Starting a new blog and can’t decide whether to use Wix or WordPress for blogging?

I’ve been blogging since 2015. I started out with Wix, then five years later I switched to WordPress. While I found Wix very easy to use and never had any big problems with it, I really wish I had moved to WordPress sooner.

To help you choose the right blogging platform for your needs, I’ve highlighted the pros and cons of both Wix and WordPress. In this post I also share my honest thoughts on each platform and recommend the one which I think is better suited for your blogging needs.

Note: The opinions and information presented in this post are based on my own experience as a former Wix user and an owner of a WordPress site.

Wix for blogging

Pros

– Setting up a Wix account is super easy. You get your website builder, web hosting and domain service all in one place.

– Wix’s drag-and-drop builder is very user-friendly. Besides selecting a template for your website, you can also build individual pages according to your preferences.

– You don’t need to worry about updates, back-ups of your site and optimising images. Wix takes care of all these things for you.

– Wix walks you through the setting up of your site with an interactive checklist. The step-by-step guide helps you get listed on Google, set your keywords and write your homepage’s SEO title and description, among other important first steps.

– Your Wix account comes with a lot of other cool and useful tools, including a video maker, a logo maker, templates for social media posts and email marketing (a newsletter service for your audience).

Cons

– Wix’s paid plans, which include premium features such as your own domain and an ads-free site, are a bit pricey. The prices go up after your first year on a paid plan.

– Besides paying for a premium plan, you might also need to pay extra for other features, including a custom email address using your domain name (e.g. daniela@grumpycamel.com).

– With a Wix website, you are quite limited in terms of apps and tools. You can only use apps that are available on the Wix app market.

– The Wix blog is very basic. There is only one blog post template and it’s not very customisable. It also has limited features, although Wix has slowly been developing the Blog app and introducing new features.

– I experienced several glitches when I had a Wix blog (for instance, links in my posts would sometimes stop working or the blog would be down for a for a good few hours). While these issues were eventually resolved, they impacted my site performance and traffic.

WordPress for blogging

Note: This section is about WordPress.org, not WordPress.com. With WordPress.org, you own your website and have full control over it. The WordPress.org software is free, but you will need to find a host for your website.

Pros

– Unlike Wix, WordPress was created as a blogging platform. This means that there are limitless choices when it comes to blog templates and blogging tools (many of which are free).

– A WordPress site is cheaper. You get to choose your hosting service (the company that will put your WordPress website online) and a domain name provider (some hosting companies offer a free domain name with their paid plans). There are many web hosting companies out there which offer reasonably priced packages, so you can choose the one that best suits your needs and budget.

Recommendation: My husband and I use A2 Hosting for our WordPress sites. Their plans are reasonably priced for first-time customers. Their support team is also very quick and helpful.

– Besides being able to choose your own hosting service, you can also use different website builders for your WordPress site, such as Beaver Builder, Divi and Elementor. Similar to Wix’s own page builder, these drag-and-drop web builders allow you to design your own pages and blog post templates.

Recommendation: I use Elementor for Grumpy Camel. It is very user-friendly (though not as simple as the Wix website builder) and the pro version comes with a lot of added features and customization options.

Cons

– The downside of owning a WordPress website is that you will need to take care of all updates, back-ups and important plugins. For instance, while Wix regularly carries out updates and optimizes any images that you upload to your site, with WordPress you need to check for regular updates and download a plugin, such as EWWW Image Optimizer, to optimise your own images and make your site load faster.

– Many web hosting providers charge higher package fees once your first subscription with them is up. After a year or two with a particular web host, you might want to sign up with a new host provider to take advantage of first-time customer fees again. This means you will need to migrate your WordPress site to your new host, which might not always be that simple.

– WordPress has a steeper learning curve. While with Wix you can literally have a blog up and running within an hour or two, with WordPress you need to spend a few days familiarising yourself with the software and trying out different themes, plugins and website builders.

So, Wix or WordPress for blogging?

My story in a few words…

When I created my Wix site in 2015, their blog app was very, very basic. In fact, I (stupidly) created a page for each post that I wrote, and wasted hours trying to make the formatting of all my posts identical. Moreover, Wix wasn’t very SEO-friendly back then. To be fair, Wix has made several improvements over the the last few years and some of my posts had started to rank very well on Google.

As my blog got bigger, I considered moving to WordPress several times, but I kept putting it off because I was scared that building and running a WordPress blog would be a very complicated process. Well, I was wrong.

Five years and 200 blog posts later, I finally switched from Wix to WordPress. I am in love with the software, particularly the latest block editor, and my website looks more professional than before. It also loads quicker (with Wix I had no control over my site speed) and my posts are performing better.

In my humble opinion…

WordPress.org is the better option for bloggers, even for those who are not very tech-savvy. Yes, it might take a while to master WordPress and build your site, but there many great resources out there. For instance, Elementor has several tutorial videos to help you build your website.

I think Wix is better suited for small businesses and artists, such as restaurants and photographers. Meanwhile, the Wix blog may be great if you just want to blog as a hobby or without having to worry about the technical side of your site. But if you are planning to start a professional blog, then WordPress.org is the go-to platform.

Thinking of switching from Wix to WordPress? Check out my step-by-step guide.