If you want to move your WIX site over to WordPress, we can help.
WIX is often the go-to website builder for start-ups and smaller companies, but it’s easy to outgrow it as your business grows and you need a more robust platform for content and SEO.
As it accounts for around 3.7% of the CMS market, WIX is pretty popular, but it lacks the flexibility and performance of WordPress in terms of functionality, SEO and e-commerce.
We can move you from WIX to WordPress
Why might you want to move to WordPress from the WIX platform.
The larger your site gets, the more functions and management it will need.
While WIX might be great for smaller sites, WordPress is more of an enterprise-level platform, and it provides better opportunities for improving the functions of your site, the design and UX, the SEO and more.
If your site is getting larger by the month, it’s important to plan a move to WordPress, as the longer you leave it, the longer it will take to move everything over to WordPress.
In a nutshell, the sooner you get your site moved to WordPress, the sooner you’ll start to see the benefits of doing so.
Is WordPress more complicated than WIX?
Yes and no. If your WordPress site is designed and built correctly, you will find it more intuitive and easier to use than WIX, and they’ll be far less faff involved in getting your site how you want it.
As WIX is a managed platform, you don’t have to worry about updates, but the issue is what happens when WIX makes global changes that your current site does not support.
In general, WordPress is not any harder to use than WIX, but the benefits are much wider.
WIX vs WordPress when it comes to SEO.
WIX has a set of SEO tools, but they tend to be rather basic and don’t allow the flexibility you get with WordPress.
If SEO is important to your site (and should be), WordPress provides a better option for fine-tuning and improving your SEO.
The general reasons for this are:
- Your theme in WordPress can be fully optimised for speed and technical SEO – you don’t have access to this sort of optimisation in WIX
- Your content: plugins like YOAST, AIO SEO or Rank Math provide advanced on-page SEO options for your content
- Additional plugins like Internal Link Optimiser and 301 Redirects make it even easier to enhance further your SEO
Extending your site.
WordPress is famous for its free and paid plugins – there are 1000s of ways to extend your WordPress site to add additional functions and tools.
WIX also has Apps that can be added to the site at an additional cost, but you don’t have the options you have in WordPress.
You can also have custom plugins built for WordPress if your site has some custom requirements that can’t be solved via an off-the-shelf route.
At the time of writing, WIX has around 300 apps, and WordPress has around 58,000.
Flexibility.
WIX has around 800 pre-designed templates that you can use for your site, but it’s important to remember that the templates are directly linked to your site.
Once you have chosen a template, you are stuck with it unless you want to redesign your entire site from scratch.
On the other hand, a well-built WordPress site separates the content from the theme and mark-up, meaning if you want to redesign your site later on, you don’t have to start again.
Access to the core theme files in WordPress also means that custom templates, pages and layouts can be built that do exactly what you want them to do; you don’t have to bend your site into what the CMS has to offer.
WordPress also offers off-the-shelf themes, but you can find yourself with the same issue of becoming tied to your theme over time.
This is why bespoke WordPress development is often the best route if you want your site to be future-proofed.
Considering a move from Wix to WordPress?
There are many reasons to move your site from WIX to WordPress, but here are some specific reasons to consider a migration:
- Your WIX site is getting (or planning to) grow extensively
- You need complex e-commerce solutions
- SEO is important to your site
- You want more control over the design and UX
- You want to own your site outright
These are just a few reasons to move to WordPress.
Using an automated migration tool to move from WIX to WP.
There are automated tools that can migrate your content from WIX to a new WordPress site, but these can often be a little hit and miss, and we’d only recommend using these if you’ve 100s of pages of content on WIX.
The time required to rework the content then can be as much as if the migration were done manually.
Tools like CMS2CMS offer these services, and we can run an initial check for you to see just how well an automated migration may go.
Manual Migrations from WIX to WordPress.
There’s a good chance you will want to redesign your site when moving from WIX, so it’s often a good time to consider all your content as part of that process.
As it’s easy to build out pages in WordPress, it’s often a lot quicker than you may think to build out pages by copy-pasting content from your current site.
Things to consider when moving from WIX to WP.
- Design and Customization: List out the design requirements you need before you ask for a quote; a good WordPress agency should be able to provide references to alternatives in WordPress together with the improvements.
- Content Migration: As mentioned above, content migration is a serious consideration for a larger WIX site.
- SEO Considerations: If your current Wix website has good search engine rankings, you’ll want to preserve that SEO value during the migration. We can set up proper redirects from old URLs to new ones in WordPress to maintain SEO rankings. Consider using SEO plugins and configuring them to optimize your new WordPress site.
- Hosting and Domain: With Wix, hosting is included, but with WordPress, you’ll need to find a reliable hosting provider and set up your hosting account. Additionally, you’ll need to manage your domain and DNS settings appropriately to ensure your WordPress site functions correctly. Again, this is something that we can help with.
- Functionality and Plugins: WordPress offers a vast array of plugins that can enhance your website’s functionality. We’ll research and identify the plugins you need to replicate your current features on Wix, such as contact forms, e-commerce capabilities, analytics, or social media integration.
- Learning Curve: Moving from Wix to WordPress may require learning and adjustment. The sites we build are very intuitive to use, so this flattens the learning curve and makes it very easy for you to manage your content.
- Maintenance and Updates: Unlike Wix, where updates and maintenance are handled for you, WordPress requires regular updates of themes, plugins, and the core software. Consider the ongoing effort required to keep your WordPress site secure, up-to-date, and functioning optimally. WordPress is famously easy to update, with most updates now running automatically, but we can sort this for you via a very cost-effective WordPress support package.
- Budget: There are larger upfront costs with WordPress regarding the design, build and optimisation, but the increase in new sales you can achieve via improved SEO means this is an investment and should provide a return.
Need to keep your existing design?
There are two options when moving to WordPress:
- Keep your design the same as your current WIX site
- Use this move as an option to rework the design and improve UX
If you are happy with your current design, we’ll use it and rebuild it in WordPress.
If you want to make small improvements, we can do that as part of the project.
Similarly, if you want to start from scratch with a complete redesign, we can quote for that.
Migration is a great time to evaluate your design and UX.
Maintaining your link structure and SEO when you move from WIX to WordPress.
WordPress has a very flexible permalink structure, so your WIX URL structure can be replicated in your new WordPress site where possible.
We’ll check your rankings for all your current URLs and can advise on the impact of any changes and redirects that may be required for your new site.
Getting started with a move from WIX to WordPress.
Expression Engine to WordPress migrations are large projects and take time.
We’ve migrated smaller sites and large websites with 100s of URLs.
Everything we do is managed via spreadsheets, site crawls, and a deep understanding of your current EE CMS, and as WordPress experts, we can make sure your new WP site is solid, fast and fully optimised.
Got an Elementor-based site you want to move? We also migrate Elementor sites to bespoke WP themes.
Moving your website from WIX to WordPress FAQs.
How long does it take?
This depends largely on the size of your current WIX site. Get in touch so we can spider your WIX site and let you know.
The sooner you start, the sooner it's done!Is WordPress better for SEO than WIX?
Much better. There is far more control over the on-page SEO with WordPress. It’s also more possible to do effective technical SEO to further enhance your site.
