Contemporary website development niche is not the same it used to be several years ago. It keeps evolving, with lots of new trends and web design tools being introduced to the market. This makes it possible for diverse user categories to pick those systems that adhere to their particular website development needs and requirements.
On the other hand, such a diversity of web design tools somewhat complicates user choice, making it difficult to pick the right tool. To simplify the task, it makes sense to highlight and compare two most popular web design platforms that will help you start a full-featured project in 2020. These are Wix and WordPress.
Read on to find out what exactly makes these systems stand out from the crowd and what are those features you should consider, when making the right choice of the system to start a website.
Wix vs WordPress: Major Implication
Wix and WordPress both deserve user attention as each system is the leader of its niche. Wix is the best website builder in the world, while WordPress is a trusted, most popular and affordable CMS. The platforms target diverse user categories yet each of them has much to offer to users looking for a functional web design tool.
Wix is a website builder that delivers powerful out-of-the-box functionality and works great for web designers willing to start feature-laden and visually-appealing projects. This is a nice pick for users, who intend to present their website content in the creative and extraordinary way. With Wix, you can start any type of project, be it a landing page, a business website, a portfolio, a web store etc. The website builder comes with a high end WYSIWYG editor that lets you customize its ready-made templates, giving them unique design. Everything depends upon your skills, project complexity and expertise level.
WordPress practices another web design approach. This is the CMS, which focuses on the development of unique website design via deep web page customization, code editing and plugin integration. This allows creating high end and personalized website design and this is what sometimes poses problems for inexperienced users. The platform, however, does not impose any restrictions regarding the process of design customization. Just pick one of thousands designs, choose plugins to give your website the required functionality and go live with your project.
Differences between the platforms are quite obvious and this is what helps users make the right choice, when proceeding to their project development.
Read also: Wix vs WordPress Expert Comparison
What About Design Customization?
Wix has one of the richest and most impressive template collections. Their number has reached 550 themes, all of which are mobile-ready, free and highly customizable. The amount of WordPress templates is several times higher as it encompasses thousands of free and paid themes developed by third-party web designers specially for WordPress.
Wix follows the “absolute positioning” principle, which allows for complete design customization freedom. It’s up to you to adjust the positions of elements and their parts as well as to form layouts, set up styles and apply special effects. WordPress, in its turn, offers templates that are divided into sections with special places for modules and widgets. Each template comes with unique settings (it is possible to set up their menu structure, header/footer, sidebar, logo etc.), which makes it possible to create unique website design without a line of coding.
When it comes to design customization, Wix lets you choose from two design editing options. Professional Wix ADI tool automatically creates a website for you based on the content you submit upon its request. This is what makes it a good pick for beginners, who are not experienced in website design yet. Standard Wix Editor, in its turn, allows for greater flexibility as it lets you apply coding skills for creating high end website design. As to WordPress, the CMS implies programming proficiency to create feature-laden projects. It’s possible to preview the result of your work before its publication to make sure you’ve done everything right.
The Power of Integrations
Both systems have integrated widget libraries, which contributes to the functionality of the projects started with them. Wix App Market grants access to multiple free and paid widgets/applications that fit various niches and may bring your website performance to the brand new level. Currently, the number of widgets you can browse exceeds 350 extensions. They are mostly geared towards business website creation, SEO, events organization, online marketing, code editing, blogging, audience interaction etc.
WordPress stands out from the crowd due to its extensive selection of high quality plugins. Each plugin is geared towards the completion of a certain task. Thus, there are plugins to be used for SEO optimization, web stats tracking, online form building, gallery creation, effective content presentation, eCommerce development, email marketing and other related purposes.
Functionality Aspects
Wix offers powerful functionality available out-of-the-box. No extra integrations are needed to get the most out of your project performance. The features are geared towards effective organization/management of various niches, content management, SEO optimization, integration of third-party services, social networking and more. The website builder also has a built-in Logo Maker, powerful Ascend platform used for effective business management, integrated CRM, online reminders, commenting options and other features that contribute to quality website management.
WordPress functionality is mostly centered around its powerful integrations. Some of the plugins are already available in the dashboard and their integration is free and hassle-free for everyone. You can get access to social networking and SEO plugins, online calendar, online forms etc. Likewise, it is possible to integrate any other plugins to reach the desired website performance, irrespective of the website type you intend to start.
Hosting Issues
Wix is a SaaS platform, which comes with integrated hosting available in terms of its paid subscriptions. There is no need to bother about hosting choice – it is offered by default. The cost is included into the price of subscription you will go for along with the amount of disk storage space, domain connection solutions and other related features. WordPress is a hosted solution. Unlike Wix, it does not provide direct hosting access. Instead, it triggers the need to pick a reliable hosting provider and subscribe to one of the plans it offers. Is this a merit or a demerit? This depends upon your expectations, financial investment and degree of web design proficiency. By using the opportunity to pick your own hosting, you can control the budget of your project as well as the service you will avail, when subscribing to the selected plan. That’s a notable advantage for most users, but get ready to face hosting-related problems, when moving from WordPress to Wix in case of necessity.
Bottom Line
Wix and WordPress are two worthy representatives of the modern web design market. It’s impossible to define the system that prevails over its competitor. This is because each of them is full-featured and each of them targets a certain user audience. The choice should be based upon the complexity and specialization of your website as well as on the skills you possess.
Wix will be a great pick for those users, who don’t wish to bother about coding nuances yet expect to avail functional projects. WordPress allows starting large-scale websites, but it also allows for more powerful integration options and specific design customization opportunities. If you have picked the CMS and find that it’s complicated for you, there is always a chance to migrate to Wix and enjoy the solutions it offers. Just give it a try and decide, which option works best for you.