What Wix is, and what it isn't
Wix is a website builder: you pick a template, change the words, photos and colours in an editor, and Wix hosts the result. You can have something online the same week, and you never touch code.
What Wix isn't is a website designed around your business. The template decides the layout, the editor decides what you can change, and the platform decides what the site can do. That's the trade: ease now, limits for as long as you stay.
How the cost adds up
Wix charges a monthly plan, and the plan you need depends on what the site has to do: taking payments and bookings sits on the higher tiers. On top of that come the apps. Many of the add-ons that make a site useful, like advanced forms, reviews or scheduling, carry their own monthly charge. Over a few years those small amounts add up to a real number, for a site that still looks like a template.
A custom site works the other way round: a project price to design and build it, then a monthly fee that covers hosting, updates, backups and the changes you ask for. You know both before anything starts, and nothing is bolted on later.
- Wix: a monthly plan, plus paid apps
- Stratasis: a fixed project price, then one monthly fee
Load time and search
Every Wix page carries the code that runs the builder, whether the page needs it or not, and every app adds more. A page built for one business, with only the code it needs, is lighter, and the difference shows most on a phone on mobile data, which is how most local customers find you.
Wix gives you the search basics: titles, descriptions and a sitemap. A custom site goes further, with the structure of every page, the structured data Google reads and a page for each service and town planned from the start. If being found in your area matters, that control is worth having.
Design, and growing past the template
A template is designed for everyone, so it fits no one exactly. You can change colours and fonts, but the bones stay the same, and so does the feeling that you've seen the site before.
A design made for your business starts from what your customers need to know and do, in your brand. And when you need something the template never planned for, like a client portal, an estimate request with photos or a booking flow tied to your calendar, it's built as part of the site, not squeezed in.
Owning your site, and leaving Wix
Your domain can move anywhere, but a Wix site can't. Wix doesn't let you export the site itself to host it elsewhere, so leaving means rebuilding it. That's worth knowing before you put years of pages into it.
A custom site is yours: the code, the domain and every account are in your name, and you can take them wherever you like.
Moving from Wix to a site of your own
Switching is less work than most people expect. We plan the new site, carry your words and photos across, keep your domain, and point every old address at its new page so Google and your customers follow along. Your Wix plan runs until the new site goes live.
- Your domain stays
- Every old page redirected
- No day without a website
