Please don't use Wix - She Soars Digital

One of the first things small business owners need to do is launch a website. It might be tempting, but please don’t use Wix. Read on to find out why.

Please don't use Wix to build your business website.

Most small business owners understand that they need to start creating an online web presence and, more likely than not, that means launching a website.

Some nerds (like me) jump at the idea of starting a new website, but for many, the thought of getting techy fills them with dread. If you’re more the latter than the former, don’t worry – you’re not alone! Launching a website for your business need not be difficult or expensive.

Whatever you do, though, please don’t use Wix to launch your business website.

I know, I know. Wix looks so tempting because they make it look so easy. You can have a site up in approximately 10 minutes. They do everything for you. They’ve even got supermodel Karlie Kloss to be their spokesperson so it must be awesome, right? (Well, I guess that depends on how you feel about Karlie Kloss.)

Why I don’t recommend Wix

The problem with Wix, in my opinion, and why I don’t recommend that my clients use the platform, is three-fold:

It’s expensive! You’re going to pay premium prices, both to host your site on their servers and to rent your domain name. Maintaining a website need not be that expensive.
Yes, Wix does have design templates you can use to build your site, but unless you know how to customize them, your site is still going to look fairly generic.
Should your business expand and you outgrow Wix, it’s a pain in the butt to transfer to another platform. Most content management systems work together at a basic level, but Wix makes it more difficult than it needs to be. (Likely because they’d rather ensure that you keep paying their exorbitant prices.)

How much does Wix cost?

Don't use Wix: It's too expensive! Here's how much Wix costs.

It is imperative to have your own URL for your business. Having a website along the lines of “thisismybusiness.wix.com” looks unprofessional. Therefore, if you choose to host your website with Wix and have a custom domain, the cheapest amount you’ll pay is $11 per month, for a total of $132 per year. You’ll get your URL (domain) free for the first year, but after that you’ll pay $25 per year, which brings your yearly costs up to $157. Ouch.

The best Wix alternative

Wix is well-known, but if you trust me enough to not go down that route, the best Wix alternative is to get a self-hosted WordPress site.

A whatty what?!

While that may sound confusing, it’s really not that bad.

WordPress is the backbone of a website, just like Wix. They’re both considered Content Management Systems (or CMS if you’re into lingo). It’s where your site will be created. Self-hosted means that instead of paying a company like Wix to host your site, you’ll have your pick of all of the web hosts in the world, and believe me, there are a ton. I’m happy to talk to you about any and all of them, except Bluehost. Bluehost sucks.

The one web host I recommend to nearly all of my clients is GreenGeeks. GreenGeeks offers great customer service, great uptime, a free domain for as long as you host with them, and they’re incredibly budget-friendly. Currently, you can lockdown hosting for as little as $2.95 per month when you prepay for three years upfront. Throw in the free domain, and you’re paying less than $116 for three years, or $38.66 per year. Compare that to the $157 minimum per year with Wix!

What about designing a site?

It’s true that Wix provides you the tools to design a site quite quickly, but as mentioned above, the Wix themes are very limited.

You might roll your eyes when I recommend hiring someone and think the fees will be exorbitant but depending on who you hire (cough*me*cough), you can get a site that’s completely customized to how you want it to look at an affordable price. When you hire a designer, you can get all of the bells and whistles, like pop-up forms and custom fonts, and even search engine optimization. (After all, what good is a pretty site going to do you if nobody can find it?!)

If you balk at paying a designer, consider this: Time is money. Would you rather spend time working on your business, or trying to figure out how to build a website?

A WordPress site will grow with you

One of the very many reasons I love WordPress is because the ways you can use it are positively endless. Perhaps you’ll start with a fairly basic site, but then down the road want to start selling items. That can be done quickly – and for free – using WordPress! Perhaps you’ll want to teach a course. You can do that on WordPress, too. The options with WordPress are infinite and you won’t have to pay more just to consider the option of doing something cool, like you will with Wix.