Wix And Wordpress: Is Wix Overtaking Wordpress?
With Wix you can build your own site, or have one built for you at a fraction of the cost. You can keep up with site maintenance on your own without needing to hire someone if you need to change some text or add a picture to your site.
Ask anyone in the know about how Wordpress compares to other website builders and there will be no hesitation to let you know that there really isn't a comparison. Wordpress is better....period.
Why Do Experts Like Wordpress?
There are several differences in the platforms that you will find. The level of customization and the open source foundation allow it to be one of the more powerful tools for web developers and designers. For entrepreneurs this means you can get a site exactly how you want with the exact functionality you need.
As with anything else in life, the higher the customization the higher the cost. And Wordpress is easily one of the more expensive ways to build your site because of the steep learning curve involved.
But with a shifting economy that is allowing for more entrepreneurship, more individual freedom, and more opportunities than ever before to take control of your own career, there is a new mindset among business owners...
No longer are business owners willing to pay thousands of dollars in order to get their websites off the ground and with bootstrap budgets and they certainly don't have the funds to pay for constant maintenance anytime they need something changed.
Does Wix Compare To Wordpress?
This is why Wix has been instrumental in leading the change in how the website building industry has evolved.
With Wix you can build your own site, or have one built for you at a fraction of the cost. You can keep up with site maintanence on your own without needing to hire someone if you need to change some text or add a picture to your site.
But that hasn't been enough to overtake Wordpress….
Looking at a google trends picture from the past 12 months still shows Wordpress having a significant margin in searches over Wix but you can see another trend happening...
Wordpress is declining, slowly but steadily. They hit their peak in searches around January and then slowly decline the rest of the year.
Compare that to Wix who hits a peak in January, stays consistent till summer where they experience a slight decrease in searches, and then immediately start slowly rising again.
In order to see if this trend is consistent with where these two platforms are now, and where they have been in the past, we need to take data from a longer period. The google trends picture below is from the past 5 years and you might notice that we are in the middle of a major shift...
Wordpress has experienced a MAJOR decline in searches the past 5 years compared to Wix who, although not growing by large amounts, continues to rise in searches every single month.
It would be too early to claim Wix as the new king but given this interest in the two platforms over the years it is clear that innovation is beating reputation.
What do I mean by that...
What Is The Reason For These Changes?
Wix is not an open source platform. Meaning that everything except for the apps are built by Wix employees. The company makes specific changes to the platform based on the direction the company wants to take.
Wordpress is an open source platform meaning they count on web developers who do not work for the company to create new ways to use and grow the platform in order to give it direction.
What this ultimately means is that Wix has a clear path they are following to dedicate every resource they have to providing an all-in-one solution to your web building needs. Need web hosting? Need domain hosting? Need email marketing? Social marketing? Customer Relationship Manager? Wix has implemented all of these changes in their platform, built by Wix employees, in the past few years.
Wordpress has NONE of these options on their platform. If you want domain hosting you need to purchase from another platform. Need website hosting? You need to go to another platform. Need email marketing? Go to another platform... and so on.
As an entrepreneur growing your business would you rather have all of these options on one platform and if you need to troubleshoot you contact one support team, or would you rather piece together 4-6 different platforms and if you need to troubleshoot a problem you will need to contact different support teams who do not work with each other.
As someone who has worked on building sites the past few years I cannot tell you how easy it is for support teams to blame another company and tell you that you need call them instead and that it is not their issue. FRUSTRATING!
This is why I believe we are seeing this trend over the past 5 years. Entrepreneurs looking to build a new business or redo their websites at the beginning of the year when new budgets are released look into the different platforms and then start to realized what is actually offered on each. This makes it an easy decision to pick Wix over Wordpress for the simple fact that it is a much less hassle.
The reputation of the Wordpress brand is still very strong in the web building community. Expert developers still hold to the platform because there is more of a technical need and the payouts are higher but if these trends are telling us anything it is that entrepreneurs don't really care about any of that.
I believe that Wix is looking to implement the level of customization that you can obtain in Wordpress on their own platform but they have some catching up to do before they get there.
And more customization would mean less ability for you as an entrepreneur to build your own site and still get everything you want. The idea of a "drag-and-drop" experience is still there but quickly becoming a past memory for Wix.
This is why they have spent so much of their focus on becoming the best all-in-one website builder platform on the market.
Given the data from google trends and the constant innovation from Wix I wouldn't be surprised if Wix overtakes Wordpress is searches in the next two years.
This would be a momentous change in the approach of how websites are being built and what entrepreneurs and businesses are demanding for their businesses.
Of course google trends isn't the only data to look at and we cannot make any assumptions based on one set of data, but if Wordpress searches were a stock you certainly would not want to invest.
And What About The Other Website Builders?
Although this article was meant to compare Wordpress and Wix I don't want you to leave without having some additional data on google trends of other website builders.
Looking at the past 12 months we can see some interesting things to note.
Weebly is volatile in its searches from month to month. Huge drops in the summer months gives me an indication that business owners probably aren't using this platform very much. I can guess that maybe younger people in school might be searching for this platform more often and during summer months there isn't as much need. But I don't have any data to back that theory up.
Squarespace actually looks fairly steady. They do not appear to be declining or growing in searches month over month. Still less than Wix but holding on to their searches every month.
Extend this data over 5 years and you will see more of a pattern for each platform.
Weebly continues to be volatile in their searches from month to month but now you can see a more consistent decline in interest. They always have dramatic drops in the summer only to recoup during the following months. I do not have any experience with this platform so I cannot comment on how useful it may be but things do not appear to be going well.
Squarespace has seemed to level off some in the past 5 years. They started with some good initial growth, and even had more searches than Wix in some months, but since have leveled off and don't seem to be moving in either direction. I also do not have any experience with this platform but am interested to see the direction the platform takes in order to make a change in the interest shown.
Let's Go Even Deeper...
From the 12 month comparison for all web building platforms you can see that Wordpress has declined dramatically in interest, Weebly started off strong and then has declined since, squarespace has enjoyed consistent interest over time, and Wix continues to grow, slowly, in interest over time.
The decision on how to build your site is ultimately yours but I would take a good luck at the trends above and stick with a platform that seems to be on the rise rather than one on the decline. To me, this means that innovation and new releases are causing more and more interest and no one is doing it better than Wix.
Day 12 of the 30 day Wix content challenge to bring HIGHLY valuable, free Wix content to entrepreneurs and businesses. If you need to catch up then head over to yesterday's post that contains a complete guide to buying, hosting, and transferring domains in Wix.
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