Wix.com review

First impression

Wix is a website builder, a tool for designing, creating, and publishing a website with minimal coding. Wix’s intuitive browser-based wizards make building a gorgeous, vibrant, and professional website simple, even if you’ve never created one before.

With tons of templates, an easy-to-use yet powerful editor, and a massive app market, you can create pretty much anything with Wix. Whether it’s an online portfolio, a personal blog, a small online store, or a booming business site, Wix has got you covered.

Wix’s onboarding experience includes the option to use its Artificial Design Intelligence (ADI) system or jump straight to creating a template-based website in the editor.

Wix ADI is a wizard that asks you some questions about the type of website you envision. Based on your answers, Wix will create a template website for you with all the features you need. For example, if you specify your plan to sell products through a subscription model, your website will start with an online shop set up to sell subscriptions, saving you precious time.

Trial period

Wix works differently from most other well-known website and online store builders, because you can technically use it for free indefinitely, via its free plan.

As a one-stop site-building solution, Wix comes coupled with a cloud hosting service and a domain name. However, to connect a custom domain you’ll have to choose one of the paid plans - with the free plan, it is a Wix domain or nothing. Meanwhile, all paid plans include a free domain for a year and they cover the most popular domain names such as .com, .net, and .org.

Billing cycle

As for paid plans, Wix provides four plan options (plus a bespoke enterprise option). The most pocket-friendly plan is “Light” and it starts at $16 per month when billed yearly, but if you’re planning to create anything but a small personal blog, we recommend skipping it. It comes with small storage of just 2GB and no ecommerce functionality.

With all paid plans you can choose between monthly, annual, and biennial billing cycles - as you suspect, the longer you commit, the more money you can save. 

While there are no free trials, all paid plans are backed by a 14-day money-back guarantee. There are also some Wix promo codes that could be useful.

As for supported payment methods, Wix accepts all major credit/debit cards (including Visa, Mastercard, and American Express), PayPal, and SEPA debit payments.

Control panel

Wix doesn’t offer any cPanel or Control Panel system as they only focus on their website builder features. With all its toolbars and buttons, it’s a more intimidating interface than those of most other website builders, but it doesn’t take long to learn how to use it. 

Limits

There’s a free plan that’s great for checking out the service, but it also has some severe limitations. Notably, you can’t use your own domain name, and advertisements will be shown prominently on your website. When it’s time to upgrade, there are no fewer than four plans for personal use and three for business.

As for this reference, we used the Basic Plan.

Connect Domain - offers 1GB Bandwidth, 500MB Storage, 4 Lead Capture form, and 10 Fields per form.

Combo - offers 2GB Bandwidth, 3GB Storage, 4 Lead Capture form, and 10 Fields per form.

Unlimited - offers Unlimited Bandwidth, 10GB Storage, 10 Lead Capture form, and 20 Fields per form.

VIP - offers Unlimited Bandwidth, 35GB Storage, 74 Lead Capture form, and 74 Fields per form.

Security

Wix’s free web hosting keeps your data protected across all platforms. With 24/7 security monitoring, HTTPS and SSL protection - your website is always safe and secure. Our extensive hacker testing and DDoS protection make sure you have secure and reliable servers for your site.

Communication between your browser and the Wix servers is secured via Hyper Text Transfer Protocol (HTTPS) and Transport Layer Security (TLS). All Wix sites have been enabled for HTTPS and TLS. This means your site is secured using a Secure Sockets Layer or SSL Certificate, which protects your and your users’ data.

OS

Wix is a cloud-based platform, which means that it runs on a remote server and not on your local computer. This means that you don’t need to worry about what operating system Wix uses because it will be the same no matter what device you are using. Wix is compatible with all major operating systems, including Windows, Mac, and Linux.

Support

Wix has a well-stocked help center available from within its interface. More complex tools like Velo Dev Mode have their own dedicated help sites, with getting started guides, video tutorials, API (application programming interface) references, and step-by-step exercises.

If you need customer support, your first port of call is a support ticket. You can request a phone call back, too. This is available 24/7, even for free accounts. During our testing, we contacted support several times and always got a call back within five minutes, which is impressive.

Conclusion

The best thing about Wix is that it has something for everyone. So, whether you’re planning to launch a pretty-looking personal blog, a stunning online shop, or a professional site to promote your business - Wix has got you covered. 

And if you wish to add features or additional functionalities to your site, you’ll likely find what you’re looking for in Wix’s app store. However, most third-party apps won’t come free of charge. Also, Wix doesn’t provide unlimited resources with any of its plans, which makes it less ideal for fast-growing and large sites.