The Wix platform has become quite well known in recent years , partly due to deliberate marketing campaigns with stars such as Heidi Klum and Jason Statham.
Wix is a major player on the market . The website builder accommodates no fewer than 110 million websites.
You have to be a technical ingenuity to build a Wix website.
Wix's drag-and-drop editor makes it easy to design a professional website without having to write a line of code.
As icing on the cake: you don't have to pay anything. Both your website and its hosting are free.
Does this sound too good to be true? Then you are right. A free website sounds promising, but our healthy common sense tells us that something is not right.
If you want to turn your website into an online marketing and sales tool , it is best to omit Wix. In this blog article we tell you why.
# 1 Wix and SEO do not go hand in hand
First and foremost, Google is not a fan of Wix . The popular search engine does not hide that either, and has its reasons.
A free Wix website only supports few marketing techniques, including Facebook pixels, remarketing lists and e-mail campaigns.
Wix websites also load on average slower than, say, WordPress websites. The website builder does not support AMP.
Let the loading time be one of the most important ranking factors with which Google determines the position of your website in the search engine.
AMP stands for Accelerated Mobile Pages and considerably shortens the (mobile) loading time of a page . AMP pages therefore have a preferential position in Google.
In addition, users at Wix obtain a free subdomain that refers to Wix itself , namely wixsite.com. If you want to change this to your own domain name , you will have to pay more.
# 2 You have to take into account hidden costs
The big asset of Wix? It is free. At least, that's what Wix claims. In any case, it is an effective sales technique that attracts many customers.
You can still take it with a grain of salt for free. Wix 'business model is in fact freemium , where income is generated by paid extras .
Do you feel the shoe wring?
What Wix does is not a friend service. Just like any other company , Wix also thinks of its profitability. There is nothing wrong with that in itself.
If Wix provided non-essential paid extras, it would not earn any money. After all, who pays for extras that are not necessary?
The result of this? The free plan of Wix has strong limitations , so you cannot really speak of an operational website.
Free domains aren't always free
When you're upgrading to a Wix premium plan, you'll likely notice that you can get a free domain. However, you only get the free domain in certain circumstances.
- You only get a free domain when you purchase a yearly plan — not a pay monthly plan
- You only get a free domain with your first purchase — there'll be no free domain when you come to renew
- You only have two months to claim your free domain voucher from the time that you make your initial purchase of a yearly plan
Once your free year is up, you'll have to start paying for your domain which will cost you $14.95 per year. Having your own domain is definitely worth it in the long-run, as you’ll get a professional-looking URL and the ability to have custom email addresses.
Wix plans auto-renew
Auto-renewing subscriptions can be annoying. All of Wix's plans are set to auto-renew, so it's worth making sure you know what you're signing up for when you take the plunge.
However, you can cancel the auto-renewing subscription in the settings on your Wix dashboard.
Head to Billing in your Wix account > Click Plan Actions > Click Cancel Now
You won't lose access to your account, or your site, it just won't renew.
Premium apps
Wix has a large app store which can help add loads of extra functionality to your site. However, some of these apps require some extra outlay before you can use them.
You won't have to pay to add an Instagram feed to your site, but some accounting apps, for example, only offer short-term trial periods. Premium apps typically cost less than $10 per month, but some can run up to $20 per month.
If the app is going to help you make money, it will probably be worth paying the extra cost. But if it's offering an otherwise free service, we'd probably avoid it.
# 3 It is difficult to change a template
The drag-and-drop system is user-friendly. That's right. Yet Wix is not as user-friendly as the website builder claims to be.
You can not switch from template or template after you have built your website.
So think carefully about your choice, because if you want to switch to a different design, you must completely rebuild your site .
Not very handy, since innovation and renewal are increasingly switching to a higher gear.
The expiry date of your website is thus considerably limited. Your website needs a refreshment at least once every two years for us.
Unless you want to start all over again, this is an annoying bottleneck.
Moreover, your first website will not immediately become a high flyer , while your twentieth website will probably look a lot better.
However, this means that you will have to start again from 0 20 times completely , since you can no longer change the template after your website has gone live.
# 4 Your website is not exportable
Your Wix site and all its content is exclusively hosted on Wix's servers and cannot be exported.
In particular, it is not possible to export files, pages or sites created in Wix to another external destination or host.
If, after a few years, you decide to switch to another website builder such as WordPress, you have lost everything.
You are also bound by the Wix framework . You can buy extensions in the Wix App Market. So you do not have to look for external plug-ins.
This is both a curse and a blessing at the same time . It is handy, but this also means that you cannot transfer these plug-ins to another framework.
The result? If you want to change your website builder or CMS you will have to make peace with the fact that your Wix website (and all its data) cannot be integrated.
# 5 A Wix website is not 100% responsive
More and more users are switching to mobile surfing. In some cases even exclusively. This means that a responsive website is crucial.
Wix claims that your website looks great on every screen. Although Wix definitely does its best, this is not entirely true.
The Wix website builder uses absolute positioning . This means that web elements are positioned per pixel.
Absolute positioning gives more flexibility in the positioning of elements. You can determine yourself exactly where you want a certain button or text.
However, this results in a less well-adjusted image with different screen sizes.
WordPress, on the other hand, uses a responsive design , which means that page elements are positioned relative to the device's screen.
Your website design is automatically adjusted so that it is beautifully displayed on every device on which it is viewed.
The use of absolute positioning means that Wix websites do not fully adapt to the screen size of users . Your website is therefore in fact not responsive.
In practice, this means that Wix websites can be susceptible to user-friendliness problems when it comes to layout, whereby parts of the web page can disappear from the screen.
Websites that use absolute positioning are therefore inevitably less mobile-friendly than a website that is built using a responsive design.
# 6 The customer service leaves something to be desired
Although Wix has a 24/7 help desk , customer service often leaves something to be desired.
Of the 1137 reviews on Trustpilot, Wix only gets one star out of five on average. No less than 49% of the 1137 reviews rated Wix's customer service as downright bad.
Uncommunicated cost increases, automatic answering machines or difficult to reach. It is just a sample of one of the many reviews that customers left behind.
Are you curious about all the reviews? You can always consult the website of Trust Pilot .
Why say No to Wix?
You can create a website yourself with Wix. If you need a website to support a fiftieth birthday or wedding , Wix is a great option.
However, due to the lack of options , Wix is not ideal for professional users.
Do you still have questions or are you looking for support for your website project? Then you can always contact us without obligation for a nice chat.
We work for companies with a budget from € 2000 and are happy to help you further!
