Creating a website isn’t as difficult as it used to be a few years ago thanks to modern website building tools.
One of them is Wix, a leading website builder that allows you to quickly create eye-catching and fully responsive websites for your business, personal brand, ecommerce store, or any other objective.
In addition, Wix offers website hosting and domain registration services, along with several other tools, to provide you with a one-stop solution to all your website creation needs.
But what if you don’t want to or can’t use Wix for any reason?
Are there any good alternatives? Thankfully, yes.
In this article, we’ll discuss some of the best Wix alternatives and present a comparative analysis to help you choose the best website builder for your business needs.
Let’s dive in.
The Best Wix Alternatives
During our research, we found several high-quality Wix alternatives that can help you create, customize, and manage modern websites without any technical or design skills.
Wix Alternative #1: Squarespace
If you’re looking for the perfect Wix alternative, don’t look beyond Squarespace. It’s a powerful website creation, design, management, and marketing solution that allows you to quickly set up eye-catching websites without any design skills.
Squarespace is primarily designed for creative artists, service providers, and small businesses looking for a simple yet resourceful website builder. However, it is equally valuable for ecommerce businesses and online stores, since it provides you with a wide range of website templates for different business types.
In addition, you can customize its templates according to your brand’s requirements to create a unique website that truly represents your business.
With Squarespace, you get website hosting, domain registration, and a drag & drop website builder. It also includes powerful marketing capabilities including a complete email marketing solution.
You can use its drag & drop email campaign builder and templates to create eye-catching email campaigns for your ecommerce and online business. It also offers basic autoresponders but isn’t suitable for advanced automation and triggered campaigns.
You can start using Squarespace for as low as $14/month. But for a one-stop website management solution, you’ll need to sign up for one of its more advanced plans.
Wix Alternative #2: Shopify
Shopify is the world’s most popular website builder for ecommerce websites and online stores. It is a complete solution for anyone looking to take their bricks & mortar business online or sell products to customers across the globe.
Shopify provides you with a state-of-the-art online store builder which comes with several responsive website themes. In addition, it includes a complete backend system to manage your products and inventory, process and track orders, store customer data, and manage product shipping.
It also includes a complete email marketing solution using which you can send broadcast emails, configure autoresponders, and manage your email subscribers.
One of Shopify’s biggest strengths is its app store. It integrates with thousands of applications that allow you to add any functionality to your business.
These apps also include fulfillment services using which you can set up an ecommerce business without worrying about managing inventory, shipping products, or handling customer issues.
In short, if you’re looking to start an online store, there’s no better option than Shopify. You can start using Shopify for as low as $39/month.
Wix Alternative #3: WordPress.com
WordPress powers more than 43% of websites and is undisputedly the most popular website builder in the world.
To avoid confusion, we’re talking about WordPress.com, a website builder that provides hosting, domain registration, and several other cloud services. It is different from WordPress.org, the world’s most popular content management system designed for slightly advanced users.
Both are owned by the same company but designed for different users.
With WordPress.com, you can register a domain name, get web hosting, and design your site using its drag & drop website builder. In addition, you get access to the WordPress plugin directory which opens up unlimited possibilities and allows you to add any feature to your site.
WordPress.com also offers custom email registration and email delivery services. However, you can’t configure autoresponders or send broadcast emails.
You can get started with building your WordPress.com site for as low as $5/month. But to grow your site and use WordPress plugins, you’ll need to sign up for its higher-priced plan.
Wix Alternative #4: Weebly
Weebly is among the most impressive website builders because of its ease of use and robust website building and management features.
It is designed to help freelancers, creative professionals, agencies, and small businesses quickly set up responsive websites. Plus, it contains advanced ecommerce features to help you set up a thriving online store.
You can use Weebly to register a domain name, host your website data, and get a custom email address. Weebly also provides you with a wide range of fully responsive website themes designed by professionals. You have the option to customize themes according to your brand’s appearance by using Weebly’s drag & drop site builder.
For ecommerce sites, Weebly provides you features such as shipping, inventory management, review management, customer database, and several other valuable features that are quite expensive if you get them developed by a professional programmer.
Weebly also has pretty impressive marketing features such as email marketing for conventional and ecommerce sites, and an SEO widget to optimize your content.
The best part? Weebly is free to use. But if you want to experience its real power, sign up for one of its premium plans.
More Top Website Builders
We’ve briefly covered some of the popular Wix alternatives in this article so far. However, we’ve published a dedicated post that lists more website builders and evaluates their features, user experience, and pricing in more detail. Since all the platforms we’ve covered in our detailed analysis are worth using, we’ve categorized them according to use cases and shared our recommendations for the best tools for different end-users. So, if you’re looking to make an informed choice, see all of our top picks here.
Our Take on Wix
Before comparing Wix with its alternatives, let’s briefly discuss what it offers and why it’s considered a leading website-building tool.
Wix is a cloud-based website builder that allows small businesses, creative professionals, ecommerce stores, and other non-technical users to create professional websites in no time.
It’s a one-stop solution for building a website since it provides you with high-quality web hosting services, domain registration, and email marketing features. In addition, it provides you with a dedicated ecommerce section for managing product inventory, customers and leads, shipping carriers, customer reviews, and payments.
Wix also has an impressive drag & drop site builder that comes with 800+ website themes for all kinds of businesses.
In addition, Wix integrates with hundreds of third-party applications and also has a dedicated pool of developers you can hire to add any features or functionality to your website.
To help you promote your business, Wix has impressive SEO features to optimize your page title, description, images, and body content.
Wix offers two separate pricing categories for corporate and ecommerce sites.
The regular website plans start from $4.50/month while the ecommerce plans start from $17/month. All premium plans come with a 14-day free trial.
Let’s now quickly compare Wix with some of its top alternatives to see which one is best for your business.
Wix Vs. Squarespace
Wix and Squarespace are very similar in features, design, and target audience. Both offer an excellent user experience, a robust website builder, dozens of website themes, and website and domain hosting.
Wix’s email marketing features are more advanced. But Squarespace is more affordable and offers great value for money.
So, if you’re a creative professional or a freelancer looking to create an image-heavy site with all the necessary site management and marketing features, Squarespace can be an excellent Wix alternative for you.
Wix Vs. Shopify
Both Wix and Shopify offer website hosting, domain registration, and numerous other services to help small businesses and ecommerce websites.
However, they have unique strengths.
Wix is more suited to small businesses, freelancers, service providers, and corporate sites. It also provides pretty impressive ecommerce tools and features.
However, Shopify is a purpose-built ecommerce and online store management platform that’s hard to beat. It not only provides you with superior store management features but also integrates with dozens of applications and has a vast network of Shopify development experts.
So, if you’re looking to start a dedicated ecommerce site, Shopify is the better option. However, Wix is more suitable for corporate sites, small business sites, and portfolio sites for freelancers. It is also more affordable than Shopify.
Wix Vs. WordPress.com
Wix and WordPress.com are close competitors. They both offer an excellent site builder with drag-and-drop features that allow you to quickly turn your ideas into a professional website.
WordPress has the edge due to its incredibly versatile plugin library that allows you to add any feature to your site. In addition, its theme library is also much more extensive than Wix.
However, Wix’s themes are more visually appealing, and its ecommerce and online store features are easier for a non-technical user. But it’s more expensive than WordPress.
So if you’re a savvy user looking for an affordable yet robust website builder, WordPress.com is a great choice. But if you want a ready-to-use website platform that requires no technical skills, Wix might be the better option.
Wix Vs. Weebly
Weebly offers lots of great features and is perhaps the top Wix alternative because of its excellent user experience and robust website building and management features.
Its free plan is particularly impressive as it provides you with 500MB of storage along with several other advanced features.
Weebly also stands out for its attractive website themes designed for corporate sites and online stores. Plus, its email marketing features allow you to send personalized campaigns to your subscribers and view your performance using its analytics tool.
So, if you’re looking for a free website builder, Weebly might be the best option out of all the Wix alternatives we’ve discussed so far.
What’s The Best Wix Alternative?
Wix is an excellent site builder. But so are all the Wix alternatives we’ve discussed in this article. But which one’s the best for your business? It depends on your business needs.
Since most of the site builders I’ve mentioned in this article offer a free trial or a free plan, I’d recommend using their features and diving deeper into their pricing before making a choice.
To make your decision even simpler, we’ve written an in-depth article that reviews the best website builders and compares their pricing and features to help you choose the best option for your business.
