Wix Blog Review; Everything Including Our Dislikes

Updated: March 4, 2024

The idea of building a website with little to no code means you and I can spin up a website in a few hours. Everything always has a catch though. Although website building is easier than programming, it requires your time and attention to fully utilize it. You can’t keep switching them around because you never get good at the one. Besides, the point is for you to have a website, not to keep building them. That is why your choice matters.

Once you have understood the features of a Wix Blog, it is natural and smart to want to hear other people's reviews on the same. We rate Wix blogs based on different aspects and explain why we rate them the way we do.

The maximum rating per category is five. We then aggregate these ratings to come up with the final score. Here is what we came up with.

Ease of Creating Your Website

The whole reason for using a website builder is the ease of creating a website by yourself. If it is not easy to use, then why bother.

From the moment you visit the Wix homepage, it feels like the directions to take are planned to the very end. You never doubt which button to push next and why you are pushing it. The whole login process seems familiar even if you are new to the website. By the time you have an account, you know what to do next.

From your dashboard, it is a matter of choosing which site you want to work on. You can also choose to create a new site. This is where Wix shines. They tell you what to expect and how many steps are remaining until you have your results. Your job is to input your data into your website. And pressing the ‘Next’ button.

Within a short time, your website is complete and you are ready to view it live.

For ease of creating the website, it is a downright 5 / 5.

Ease of Editing Your Website

When you start, your website will be far from how you want it. Even if you are initially satisfied, you won’t be forever. You may also decide that you would like to add extra features that suit your business. This is where editing comes in.

Editing your Wix website starts by choosing the website you would like to work on. Once you do, you are directed to that website’s dashboard and it is from there that you begin editing.

The process of editing a Wix site is, in one word, intuitive. The selection buttons are arranged in a taskbar that serves as a shortcut to everything; want to change the page you are working on, the Pages & Menu button is available, want to extend your website and give it online store features, go to Add Apps.

You can arrange components within the website through dragging and dropping. Everything within the website is yours to arrange. Let your imagination run wild. We’ll talk more about this in the customization section.

You won’t start by knowing where everything is and how to do it. A good documentation system is key to you feeling comfortable. One of the issues I faced was with the help icon. It is not the easiest to find and you may struggle with that aspect as well. I personally want to know exactly where to get help if I get stranded, especially if I have spent or plan to spend money. The other issue I have with the help guides is I have to type what I am looking for. Website builders have different vocabulary, and I will only get assistance once I know that the top row in my website is called a header, if I call it anything else the articles don’t show up. There should be an easier way to link me to help articles.

I’ll give it a 4 / 5 on the editing. Though the guides are hidden, I only used them once.

Ease of Creating and Updating Blog Posts

As you are following the steps of creating your website, part of the process is to create a blog post. You do this so that by the time you are done, your website has content and you get a full picture. Wix directs you to your post editor, and it looks a lot like other post editors.

You set the kind of text you want to use; heading or paragraph. You set its font size and whether it is bold, italic or underlined. You also set the indentation of the text and the spacing. Writing your blog feels like editing on Google docs or Microsoft Word because of how these buttons are arranged.

There is a conspicuous ‘Add’ button that helps you add non-text elements to your blog. You can add images, videos, tables, polls and many other elements. You can also choose their positioning in the article which gives you the power to add them after you have formatted the text.

The largest drawback I have seen is the inability to choose a font. I don’t understand why I have to use the Wix designated font. On the website editor, I can change the font for other texts other than the blog text. There is probably a way out there but I should not struggle to find it. I know I’m spoiled.

Creating and editing blog posts deserves a 5 but I’ll give it a 4 / 5 until I can find a way to change article fonts.

Price and Affordability

An affordable website builder is a heavy consideration for many people, myself included. The price needs to be right if you are to consider Wix long term. One thing I like about good pricing plans is they make me feel like I have a choice. There are pricing plans that nudge you towards one plan because the rest are either too expensive or too under-equipped. Let’s see where Wix falls on this.

Building your blog on Wix is free. You can build it and ensure that everything is as you would like it to be before you pay. There are limits to what your free blog can do. For instance, you can’t connect your blog to your custom domain until you sign up for a premium plan. A premium plan is Wix’s way of saying a paid subscription. Wix promises a 14 day money back guarantee when you sign up for a premium plan.

There are four website plans available. The cheapest option is a genuine consideration when you are starting out. It comes with Wix branding on your website and less storage but you can upgrade when you are ready. One of the important things it lacks is visitor analytics which you get with the Unlimited Plan. It’ll be a while before you have enough visitors to make good use of analytics, I wouldn’t worry about it.

The two most expensive website plans, VIP and Unlimited, come with a Site Booster App. The app is integrated into your website and improves your SEO, Search Engine Optimization. I’ve never understood why I would have to choose the more expensive options to get site boosting. Shouldn’t that be part of the basic package?

VIP and Unlimited also come with a visitor analytics app. The app gives you insights and stats on the performance of your site. There is also a disclaimer that it is free for one year. I take issue with the idea that it is part of a higher priced plan and I may have to pay for it later, especially when I know that Google Analytics exists, and it is free.

The prices themselves don’t seem too high. They fall on the normal side of website builders’ pricing plans. My issue is that I am nudged towards certain plans. A blogger would want analytics and site boosting and that leaves me with only two real choices. Maybe that is Wix’s plan.

I’ll give them a 3 / 5. The price is good. The features I get at each price is my problem.

Customization

A website builder with customization options helps you stand out when compared to the hundreds of millions of websites out there. You can communicate a feeling to your readers and they recall what your website made them feel. It is a way of branding yourself.

Wix allows customization. You can change every aspect of your website down to the last details. Whether its color or a background image, you get to set what you want. Wix gives you free reign of these details. Customization can go as far as using Wix Velo to add functionality to your website.

When you are creating your website, Wix has a selection of templates that gives you a starting point. There are hundreds of available templates and you are limited by your patience in choosing.

On customization, Wix scores a comfortable 4 / 5. They would get full points were it not for my earlier complaint regarding font.

SEO and Mobile Friendliness

Search Engine Optimization, SEO, is as important to your website as breathing is to you. It is how search engines like Google get to understand your website’s content. They need to understand your content so they can recommend it to users. Good SEO leads to more organic traffic to your site.

There are parts of SEO that fall on you like the keywords you use on your blog or the quality of your content. Other parts fall on the website provider because they are programming or infrastructure related. The best way to test this is through Pagespeed Insights, a tool that Google provides. You input your website url and the tool gives you a score based on various metrics.

The image above is the report Pagespeed Insights generates for the homepage. The one below belongs to a blog article I had published on the site.

The Wix blog takes a hit on its performance score. The performance score looks at the speed of how your page loads. The homepage scores 58 while the article page scores 41, both of which are average. Google may be unkind to websites that load slowly because they give users a bad user experience.

The website scores better on its accessibility, best practices and SEO metrics. Search engines use many variables to rank your pages and the better you perform in most of them, the better your performance on the search engine results page. These good scores are also rated based on mobile-view of the website, which shows how mobile friendly Wix is.

Website builders use a lot of code which can cause slow rendering. As a customer, I'm concerned by the outcome. I’m paying them so they can worry about such issues. There is no way to overlook performance because if I do, I’ll pay for it in my organic traffic.

It is for that reason that Wix scores 3 / 5 on SEO.

Integration to Other Ecosystems

Growth and expansion are parts of the blogging process. You will, at one point, want to expand the features of your website. You could want to integrate an online store or social media platforms; Wix should provide that. Let’s see how Wix scores on this.

Major functionalities in Wix are organized in apps. Doing this makes them easy to integrate to one another. You will find all the apps available on the App Market. The App Market organizes apps in different categories and when you get the one you want, you click on ‘Add to Site’ and it is automatically integrated to your website. Examples of apps you can add to your blog include: an online store, comments section, and analytics apps.

The App Market is also robust because it is open to third party creators. They create apps to fulfill specific needs that would otherwise go unfulfilled. They have app specific terms that you will need to confirm before you sign up. Some only work when your website is on a premium plan.

For your marketing goals, you can integrate Google Analytics, Facebook Pixel and other integrations. You simply click on ‘Connect’ and follow the steps from that point on.

On the integration front, Wix has facilitated the process. It is up to you to choose what you would like to integrate. I’m impressed with their integrations and will give them a 5 / 5.

Guides and Documentation

As a first time customer, you know just enough to get by. You find your way like you would in the dark, by fumbling. Website builders make the process painless by giving you guides from which you could learn and making it easy to find what you are looking for.

Wix has a help button in the editor dashboard. The help button works by typing what you want and searching. It then retrieves all the relevant articles and you then choose the appropriate one for you.

You can alternatively visit the help center which has collections of articles.

The search functionality is powerful and I am impressed by its ability to surface articles I need. There are also many articles available and they are written in an easy to understand manner.

On the dashboard, Wix has integrated tips that come with short videos that instruct you on how to do something. Here’s an image of how Wix has provided a video on how to set up automations.

The verdict on the guides and documentation on the website dashboard is that they are comprehensive. They are well placed and are easy to find. Wix gets a 4 / 5. I’ll knock one point off because of the guides on the website editor not being easy enough to find.

Final thoughts

I have tried to be as objective as I could be throughout this whole review. Maybe I was kind where I ought to have been tougher. There are places you will feel like I was unnecessarily tough. In both situations, I encourage you to look at the content, my criticism and praise, rather than the score.

Please check out Wix they hold all the current information. Some of the information I have used to come up with these conclusions may change as time passes.

Thank you for reading this far and we hope you have gained some insight.