Feb 13

Does Wix own your Website?

Hosting companies and developers often nay-say Wix for a variety of reasons that are almost always untrue. One of my clients who has a Wix website recently received this advice from a hosting company:

Unfortunately Wix is just the worst and while they trick you into thinking its cheap and easy to use they end up having a lot of hidden fees and the worst part is you can never leave them They own your site and will not let you move it. ~ Quoted from a Hosting Company Sales Email

This statement is untrue.

First, to clear up any misunderstanding, Wix does not "own" the websites built on the platform. The owner of any sites or content is the owner of the Wix account under which the content was created. Wix does not keep your website content or domain hostage.

As a Website Designer for over 20 years, I have worked in tons of different website platforms including Shopify, Drupal, Joomla, Squarespace, Wordpress and Wix.

What is my my favorite platform for ease-of-use? Wix. Which platform to my clients like? Wix.

As mentioned, the hosting company above is wrong about Wix “owning” your site, you can move to a different platform just like with any platform. Note, it does takes time to move, export/import, and rebuild any website content on any new platform whether going from Wordpress to Squarespace or Wix to Wordpress or Wordpress to Wix. Changing platforms is never a simple click of a button, but it is possible no matter what platform you are on.

So, don't worry about Wix "owning" your website, you can move platforms anytime you want, Wix does not own it. However, you will need to rebuild your website on the new platform (and possibly import blog posts, as well as any images). You can download all your website images from Wix, and even export out blog posts if needed. Page content can be copied and pasted from platform to platform. Is that much different from moving from Wordpress to Drupal or Squarespace? Nope. Also, while Wix (along with everything) has gotten more expensive over the past several years, it is still very competitive (Most of my Wix clients are paying about $11-$14/month for basic sites, or clients with online store ecommerce websites pay in the range of $20-30/month. Wix also often offers sales and multi-year discounts so businesses can take advantage of the deals to keep Wix's hosting costs low.

I also find that Wix seems to perform as good if not better in Search Engines than Wordpress or other platforms – SEO (search engine optimization) is all in how you optimize your content, not the platform. I think that because Wix is so easy to edit, it helps people keep their website fresh with new content pages and posts, which is always good for SEO.

If you're scared to edit your website because it is confusing or you're afraid you might "break it," then Wix is for you. There is even a handy site history option so you can view and restore previously saved versions of your site, not to mention undos and redos at a click of a button. I have had way too many clients who've come to me with a Wordpress or other platform website that they struggled to edit or even use, and their websites had gone stagnant for many years. Your website should be easy to use and update – that's what it's for! With every website I design, I do a training to show how to make the edits on the site, and also offer lots of custom training videos to make it easy as can be. Wix is quite intuitive after you get a brief introduction to the editor.

Wix saves businesses time as it eliminates the maintenance hassle of managing software updates or plugin upgrades. Wix hosting includes all of that by their expert team, so your business can focus on your website content, not the website platform software.

I still work on and develop Wordpress sites for a few clients (and for a few years back in the day all I would do was Wordpress sites!) – but they take more than twice as long to design, and so they cost twice as much and require a lot of ongoing maintenance. View my related post about What do Wix Designers Charge » Wordpress websites are also not easy to redesign or customize individual page designs like on Wix. Wix's WYSIWG editor (what you see is what you get) is by far the best current platform for customizable page design and ease of use. At least that’s what my experience has been, anyway, and I've worked on a thousands of websites over the years!

All that said, sometimes Wordpress or Shopify or other platforms can be better for highly customized business needs, Wix works perfectly for a majority of my clients, but I always consult with each client to determine what the best website platform is for their needs.