TJ Slade
Web designer · Kansas City
Wix vs WordPress is the first real fork in the road for most people building a small business website, and the arguments online are close to useless because almost everyone writing them sells one of the two. I'm TJ Slade, I build small business websites, I have inherited plenty of both, and I have talked clients out of each one about equally often.
The honest version is that this is not a question about features. Both can produce a site that looks good and ranks fine. It is a question about who is going to maintain the thing in eighteen months, and what happens if you want to leave.
The short answer
Pick Wix if most of these are true:
- You are building it yourself and nobody on your team enjoys software.
- The site is a handful of pages: what you do, who you are, how to reach you.
- You would rather pay one monthly bill than manage hosting, updates, and plugins.
- You are not planning to move it somewhere else later.
Pick WordPress if most of these are true instead:
- You will publish regularly, or you need many pages with a repeatable structure.
- You need it to connect to something specific: a booking system, a store, a members area.
- You want the option to move hosts, or hand the site to a different developer, without rebuilding.
- Somebody, you or a person you pay, will keep it updated.
What each one actually is
Wix is a hosted website builder. You pay a monthly plan, and that plan includes the software, the hosting, the security patching, and the backups. You design in the browser by dragging things around, and nothing technical is ever really exposed to you. That is the entire point, and for a lot of businesses it is exactly right.
WordPress is software you install on hosting you rent. It is free and open source, which is why it powers such a large share of the web, and why there is a plugin for practically everything. Because you own the installation, you also own the responsibility: the hosting bill, the updates, the backups, and whatever a plugin breaks on a Tuesday.
One point of confusion worth clearing up, because it trips up nearly everyone. WordPress.com is a hosted service that runs on WordPress and behaves a lot more like Wix. WordPress.org is the free software you install yourself. When people say WordPress in a conversation like this, they almost always mean the second one.
What it costs over three years, not month one
Month one, Wix usually looks cheaper, because the plan covers everything and WordPress starts with a hosting bill plus whatever your theme and plugins cost. Three years in, the comparison usually shifts, and not always in the direction people expect.
Wix costs are predictable: the plan, plus any apps you add, plus your domain. WordPress costs are lumpy: hosting is cheap until it is not, a couple of premium plugins renew annually, and the real expense is time. Either somebody at your business learns to run updates and check that nothing broke, or you pay someone a monthly retainer to do it. That is not a knock on WordPress. It is the honest cost of owning your own installation, and it is exactly what website maintenance covers.
The thing that actually makes a site expensive is neither platform. It is scope: how many pages, how much custom design, whether it takes payments. I broke the real numbers down in what a website costs.
SEO: both can rank, and neither does it for you
The claim that Wix cannot rank is a decade out of date. It was true once, it stopped being true a long time ago, and today a well built Wix site and a well built WordPress site both compete fine. I have seen Wix sites outrank agency-built WordPress sites in this metro, because the Wix site answered the question and the WordPress site was a slideshow.
What actually decides it: whether each page targets something people search for, whether the site is fast on a phone, whether the content answers the question better than the other results, and whether anybody links to you. WordPress gives you more control over the technical details, which matters at the margins and on larger sites. For a five page local business site, the platform is close to irrelevant next to the words on the pages.
Can you take it with you?
This is the difference that gets underweighted, and it is the one people call me about. A Wix site cannot be picked up and moved. The words and the images are yours and you can copy them out by hand, but the site itself stays where it was built. Leaving Wix means rebuilding somewhere else, which is a cost you pay later for the convenience you get now.
WordPress content moves. There is a built-in export tool that hands you a file of your posts and pages, and the whole installation can be copied between hosts. That portability is the strongest practical argument for WordPress, and it ties straight into who actually owns your website, which is worth reading before you commit either way.
Who patches it when something breaks
On Wix, the answer is Wix. Updates happen without you, and there is no plugin conflict to debug, because there are no plugins in the WordPress sense. The tradeoff is that when something does go wrong, you are in a support queue rather than able to fix it yourself or hand it to someone who can.
On WordPress, the answer is you, or whoever you pay. Every plugin is code written by a stranger, running on your site, needing updates. A maintained WordPress site is solid and runs for years. A neglected one is the most common hacked site I get called about, which is the single best reason to be honest with yourself about who is doing that work.
When the answer is neither
Plenty of small business sites do not need a content management system at all. If you have five pages and you change them twice a year, a hand-built site has no login to hack, no plugins to update, and loads faster than either option here. That tradeoff is its own decision, laid out in a static site versus a CMS and, for the bigger version of the question, WordPress versus a custom build.
How to choose in five minutes
Answer these honestly and the choice usually makes itself:
- Who edits this site six months from now, and do they like software?
- How often does the content actually change? Weekly, or twice a year?
- Does it need to connect to something specific, like booking, inventory, or memberships?
- Is anyone budgeted to keep it updated, or will nobody touch it until it breaks?
- Would it be a disaster to have to rebuild it somewhere else in three years?
Mostly nobody maintaining it and rarely changing? Wix, or a hand-built site. Regular changes, real integrations, and somebody responsible for upkeep? WordPress.
What I build, and why
I build on WordPress when a client genuinely needs to edit their own content, and hand-built when they do not, because the second kind is faster and there is nothing to patch. I do not build on Wix, though I have taken over plenty of Wix sites and I will tell you honestly when yours is fine and the money belongs elsewhere. If you want a straight answer for your situation, tell me what you are working with. The ranges for everything else are on the pricing page.