Wix vs WordPress: Which One Should a Local Business Use?
For a one page site or a hobby project, Wix is fine and cheaper to start. For a local service business that needs to rank, load fast and be moved later, one fact decides it: you cannot export a Wix site. Done for you from $0: website design and landing pages.
About 1,900 people a month search "wix vs wordpress" (our September 2026 keyword pull), and almost every answer is written by somebody who sells one of them. We build on WordPress, so read this with that in mind, and then check the two facts that actually settle it: what Wix costs at each tier, and what happens the day you want to leave. Squarespace and Webflow sit in the same closed-platform category as Wix on that second point, and each gets its own comparison.
What does Wix actually cost?
Wix runs from $0 to $159.77 a month, and the tiers most local businesses land on are $29.77 or $39.77 a month billed annually (Wix pricing page, checked September 2026). The free plan does not include a custom domain and cannot accept payments, so it is not a business plan, it is a demo.
| Wix plan | Per month, billed annually | What it unlocks, and what stays locked |
|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | No custom domain and no payments. You are on a wix subdomain. |
| Light | $17.77 | Custom domain free for the first year, 2 GB storage, 2 collaborators. No payments. |
| Core | $29.77 | 50 GB storage, accept payments, basic ecommerce, 5 collaborators. |
| Business | $39.77 | 100 GB storage, standard ecommerce, 10 collaborators. |
| Business Elite | $159.77 | Unlimited storage, advanced marketing tools, scheduling, 100 collaborators. |
Two things that table hides. The free domain is free for the first year only and renews at the normal registration rate after that, and Wix states plainly that prices are shown in USD and vary by location, billing term and promotion, so the number on your screen may not match the number above. Billing monthly instead of annually costs more on every tier.
Can you move a Wix site off Wix?
No, and that is true on all 5 plans. Wix's own help center states that a Wix site cannot be hosted anywhere except Wix's servers, because the site depends on Wix's proprietary platform to run (Wix Help Center, "Exporting or Embedding Your Wix Site Elsewhere", checked September 2026). There is no export button that hands you a working site.
It goes past the pages. The same help center says it is not possible to export blog posts to other platforms, and that an online store cannot be transferred from one site to another, although a product list can be exported and re-imported by hand (Wix Help Center, checked September 2026). Your domain name is yours and can be moved to another registrar. The site sitting on it cannot follow.
That is the whole argument in one line. Three years of pages, posts and on-page work built on Wix is three years you rebuild from scratch if you ever move, and the rebuild is the moment most owners find out what they actually owned. If that idea is new, read whether you own your website.
A WordPress site is a database and a folder of files: any host will take it, and any developer can open it.
Is Wix bad for SEO?
No, and anybody still saying that is quoting a problem Wix fixed roughly a decade ago.
Wix gives you title tags, meta descriptions, 301 redirects, a sitemap and structured data, which covers most of what a local business needs to compete on search.
The ceiling is control, not capability. Four things you cannot do on Wix start to matter once you are fighting for terms that carry real money.
- Install what the job needs. WordPress has an add-on for nearly every SEO, schema, speed and tracking task. Wix gives you the settings Wix decided to expose, and that list is not yours to extend.
- Take the work with you. SEO built on a platform you cannot export is rented. Rankings attach to URLs, and those URLs stay on Wix.
- Hire anybody. W3Techs measured WordPress at 40.7 percent of all websites and 58.9 percent of the CMS market on 9 September 2026, against 4.2 percent and 6.1 percent for Wix. Roughly ten times the footprint means ten times the people who can work on it.
- Change how the page is built. Server access, template code and page structure belong to Wix. When a fix needs to happen below the settings screen, there is no screen for it.
Which is faster, Wix or WordPress?
On the published data Wix is faster on average, and this is the point where an honest comparison has to go against the platform we sell. In the November 2025 snapshot of the Core Web Vitals Technology Report, built on HTTP Archive data, about 75 percent of Wix sites passed all three Core Web Vitals against about 46 percent of WordPress sites.
The gap is real, and it is also explained. WordPress's average is dragged down by millions of sites running twenty plugins, an unoptimised theme and four dollar shared hosting. The same data set shows the weakness is loading speed rather than responsiveness: WordPress passes the interaction metric on 85.9 percent of sites, close to Wix at 86.8 percent.
Wix has the higher floor because Wix controls everything. WordPress has the higher ceiling because you do.
The practical version is short. On Wix you inherit an average you cannot change. On WordPress you inherit whoever built it, so ask any provider to show you a mobile PageSpeed score on a site they built for a client, not a score on a demo.
Want a site you can actually take with you?
Ziwi builds on WordPress, hosts it for $99 a month, and puts the site, the domain and the accounts in your name from day one. Live in 3 days from kickoff.
How do Wix and WordPress compare over three years?
Wix on the Core plan is about $1,072 over three years and you build the site yourself. A designed WordPress build at Ziwi, $1,000 for the template build plus $99 a month hosting, is $4,564 over the same three years. The gap is not the software, it is whether somebody else does the work and whether you can leave with it.
| Wix, Core plan, built by you | WordPress, built by Ziwi | |
|---|---|---|
| Cost over 3 years | About $1,072 in subscription, plus your own hours and a domain renewal from year two | $3,564 with the $0 build offer, $4,564 with the $1,000 designed template, $6,064 with a $2,500 custom design. Hosting is $99 a month in all three. |
| Ownership | Wix hosts it and it cannot be moved. The domain is yours, the site is not | You own the site, the domain, the hosting account and the files from day one |
| SEO control | The settings Wix exposes: titles, descriptions, redirects, sitemap, structured data | All of it, including markup, schema, speed work and any add-on the job needs |
| Speed | Higher floor. About 75 percent of Wix sites pass Core Web Vitals | Higher ceiling, decided by the build. The WordPress average is about 46 percent |
| Support | Wix support for the platform. Nobody to call about your marketing | Included with hosting, or unlimited small edits and a post a week on Ziwi Care at $299 a month |
| Getting it built | You build it, or you pay a freelancer on top of the subscription | Live in 3 days from kickoff, standard, month to month after that |
Two caveats, because a table can lie by leaving things out. The $0 build fee is tied to keeping an ongoing plan for 12 months, and those terms are printed on the free website page instead of buried in a schedule. And the Wix column leaves out your own hours, which for most owners is the biggest number in it. For our prices next to the wider market range, see what a website actually costs.
Who should stay on Wix?
Stay on Wix if the site is one page, a hobby, a side project, or a business that will never chase search traffic. At $17.77 or $29.77 a month with no build fee, Wix is genuinely cheaper for that job, and moving a five page brochure site to WordPress is a cost with no return attached to it.
- 01
Stay if the site is one page and stays one page. There is nothing to rank and nothing to migrate, and $29.77 a month buys a working site with hosting inside it.
- 02
Stay if you edit it yourself and like the editor. Changing a headline on a Tuesday night without calling anybody has real value.
- 03
Move if search is a channel you intend to use. Every page you publish on Wix is a page you cannot take with you, so the longer you wait the more the move costs.
- 04
Move if you sell appointments or jobs in a competitive local market. Booking flows, call tracking and page speed all need control below the settings screen.
- 05
Move before five years of content, not after. The migration bill is set by how much you have already written, and it only goes up.
What does a done-for-you WordPress site cost?
At Ziwi it is $0 for the build with an ongoing plan kept 12 months, $1,000 for a designed template build, or $2,500 for a custom design, with hosting at $99 a month and extra pages at $149 each. Sites go live in 3 days from kickoff as standard, and everything after that is month to month with no long contract.
You own the site, the domain and the hosting account from day one, and if you leave, we hand the files over rather than hold them. That is the part Wix cannot match at any price, because the architecture does not permit it. If you want the build done for you, see Ziwi's website design and landing page service.