Wix vs WordPress comes down to who does the work. Wix is a hosted builder from $17 a month billed yearly. WordPress is free software you install on hosting you rent, from about $3.99 a month on an introductory term. Wix costs more and asks less of you. WordPress costs less and asks more.
Key takeaways
- Wix paid plans run from $17 a month (Light) to $159 a month (Business Elite), and Wix states those displayed prices are for yearly subscriptions paid in full up front.
- “WordPress” means two different products. WordPress.com is a hosted service from $9 a month month-to-month, or $4 on a 12-month term. WordPress.org is free software you host yourself, so your bill is hosting plus domain plus anything you buy.
- WordPress powers 40.8% of all websites and 59.0% of the CMS market, per W3Techs on 14 August 2026. That scale is why every plugin and every tutorial exists for it.
- Self-hosted WordPress is the cheapest three-year option on paper and the most expensive in hours. You own updates, backups, security and whatever breaks at 11pm.
- Neither one builds the site for you. If the real blocker is that nobody on your team wants to build or maintain a website, a done-for-you service answers a different question than this comparison does.
Wix vs WordPress: the difference that actually matters
Wix vs WordPress is not really a feature argument. Both can run a service business site with pages, a blog, forms, bookings and a store. The difference is who carries the work. Wix hosts, updates, secures and backs up your site as part of the subscription. Self-hosted WordPress hands you all four jobs and charges you almost nothing for the privilege.
That is why comparing monthly prices alone gives you the wrong answer. A $17 Wix plan and a $3.99 hosting plan are not the same purchase. One is a finished service. The other is a set of parts plus a job.
There is also a naming problem worth clearing up before you shop. WordPress.com is a commercial hosted platform run by Automattic, with plans and a support team. WordPress.org is the free open source software that anyone can download and install. When a review says “WordPress is free”, it means the second one, and it is quietly ignoring the hosting bill, the domain, and your time.
| Wix | WordPress.com | WordPress.org (self-hosted) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Entry paid price | $17/mo (Light) | $9/mo (Personal), $4 on a 12-month term | Hosting only, from $3.99/mo intro |
| Free tier | Yes, with Wix branding | Yes, 1 GB, no plugins, ads shown | Software is free, hosting is not |
| Who handles updates and security | Wix | WordPress.com | You |
| Who builds the site | You | You | You |
| Design ceiling | Template plus editor | Themes, plugins on paid plans | Effectively unlimited |
| Easiest to abandon halfway | Least likely | Middle | Most likely |
What Wix costs in 2026
Wix lists five tiers on its plans page: Free at $0, Light at $17 a month, Core at $29, Business at $39 and Business Elite at $159. Light includes 2 GB of storage, a free domain for the first year and two site collaborators. Every paid plan removes Wix branding from your site.
The footnote on that page is the part people miss. Wix writes that “Displayed prices are for yearly subscriptions, paid in full at the time of purchase.” So $17 a month is really $204 charged at once, and month to month billing costs more than the sticker. Budget for the yearly figure, not the monthly one.
The free plan is genuinely usable for testing, but it carries Wix branding and no custom domain, which makes it unsuitable for a business you want customers to trust. If you are weighing Wix against other hosted builders rather than against WordPress, our Wix alternatives roundup and the Wix vs Squarespace comparison cover that ground.
What WordPress actually costs in 2026
WordPress.com’s pricing page needs reading carefully. Free is $0 with 1 GB of storage, no plugin installs and WordPress.com’s own ads shown to your visitors. The paid tiers open at $9 a month for Personal, $18 for Premium, $40 for Business with 50 GB, and $70 for Commerce. Those are month-to-month rates. Committing to 12 months brings Personal down to $4 a month on the pricing page, and WordPress.com’s own plans data puts the first-year totals at $48 for Personal, $96 for Premium, $300 for Business and $540 for Commerce. All paid plans include a custom domain free for the first year.
| Plan | Month to month | On a 12-month term | First-year total |
|---|---|---|---|
| Personal | $9 | $4 | $48 |
| Premium | $18 | $8 | $96 |
| Business | $40 | $25 | $300 |
| Commerce | $70 | $45 | $540 |
One warning about that table. Every figure in it is a first-term price, and WordPress.com’s renewal rates are higher. We are deliberately not quoting them. The renewal amount on that page is injected by a live pricing experiment, so the figure you see is not necessarily the figure anyone else sees. Check the renewal line on your own plan card before you commit.
Self-hosted WordPress.org is where the maths gets interesting. The software is free. Hosting is not. Bluehost, to take one widely used WordPress host, lists a Starter plan at $3.99 a month that renews at $9.99, a Business plan at $6.99 renewing at $13.99, and eCommerce Essentials at $14.99 renewing at $21.99. Each introductory rate is stated “For 36 month term”.
So the honest self-hosted number is $3.99 a month for three years, then roughly $9.99 a month after that, plus a domain once the free year ends, plus any premium theme or plugin you decide you need. Nothing there is hidden. It is just spread across more line items than a single builder subscription.
The renewal cliff nobody puts in the comparison table
Introductory hosting rates are the single biggest distortion in Wix vs WordPress cost comparisons. Three years of Bluehost Starter at $3.99 comes to about $144. The next three years at the $9.99 renewal rate come to about $360, which is two and a half times the first term for the same site. Wix publishes no separate renewal rate on its plans page, so there is no equivalent step to budget for.
Wix vs WordPress on setup time and skill
Wix gets you to a published page faster because there is nothing to install. You pick a template, edit in the browser, connect a domain and publish. Self-hosted WordPress adds a setup layer before you write a word: choose a host, install WordPress, choose a theme, install the plugins that supply forms, SEO settings, backups, caching and security.
None of that is hard for someone who has done it before. All of it is a wall for someone who has not. The realistic question is not whether you could learn it. It is whether you will finish, on top of running the business, and whether you will keep doing the maintenance in month nine.
Plugins are the reason people accept that overhead. WordPress.com describes a marketplace of over 60,000 plugins, and installing them is a paid-plan feature rather than something the free tier allows. On self-hosted WordPress you can install anything, including code you write yourself. That is real power, and it is also how sites break.
Wix vs WordPress for getting found on Google
Both platforms can rank. Neither gives you rankings. The Wix vs WordPress argument in SEO is mostly settled, and what is left is content, links, page speed and local signals. Speed is the one place your platform choice still shows up, and the picture across the whole web is not flattering. The Web Almanac’s 2025 performance chapter found, from Chrome UX Report data, only 48% of mobile sites pass Core Web Vitals, with 62% achieving good Largest Contentful Paint and 77% good Interaction to Next Paint.
Hosted platforms have an advantage here by default, because their caching and image handling are managed for you. On self-hosted WordPress you get the same result only if you configure it, and a plugin-heavy install is the classic way to fall out of that 48%.
For a local service business, the bigger lever sits outside the website. BrightLocal’s Local Consumer Review Survey 2026, run on a panel of 1,002 US adult consumers via SurveyMonkey, found Google’s share as a review source has slipped from 83% in 2025 to 71%, while use of ChatGPT and other generative AI tools for local recommendations jumped from 6% to 45%, making AI the third most popular source of business recommendations. Reviews then decide the click: 97% of consumers read reviews for local businesses, 68% will only use a business rated four or more stars, and 31% will only use one at 4.5 stars or more.
Which means the honest ranking advice for either platform is the same. Get the basics right, then spend your time on your local SEO and on asking customers for reviews. If your site is live and still invisible, the causes are usually indexing and local signals rather than the builder, which we walk through in why your website does not show up on Google.
Wix vs WordPress: which one fits your situation
There is no universal winner, so match the tool to your constraint. The three constraints that actually decide it are your budget, your appetite for maintenance and how custom the site needs to be.
Pick Wix if
You want one bill, no maintenance and a site live this week. You are comfortable spending a weekend in an editor. Your site needs pages, a booking form and maybe a small store, not custom functionality. The $17 Light plan covers a straightforward service business site, and you will not touch hosting or updates.
Pick WordPress.com if
You want WordPress’s ecosystem without running a server, and $9 to $18 a month is comfortable. This is the sensible middle for a content-led site or a blog you expect to grow, especially if you may later export to self-hosted.
Pick self-hosted WordPress.org if
You have someone technical, or you genuinely enjoy this. You need custom functionality, an unusual integration, or full control of the code. You accept that updates, backups and security are your job, and you have budgeted for the renewal rate rather than the introductory one.
Pick a done-for-you service if
Your blocker is not price and not features. It is that nobody is going to build this. UENI sits in that third category: we build the site for you rather than handing you an editor. The Website Launch plan is $24.99 a month plus a $79 setup fee, and it lists a custom-designed website built for you, a custom domain and SSL, a professional email address, fast secure hosting, mobile-optimised and SEO-ready pages, and 30 days of done-for-you edits.
That costs more per month than Wix Light and far more than self-hosted hosting. What you buy with the difference is that the site exists. If you have already abandoned one website build, that is the variable worth pricing. Our guide to how much a website costs lays out all four routes side by side.
Frequently asked questions about Wix vs WordPress
Is WordPress really free?
The WordPress.org software is free to download and use. Running a site with it is not, because you still pay for hosting and a domain. Bluehost’s entry WordPress plan is $3.99 a month introductory and $9.99 on renewal, so budget for hosting as a permanent line item.
Is Wix or WordPress better for SEO?
Neither has a decisive advantage in 2026. Both let you control titles, meta descriptions, URLs and structured data. Site speed is the one real platform difference, and managed platforms tend to handle caching for you. Your content and local signals matter far more than the choice.
Can I move from Wix to WordPress later?
You can move the content, but not the site. Wix does not export a WordPress-ready site, so a migration means rebuilding pages and re-pointing the domain. Wix does offer a blog RSS feed that can be imported. Plan for a rebuild rather than a transfer.
How much does a Wix website cost per year?
Wix Light at $17 a month works out to $204 a year, because Wix’s displayed prices are yearly subscriptions paid in full up front. Core is $348, Business is $468 and Business Elite is $1,908 a year on the same basis, before a domain renewal after the free first year.
Why do so many sites use WordPress?
Scale compounds. W3Techs put WordPress at 40.8% of all websites and 59.0% of the CMS market on 14 August 2026. That installed base is why almost every plugin, theme, agency and tutorial targets it, which in turn makes it the default recommendation.
Which is cheaper over five years, Wix or WordPress?
Self-hosted WordPress, on cash alone. Five years of Bluehost Starter costs roughly $144 for the first 36 months and about $240 for the remaining 24 at the $9.99 renewal rate, so about $384. Five years of Wix Light is $1,020. The gap closes fast if you ever pay someone to fix the self-hosted site.
Sources
- Wix, Pricing Plans, read 14 August 2026.
- WordPress.com, Plans & Pricing, read 14 August 2026.
- Bluehost, WordPress Hosting, read 14 August 2026.
- W3Techs, Usage statistics and market share of WordPress, 14 August 2026.
- BrightLocal, Local Consumer Review Survey 2026, published 11 February 2026, panel of 1,002 US adults.
- Web Almanac 2025, Performance, HTTP Archive and Chrome UX Report data, July 2025.
- WordPress.com, public plans API, currency_code USD, read 14 August 2026.
- UENI, Pricing, read 14 August 2026.
