What's Better for Your Business?

Wix or WordPress? What’s the better platform for your business? Each has different structures, capabilities, costs and more. Whether you’re building a new site, or refreshing your current – we’re here to help you walk through each platform and find the best fit. 

 

Website Platform in a Nutshell

A website platform is what your website is built on, or the foundation of your website. It's generally recommended to select a website platform with a CMS (content management system.) Evolve Creative developers offer expertise in the following platforms: Wix, WordPress, BigCommerce, Shopify, 3D Cart and WooCommerce.

 

What Exactly Is a CMS?

A CMS (content management system) allows you to create and update website pages without having to know website coding language. Cool, right? But a CMS does much more than help manage the text and image content displayed on webpages. They have evolved to help design the look of websites, track user sessions, handle searches, collect visitor comments, host forums and so much more. 

 

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wix

Why Wix?

Wix provides a user friendly website building platform to millions of users around the world. Not only is it affordable, but with their easy-to-manage builder and CMS (online page editor), it’s marketed as the ideal platform for beginners. This particular platform is a solid option for startups, small businesses or organizations looking for a ‘brochure style’ website – which provides general information about their business, products and/or services. Because you can't change themes after a Wix site is launched, it's best to have 10 pages or less.

Wix sites are also mobile-friendly and can be built and launched all within a single interface. With over 300 web apps, features can be added like online chat, bookings, calendars, analytics and more. Their hosting service is very reasonable at $225 annually and includes site back-ups and security. After the site is launched Evolve Creative will provide up to an hour of training so you can edit and update your site with ease. Or we can take care of any future edits you may have at our hourly rate.

Last, but not least, Wix makes SEO easy by creating a customized plan for your website. Our developers can easily enter in your keywords, optimize page titles, add metadata to pages, etc. Wix also provides an SEO checklist to follow to make sure your website will rank high in google.

Key Takeaways

  • Best for sites 10 pages and under
  • Great for startups, small businesses and organizations
  • All in one solution - CMS and hosting under single interface
  • Very affordable 
  • Easy-to-manage online page editor
  • Reasonably flexible tax and shipping options
  • Customized SEO plan

Need Ecommerce?

Wix makes it particularly easy to sell products online. The Wix Business Unlimited plan, for example, is $27 per month and allows businesses to sell both physical and digital goods while tracking what you have in stock. This means you could sell anything online from clothing to membership fees and beyond. Click here to learn more about all of the ecommerce plans available. Please note: There are restricted products and services that cannot be sold through Wix, so please check here to ensure yours is not on this list. 

Taxes

Tax is always a stickler, but automated tax calculations are now available in Wix if you are on a Business Unlimited plan or higher. However, be weary as some limits apply - 100 transactions a month on ‘Business Limited’ and 500 a month on ‘Business VIP.’ Click here to learn more about Tax with Wix.

Shipping

Shipping rates can be set per region or you can configure rules to calculate shipping based on weight, price, or flat rate. The USPS does give out shipping discounts as well depending on your plan. Click here to learn more about shipping with Wix.

Payment Set-up & Transaction Fees

There are several ways to set up payments. If you don’t already have a payment processor, Wix Payments provides sellers an all-in-one, convenient way to manage their online transactions. There is a 2.9% of the transaction amount + 0.30 USD and no chargeback fees. Below are a few other options available:

  • Credit Card: Connect to a third-party payment provider (e.g. Square, Stripe) to accept credit card payments. Credit cards charge 2.9% of the transaction amount + 0.30 USD and a potential $15 chargeback fee (if you don’t win a dispute).
  • PayPal: Accept payments through PayPal. Note that if you select the PayPal option, customers can pay by credit card even if they do not have a PayPal account. Paypal charges 2.9% of the transaction amount + 0.30 USD and a potential $20 chargeback fee (if you don’t win a dispute).
  • Manual: Accept cash, payment through apps, checks, bank transfers, or any other form of payment that is not tracked online. When selecting this method, customers see instructions at checkout explaining how to complete payment. 
wordpress

Why WordPress?

WordPress is far superior to Wix as a web publishing platform. In fact, it’s the world’s most popular CMS software, powering around 44% of all websites on the internet; It's also a developer's favorite as it’s extremely customizable and highly responsive. It gives users complete control over every aspect of the website and offers endless features, plugins and themes. The platform’s versatility makes it a great fit for a variety of business types and also serves as one of the best long term solutions (and investments). As the business or brand evolves, so can the website.

WordPress also is super SEO friendly and offers an abundance of plugins to further improve the SEO capabilities of the platform. However, when working with Evolve Creative, the developers will actually do all the heavy lifting for you. While building out the website they will ensure the best practice of coding, page titles, permalinks and image optimization to ensure top notch organic SEO. 

In order to start building a WordPress website, a staging site must be set up via a hosting service. Evolve Creative developers utilize Flywheel as their preferred hosting service for any new website builds. In addition to site hosting, Flywheel’s benefits are many including monthly maintenance, back-ups and security at just $55/month. 

After development takes place, the staging site essentially gets pointed to the new domain name when it’s time to launch. Evolve Creative will provide up to an hour of training in WordPress along with our visual content builder, Beaver Builder. Evolve Creative provides the entire Beaver Builder Suite allowing our developers to extend functionality and custom tailor a website to your specific needs.   With Beaver Builder you can edit and update your site like a pro, no coding knowledge is necessary!

Key Takeaways

  • Great long term solution for businesses who are willing to invest in their website early on
  • Attractive design options and functionality
  • SEO friendly
  • Top notch security
  • Easy to manage online page editor
  • Using Beaver Builder, it's easy to change the theme (design) in a couple years.

WooCommerce

If you’re looking to turn your website into an all out digital store, WooCommerce can help. WooCommerce is an open-source e-commerce plugin designed for small to large-sized online merchants using WordPress. While WooCommerce is free, there are hundreds of additional plugins (both free and paid) that are easy ways to add additional functionality to your online store.

Taxes

WooCommerce allows users to configure settings so that tax is calculated on the shipping address, billing address, or even store location. There is also the ability to display product prices inclusive of tax. WooCommerce sales tax automation plugins can also lend a hand to provide you accurate tax calculations. Learn more here.

Shipping

WooCommerce provides options for flat rate shipping, free shipping, or local pickup. The WooCommerce Shipping extension is a free option that connects to USPS and allows you to print shipping labels right from your WordPress dashboard - great way to save time and money! See a full list of shipping extensions available here.

Payment Set-up & Transaction Fees

WooCommerce Payments uses a pay-as-you-go pricing model. You pay only for activity on the account. Payment options available in WooCommerce include major credit cards, PayPal, bank transfers, and even COD. Credit cards charge 2.9% + 30¢ per transaction. In addition, there is a potential $15 fee per dispute (refunded if you win the dispute). There are also over 100 payment integrations that are available, including Stripe, Amazon Payments, and more. Click here for more information.

bigcommerce-shopify

Platform Alternatives

Although Wix and WooCommerce does a good job of providing ecommerce solutions to businesses and organizations, there are some other platforms to consider if your primary goal is to create an online store - BigCommerce and Shopify. Both provide significantly more advanced e-commerce functionality. Learn more here.

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