Wix vs. WordPress: Which is the better website builder?

Wix and WordPress share many similarities, such as their price points and design features. But they also differ in a few important ways, like ease of use and available plugins. Ultimately, choosing a platform will depend on which suits your goals better.

In this article, we’ll compare several features between Wix vs. WordPress, but identifying a clear winner isn’t so simple. Read on to learn more about these solutions’ overlapping and distinct offerings and explore an alternative option to help inform your choice.

Wix vs. WordPress: Which one is better?

Wix and WordPress are both website builders that can serve as a foundation for blogging, ecommerce, and marketing. They offer a range of native features you can supplement with plugins and integrations like WooCommerce. Both provide basic editing and content management functionalities, but what sets them apart is their ease of use.

Wix prioritizes simplicity, offering a faster and more intuitive interface than WordPress. But that approachability comes at the cost of customization features. Whether you use the open-source WordPress.org service or its more robust WordPress.com alternative, you can access more customizable themes and SEO tools than with Wix. 

6 key differences between Wix and WordPress

Wix and WordPress each offer a content management system (CMS) and many plugins to support additional website building functionality, but their native offerings are quite different. Here are six primary distinctions between the two.

1. Pricing

Pricing plans for WordPress and Wix websites will vary depending on your needs. Both platforms offer tiered subscriptions, with options that include different levels of storage, collaborators, and features. 

Wix offers multiple business plans ranging from $29 to $159 per month, with features like hosting, online payments, and priority support in higher-tier plans. WordPress.com’s plans range from a free option with basic features to the business plan at $25 per month (billed annually), with more advanced customization and security, but you may need separately-sold plugins for certain features like SEO.

2. Ease of use

In terms of the platform’s ease of use, Wix and WordPress diverge significantly. According to G2 ratings, Wix is more intuitive and easy to learn, whereas WordPress has a steep learning curve. This difference is likely due to Wix’s drag-and-drop interface, which simplifies arranging a page. You can install plugins to give WordPress a drag-and-drop interface, but that takes more time and effort.

Wix boasts faster page loading speeds and a more helpful knowledge base thanks to multiple video tutorials and guides. If you do need to contact support, they have 24/7 customer service. WordPress offers 24/7 support, but only for members of its higher subscription tiers.

3. Plugin library

One major benefit WordPress has over Wix is its vast user base of designers who are constantly creating new templates, plugins, and integrations for the platform. As a result, WordPress has over 70,000 plugins alone, giving creators a vast library of additional functionalities to customize their sites. Wix, on the other hand, has about 800.

4. Design tools

Design tools are the most essential feature of a website builder. The more customizable and comprehensive your design tools, the more creative you can get with your website layouts. 

Wix and WordPress both offer streamlined, beginner-friendly design tools that, while easy to use, don’t offer much versatility. Many G2 ratings mention times when customers couldn’t get the exact layout they wanted due to limitations in the templates, plugins, or themes. That said, more people mentioned this when rating Wix than when rating WordPress.

5. SEO tools

WordPress and Wix both offer native SEO features, including integrating Google Search Console into the platform to perform basic website checks. To truly optimize your content for search engines, you need tools that allow you to customize metadata, schema markup, and sitemap optimizations. With Wix and WordPress, you’ll have to find a plugin or solution for each function.

6. Security

Security is a common concern for WordPress. Being the most-used website builder means they’ve experienced the most scrutiny for any vulnerabilities they allow. Recently, they’ve made efforts to reduce their number of security vulnerabilities, but issues are still present. According to a SolidWP investigation, they had 181 security vulnerabilities in August of 2024.

Wix hasn’t endured the same level of scrutiny, so there’s less reporting about any security issues. Wix sites don’t enforce HSTS security, however, and their encryption ciphers have been classified as “weak” according to security experts like UpGuard. Because of this weakness, customer data stored on their servers isn’t as secure as it could be.

A more powerful alternative: Webflow

If you’re having difficulty deciding between WordPress and Wix, Webflow is an excellent alternative to both. Webflow offers:

• An all-in-one platform — With Webflow, you can host, design, manage content, and optimize your site in one integrated platform, reducing the need for multiple tools.
• Design flexibility and control — Take control of your site’s design with Webflow’s visual web development tools and add custom code only when you need it. Webflow University gives you all the tutorials you need to design with confidence. 
• Marketplace resources — Find templates, themes, and inspiring cloneable sites in the Webflow Marketplace. You can connect your Webflow site to popular tools and integrations to extend your site’s capabilities without managing plugin overload — no updates required.
• Collaboration — Work together with team members, leave feedback, and manage content in one collaborative workspace. Webflow’s user roles, staging, branching, and publishing workflows ensure large teams can do quick, concurrent, and safe work.
• SEO tools — Webflow provides several SEO-focused features, such as tools to add metadata, schema markup, and manage 301 redirects where needed. 
• Security — Webflow supports HTTP2 and 3 protocols, and we use the industry standard SHA-256 encryption cipher that’s well-respected in the security community. Webflow is a trusted domain with a good reputation thanks to robust security practices, a lack of vulnerabilities, and trustworthy certificates.

Fulfill all your site management needs with Webflow

Webflow stands out from WordPress and Wix by offering greater design flexibility and control. Its visual editor allows you to customize your design without relying on code, making it ideal for designers who want more creative freedom. 

Use the platform to create custom layouts, animations, and interactions for your website or online portfolio. Webflow’s fine-tuned SEO tools give you unparalleled control over your site’s appearance in search engine results. 

If you’re ready to design stunning sites with Webflow, try it for free today.