Wix website builder review 2024: Pros and cons Wix is our number one overall website builder and scores highly on ease of use, features and design flexibility - but is it right for your small business? Written by Alec Hawley Updated on 24 October 2023 Our research When reviewing website builders, our expert team of writers and independent researchers focuses in on the most important factors for small business owners. We look at the range of templates and designs available to choose from; how easy it is to get started building your site and customising it; the help and support options available; the range of available plugins, apps and extensions; the ability to customise a mobile design, and above all, the value for money – including any hidden pricing, ongoing fees, and initial setup costs. Written and reviewed by: Alec Hawley Robyn Summers-Emler Digital Growth Editor Our independent reviews are funded in part by affiliate commissions, at no extra cost to our readers. Based on our extensive testing, Wix is the best web builder for small businesses currently on the market. It has an overall score of 4.8 out of 5 thanks to its extensive list of features and affordable pricing plans. 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 Visit Wix Wix is also incredibly easy to use, scoring a solid 4.4 out of 5 Ease of Use score in our testing. This makes it perfect for small business owners that don’t have time to learn complex code or designing their website – so, pretty much all of them.However, 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. However, if you’re short on time and you’d rather skip ahead, you can also check out Wix’s pricing page. This Wix website builder review will cover: Wix web builder: general pros and cons Wix web builder overview Wix web builder pricing uk Wix website features Wix design flexibility Wix help and support Wix value for money Wix customer score Wix ease of use How did we evaluate Wix web builder for small businesses? Wix web builder review: The verdict FAQs Wix web builder: general pros and cons Pros Unbeatable range of features. These include free access to the site booster and visitor analytics apps for one year Over 800 templates covering a range of 16 different industries to suit pretty much every business - the largest selection of templates available on the market Intuitive drag-and-drop interface. It's incredibly easy to apply changes to your website, specially if website building is new to you Affordable pricing plans to suit all budgets Creates mobile-friendly pages so you know how your site will look on mobile Free 24/7 phone and live chat support ADI functionality makes it easy to start your website in just minutes by answering a few simple questions Cons Template is unchangeable once site is live. This could cause problems in the future Free plan site is littered with Wix ads and a Wix branded domain No plan has unlimited storage Its value for money score is lower because its price is not the most accessible compared to other competitors Wix web builder overview Wix 4.8 Number one website builder for price, features and usability. Visit Wix Full review of Wix Free trial 14-day Price from £7.50 per month Flexible pricing plans Good balance of easy usability and complex features Customisable, 'drag-and-drop' templates Summary Wix is the most popular website builder in the UK. The platform has undoubtedly earned these accolades, with an unparalleled list of features and wide-ranging payment options for every budget. Whether you’re new to website building, or a seasoned expert looking for endless customisability, Wix is an excellent choice. Its pricing is also practical for small businesses, with the Business plan particularly good value at just £20 per month. Show moreless It’s hard to really pick out just one thing that Wix does really well – it’s a real jack of all trades and a master of most of them.Perhaps most impressively, it manages to both be easy to use and grant a lot of creative freedom via the intuitive drag and drop design process.And, with over 800 templates, the platform is massively versatile – whether you want to create a simple blog or formulate an online digital marketing strategy for your business, Wix makes it easy.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.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: it earned an overall score of 4.7 out of 5 back in 2020, but has now climbed to a 4.8 (small, but notable!) due to improvements in its value for money and design functionalities. Since our last update... 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 AssistantWix have 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 ConsoleDuring 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 titlesWix 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. Are there any drawbacks of Wix?There are some minor drawbacks – some of our testers reported that the number of options in the editor can be overwhelming and more advanced designs may suffer from the relatively slow server response time depending on the type of plan you choose (the Connect Domain plan is NOT a good choice for small businesses) – but despite this, Wix is still our best overall web builder for small businesses. Loading Wix is our highest-rated website builder. But how does it compare to runner-up Squarespace? Read our full review of Wix vs Squarespace for small businesses to find out. Wix web builder pricing UK 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 ‘GET 10!' Price £14 per month£12.60 with code ‘GET10!' Price £20 per month£18 with code ‘GET10!' Price £119 per month£107.10 with code ‘GET 10!' Features Use and test Wix's featuresNo obligation to sign up for a paid planCan move your created website on to a paid plan option seamlessly Features 2GB storage spaceFree domain for 1 yearCan remove Wix branding Features Up to 5 collaborators50GB of storage24/7 customer care Features 100GB storage spaceFree Site Booster app for 1 yearUp to 10 collaborators Features Up to 15 collaboratorsUnlimited storage spacePriority customer care Free trial? Free trial? Free trial? Free trial? Free trial? As the table shows, our top overall web builder 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.For a full guide to what each plan offers, check out our dedicated Wix pricing page, but here’s a quick summary.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.As for Wix's paid plans…💰 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 'GET10!' for 10% off from any Wix plan! Get 10% off Wix! It only takes a minute. Wix website featuresThis is Wix’s key selling point and it's no wonder the web builder is unrivalled in this category – as it essentially does everything you could want a web builder to do. It scored a commendable 4.9 out of 5 in this category based on our first-hand testing.With Wix, you can easily do anything, from setting up a business blog, creating an online booking system, to creating a spectacular online home for your SME that’s the launchpad for spectacular digital marketing campaigns.Also, in terms of SEO features, Wix is the only web builder that has an exclusive partnership with SEO giant Semrush. This partnership transforms Wix's SEO offering for its users, who can now access Semrush's high-quality SEO keyword data directly through the Wix dashboard.This in turn will help Wix users identify the ideal keywords to target and propel their website up the search rankings.And, if you do find yourself needing a feature that’s missing from default Wix, the app market should have what you’re looking for. The most comprehensive web builder app market out there with over 300 apps, add-ons that will let you optimise your shipping, turn your Wix website into a native mobile app, easily integrate customer reviews, and loads more besides.The apps are also ‘no-code' and incredibly easy to use, unlike other competitors like WordPress.com, in which you'll need some knowledge of coding before you can integrate them into your website; this is one of the most crucial points in the Wix vs WordPress competition.Given all this, it’s no surprise that Wix has the highest features score of any web builder we’ve analysed – it’s quite simply unmatched in this area and has even improved since our last round of testing – rising from 4.6 out of 5 to near full marks (4.9). Did you know? About 332,000 e-commerce websites are currently using Wix. This means plenty of entrepreneurs have trusted Wix will be the perfect digital storefront for their business. Wix design flexibilityIn many ways, Wix is streets ahead when it comes to design flexibility, scoring a solid 4.4 out 5 in this category in our research.For starters, you can choose from over 800 templates (more than any other web builder) that cover all of these 16 industries:(deep breath)Art and cultureAnimals and petsDesign and photographyElectronicsEducation and booksBusiness and servicesCars and motorcyclesSports, outdoors and travelFashion and beautyWeddingFood and restaurantsHome and familyEntertainment, games and nightlifeHolidays, gifts and flowersHealthcarePropertySo, whether your business provides perfect paving or maintains magnificent motors, you’ll find the perfect template for your small business needs.Wix even caters to some really specific needs, like the template specifically designed for true crime podcast websites.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.Our user testers really appreciate how easy Wix makes it to chop and change your website, this is in contrast to GoDaddy, which scored poorly in terms of design functionality, due to its clunky editor and lack of creative freedom.All of Wix's design features work remarkably well, so what’s the problem?Well, 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 frequently change your firm’s online identity.Otherwise, just make sure you pick your template very carefully.It’s a real shame Wix is so inflexible in this regard, as it excels in most areas of the design process.Overall though, it ranks second for design flexibility with a score of 4.4 out of 5, with Squarespace easily sitting at the top of the tree. Wix help and supportHelp and support is another area where Wix does well. It recently climbed up from a 4.3 out of 5 in this category in our research to a very solid 4.8 out of 5.Wix offers phone, social media, and live chat support, with subscribers to the £21 per month VIP plan getting priority support and the ability to skip the phone lines and virtual queues. This is ideal for customers that have a large online audience, and need immediate support for issues like site downtime and bugs.Notably, Wix doesn’t offer any email support whatsoever, so if this is something that’s important to you, you may want to choose a different web builder like Squarespace.However, you should be able to find an answer to most of your questions in the Wix Help Center – Wix’s online knowledge base – which is full of tutorials and explainers for more advanced features.However, this information is not always arranged in the most user-friendly way, so you may need to do a bit of searching to locate what you’re looking for.Taking everything into account, Wix offers very good help and support – with only an occasionally tricky to navigate help center and the lack of email support preventing it from getting absolute top marks. Wix value for moneyThis is Wix’s lowest score, landing at a 3.4 out of 5 in this category as it has a high higher average pricing plan than other options in the market. However, you do get access to free trials on its paid plans so you can give it a spin before you decide to commit.However, Wix offers so much – from the widest range of templates to a huge range of powerful features – that it really is worth spending a bit more each month to get a site that will grow with your business.It is also still relatively cheap compared to other providers, such as Squarespace, which charges you a premium for ecommerce functionality, unlike Wix.Ultimately, while it would be lovely if Wix was a bit cheaper, it’s hard to complain too much when you consider what you’re getting for your money. However, the high costs have dropped its value for money score down from 4 out of 5 to 3.4 out of 5 by our researchers between 2022 and 2023. Wix customer scoreSimply put, our users loved Wix – its 4.8 customer score was the highest for any web builder we tested, but are you surprised?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 sitespeed issues for sites that featured a lot of different elements.Although these sitespeed 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, this is an area where Wix really shines. And compared to Squarespace, which scored 4.3 in this category, customers are definitely happy with what Wix has to offer. Wix ease of useA high customer score generally goes hand in hand with a high ease of use score and that’s definitely the case for Wix – this is another key area where it posted the top score for any web builder we tested. It scored an impressive 4.4 out of 5 in this category in our research.You can either select to create your website through ADI functionality or by using the Wix editor. Customers really like this choice because for those businesses that want to create a website quickly and with minimal fuss – the ADI option is ideal. Whereas those that have a bit more experience in web design, they can choose to use the editor and get their creative juices flowing.In comparison, web builders like WordPress don't offer ADI as an option when users are creating their website, so you'll have to spend time and effort putting together your website from scratch – which for some businesses is time not well spent.Once you’ve chosen your template – a process that Wix tries to guide you through by asking what sort of website you want to create and then suggesting suitable options – Wix makes creating your website an incredibly easy and enjoyable process.To change the position of any element on the page, you simply drag and drop, while clicking on an element brings up a range of editing options so you can easily change an image or choose a different colour/font for text etc.A toolbar on the left gives easy access to bigger changes like choosing a new theme or adding media, while buttons along the top allow you to undo and redo any changes you make to the site to save yourself time.Based on our first hand user testing, we found it was easy to drag and drop elements into the web builder, as well as deleting them. It's intuitive user interface makes it easy to grasp by those who are new to website buliding.This is also where you’ll find the mobile view button, so you can customise the mobile version of your site without affecting the desktop version – incredibly handy!As you can tell, ease of use is one of the biggest feathers in Wix’s cap – you should be able to get to grips with it very quickly and you can easily add whichever features you need to your site. How did we evaluate Wix web builder for small businesses? 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 “GET10!” Price £5 – £259 per month, billed annually£1/month for 3 months Price £12-£35 per month, billed anuallyUse code “STARTUPS10” 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 monthUp to 81% discounted with code “STARTUPS” Visit Try Wix Visit Get Shopify Visit Get Squarespace Visit Get GoDaddy Visit Get Site123 Visit Get Wordpress Visit Get Hostinger As you can see, Wix is our best all-round web builder, edging ever so slightly ahead of Squarespace thanks to its unrivalled array of features and its high level of design freedom.The research that powers this review analysed Wix according to six key factors for small business web builders: website features, design flexibility, help and support, value for money, customer score, and ease of use.Using this framework, we’ve taken an in-depth look at the top eight small business web builders on the market (Wix, Squarespace, Shopify, GoDaddy, Square, Hostinger, Jimdo, and 1&1 Ionnos).To see how each measures up, check out our guide to the best web builders for small businesses. Wix web builder review: The verdictAs we’ve mentioned a few times now, Wix is our No. 1 overall web builder for small businesses.It excels in several key areas – with our highest testing score for features, customer score, and ease of use – and recorded at least a 4 out of 5 rating in all six of our testing categories. The highest score it received was the 4.9 out of 5 for Website Features.The only other web builder that gets close to these scores is Squarespace, but the expense of its plans and its fiddly website editor let it down.Basically, Wix will let you do pretty much whatever you need your website to do, and make it pretty straightforward to do so.The array of templates offered is frankly 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 your day.There are minor drawbacks of course. Wix is a premium product and is therefore one of the higher-priced web builders on the market. 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. FAQs Is Wix website builder really free? In short, yes. You can use Wix as a free website builder to build your own website. However there are big limitations to what your site can do, and because you have to have a Wix branded domain name, it won't look very professional. There is no ecommerce functionality so you can't sell online, and your website will be littered with annoying Wix ads. We would suggest paying for a plan - but if you just want to try Wix out and create a very basic website - the free plan will do the trick. Is WordPress better than Wix? Wix is a much better choice for small businesses than WordPress.com – it offers more powerful features, is far easier to use and offers a lot more support in crucial areas like SEO and marketing. However if you are a whizz at coding and have used open source platforms before, WordPress might actually be the better option. It will open up doors to huge creative freedom that Wix can't offer. However for beginners, Wix every time. Is Wix a good website builder for beginners? Wix certainly is a great web builder for beginners. The fact you can use the ADI system to help you set up a website in just minutes can really speed things up for you and save you pulling your hair out before you've even got the foundations of your website together. It also offers helpful prompts to help support you as you navigate the website, and its help centre has the answers to pretty much every question. It is also easy to use with its intuitive drag and drop interface. And the SEO prompts are a must for any beginner who otherwise won't understand how to capitalise on this important aspect of website creation. Startups.co.uk is reader-supported. If you make a purchase through the links on our site, we may earn a commission from the retailers of the products we have reviewed. This helps Startups.co.uk to provide free reviews for our readers. It has no additional cost to you, and never affects the editorial independence of our reviews. Share this post facebook twitter linkedin Written by: Alec Hawley Alec is Startups’ resident expert on politics and finance. He’s provided live updates on the budget, written guides on investing and property development, and demystified topics like corporation tax, accounting software, and invoice discounting. Before joining, he worked in the media for over a decade, conducting media analysis at Kantar Media and YouGov, and writing a wide variety of freelance pieces.