Wix vs WordPress: ease or control for a business website?

One is a closed, hosted product run by a single company. The other is open-source software you can host anywhere, or rent through WordPress.com. That difference decides cost, upkeep and how easily you can leave.

WordPress or Wix: which one fits your situation

Pick WordPress if you publish a lot, want control over hosting, or expect to need a specific plugin someday. On WordPress.com the Personal plan is $4 a month on yearly billing and already lets you install plugins from a marketplace of over 60,000. Self-hosted WordPress costs nothing as software, but you pay a host and look after updates yourself.

Pick Wix if you want one company to handle hosting, security and features, and you would rather drag things into place than learn a dashboard. Wix's yearly plans are Light $17, Core $29, Business $39 and Business Elite $159 a month, and taking payments starts at Core.

There is a third path. We.Inc writes the site for you from a chat description, and you edit the result by clicking, by asking, or in its code editor. It has a free plan of up to 3 template sites with no AI; AI building starts at $20 a month.

Wix, WordPress and We.Inc compared on cost, upkeep and exit

	Wix	WordPress	We.Inc
Starting price	Free plan; Light $17/mo yearly	WordPress.com free plan; Personal $4/mo yearly; self-hosted software is free	Free: 3 template sites, no AI; Starter $20/mo
Paid plan ladder	Light $17, Core $29, Business $39, Business Elite $159	Personal $4, Premium $8, Business $25, Commerce $45 (WordPress.com, yearly)	Starter $20, Pro $49, Max $99
Extending the site	Wix's own business tools and app market	Over 60,000 plugins on WordPress.com plans	Ask in chat, or edit the React code
Who handles updates	Wix	WordPress.com, or you on self-hosted	We.Inc hosts what it builds
Taking payments	Core and above	Payment buttons from Premium; WooCommerce store on Commerce	Store panel with your own Stripe account
Content export	CSV for CMS items, products and contacts; blog posts not exportable	XML file of posts, pages and comments (Tools, Export)	Code as a ZIP on any plan; GitHub export on Max

Prices as of October 2026 from each vendor's pricing page (linked in sources), in US dollars per month on yearly billing; WordPress.com and Wix add tax, and Wix says prices vary by location.

Pros and cons

Wix

Best for: Owners who want hosting, design and business tools handled by one vendor

Price: Free plan; Light $17, Core $29, Business $39, Business Elite $159 per month on yearly billing (October 2026; varies by country)

Pros: Bookings, store and marketing tools are part of the paid plans, with nothing to install; Wix runs the hosting and security, so there are no plugin or core updates to schedule; A 14-day money-back guarantee on Premium plans

Cons: Light, the cheapest tier, cannot take payments; Leaving means rebuilding; Wix blog posts have no export tool

WordPress

Best for: Publishers and anyone who wants open software they can move between hosts

Price: WordPress.com: Personal $4, Premium $8, Business $25, Commerce $45 per month billed yearly, plus tax (October 2026). Self-hosted: free software; you pay for hosting, a domain and any premium themes or plugins

Pros: Plugins from a marketplace of over 60,000, even on Personal; Your posts and pages leave as a standard XML file most platforms can read; Business adds SFTP, SSH, WP-CLI and GitHub deployments for developers

Cons: More settings to learn than a drag-and-drop builder; On self-hosted WordPress, updates, backups and security are your job

We.Inc

Best for: Someone who wants a finished business site without learning either a dashboard or a canvas

Price: Free plan: up to 3 template sites on a we.inc address, no AI. AI building from $20/mo (Starter, 250 credits). Pro $49/mo, Max $99/mo.

Pros: The site comes back written and laid out from a plain description; Its code is real React and TypeScript, downloadable as a ZIP on every plan; Blog posts and listings live in a CMS panel you edit without spending AI credits

Cons: A newer platform with far fewer add-ons than WordPress's plugin library; The free plan offers templates only; AI work needs a paid plan

Plugins versus a closed feature set

WordPress's strength is that almost any feature exists as a plugin someone else maintains: membership systems, booking forms, multilingual tools, SEO helpers. WordPress.com's pricing page now lists plugin installs from the Personal plan up, which used to be a reason to pay for Business. The trade-off is that every plugin is another thing to keep updated and another place where two add-ons can clash.

Wix takes the opposite approach. Its plans bundle a marketing suite, scheduling and eCommerce at set tiers: basic eCommerce on Core, standard on Business, advanced on Business Elite. You get fewer choices, but the tools are built to work together and Wix keeps them running.

Cost over three years for a small business site

Using today's yearly list prices, a site that needs to take payments costs $29 a month on Wix Core, or $1,044 over three years before tax. On WordPress.com, Premium at $8 a month adds PayPal and Stripe payment buttons, which comes to $288 over the same period; a full WooCommerce store needs Commerce at $45 a month, or $1,620. Neither figure includes a domain after its free first year.

Self-hosting WordPress can be cheaper or more expensive than both, depending on the host, the theme and how many paid plugins you add. WordPress.com notes its renewals are billed every 12 months and exclude taxes, so check the renewal line at checkout.

When WordPress is the stronger choice

You run a blog, magazine or resource site with hundreds of posts and want categories, tags and comments that work out of the box. You want the freedom to move hosts without rebuilding. You have a developer, or are one, and value SFTP, WP-CLI and Git deployments on the Business plan. You need a niche feature that only a plugin provides.

When Wix is the stronger choice

You are a service business that wants bookings, a few products and a contact form on one bill, and you never want to think about updates. You like placing elements freely on a canvas. You want Wix's AI tools to draft a first version and then adjust it by hand, which every Wix plan includes.

Taking a site out of Wix or WordPress

WordPress.com's export lives under Tools, Export and produces an XML file with posts, pages, comments, categories and tags, plus links to your images rather than the images themselves. Its help page says the file leaves out your theme design, customizations and plugins, and that a migration plugin is needed to move the whole site. Keep the old site public until the new one has copied the media.

Wix's help center offers CSV downloads for CMS collections, store products and contacts, but says blog posts cannot currently be exported to other platforms. Moving a Wix blog therefore means copying posts by hand.

Whichever way you go, write down your current page addresses first and reuse the same paths on the new site, so search results and shared links keep landing on real pages. If you would rather skip the rebuild, We.Inc can take the address of a site you own and produce an editable copy with the same structure and content; ask it to keep the old paths, then connect your domain with one CNAME record.

Start from a template

Sources

Wix: Premium plans and free plan (2026-10-17)
Wix Help Center: exporting blog posts to other platforms (2026-10-17)
Wix Help Center: exporting CMS collection content (2026-10-17)
WordPress.com: Pricing (2026-10-17)
WordPress.com Support: Export your website's content (2026-10-17)
WordPress.org: Download (2026-10-17)
We.Inc: Pricing (2026-10-17)

Frequently asked questions

Is WordPress cheaper than Wix?

On hosted plans, yes. WordPress.com Personal is $4 a month billed yearly, against $17 for Wix Light. For payments, WordPress.com Premium at $8 compares with Wix Core at $29, though Premium offers payment buttons rather than a full store; the WooCommerce Commerce plan is $45. Self-hosted WordPress has free software but you pay a host, and costs vary widely.

Can I install plugins on the cheapest WordPress.com plan?

According to WordPress.com's pricing page in October 2026, yes. Personal, Premium, Business and Commerce all list installing any of over 60,000 plugins from its marketplace or uploading your own. Business adds developer tools such as SFTP, SSH, WP-CLI and GitHub deployments, plus real-time backups.

Is WordPress harder to use than Wix?

For most first-timers it is. WordPress separates content, themes and plugins, and each has its own settings. Wix puts design and content on one canvas and handles hosting for you. WordPress.com now offers a guided builder that drafts a site through a chat, which narrows the gap, but the dashboard still has more to learn.

Can I move my Wix site to WordPress?

Not as a working copy. You can download Wix CMS collections, products and contacts as CSV files and import them with WordPress tools or plugins, but Wix says blog posts cannot be exported, so posts are copied over by hand. Pages and design are rebuilt in a WordPress theme, then you point your domain at the new site.

Which is better for SEO, Wix or WordPress?

Both give you page titles, descriptions and sitemaps, and both rank when the content is good. WordPress offers more SEO plugins and finer control over technical details, which helps large content sites. Wix includes its SEO tools in every plan without add-ons, which suits owners who want sensible defaults.

Build your own site

Related guides

Webflow vs WordPress compared

How we research, test and update this page: our editorial policy. We.Inc is our own product.