywords for your site, which are used to determine what pages need to be optimized for those keywords. Wix then generates an SEO checklist for you to follow, walking you step-by-step through the process for each task.

The Wix SEO Wiz answered questions I didn’t even know I had.

There are three phases to the SEO checklist:

• Step one helps you optimize your homepage and get indexed by Google
• Step two walks you through your site pages and contact information
• Step three helps you continue improving your SEO as your site grows

Wix SEO Wiz includes an extensive SEO guide, which provides tons of details on must-have pages, how to optimize them, and how Google reads and understands your site. It’s an impressive resource that no other website builder I’ve seen has matched.

To help you get more visitors to your site, Wix offers an impressive suite of business tools. At first glance, I thought these tools were pretty basic, but when I looked closer, I realized they cover just about everything you might need to successfully market your website, all from a single dashboard. Here’s what’s included:

• Email marketing: You can use the simple drag-and-drop email builder to create unique email campaigns and send them to your mailing list. You can set up a signup form on your site to collect email addresses, and segment your contact list according to your needs.
• Video maker: Wix’s video tool lets you create business videos made up of images, business information, and more. These videos are great for sharing on social platforms and in email. There are video templates for you to work with, but you can customize a lot to make your videos match your brand.
• Social post builder: Similar to the video maker, the social post builder lets you use templates to design catchy images for social media and share directly to your preferred platforms. Choose from different layouts, backgrounds, and more and customize to your liking.
• Automations: You can take some of the legwork out of your marketing efforts by setting triggers and responses for a variety of customer actions, including sending thank you or abandoned cart emails, creating automatic labels for new chat contacts, and setting up customer support tasks.

Use an established marketing automation or create your own

• Marketing integrations: If you already work with other business tools, you can easily connect them to your site. You’ll find integrations for Google Analytics, Mailchimp, and much more.
• Invoices: If you use Wix Stores, you can request and track payments within your Wix dashboard, making it easy for customers to pay you directly.
• Analytics: The extensive analytics and reporting interface lets you track all your site traffic, sales, and customer interactions.

You get limited access to these features with any Wix plan – even the free one! If you need more, you can add a separate Ascend subscription. Upgrading allows you to send more emails, create more videos, and so on. There are several different plans, so you can pay for exactly what you need, and no more.

It seems to me that Wix is moving toward being a one-stop-shop for a business’s online presence, and this set of marketing tools is a huge step in that direction.

I’ve now spent a lot of time on Wix for a few different projects, and everything is always where I expect it to be. Unlike with other site builders, I don’t waste any time figuring out how to do a basic task. These are some of my favorite features that make Wix easy to use.

Wix’s classic drag-and-drop editor is easy and even fun to use, but if you don’t have the time, there’s an even easier option: Wix ADI (Artificial Design Intelligence). You answer a few questions about the type of site you need, features it should have, and what your topic is, and Wix ADI generates a unique site within minutes.

Wix ADI is great if you’re lazy – I mean, if you want some additional help setting up your new site.

You’ll input your preferences regarding content, color, and style, and then choose your favorite homepage design to get started. You can then customize your site further, but the editor is simpler and more straightforward than the standard drag-and-drop editor. Any features you selected during setup will be included as apps, and you can manage these and add more if you like.

Out of the many website builders I’ve tested, Wix has the best drag-and-drop editor. Everything can be adjusted down to the pixel, and you can add, move, or layer elements in any combination imaginable.

Because there aren’t any grid limitations, each element lands exactly where you intend it to, and there are helpful guidelines to get your content aligned properly for an aesthetically pleasing design. As a self-admitted web design amateur, I definitely found these guidelines useful.

Drag-and-drop your pages into whatever navigation order you’d like.

Even adding and reordering pages in your menu comes in a drag-and-drop interface. You can change your page order through the sidebar menu, and from this same screen, you can add new pages or adjust the SEO settings (such as the title and meta description). You’ll always have a clear view of your site structure and navigation.

Help for each design element comes up automatically within the editor interface.

Just because you can drag and drop every little thing doesn’t mean you have to. Wix has a huge selection of content layouts and styles, ranging from header images to photo galleries to pretty much anything you can think of.

If web design doesn’t come easily to you, these layouts provide eye-catching options without having to rack your brain for something that will look good to your visitors. When I was testing Wix, these layouts really helped keep my site looking professional rather than put together by an amateur (which I am, when it comes to web design).

The layouts can be used as-is or customized further to match your branding. For example, you can change colors or fonts while keeping the style or layout the same. When you add apps like Wix Blog, you get access to more layouts and design elements as part of those features.

If you want to see these features in action, check out this Wix tutorial from my colleague:

I looked everywhere on the Wix site for a live chat or email support option, but as far as I can tell, it’s nowhere to be found. Instead, Wix has a truly massive Support Center, with detailed, step-by-step articles on pretty much any topic I could think of.

I did eventually find an automated chatbot that allowed me to click through a series of prompts to describe my issue. These offered plenty of detailed options to describe very specific issues, and each one ended in direction to the relevant support article.

The Wix Support chatbot can help with FAQs, but is pretty much useless when it comes to more complex issues.

If you prefer to talk to a real person, or you have a question that the guides truly can’t answer, at some point you’ll find the option to submit a ticket to or receive a callback from the Wix support team. But for the most part, you’re just directed back to the support center in a frustrating loop.

If you like figuring out issues on your own like I do, this setup works pretty well. But if you prefer quicker access to talking to a real person or if you have an issue that’s not covered by the written tutorials, Wix might prove a little frustrating on the support side.

One of the best things about Wix is that its free plan is more robust than almost any other website builder out there. You can access nearly every feature, with no limits on the number of pages or the amount of customization you can do.

That said, the free plan does have its limitations. If you want to connect a custom domain, remove Wix branding, or increase your bandwidth and storage, you’ll have to upgrade to a paid plan. If you want to build an online store, you’ll need a business plan in order to accept payments.

When you upgrade to the cheapest plan, you’ll remove Wix ads, get more storage, and be able to connect a custom domain. Higher tier plans get you even more storage space as well as the ability to upload more video, and the highest tier plans have some extras like a free analytics app, professional logo design, and ad vouchers.

E-commerce plans are a different story, and you’ll need one of these to accept online payments of any kind. The e-commerce plans offer even more storage and video, as well as online store benefits like automatic sales tax calculations, advanced shipping options, and a product review tool.

In addition to these website builder subscription plans, you can add on an additional subscription for Ascend by Wix business tools. These also have different levels, and provide great value in my opinion.

Wix currently accepts all major credit cards, but not PayPal.

You can get a full refund for your Wix plan or Ascend add-on within 14 days of purchase, no questions asked. After that, you’ll have to contact Wix and make your case, which they’ll review and decide on an individual basis.

The 14-day refund policy doesn’t apply to the purchase of domain names, email addresses, app purchases, or some other add-ons, so be sure you’re committed to those purchases before confirming them.

It’s hard to go wrong with Wix. It has a great free plan, and it’s packed full of features that make your site beautiful, functional, and easy to design. There are lots of templates and apps designed with specific niches and industries in mind. It’s also legitimately fun to use – it feels like Wix always has a new surprise just around the corner that makes designing your site easier and better every time.

Which Wix plan should I choose?

Most users will be able to make do with one of the cheaper Wix plans. These come with all features and access to Wix App Market. If you want to build an e-commerce site, you’ll need a business plan in order to accept online payments. Be sure to check out our Wix coupons to make sure you get the absolute best price on whatever plan you choose for April 2022. 

Are Wix websites secure?

Yes. All Wix sites come with HTTPS and an SSL certificate, even on the free plan.

Can I use my own domain name with Wix?

Yes. If you already own a domain name, you can connect it to your Wix site when you upgrade to a Premium plan. Follow the instructions in your Wix dashboard to start the process. You’ll also need to make changes in your domain host account, so check with your domain provider for further information.Need help choosing and buying a domain name? Our ultimate guide can help you out.

Can Wix handle high traffic?

Yes. Most Wix Premium plans offer unlimited bandwidth that can accommodate any number of site visitors. The free plan and cheapest Premium plan have come with limited bandwidth, but this is typically sufficient for smaller sites. 

Are Wix websites mobile-responsive? 

All Wix templates come with a mobile-friendly version, but they won’t automatically adjust to smaller screens. So depending on how many customizations you make, you may need to separately edit the mobile version of your site to ensure everything appears properly. That said, Wix still tops our list of the best mobile-friendly website builders. 

Which is better, Wix or Squarespace?

Both Wix and Squarespace are powerful website builders, but Wix offers a bit more in terms of functionality and customization. It also offers a free plan and more affordable subscriptions than Squarespace. Squarespace is known for its beautiful, high-quality templates and excellent e-commerce tools. If you’re not sure which one is best for you, check out our list of the best website builders for 2022. 

Is Wix good for SEO?

Yes. Wix has one of the best SEO tools available on popular website builders. The Wix SEO Wiz creates a custom checklist to walk you through optimizing your site for your chosen keywords, and even has features for optimizing technical site elements, like sitemaps and URL redirects. Check out our list of the best website builders for SEO for a closer look at what Wix can do for your search rankings. 

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