Review of Wix — the top Website Builder

With Wix's extensive customization, e-commerce tools, and Photoshop-like user interface, you can build stunning websites without spending a dime.

Wix is the best option for you if you want to create a website online with the least amount of work and the most room for creative expression possible. It provides outstanding features such as online storage for your website's assets, e-commerce tools, cool video backgrounds, title animations, mobile apps, and even a helpful, free service tier for users to take advantage of. In addition, we found the interface of its Editor X platform to be among the most user-friendly, polished, and potent of all the website-building services currently available on the market. In a nutshell, Wix is an easy-to-use, multifunctional tool that, along with Duda and Gator, is a natural choice for the Editors' Choice award in the category of website builders.

Wix: How to Get Started

Wix is a website builder, also known as an easy-to-use tool that allows you to rapidly create an online presence through the use of a drag-and-drop interface. Prior experience with coding or FTP is not required to use Wix. To get started with Wix's web hosting, all you require is an email address on your computer. You can create a website absolutely free of charge if you don't mind the presence of advertisements on it.

You will, on the other hand, be required to upgrade to a paid account in order to remove ads from your site, create a custom URL, or utilize the e-commerce features. These range from the Combo account, which costs $14 per month and offers 3 GB of storage space and 2 GB of monthly data transfers, to the full VIP plan, which costs $39 per month (35GB of storage, a domain name, unlimited monthly data transfers, a professional logo, and priority support). Business and e-commerce plans cost between $23 and $49 per month, depending on whether or not they include a shopping cart and other features that help generate revenue. Last but not least, there is the Enterprise-level plan, which begins at $500 per month and requires a custom quote from a Wix representative.

That price is acceptable in my opinion. The paid plans offered by Duda begin at $14 per month, while the options offered by Squarespace begin at $12 per month. Weebly, much like Wix, offers a free plan, but it also offers an early-stage Personal plan that costs only $6 per month. Weebly's most popular business plans, which vary in price from $44 to $40 to $26 per month, are as follows: Gator is an affordable alternative that stands out from the crowd; their monthly plans begin at just $3.84 and go up to just $9.22 for their e-commerce service.

After you have created an account with Wix, you will search for a general site type (such as business, designer, event, blog, and so on), and then you will decide whether you want to use a site template or have Wix automatically create a site for you utilizing Artificial Design Intelligence (ADI). A little bit more on ADI in a moment. There are almost twenty top-level site types, and each of these has a number of subcategories. For instance, there is a choice for "Restaurant," which further breaks down into "Subcategories" such as "Bar," "Café," and "Catering." We chose the Blog category for our test site on Wix because it provides more than 70 options for lovely template designs to choose from.

In total, Wix provides access to hundreds of different templates, which is significantly more than Squarespace or Weebly. Although many are free, there are some business options that require a subscription at the e-commerce level. Before beginning the editing process, you can get a better sense of the overall theme by utilizing the full demos that come packaged with each of the templates. The preview of the template provides you with helpful information about how your website will appear on the screen of a mobile device.

One disadvantage of using Wix is that, unlike Squarespace and Weebly, it does not allow users to change templates once they have selected one. If you want to give your online destination a new look, you will need to create a separate website and move your files over to the new pages. This is a significant drawback of the service. If you want to give your online destination a new look, you will need to do both of these things.

Options for Web Design

After you have decided on a layout for your website and begun making changes to it, you will be shown an introduction video that lasts one minute. The templates are contemporary and appealing, and many of them pin your navigation icons to the top of the page as the viewer scrolls down the page. You can begin blogging, add elements, change the background image, access the App Market (from which you can get widgets from third-party sites), and view any uploads you have made using the eight round buttons. If you need to make changes to the area that is underneath these controls, you can quickly minimize or hide them.

You can expect to find all of the standard options for text, media, social media widgets, buttons, shapes, and so on in a website builder like Wix, and it does not disappoint. Check out the App Market if there is something you want to use that is not already installed on your device by default.

The design of the template can be edited with relative ease. Simply clicking on any component will reveal resizing handles and dragging buttons for you to use. In comparison to Weebly and Squarespace, you have a great deal more leeway to position objects exactly where you want them to be. Text can be edited and formatted by double-clicking on it. When you move objects around, guides will appear to assist you in aligning them properly whenever the objects are in line with one another. A toolbar provides a variety of tools that can be used to resize and organize objects, such as options for size matching, alignment, and overlap. When you have more than one object selected at once, you will have the ability to move them around the page together. The ability to animate any object on load with effects such as Bounce-In, Glide-In, and Spin-In is one of our favorite features of this game. In general, Wix provides a remarkable editor for basic content.

The fact that the Wix site-building interface makes use of context menus accessible via a right-click is one aspect that particularly impresses us. The vast majority of other builders simply launch browser options that are irrelevant to the process of site building when a right click is performed. Right-clicking on an image or section of text allows you to make changes in Wix. You have complete control over the appearance of the pages you create, including the number of columns, the size of those columns, and how they are aligned. In addition, adding new pages to the site is simple, and you can reorder the pages in the navigation hierarchy by dragging and dropping them. You have the ability, with Wix, to password-protect specific pages or require users to sign up for a membership or sign in before accessing content.

Experience with Editor X

Editor X is an alternative to the standard editor that provides users with website templates that are less cluttered and more focused on design. The fact that they are responsive, in contrast to the templates you have to deal with when using Wix’s classic editor interface, is of the utmost importance. Editor X comes with an integrated tutorial that will walk you through the basics, in addition to providing a link to the website of the Academy X. (Opens in a new window). The second choice demonstrates the power that is available to you through a series of lessons and video tutorials.

The operation of Editor X is more akin to that of Adobe Photoshop or InDesign than it is to that of a conventional website builder. While layers give you the ability to stack elements, masters give you the ability to quickly duplicate a design element across multiple pages. When you click on a text element, a series of menu options that can be expanded and collapsed will appear. These options allow you to change the sizes, positions, and anchors of various items. The right-clicking functionality of the fundamental editor is replicated here, and when activated, it brings up menus that are sensitive to their context. If you are working on a website that is responsive, Editor X will initially provide you with three different page sizes. You can toggle between these page sizes to see how your website appears in each setting. You also have the option of adding additional breakpoints, which are distinct resolutions that become part of the toggleable options. Even when compared to the already-smooth website builder offered by Wix, the overall process of moving elements around on your site using Editor X is significantly faster.

You have access to a variety of typography and color swatches, and you can even save your preferences as design libraries. Because of this, you will have the ability to quickly change the color scheme of an entire page, such as the text in the header, without losing any of your previous design decisions. Editor X was developed specifically for multi-user collaboration, and its design libraries provide a means by which groups of people can experiment with a variety of concepts without having to worry about discarding anything.

Extras for Website Builder

Additionally, the main account administrative interface of Wix is more understandable than that of Weebly, with a full page dedicated to listing your sites. When you select it, the site dashboard will appear, along with a side rail containing buttons for selecting site options. A feed of the site's activity is also displayed, and there are buttons for performing frequently used actions.

Wix Analytics does provide some basic reporting on site traffic, but if you want more advanced functionality, it is recommended that you use the no-cost Web-Stat app or create a separate Google Analytics account (which does require a paid account level). Even for free users, Web-Stats is a fairly informative tool because it can tell you where visitors came from as well as what display, computer, and browsers they utilized. Members with a premium account can add reporting through Facebook Pixel. More tracking tools for search engine optimization (SEO), video views, subscription data, and music plays are available on the App Market. This is in addition to other, more specific additional features, such as the creation of custom seat maps for recurring live events at your venue or the development of an app with your establishment's name on it.

Wix is equipped with a number of features, such as Wix Fitness, Wix Turbo, and Ascend by Wix, that will make the hosting experience more enjoyable. Wix Fitness is a website building framework that, you guessed it, caters to fitness business owners. Promotion, scheduling, client management, and even the sale of online workout videos are all made easier by this platform. Wix Turbo is a performance technology that, according to Wix, will improve the speed at which websites load. "Wix sites will be optimized for accelerated JavaScript execution time and use the most recent CSS functionality," the company stated. "Wix sites will also use the most recent HTML5 functionality." You will need to go through the process of updating your site if you are updating a site that you haven't touched since the introduction of Wix Turbo, which accelerates the rate at which pages load. The procedure took less than a minute for our 17-page test website, and after the procedure, the website appeared to be unaltered in any way.

Ascend by Wix is a "suite of 20 products" that enables business owners to launch, manage, and market their companies without leaving the Wix web development platform. The tools consist of things like chat, membership on the site, invoices, workflows, tasks, and automations. Price quotes are also included.

Intelligent Artificial Design from Wix

We experimented with constructing a test website for a local business using the Wix ADI. It makes the process of website construction significantly easier, it is surprisingly enjoyable to use, and it provides a great deal of guidance and support. To get started, you will need to provide answers to a few fundamental questions regarding the site's purpose, features, location, and title. It then searches the web for content that is associated with your company or activity. You have the option of including social media accounts like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter in your profile. Following this step, you will select a layout for your website, provide ADI with your company logo so it can generate a color scheme, and then click the "Create My Site" button.

The process of fully automating its design takes a little bit of time. During the process, it provides you with updates on what it is doing, such as adding menus and optimizing your mobile site. When we did a test using the information from a local bagel shop, ADI came up with a website that looked even better than the shop's actual website! Additionally, we are blown away by the website that we developed for an artist friend, who was actually blown away by how good the automatic design was. You are able to personalize aspects of the website such as sales items and boilerplate text after ADI has built the initial version of the website. Trying out Wix ADI is something you should do even if you aren't interested in designing your own website.

Using Pictures and Videos

When compared to Weebly and Squarespace, Wix offers a significant improvement in photo management. It saves the images you've already uploaded to online folders for you, allowing you to reuse the images you've already uploaded. If you want to use photos in a different location on your website, you will need to re-upload them if you use one of the other services.

Wix also enables you to import pictures from other online sources like Flickr and Facebook into your projects. Ditto for videos. You are able to use video in places where the other templates only let you use photos, such as the background for the primary theme. Additionally, the service supplies a large number of stock images and videos for you to use on your website. You can download much of this content for free, but if you want to purchase stock images, BigStock offers them at prices that are not prohibitively expensive.

With the integrated Aviary editor, you have complete control over the editing and enhancement of your photographs. Adding a link to an image, whether it's to a page on your site or an external one, is very easy to do. In addition, you have the option of including a border, as well as an animation like a fade in, and selecting from a variety of resizing behaviors like autocrop, center, stretch, and fit.

You can configure videos to start playing automatically upon page load and to loop continuously; in addition, as was previously mentioned, you can use a video as your background image.

Wix: Making Money

Wix provides a full range of e-commerce functionalities. When you select the Store element from the primary toolbar, a Shop page is added to the site. This Shop page has a product gallery that is initially populated with sample products, but you can replace these with your own. To actually start receiving payments, you are going to need to upgrade to a more expensive e-commerce plan. The online shop may consist of a number of distinct pages, the most common of which are the product page, the shopping cart page, and the "Thank You" page. Wix also provides you with the ability to customize storefronts, as well as options for recurring payments and subscriptions, which further expands your opportunities to make money. There is a comprehensive panel for editing products, and you have the option to both offer coupons and organize products into collections. You can process credit card payments using Stripe and Square, in addition to accepting payments through PayPal and cash that is mailed to you. You have the ability to enter shipping and tax rules, but the built-in store does not provide any assistance in actually figuring out these things with integrations such as UPS or FedEx.

Wix now includes an integrated system for the sale of digital downloads, which can be accessed as a straightforward option right when you begin adding a product to your store. Through the Wix Music app, you also have the option to sell music without incurring any transaction fees. The application even has the capability to play music on your website and supports the file formats MP3, WAV, FLAC, and ALAC.

You have the ability to send up to 5,000 emails each month using the ShoutOut mail-blast app offered by Wix. This can be used for marketing your products. MPZMail, CakeMail, and V.I. Plus all provide their customers with the ability to integrate third-party applications into their email marketing campaigns.

The marketing service for your website is known as Ascend by Wix. It gives you the ability to interact with customers through various channels, such as trigger actions, chat, invoices, and price quotes. Even tools for organizing workflow are included in it. Your email and chat messages can be consolidated into a single location using the Ascend Inbox. In addition, Ascend offers services in the areas of search engine optimization (SEO), social media posting, and video tools. Workflows are helpful for lead follow-up and contact management, and Automations include things like sending reminders to customers about invoices that are due. Its Tasks tool eliminates the need for you to make use of an external application such as Asana, which is an excellent choice. Finally, it gives you the ability to create a Members area, which can include exclusive pages and features such as a forum, user profiles, and store accounts. In a nutshell, Ascend is a collection of many different tools that are helpful for online businesses.

Tools for Blogging

Simply selecting the Blog entry on the primary toolbar for site elements is all that is required to add a blog to your website. You can design the layout of your blog page in the same way as the layout of any other page on your site, or you can choose a style with only one entry or one without a header. You have the option of providing your readers with both subscriptions and comments. You have the ability to tag posts and even display a tag cloud, an RSS button, comments from Facebook, and comments from Disqus.

In contrast to Weebly, which utilizes the same interface for both website creation and blog posting, Wix provides its users with a stand-alone, user-friendly blog posting interface. Wix allows you to add photos, galleries, video, and of course text, all of which can be formatted according to your preferences. You have the ability to schedule any post for later publication and designate it as Featured if you so choose at any time. All things considered, it's a robust blogging tool that provides you with everything you require.

Mobile Websites

The websites created with the basic editor are not responsive in the strictest sense (this means that you can resize your browser to see the contents of the website being compressed to fit a smaller size), but site creators shouldn't be concerned about this fact: Wix can generate mobile versions of your websites that are user-friendly enough to pass Google's test for mobile compatibility. You can switch to the mobile editing view by tapping the smartphone icon that is located at the very top of the site editor.

Because our website already had the "Make your site mobile friendly" option enabled by default, we didn't need to make any additional adjustments in order for it to function properly when viewed on mobile devices. Nevertheless, Wix provides you with the opportunity to edit the mobile view if the version that it generates automatically does not satisfy your needs. To be more specific, you have the ability to hide components that you do not want displayed on mobile screens. You also have the option of adding a Mobile Action Bar, which enables site visitors to send you an email or give you a call with the tap of a finger.

Having said that, Editor X makes it possible for you to design websites that are fully responsive. Not only are there fluid sizing options for certain elements, but the breakpoints feature enables you to view what the appearance of your website is across a range of resolutions. Editor X also includes support for CSS grid and Flexbox, which ensures that your website will adapt to the display of any device it is viewed on.

On the other hand, mobile Wix allows you to interact with site visitors and edit store items such as products and prices through the use of apps that are available on the platform. You can also upload photos from your mobile device, but unlike the Weebly and Jimdo apps, this one does not allow you to create and edit websites directly from the app itself.

Code for Wix

Site builders, even those without any prior experience with programming, are now able to add features to their websites that, in the past, would have required knowledge of database development. This is made possible by Wix Code. Although the feature is still identified as being in beta mode, it can be accessed through all Wix accounts. Databases, Dynamic Pages, External APIs, Forms, and Managed JavaScript are the five different tools that are included in Wix Code.

The use of databases, dynamic pages, and forms does not call for any specific coding expertise. Using these prefab databases is very much like filling out a spreadsheet with the information required. When it comes to collecting information from site viewers, customized forms and user input controls are extremely helpful tools. For instance, users of a website about food could submit their own recipes to the website.

Data-driven Utilizing capabilities such as these makes website design quite a bit more challenging, which is consistent with the impression that dynamic pages are intended for programmers. Simply put, it means that the pages of your website are generated dynamically based on the data contained in a table. A Wix-designed college course page can display unique pages for each individual course, even though they all make use of the same page template. A comparable level of dynamic customization is provided by the Duda feature known as InSite, which enables users to deliver distinct content to viewers based on variables such as the time of day, date, location, and total number of previous visits. The Duda feature is easier to use, but it does not offer the same level of power as the Wix Code option.

Wix also includes new API and JavaScript features, which allow actual web developers to use Wix to design websites, and then use those same features to extend functionality by going behind the scenes. They are able to do this by utilizing an environment for the development of JavaScript that is fully managed and by calling external APIs in order to leverage web services and augment site behavior.

When we first tapped the Wix Code menu, a panel appeared with a video that explained the feature as well as links to resources that we could use to get started with it. The site-building interface will become more complicated as a result of the addition of entries for Backend and Database to the sidebar for Site Structure. You are able to add modules and collections on top of those, respectively. The latter are comparable to spreadsheets in that you can add particular kinds of data, such as pictures or text, to them.

A wizard guides you through the process of entering the information required to create a collection that can be used, enabling features such as dynamic pages, forms, and member-generated content. You have the option of either adding dynamic content to a page, creating pages in a dynamic manner, or creating index pages that draw from the database. Even though all of this is quite powerful, it moves Wix further away from the category of simple website builders and closer to the category of developer tools. These developer tools are completely optional for those who would rather keep things as straightforward as possible. Even though there are a few hurdles to overcome, we were able to successfully create dynamic pages that include an index to some of our reviews. The end result was exactly what we had hoped for.

Excellent Wix Help

Because Wix is one of the site builders that is easier to use than others, there is a good chance that you won't need to get in touch with the support team. A question mark can be found in the top-right corner of the Wix editor. Clicking on this symbol will open the comprehensive Help Center. If that does not contain the solution to your issue, you have the option of submitting a support ticket or requesting a phone call back at any time of the day or night. This service, which is quite impressive, is even accessible to free accounts. On the other hand, only WordPress.com's free users have access to the knowledge base that the website provides.

The first time you contact support, a chat bot will ask you for information about your website before guiding you through a series of logical steps to solve your issue. When you reach a point in the process where the text robot is no longer able to assist you, you will be presented with a Contact Us section that gives you two options: Talk to a Support Agent or Submit a Ticket. Naturally, we went with the second option. After that, you are prompted to enter your phone number and a description of the issue. During the morning hours of a weekday, we submitted our initial request, and a customer service representative got in touch with us just under a minute later. The representative of the customer service department walked us through the process of scheduling posts and explained what steps would need to be taken if we wanted to change the theme of our website. Wix deserves praise for the fact that it provides both in-depth online support and actual support from real people.

Maximum Uptime

Uptime is one of the most important aspects of website hosting. In the event that your website goes down, clients and customers won't be able to locate you or get access to the goods or services you offer. Discovering a trustworthy web host who is able to maintain your website's accessibility and functionality is in your best interest. If this occurs, customers may turn their business elsewhere, and they may never return.

We use a website monitoring tool to track the amount of time that our test website is available online over the course of fourteen days so that we can evaluate its reliability. The tool will ping the website once every 15 minutes, and if it is unable to make contact with the website for at least one minute, it will send an email notification. According to the data, the website builder Wix, which also serves as a provider of web hosting, exhibited an exceptionally high level of consistency throughout the evaluation period. In fact, it never dropped even once. Wix is sure to provide a rock-solid foundation for your website, so you can count on using it.

The Tricks Are All on Wix

Wix is the best website builder there is due to its user-friendliness and extensive feature set. The website builder provides users with cloud storage for their media files, an extensive app store, and an intuitive and well-designed user interface. Additionally, despite the fact that they increase the level of difficulty, the optional Editor X and Wix Code features make it possible to create highly effective, cutting-edge, and dynamic websites. Wix Ascend also includes a collection of web business tools that are helpful. Wix has been able to maintain its status as the Editors' Choice for online website builders thanks to all of these features as well as its rapid and dependable page loading times. That being said, if the capability to export site code is important to you, you should consider using Weebly or Squarespace rather than Wix.

The Verdict

The website builder Wix enables users to construct stunning websites at no cost and provides a user interface reminiscent of Photoshop in addition to comprehensive customization options and tools for online stores.

Pros

• Remarkably intuitive Editor X interface
• A great number of widgets
• Hundreds of templates that may be customized for a variety of enterprises and other purposes
• Good mobile-site-building tools
• Comprehensive web-based shop capabilities
• Excellent uptime and customer service support
• Numerous commercial possibilities, one of which is the capacity to offer digital downloads
• Free plan

Cons

• Better analytics may be found in third-party applications
• Does not allow you to transition between different templates