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The website building wars are currently dominated by players like WordPress and Joomla, but since 2015 Wix has been steadily growing in popularity to become one of the best website builders, giving them, and especially Joomla, a tough competition. It may seem hard to match up with super popular WordPress, but some site builders do. There’s Magento, a CMS aimed at professional e-commerce site designers who know more code than the average WordPress user. Then there’s Wix, a free website builder for anyone who wants to create a website. Wix may not have the same rep as WordPress, but there are many reasons why it’s still worth checking out. Here are some of the best reasons to use Wix:
1. It’s Free
Wix is completely free to use. You can create a fully-fledged, beautiful, and unique website completely free! If you are too broke to pay for a CMS, Wix is definitely one of the best to use. The free version does contain small Wix adds, but they are not very prominent. You can upgrade the plan later if needed for as little as $5 or $10, for extra features like the ad free version or a custom domain name of your choice. for $5, you can connect a domain you already own to Wix. For $10, you get plenty of storage suited for a small business website. The e-commerce plan starts at $17. You can even build a massive web store for as little as $25 with unlimited features. Overall, the CMS is very affordable to use.
2. No More Flash
Wix used to have a really bad standing with some designers because the CMS used to be based on Flash. It is no longer. Flash is known to have security vulnerabilities and web browsers like Chrome and Firefox have phased out theuse of Flash. Therefore, now you can use Wix without Flash getting in the way. Wix now uses an HTML5 editor that designers can definitely get excited about.
3. Super Easy to Use and Modify
Wix’s main selling point is that the CMS is very easy to use for non-developers. It’s specifically aimed at people who don’t know how to code but still want to design a website. Users can drag and drop components to build a site, literally. Developers call this method “What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get.” You can essentially select whole paragraphs, images, and buttons from a sidebar and drop them onto the web template to create the site. It’s easy and fast to learn. Also, you can see how the website gets built. With WordPress, you will always need to preview content see what the site would look like live. This additional step is not needed for Wix. Plus, with builders like WordPress users still need to know some code to modify content. In some instances, modifications can get quite complicated. Not with Wix. Modifying content is just as easy as dragging and dropping.
4. Superior Templates
Even developers who don’t like Wix praise it’s superior-quality free landing page templates. Wix templates are gorgeous and practical. You can create a unique look for the site without much extra effort. Templates on popular builders can get overused quite fast. That’s why it’s really easy to like the uncommon templates you see on Wix.
5. Fully Integrated and Supported Plugins and Tools
One of the many reasons people love WordPress is the host of plugins and other tools almost freely available to users. WordPress has a massive plugins library, but the problem is most of these tools are developed by third-party programmers. As a result, the tools can get buggy and also pose security risks. The most important advantage with Wix, on the other hand, is that it’s not an open source CMS. Meaning, third-party developers cannot modify the codes for the platform. As a result, all the plugins and tools you get with Wix are completely integrated into the platform to work seamlessly. You won’t see many bugs with Wix tools. Even if you do, you can report the bugs to the Wix tech support who will get it fixed as soon as possible. Open source CMSs don’t offer tech support for most plugins.
6. Artificial Design Intelligence
This futuristic-sounding feature automates most annoying tasks of building a website. Think of it as a smart assistant for building your site. The tool can analyze billions of web layouts and other components to perfect your site based on your preferences. The ADI site builder can recommend changes so your site is more polished. For example, it can suggest a layout or auto-generate a contact form. After building a website with ADI, you can further customize it using the Editor, as well as utilize all other Wix offerings and apps.
7. Automatic Site Backup
When you use Wix, your website will be automatically backed up. So, if you forget to do this important thing, your back is still covered. You will never lose vital information with Wix auto site backup.
Wix also offers excellent customer and technical support. Users can redirect any tech-related questions to the builder team and expect a response. The team fixes pretty much all problems because, as mentioned above, it’s not an open source platform. Wix may not be what professional coders want, but for everyone else, it’s a great option.
Wix recently announced a Beta version of a Product called Wix Code, aimed to allow the creation of more robust websites, thus answering the needs of professional coders and web designers. Wix Code is the first product from Wix that allows you to edit JavaScript code, and essentially access the back end of the website. It also has some interesting features such as internal and external APIs, and easy database management. Could this be the answer to bridge the gap between Wix and pro coders? We’ll have to wait and see, but it’s definitely interesting.
