Wix Website Builder Review: Top-Tier Site Creation With Deep Customization

Wix.com Ltd.'s website builder earns an Editors' Choice award from PCMag for its intuitive interface, hundreds of templates, and expanded AI tools, with paid plans starting at $17 per month and a free ad-supported tier available. The service offers e-commerce features, mobile apps, and a Wix Studio interface, though it does not allow users to switch templates after selection.

Pros & Cons - - Remarkably intuitive interface - Numerous widgets - Hundreds of templates - Good tools for mobile and AI site building - Rich web store features - Excellent uptime and customer service support - Many commerce options, including the ability to sell digital downloads - Free option - - Third-party apps offer better analytics - Doesn't let you switch templates Wix Specs | Basic Image Editing | | | Blogging Tool | | | Download Selling | | | Free Version Offered | | | Site Membership | | | Web Store | If you want to build a website with minimal effort and maximum creative freedom, look no further than Wix. It offers standout features, such as online storage for your site assets, e-commerce tools, cool video backgrounds, title animations, mobile apps, and a useful free service tier. Plus, its Wix Studio interface stands out as one of the most intuitive, slick, and powerful I've tested in my many years covering the website builder /web-hosting-services/42131/the-best-website-builders category. Since my last review of the service, Wix has expanded its AI tools and integrated more formerly separate features into the main platform, strengthening the package. In short, Wix is a simple-to-use, multifaceted tool that easily earns our Editors' Choice award, alongside Duda /web-hosting-services/35322/duda , an excellent service tailored to enterprise needs. Plans and Prices You only need an email address to get started with Wix. If you don't mind on-site advertisements, you can spin up a site for free /web-hosting/138643/the-best-free-website-builders-for-2022 . That's a terrific option if you want to create an online presence on an extremely tight budget. On the other hand, if you want an ad-free site with a custom URL or e-commerce options /e-commerce-software/42210/the-best-e-commerce-software , you must upgrade to a paid account. These range from the $17-per-month Light account 2GB of storage, free domain for one year, two collaborators to the $29-per-month Core plan 50GB of storage, five collaborators, basic analytics, and e-commerce . If you want a shopping cart, CMS items, and other money-making features, consider the Business and Business Elite plans, which cost between $36 and $159 per month. respectively. Finally, the Enterprise-level plans require a bespoke quote from a Wix representative they start at $500 per month . See Wix's plans page https://www.wix.com/plans for a full rundown of account types. After creating an account, you search for a general site type—business, designer, event, blog, and so on—and then choose whether you want to use a site template or have Wix automatically create a site for you using AI tools. There are about 20 top-level site types, each with several subcategories. For instance, there's a Restaurant choice with subcategories that include bar, café, and catering. For my Wix test site, I picked the Blog category, which offers dozens of beautiful template options. Wix has hundreds of template choices, more than Squarespace /web-hosting-services/34505/squarespace or Weebly /web-hosting-services/34504/weebly . Many are free, though some business choices require an e-commerce-level subscription. Each template has a full demo so you can get a feel for the theme before editing. In a nice touch, the template preview also shows you how your site will look on a smartphone /mobile-phones/119938/the-best-phones screen. There's one downside. Unlike Squarespace or Weebly, Wix doesn't let you switch templates once you've chosen one. That's a significant ding against the service, as you need to create a separate site and transfer your files to the new pages to give your online destination a fresh look. However, it's not uncommon in the website builder space. To see how Wix stacks up with the competition, check out Wix vs. Squarespace /website-builders/152093/wix-vs-squarespace-which-is-the-best-website-builder , Wix vs. Weebly /website-builders/162533/wix-vs-weebly-i-tested-both-platforms-and-one-clearly-wins , and Wix vs. WordPress /website-builders/154554/wix-vs-wordpresscom-which-is-better-for-building-your-website . Creating a Wix Site Wix's templates are modern and attractive, with many pinning your navigation icons to the top as the site viewer scrolls down. You can add elements, change the background image, access the App Market from which you get third-party site widgets , see your uploads, and start blogging. You can easily minimize or hide these controls if you need to edit the area under them. Some functionality that used to exist under a separate Wix brand, like Ascend, is now built directly into Wix, making it richer in features. Wix contains all the usual options for text, media, social media widgets, buttons, and shapes that you'd expect in a website builder. It has more unexpected offerings, too, like tools just for fitness websites or ways to optimize your site's loading speed. Wix Analytics provides basic site-traffic reporting, but you're better off using a separate third-party service, such as Google Analytics, for this functionality. If something you want is not included by default, check out Wix's App Market. The App Market offers even more tools for tracking SEO, video views, subscription data, and music plays. This is on top of other, more specific extra features like creating custom seat maps for your recurring live venue events or making a branded app for your restaurant. You can also embed HTML and easily add SoundCloud /services-players/121907/soundcloud or Spotify /services-players/19266/spotify playlists to treat your site visitors' ears. Editing the template design is a cinch. Just click any element to see resizing handles and dragging buttons. You have much more freedom to place objects where you want them than with Squarespace or Weebly. You can also double-click text to edit and format it. A toolbar offers tools for sizing and arranging objects, including size matching, alignment, and overlap options. Guides pop up as you move objects around, helping you align them with other elements. If you select multiple objects, you can move them around the page. I like that Wix lets you animate any object, with effects like Bounce-In, Glide-In, and Spin-In. Wix has outstanding right-click context menus, too. Most other builders do nothing with right-clicks, except to launch browser options that don't help the site-building process. Wix lets you use right-clicks to change images or edit text. You can customize page design to your heart's content, including the number of columns and their sizes. In addition, you can easily add new pages and drag them around to change the site's navigation hierarchy. In addition, Wix lets you password-protect particular pages or require a membership sign-up or sign-in to access content. When it's time to really dig into editing your site, Wix Studio is a website-building option that features cleaner, more design-centric templates than the basic editor. More importantly, they're responsive templates, unlike the ones you deal with in using Wix's classic editor interface. To show you the ropes, Wix Studio Academy https://www.wix.com/studio/academy offers helpful text lessons and video tutorials. Wix Studio operates more like Adobe Photoshop /adobe-photoshop-cc/ or InDesign /photos-video-graphics/9433/adobe-indesign-cs6 than a traditional site builder. Layers let you stack elements, while Masters let you quickly copy a design element to other pages. Click a text element, and you're presented with collapsible menu options for changing sizes, positions, anchors, and other items. The basic editor's right-click functionality is replicated here, launching context-sensitive menus when invoked. If you're working on a responsive website, Wix Studio starts with three different page sizes you can toggle between to see how your site looks. You can also add more breakpoints and different resolutions as part of your toggleable choices. Overall, it's far faster to move elements around on your site using Wix Studio than Wix's already efficient website builder. Typography and color swatches are available, and you can save your choices to design libraries. This allows you to quickly change a page's overall color or perhaps the header text without losing your previous design choices. Wix Studio is also built for multi-user collaboration, with design libraries allowing a group to test different ideas without throwing anything away. AI Tools Wix lets you generate text for your site using AI. You simply hover your mouse pointer over a text block, select "Get Text Ideas," and tell Wix what your site is about and the topics you'd like the text to cover. Besides that, you can now talk to an AI chatbot /ai/148205/the-best-ai-chatbots to generate an entire site using AI just by answering some questions. In fact, there's an entire alternate Wix editor, Wix Harmony, that's more AI-forward. Wix has its own coding platform, Velo, but it also advertises Claude integration to novice developers as a potential vibe coding /ai/162276/how-to-vibe-code-5-simple-tips-for-using-ai-to-become-a-programmer option. These AI tools can save time at the start of the process. Hostinger Website Builder https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/zyro-website-builder also offers various AI tools /ai/154260/need-to-quickly-build-a-website-these-5-ai-tools-will-save-you-time-and-money to help you build your site and predict user behavior. However, you'll still want to tweak whatever the AI creates to truly personalize your site for your needs. And honestly, I think websites need a human touch /ai/163225/ai-cant-make-a-good-website-for-you-trust-me-i-tried to be worthwhile. Working With Photos and Videos Wix has a big advantage over Weebly and Squarespace when it comes to photos: It lets you reuse images you've already uploaded by saving them in online folders. Those other services require you to reupload photos if you want to use them elsewhere on your site. You can add images from other online sources, like Facebook and Flickr. Ditto for videos. In fact, you can use video in places where other services only let you drop photos, such as the main theme background. The service also provides a wide range of stock images and videos for your site. This content is mostly free, but you can purchase reasonably priced stock images from BigStock. With the integrated Wix Photo Studio editor, you get complete photo editing /photo-editing/8546/the-best-photo-editing-software and enhancement capabilities. It's simple to add a link to an image, either to an external image or to a page on your site. During testing, adding a border, animation, or resizing behavior was just as easy. How to Make Money With Wix Wix offers rich e-commerce /e-commerce-software/42210/the-best-e-commerce-software capabilities. The Wix Store /cloud-services/91112/wix-stores option adds a Shop page with a product gallery prepopulated with sample products you replace with your own. You need an e-commerce premium plan to receive payments. The web store can have multiple pages, including a product page, a shopping cart, and a Thank You page. Features like email marketing /email-marketing/3708/the-best-email-marketing-software , CRM /crm-software/67398/the-best-crm-software , and invoicing are integrated into the Business plans. Wix also offers customizable storefronts and recurring payment and subscription options, further expanding your money-making possibilities. There's a detailed product-editing panel where you can group products by collection and offer coupons. Credit card processing options include Stripe and Square, and you can accept PayPal /personal-finance/1443/paypal and snail-mailed cash. You can enter shipping and tax rules, but the built-in store doesn't help you figure these things out with, say, FedEx or UPS integration. Selling digital downloads is also built into Wix, and you can also sell music with no transaction fee through Wix's Music app. The app accepts the MP3, WAV, FLAC, and ALAC file formats and plays music on your site. Blogging Tools Adding a blog /blog-tools-products/8177/how-to-create-a-blog-a-beginners-guide to your site is as easy as clicking the Blog entry on the main site element toolbar. You design your blog page layout like any other site page, or choose a single-entry style with no header. Subscriptions and comments are options you can offer your readers. You can tag posts, and even display a tag cloud, RSS button, Facebook comments, and Disqus comments. Wix has a separate, simple blog-posting interface, unlike Weebly, which uses the same web page interface for blogging. With Wix, I could add photos, galleries, video, and text, all formatted to taste. Likewise, I could schedule any post for later publication and designate it as Featured. In all, it's a rich blogging tool with everything you need. Mobile Site Options Sites made in the basic editor aren't responsive in the strictest sense meaning you can resize a browser to see its contents squeeze to fit a smaller size , but that shouldn't worry site creators: Wix produces mobile versions of your sites that pass Google's test for mobile-friendliness. Tap the phone icon at the top of the site editor and switch to the mobile editing view. By default, my site had the "Make your site mobile friendly" option checked, so I didn't have to do anything to make it work well on phones. Still, Wix lets you edit the mobile view if you're not happy with how it looks. In particular, you can hide elements you don't want to appear on mobile screens. You can also add a Mobile Action Bar so that visitors can email or call you with a tap of a finger. That said, Wix Studio lets you design fully responsive sites. Not only are there fluid sizing options for certain elements, but the Breakpoints feature also lets you see how your site looks at any resolution. CSS grid and Flexbox are available in Wix Studio, ensuring your site morphs to whatever screen it's on. Wix offers apps for interacting with site visitors and for editing store items, such as products and prices. You can upload photos from your Android or iOS /comparison/146901/android-vs-ios-which-mobile-os-is-best handset, but you can't create and edit sites from the app. Customer Support and Uptime Wix is one of the more intuitive site builders, so there's a good chance you won't need to contact the support team. The Wix editor displays a question mark in its top-right section that launches the well-stocked Help Center. If that doesn't answer your problem, you can submit a support ticket or request a 24/7 callback. That service is, impressively, even available to free accounts. WordPress.com /web-hosting/116569/wordpresscom , on the other hand, just gives its free users access to a knowledge base. When you first contact support, a chatbot asks for your site information and guides you through a series of steps to resolve your issue. When you reach a point where the text robot can no longer help you, you'll see a Contact Us section with two options: Submit a Ticket and Talk to a Support Agent. I chose the latter and was prompted to enter my phone number and the issue. I asked how to schedule posts, and a customer service representative contacted us roughly a minute later. The rep kindly walked us through the process. Website uptime is a vital element of web hosting. If your site goes down, clients or customers cannot find you or access your products or services. Finding a reliable web host to keep your site running is in your best interest. Otherwise, customers may go elsewhere, and they might never come back. Wix displays its uptime status https://status.wix.com/ on its site along with a detailed log of past incidents. The readings indicate extremely stable performance, with rare drops below 100%, so you can count on Wix as a rock-solid foundation for your website. Final Thoughts Wix Website Builder Review: Top-Tier Site Creation With Deep Customization Wix is a website builder with strong design features, robust e-commerce options, AI tools, and Photoshop-like image editing, letting you easily create beautiful and potentially profitable sites.