Blogging websites have existed for a while now going all the way back to Blogger and Xanga 15 years ago. These days, blogging is not just for the college student or tour inhabitant anymore as businesses use blogging as a tool to get the word out about their company. Website turnover, or rebuilding, happens every once in a while if the design and font look a bit stale. This is also indicative of website neglect as websites should be maintained with constant updates at least once a week. Websites that keep up on this type of maintenance can last up to seven years without a complete rebuild. Businesses need a website company that has the proper tools to update and maintain the website. There are two titan website builders/blog site producers that have these maintenance capabilities and these two are WordPress and Wix. We will cover the differences and similarities between both companies and their business models below to see which features for custom website design would work best for you.
Wix
Wix was founded back in 2006 with the intent of making website creation easier and hassle-free. Wix has powerful tools to help the website builder build their own site with custom backgrounds, hundreds of fonts, and the ability to set up an online store for products. After 15 years, Wix has over 200 million worldwide users in over 190 countries.
WordPress
WordPress started in 2005 as an offshoot of the open-source blogging software of the same name. WordPress is the most popular blogging website in the world with over 400 billion page views on their user’s sites overall every month. They have many features to help bloggers and companies with different styles and editing tools available to craft custom websites.
How They Compare
Wix has many pricing plans that fit into any situation from the single user to an enterprise with hundreds of users. Single users pay anywhere from $14 to $39 a month for a tiered list of benefits that include ad-free sites, free domain for the first year, SSL Certificate, cloud storage space, video hours, and other features. The next package of tiers for Wix involves Business and eCommerce and these are essential if you plan on running a web store from your site. Prices run between $23 and $49 a month. The higher plans have foreign currency exchange to accept orders from different countries and social media linking. The Wix Enterprise plans start out at $500 a month for large companies.
WordPress has a simpler pricing plan than Wix with Single users having the choice between Personal ($4 / month) and Premium ($8 / month). Personal includes a free domain for the first year, an ad-free site, the ability to collect payments, and unlimited email support. Premium includes everything from Personal including Live Chat Support, Ad Revenue, video uploads, and Google Analytics integration. WordPress also has a Business package for $25 per month which includes everything from Personal and Premium including the ability to install plugins, advanced SEO tools, automated site backups, SSH file transfer protocol, database access. The eCommerce package is the most expensive at $45 per month and includes everything from Personal, Premium, Business and also includes integration with shipping carriers, foreign currency transactions, and premium backgrounds for business commerce.