Wix Review

Their abundance of features combined with their excellent simplicity of use makes Wix one of the top-rated website builders online. Navigating the backend is incredibly simple, and within minutes, you will already know how to use most of the features. If you can drag and drop files on your computer, you can build a Wix site. Not only is it straightforward to use, but it also packs a lot of punch with tons of handy features. From various designing tools to customer support options, including live chat and forums, you’ll never run out of tools to implement on your website. If you’re looking for an easy-to-use website builder that truly delivers quality results, Wix is definitely the way to go.

Ease of Use

Wix is all about user-friendliness. The entire idea behind this website builder was to create a beginner-friendly platform that would allow individuals without any coding skills to build stunning websites. Whether you’ve built thousands of websites or even if you just started using a computer, putting a website together with Wix is simple. All you have to do is choose a theme, edit the content and images to your liking, or drag and drop different features to the locations of your choice. If even that sounds too complicated, you can use the Wix ADI feature, which automatically builds a beautiful website for you by answering a few simple questions. Anyone can build a professional-looking website by using Wix.

Functionality

Wix is filled with amazing features, allowing you to create beautiful websites with ease. You can easily add scrolling effects, media galleries, animations, video backgrounds and choose from hundreds of different fonts. The themes at Wix are fully responsive, making them look great on all devices. Along with tons of designing features, Wix also provides you with excellent tools to manage your site, such as professional email accounts that match your domain, SSL certificates, live chat tools so you can provide customer support, website analytics, and much more. Wix also provides many features tailored to your specific websites, such as ticket-selling tools for event sites, online ordering for restaurant sites, and shipping calculators for online stores.

With the templates, you get a pretty good amount of integrated features ready to go right from the start. However, you might not be able to find a template that has everything you need. When you find yourself missing a feature, you can often integrate it into your Wix website using one of their free or paid plugins. They have tons of apps to choose from, including forums, speed boosters, event calendars, pop-up creators, rating widgets, chart builders, and more. Many of the plugins are available for free, but some of them are premium apps, which in most cases require you to pay a monthly fee. However, the paid apps are often much cheaper than most of the similar platforms to Wix. The basic apps, such as forums, generally work as promised and function smoothly. However, you may encounter some technical issues when installing more complex tools such as online booking apps.

Wix themes truly simplify the process of building a website. By implementing a template, you hit the ground running with all sorts of sections already built, such as the navigation bar, the contact page, the homepage layout, and more. With hundreds of free templates to choose from, you will easily be able to find a theme that resonates perfectly with your business. Wix has themes for businesses, online stores, photography sites, video sites, music sites, and much more. All of their templates are free to use and easy to customize. If you don’t like the template you installed, it’s simple to change themes without losing any of the content you already integrated. This is incredibly important if you want to change templates further down the line when your website is all set up with pages upon pages of content. One downside is that their templates are heavily dependent on JavaScript, which causes a slight reduction in loading speed. However, there shouldn’t be any noticeable difference for most simple websites.

A fast-loading high-performance website is what every web admin seeks when choosing a website builder. Unfortunately, Wix does not excel when it comes to speed optimizations and performance. They offer decent uptime but remain below average, and their website loading speeds are far behind the competition. Numerous issues cause Wix sites to load slower than average, resulting in losing tons of traffic. However, they don’t have very many incidents and complaints against them, which shows that they are a reliable website builder platform that takes issues very seriously. They work hard towards resolving issues quickly when they arise, but it would be nice to see them put more effort towards optimizing the code for faster loading times. It’s important to note that the user can perform some optimizations, so even though Wix isn’t fully optimized, to begin with, you can enhance the speed and performance as long as you know what you’re doing.

Uptime

The uptime at Wix is guaranteed at 99.80%, a little below the industry average of 99.99%. Additionally, Wix does not provide any uptime records to back up its guarantee. As a website owner, uptime is critical. You’ll want to be sure that your website is rarely offline, and when it does go offline, you’ll want to be sure that it returns promptly. The last thing you want is to lose customers because they can’t load your website. However, they do perform regular server maintenance and backup all your data to be restored in the unlikely event that data would be lost or corrupted.

Incident Frequency

Monitoring recent complaints is a great way to see what currently works with a platform and what they are currently having issues with. Some of the most recent Wix complaints include having issues loading websites in Safari, having troubles with email notifications, and some minor payment issues with the Stripe payment gateway. Overall, Wix has an above-average incident frequency, which means they do not receive as many complaints as their competitors. In the past month, Wix had 2 service disruptions and a total of 3 service outages. Their tech support is also very quick at resolving issues, so outages do not last very long when they do occur.

Speed

Website speed is a crucial aspect worth considering when choosing a website builder. Google and other search engines are putting an increasing amount of importance on site speed. Additionally, customers are much more likely to remain on a site that loads quickly than a slow website. After testing multiple websites using Wix, we determined that they are below average. Their online stores, basic blogs, and image gallery sites all scored similarly. Wix is a feature-heavy platform, and the drag and drop builder causes a lack of code optimization. Several components had a far-future expiration date. There were many external Javascript scripts and external stylesheets. Many components were not being served via a content delivery network (CDN). They weren’t cookie-free. Numerous DNS lookups could be reduced to speed up loading times significantly.

Quality customer support is a huge aspect of any business. Website builder platforms are no different, and having a quality team to back you up whenever you run into problems is necessary. Wix performed well with our customer support testing phase, but they did lack in a few areas. For instance, the lack of a live chat support team made the waiting times a little longer for phone and email inquiries. Additionally, email support can only answer simple questions, leaving you with no other choice but to contact them via phone when dealing with more complex issues. Wix does offer a great help section on their website with loads of useful documentation. With a straightforward interface that’s very beginner-friendly, these guides and tutorials should often have the answers that you seek. Wix support is good, but it would be nice to have a live chat option, and they should definitely consider hiring more phone and email support agents to cut down on the waiting period.

Support Availability

The support team at Wix is average in terms of availability. They offer 10/5 support - they are in-office Monday to Friday from 5 am to 5 pm Pacific Time. Most website builders offer 24/7 support, making Wix a slightly less reliable option for people who often need immediate assistance at any given moment. For instance, if you plan on building an eCommerce website, you’ll want to have access to phone support at all times in case time-sensitive issues arise, such as issues with processing payments, loading certain product pages, or other similar problems. However, if you plan on creating a simple blog, immediate assistance becomes much less of a requirement, making their 10/5 support less of a problem.

Speed of Response

We made multiple attempts to contact the Wix customer support team. When contacting them via phone, we experienced a medium wait time for simple questions. Email support resulted in wait times of 12 to 28 hours. Live chat support is not available, so this causes more people to contact them via phone, causing a longer waiting period before being connected to an agent. Wix is one of the largest website builders online, so they have lots of customers, yet they have the same amount of support agents compared to competitors with 10 times fewer customers. They also offer a wide variety of pricing plans and features, which leads to a much higher need for customer support. Their response speed is average but could be much better by adding live chat and additional phone support agents.

Friendliness & Helpfulness

A quality support team that can help resolve issues with ease is a must for any webmaster. When making attempts to contact them, we found their support team to be quite friendly and helpful. They were able to help us out rather quickly when dealing with basic issues. However, they could not fix more complicated problems. This should not be an issue for most Wix users since the platform is very straightforward and intuitive. Furthermore, Wix users do not need very complex websites, so most issues are simple to fix.

Telephone Support

Wix offers phone support for immediate assistance, but this service is only available 5 days per week. If you run into issues that require immediate attention during weekends, you will have to wait until the following business day, which could be problematic for some users. You can also request a call-back from a customer support agent, and by doing so, they will call you back during hours of operation. This is useful if you don’t want to waste time waiting to get connected to an agent. The wait time was average - it wasn’t lightning-fast, but we did have to wait a few minutes each time before talking to a support agent.

Email Support

When dealing with issues that don’t require immediate attention, email support is always a useful support channel. We had an easy time getting helpful answers to basic inquiries, but more complex questions were left unresolved. Simple questions asked via email were usually handled within 1 business day and sometimes in as little as 12 hours, but when they didn’t answer for us, we were encouraged to contact tech support by phone. When asking simple questions, the emails were always well-written and easy to understand.

Overall, Wix has an excellent pricing structure that allows you to easily benefit from an affordable website online without compromising many features. In fact, their free version is suitable for many people who just want a simple blog or content site. Most people will find the first two premium plans to be perfect for most needs. Having an entire pricing plan dedicated to online store owners also simplifies building an eCommerce, plus the lack of transaction fees allows store owners to save even more. Wix truly excels when it comes to affordability, and they still manage to deliver outstanding features.

Plans Pricing

Wix is well-known for its free plan, allowing you to build an entire site without paying a dime. However, this plan comes with certain limitations, the biggest limitation being Wix promotions being displayed. Upgrading to premium plans is the best way to get the most out of your Wix site. There are various plans available, starting with the “Connect Domain” plan, which allows you to use your own domain name. The next plan is “Combo”, and this one gives you the additional benefit of removing Wix promotions. The “Unlimited” plan gives you unlimited bandwidth along with premium apps for free. The “eCommerce” plan is the ideal solution for online stores, and the “VIP” plan gives you everything you would get from other plans combined along with priority response support.

Transaction Fees

When launching an online store, the most overlooked cost are the transaction fees. These tiny little fees truly add up when you start selling more products, and they can become quite costly when choosing a website builder that charges high rates. Fortunately, Wix is very affordable - they have no transaction fees at all. No matter how many products you sell via their eCommerce platform, you will never have to give them any money. This is well above average, making Wix an excellent choice for business owners who want to launch an online store without overspending.

Other Fees

Wix does not have any additional fees other than their paid subscription plans and some of their premium apps. Every other feature on Wix is free to use. This is well above average since many website builders similar to Wix use every possible occasion to charge users additional fees. They also do not have any hidden fees - you will always pay exactly what they state in their pricing details.

Wix is one of the leading all-in-one website builders on the internet. Best-known for its simplicity of use, Wix often becomes the main starting point for new web admins or individuals who wish to launch a website for their business without learning much code. As a drag and drop website builder, you can easily create stunning website pages with just a few clicks. Users need to choose from the available features and drag them to the location they want on their web page. Features include content blocks, sharing buttons, custom forms, video backgrounds, scrolling effects, and much more.

Along with being one of the best website builders for beginners, Wix also delivers state-of-the-art features for advanced users. Easily switch from the drag and drop Wix Editor to Wix Code, which allows you to create robust sites with serverless, hassle-free coding. However, with over 500 pre-built templates, coding isn’t necessary unless you want to perform major customizations. Templates include options for all business types, including restaurants, online stores, booking sites, music sharing sites, and so much more.

Having launched in 2006, Wix reached its first million users by 2009. Just 5 years later, they were already at over 50 million users, and by 2017, Wix had over 110 million active users. Co-founders Avishai Abrahami, Nadav Abrahami, and Giora Kaplan came up with the idea for Wix one random day on the beach. They realized how difficult and costly building websites was. Hence, they decided to offer consumers a simple way to build an online presence without any coding skills without spending a dime.

Wix headquarters are located in Israel, but they also have offices worldwide, including in the USA, Lithuania, Germany, Ukraine, and Brazil. Today, Wix has over 2,500 employees, and they are constantly growing. Although they have already achieved worldwide success, they aren’t slowing down - the aim to become the best website builder platform online.

Wix originally aimed to create a platform that would allow beginners to build beautiful websites without any prior coding skills. They achieved this goal, and they also managed to get there by offering completely free websites. If you’re looking for an affordable way to set up a website online quickly, Wix is the way to go. Not only is it free and effortless to use, but Wix also delivers professional results. Wix websites look, feel, and function like sites that were hardcoded by professional programmers. Best of all, their hundreds of free templates combined with their numerous plugins allow you to get websites looking exactly the way you want them to. Strong SEO makes Wix even better by helping you gain more traffic organically from search engines. Furthermore, their customer support team is very reliable, making Wix an ideal solution for most web admins. However, it’s the user interface that truly makes Wix shine. This drag and drop website builder takes just minutes to understand, and since it’s so easy to use, you’ll very rarely run into any issues. If you need a great-looking website with good performance but you’re on a tight budget, Wix is the solution for you.