Wix website builder review 2024: should you build a site on Wix?

4.8 out of 5

• Website Features
  4.9
• Design Functionality
  4.4
• Value for money
  3.4
• Help and support
  4.8
• Customer Score
  4.8
• Ease of Use
  4.4

Based on our extensive testing, Wix is the best web builder for creating a business website. Whether you need to build a mouth-watering restaurant website, an online store that can drive huge sales, or simply a professional-looking landing page or two that describes your business and how to get in touch, you’ll find a Wix template ready-to-go.

As well as some brilliant designs and helpful features to get you started (even as a novice) there are plenty of powerful add-ons and tools under the hood. On top of this, the affordable Wix pricing plans mean you can create and run a business site for under £100 per year.

Wix is incredibly easy to use, and in our extensive testing, we sought feedback from novices to building websites, who – reassuringly – got on comfortably with the Wix platform. This makes it perfect for small business owners that don’t have time to learn complex code when designing their website.

To help you figure out whether Wix meets your needs, this review will take an honest look at the pros and cons of using Wix to create small business websites, as well as what it would cost you.

Creating a site with Wix: Startups.co.uk video overview:

Loading

What’s it like building a website with Wix?

If you’re looking to create a business website, you’ve already likely got a challenge on your hands: you’re busy running the business itself. This is why Wix is such a tremendous tool for business users – its huge range of professional looking templates, and its effective setup process that’s supported by a smart AI tool, mean you can genuinely be looking at the outline of a professional website in minutes.

Wix is streets ahead of most of its competitors when it comes to the range of templates it offers, and how easy it is to then customise the design, layout, text and imagery after the initial template is set up for you.

There are over 800 templates (more than any other web builder) that cover all of these industries:

• Art and culture
• Animals and pets
• Design and photography
• Electronics
• Education and books
• Business and services
• Cars and motorcycles
• Sports, outdoors and travel
• Fashion and beauty
• Wedding
• Food and restaurants
• Home and family
• Entertainment, games and nightlife
• Holidays, gifts and flowers
• Healthcare
• Property

So, whether your business provides perfect paving or maintains magnificent motors, you’ll find the perfect template for your small business needs. Once you’ve picked one, you then use Wix’s intuitive drag-and-drop interface to customise almost every aspect of it – adding your own text and images, moving elements, and changing fonts and colours to really make it your own.

Another standout feature is the extremely useful preview tool, which lets you quickly and easily see how your customers will experience your website. Wix also looks very similar on the backend to the frontend, making it super efficient for you to edit your website with zero fuss.

This is in contrast to many of its competitors, WordPress.com included, which frustratingly looks different on the backend to the frontend – meaning you have to keep previewing your website every time you add an element to make sure it fits

A warning on being locked to your chosen template

Once you’ve picked a template and edited it, you’re basically stuck with it. The only way to change it is to create a new website, which means rebranding your business’s online presence is a lot of work on Wix.

Other web builders (most notably Squarespace) don’t impose this restriction, so it’s definitely worth bearing in mind if you think you might want to change your site design in the near future.

How much does it cost to build a website with Wix?

As the table below shows, Wix won’t cost you the earth – basic plans start from just £7.50 a month (and ecommerce plans from £14 a month), plus there are regular deals and discounts that can slash the monthly cost.

The first thing to note: the prices above are billed annually, so you’ll pay for a year upfront. You can also pay monthly, but you’ll pay a bit more per month if you choose that option.

Wix does have a free plan, but this is very limited, your site will be plastered with Wix ads, and you’ll have just 500MB of storage. It’s a good way to see what Wix has to offer, but not suitable for any serious business use.

This is the same across the board with web builders, but to find out more about free plans, check out our review of the best free website builders if you’re keen to learn what’s possible without spending.

Swipe right to see more

0 out of 0

• backward
• forward

Free plan	Wix Light	Wix Core	Wix Business	Wix Business Elite
Price Free	Price £7.50 per month £6.75 with code ‘TAKE10’	Price £14 per month £12.60 with code ‘TAKE10’	Price £20 per month £18 with code ‘TAKE10’	Price £119 per month £107.10 with code ‘TAKE10’
Features Use and test Wix’s features No obligation to sign up for a paid plan Can move your created website on to a paid plan option seamlessly	Features 2GB storage space Free domain for 1 year Can remove Wix branding	Features Up to 5 collaborators 50GB of storage 24/7 customer care	Features 100GB storage space Free Site Booster app for 1 year Up to 10 collaborators	Features Up to 15 collaborators Unlimited storage space Priority customer care
Free trial?	Free trial?	Free trial?	Free trial?	Free trial?

Get 10% off with code 'TAKE10' Try Wix Now

For a full guide to what each plan offers, check out our dedicated Wix pricing page, but here’s a quick summary:

💰 Light (£7.50 per month)

This is as basic a paid plan as you’re going to find in the website builder market – it allows you to change your free Wix URL (username.wixsite.com/siteaddress) to your own domain name, which is of course super handy to maintain professionalism.

However like the free version of Wix, it still imposes severe limitations on what you can do with the platform. You only get 2GB of storage space, 2 collborators, and just 30 minutes worth of video content on your site. This can severely limit how professional and appealing your site ends up looking.

💰 Core (£14 per month)

You can create a fully customised website with no Wix ads, and use your own custom domain, free for a whole year. However, your bandwidth is limited to 2GB, so this won’t be suitable for more ambitious design ideas and businesses that want to dazzle their customers with plenty of videos and photos on the site.

Despite this, we would recommend this plan for any micro business owners that want to dip their toe in the website building water – especially if you want the basics for a super affordable price.

💰 Business (£20 per month)

The Wix Business plan is our top recommendation for the majority of small businesses and is the platform’s most popular plan.

Not only does it come with all the bells and whistles of the Core plan, including a free custom domain for one year and the removal of Wix ads. But you also get access to the Site Booster app for a year, 100GB of storage, and 10 hours of video content on your site.

💰 Business Elite (£119 per month)

The VIP plan is a serious ramp up from what Wix’s unlimited plan offers, and has been designed to support growing SMEs. It includes everything from the previous plans, as well as first priority support so you can skip the queues and get immediate assistance for any issues, such as site errors.

Professional logo and social media logo designs (when purchasing a yearly subscription or higher) are available, so you can present your brand to your customers in the most sophisticated way possible.

It’s important to mention that, if you want to sell on your website, then you’ll need a Wix ecommerce plan. To get the lowdown on how Wix shapes up as an ecommerce platform, check out our in-depth Wix ecommerce review (spoiler, it’s our No. 1 choice for that too).

Want to get Wix for less?

Use discount code 'TAKE10' for 10% off from any Wix plan!

Get 10% off Wix! It only takes a minute.

How easy to use is Wix?

Wix user testing and feedback

As part of our website builder testing, we get a panel of users – with varying levels of expertise – to try building a website with each provider. Simply put, our users loved Wix – its 4.8 out of 5 customer score was the highest for any web builder we tested.

One of our testers was particularly impressed with the amount of creative freedom offered by the platform:

“I love that you can drag literally anything in it to literally any position, and it doesn’t snap into the nearest grid position.”

There was also a lot of praise for Wix’s intuitive interface, while criticism centred on the sometimes confusing site navigation and site speed issues for sites that featured a lot of different elements.

Although these site speed complaints were most likely from users on lower level plans with restricted bandwidth, so by upgrading you should easily avoid this issue.

Those minor irritations aside, ease of use remains Wix’s trump card over most other web builder platforms.

How has Wix improved recently?

Recent updates for Wix include multilingual support that lets you easily use Google Translate or manual translation to make your site accessible in different languages, opening up your business to new markets.

In fact, the work that has been done to improve Wix over the last year has simply solidified its spot as our number one website builder for depth of features.

• You can now access audits with tailored actions and recommendations to improve your site’s search performance and overall SEO health with Wix’s Site-Level SEO Assistant
• Wix has introduced a number of new SEO tools, including a dashboard that allows you to produce reports and see how your site is performing with data provided by Google Search Console
• During testing, we also found its AI Text Creator, while not as advanced as Shopify Magic, is very user friendly and can produce a range of content, including catchy titles
• Wix has launched Wix Studio, an end-to-end solution which gives you the tools to simplify your workflow, including a centralised workspace to manage all your sites, reusable assets, your team, subscriptions, and domains.

Wix versus key competitors

Swipe right to see more

0 out of 0

• backward
• forward

BEST ALL ROUND	BEST FOR ONLINE STORES
Wix	Shopify	Squarespace	GoDaddy	Site123	WordPress.com	Hostinger
BEST FOR Best all-round website builder for small businesses	BEST FOR Best for dedicated sales features when selling online	BEST FOR Design flexibility & businesses looking to scale	BEST FOR Ease of use and simplicity	BEST FOR Help and support	BEST FOR Blogging tools	BEST FOR Cheap builder
Overall Score Based on our in-depth research and user testing 4.8	Overall Score Based on our in-depth research and user testing 4.0	Overall Score Based on our in-depth research and user testing 4.6	Overall Score Based on our in-depth research and user testing 4.4	Overall Score Based on our in-depth research and user testing 3.7	Overall Score Based on our in-depth research and user testing 3.6	Overall Score Based on our in-depth research and user testing 3.6
Price £7.50-£119 per month £6.75-£107.10 with code “TAKE10”	Price £5-£259 per month, billed annually £1 for first month	Price £12-£35 per month, billed annually Use code “SU10” to receive a 10% discount on all Squarespace plans	Price £6.99-£12.99 per month, billed annually (first term discounts available)	Price $0 – 12.80 per month (about £10.22)	Price £3-£20 per month, billed annually	Price £2.59-£8.99 per month Up to 81% discounted with code “STARTUPS”
Free trial	Free trial	Free trial	Free trial	Free trial	Free trial	Free trial

As you can see, Wix is our best all-round web builder overall. But, small businesses choosing the site builder they may commit to for years will still want to weigh Wix up carefully against alternatives.

Here’s how Wix rates against the competition, based on our testing:

Squarespace:

When it comes to just how attractive the templates are, you really can’t do any better than Squarespace. Sorry Wix, but this includes you. Businesses with a particularly visual focus – think design firms, photography portfolio sites, and fashion brands – will likely prefer the cutting edge looks of Squarespace’s templates. Wix is the cheaper option, and we’d also argue it’s easier to use than Squarespace, plus it’s a better choice for making an online store in terms of the depth of features under the hood. But, for looks alone, Squarespace trumps Wix. Read our Squarespace pricing guide for more, or check out our Wix versus Squarespace comparison.

Shopify:

If you’re building an online store, then Shopify is one of the best choices you can possibly make. The other one, though, is still Wix! In our testing, we found that Shopify narrowly trumps Wix in terms of the sheer depth of sales features it has baked into the platform. Wix has plenty of its own, and thanks to its huge app market, you can go looking for extras without too much trouble. Smaller ecommerce sites may prefer the innate useablity of Wix – the templates and drag and drop editor are much simpler to get started with. But, larger or rapidly growing online stores may do better to put their lot in with Shopify. See our full Shopify pricing guide for more details.

GoDaddy:

Want to get your site live before your cup of coffee has gone cold? GoDaddy is for you. It’s remarkably quick and easy to build a site and get it out into the world with GoDaddy. Wix is no slouch, of course, thanks to its AI-assistant and simple templates. But, the depth of features Wix gives you and its ability to let you customise the look and feel mean you may get held up making tweaks and changes, where GoDaddy’s streamlined approach gets you live with less customisation. Pricing-wise, GoDaddy is terrific value, and has an especially cheap ecommerce plan.

WordPress:

If you’re looking to build a website, you’ve probably heard the word ‘WordPress’ more than once or twice. Millions of sites worldwide use the WordPress platform, and thanks to wordpress.org, you can even build a site for free. So, what’s the issue? Well, if you aren’t familiar with creating a website, and in particular if you don’t feel comfortable with delving into the code now and then, you may be less cosy with using WordPress. It’s perfectly intuitive, and experienced users will vouch for it every time thanks to the unrivalled flexibility of what you can build on a WordPress site. But, if you’d rather get on with running your business, and you don’t want to learn to code (or pay for someone to help you), our advice is pick a Wix template and get up and running in no time.

To see how each measures up, check out our guide to the best web builders for small businesses.

How we test website builders for small businesses

We tested 10 website builders to evaluate them in terms of functionality, usability, accuracy, and aesthetics so we can make the most useful recommendations to small UK-based businesses.

Our rigorous testing process means these products have been scored and rated in six main categories of investigation and 33 subcategories – in fact, we covered 251 areas of investigation in total. We then gave each category score a ‘relevance weighting' to ensure the product's final score perfectly reflects the needs of our Startups.co.uk readers.

Our main testing categories for website builders are:

Website Features: the capabilities and functionalities offered by a website builder, e.g. blog functionality, SEO capability, and marketing capacity.

Design: the aesthetic appeal and visual layout of a website created using a website builder. It encompasses aspects such as page templates and customisable themes.

Customer Score: external customer opinion; the feedback and ratings given by customers who have used a particular website builder – the market position and reputation a website builder holds.

Ease of Use: how user-friendly and intuitive a website builder is for people with varying levels of technical expertise.

Value for Money: the balance between the cost of a website builder and the benefits it provides. It considers factors such as pricing plans, subscription models, and available features.

Help and Support: the assistance and resources available to users when they encounter issues or need guidance while using a website builder.

The Startups product testing process

Swipe right to see more

0 out of 0

• backward
• forward

BEST ALL ROUND	BEST FOR ONLINE STORES
Wix	Shopify	Squarespace	GoDaddy	Site123	WordPress.com	Hostinger
BEST FOR Best all-round website builder for small businesses	BEST FOR Best for dedicated sales features when selling online	BEST FOR Design flexibility & businesses looking to scale	BEST FOR Ease of use and simplicity	BEST FOR Help and support	BEST FOR Blogging tools	BEST FOR Cheap builder
Overall Score Based on our in-depth research and user testing 4.8	Overall Score Based on our in-depth research and user testing 4.0	Overall Score Based on our in-depth research and user testing 4.6	Overall Score Based on our in-depth research and user testing 4.4	Overall Score Based on our in-depth research and user testing 3.7	Overall Score Based on our in-depth research and user testing 3.6	Overall Score Based on our in-depth research and user testing 3.6
Price £7.50-£119 per month £6.75-£107.10 with code “TAKE10”	Price £5-£259 per month, billed annually £1 for first month	Price £12-£35 per month, billed annually Use code “SU10” to receive a 10% discount on all Squarespace plans	Price £6.99-£12.99 per month, billed annually (first term discounts available)	Price $0 – 12.80 per month (about £10.22)	Price £3-£20 per month, billed annually	Price £2.59-£8.99 per month Up to 81% discounted with code “STARTUPS”
Free trial	Free trial	Free trial	Free trial	Free trial	Free trial	Free trial

Wix web builder review: the verdict

Wix is our number one overall web builder for small businesses.

The array of templates offered is staggering, and the huge amount of design freedom Wix gives you means that choosing a template is just the starting point. You can then tweak and reposition to your heart’s content to create something that really feels personal to your business. Or, you can use the ADI to knock up a professional website in minutes, tweak it and then get on with running your business.

There are minor drawbacks, of course. Wix is a premium product and its monthly charges are a bit higher than some competitors – though it’s still tremendous value and far cheaper than hiring a web designer. The sheer amount of options it offers to builders can be intimidating for some, and the editor can slow down a bit when you add a lot of elements to your site.

But this is nitpicking; whatever your business does, Wix is a superb web builder that’s packed with features, is easy to use, and offers great support.

To see how it could help you, just head to Wix and get started.