Short answer: if you need a website with real business functionality (selling, accounts, bookings), WordPress is cheaper than Wix within the first three years, not just eventually — because the Wix plan that actually enables those features (Core, from €29/month) quickly overtakes the one-off cost of a WordPress build. Wix stays cheaper only if you genuinely need the simplest possible site and you’re building it yourself.
WordPress vs Wix: quick comparison
| WordPress | Wix | |
|---|---|---|
| Upfront cost | Higher (you pay for the build) | Lower (you pay a subscription) |
| Monthly cost | Hosting only, roughly €2.5-5/month depending on the provider | From €29/month (plan Core) |
| Ownership | The site and content are fully yours; you can move hosting anytime | The site is tied to the Wix platform; migrating away is hard and limited |
| Customisation | Nearly unlimited, thousands of themes and plugins | Limited to the Wix editor and its features |
| Speed and SEO | Needs setup (hosting, caching, optimisation), but then no ceiling | Solid out of the box, with less control over technical details |
| Online shop | WooCommerce, no platform commission on revenue | A Wix eCommerce plan formally exists, but people building a shop themselves realistically choose Shopify instead — building a proper shop yourself on Wix is uncommon |
| Best for | Businesses planning growth, who want SEO control or a shop | A simple website or landing page, a fast start, no interest in handling the technical side |
Cost of a WordPress site
With WordPress you mostly pay once, at build time. The domain, hosting and any add-ons are a small, recurring cost after that. For a detailed line-item breakdown (theme, plugins, developer time), see our WordPress website development article. If you don’t need an online shop, just a standard business presence, our more general website cost guide covers that.
Cost of a Wix site
Wix has no build cost in the classic sense, but you have to pay for a plan to remove Wix ads, connect your own domain and use business features. The Core plan, Wix’s entry point for a site with serious features (selling, bookings, member accounts), starts from €29/month (paid annually). The domain is free only in the first year of an annual plan; from year two you pay the standard renewal rate, which depends on the extension.
Example: 3-year cost
A fair comparison has to count the same thing on both sides. Someone building a site on Wix themselves typically doesn’t build a shop — that’s a job for a professional, or for a platform built for shops, like Shopify. What someone realistically puts together themselves on Wix is a simple website or landing page, so that’s what we’re comparing:
| Item | WordPress (with us) | Wix Core, self-built |
|---|---|---|
| Build | from €700 (business website, one-off) | €0 — but your time, and rarely a professional result |
| Monthly plan (36 months) | – (hosting only) | €29 × 36 = €1,044 (Core plan, annual billing) |
| Domain, hosting and SSL (3 years) | roughly €110-135 (see note below, prices excl. VAT) | Year 1 domain free, then ~2 years × ~€15-18 = ~€30-36; hosting and SSL included in the plan |
| Total over 3 years | around €810-835 | around €1,080 + your time |
A note on the WordPress-side figure: hosting doesn’t have to carry a promo-then-renewal trap. A VPS provider like Contabo runs a flat rate around €2.5/month with no steep renewal jump, which comes to about €90 for 3 years. A shared host like Bluehost goes even lower if you lock in the right term: its One Site plan is currently $1.99/month (~€1.85) on a 36-month term (regular price $8.99/month, a 78% discount), and that rate holds for the entire 3 years — the jump to the regular price only happens once that 36-month term ends, right at the edge of our comparison window, not inside it. At that rate, hosting alone comes to roughly €67 for 3 years. Add a typical .com domain renewal, roughly €12-18/year depending on the registrar, say €15/year × 3 = €45, and SSL is free. Depending on which of these you use, domain + hosting + SSL for 3 years lands somewhere around €110-135 — all figures net of VAT, in line with how B2B hosting and domain prices are usually quoted.
WordPress comes out clearly cheaper than a self-built Wix Core site already within the first three years — and after those three years, WordPress’s ongoing cost drops to just domain and hosting (roughly €45/year), while Wix keeps charging the full monthly plan indefinitely. Over five or ten years the gap keeps widening in WordPress’s favour. If you plan to keep the site live beyond 3-4 years, or to expand it over time, WordPress is the cheaper choice.
Downsides of building it yourself or with AI tools
Before deciding to put a site together yourself or through an AI generator (Wix ADI and similar “build a site in 5 minutes” tools), it’s worth knowing what that saving usually costs you:
- A generic look and generic copy. AI tools and off-the-shelf templates produce sites that look like thousands of others — the same section layout, the same stock photos, text full of general phrases with no concrete reason to pick your business specifically. Visitors struggle to tell you apart from the competition.
- Weak SEO foundations. AI-generated content is rarely structured around the actual searches people type (the kind we research through Keyword Planner for every article). Without researched keywords and a deliberate heading structure, a site struggles to attract organic traffic no matter how good it looks.
- Templates carry “dead” code. A ready-made theme ships with features you’ll never use — sections, scripts and styles that still get loaded even though you never touch them. That slows the site down, and load speed is itself an SEO factor.
- Hard to adapt later. When the business grows and needs a new feature (a shop, bookings, another language), a template or AI-generated structure often can’t accommodate it without a full rebuild — what looked “free” at the start ends up costing twice.
- Security risk without oversight. People running their own site often fall behind on theme, plugin and core updates. Outdated software is the most common entry point for hacks, and the consequences (a blocked site, lost data, a Google malware penalty) cost far more than what was saved on the build.
- Your time isn’t actually free. Hours spent tweaking sections and searching forums for solutions usually don’t get counted as a cost, but that time could have gone into something that actually generates revenue.
This doesn’t mean AI is useless — we use it ourselves for research and to speed up parts of the process. The difference is whether AI generates content with no oversight or strategy behind it, or whether a professional uses it as a tool within a deliberate plan.
When Wix is the better choice
- You need a site quickly, without hiring anyone, and you’ll maintain it yourself.
- You have no technical background and don’t want to deal with hosting or updates.
- The site is small (a few pages, a simple portfolio) and you’re not planning to grow it or add a shop.
- Your starting budget is tight and a monthly subscription doesn’t bother you.
When WordPress is the better choice
- You’re planning an online shop or a site with more functionality (bookings, memberships, multiple languages).
- SEO is a priority: WordPress gives you full control over technical detail (speed, URL structure, schema markup) that’s harder to achieve on Wix.
- You expect the site to grow and change over the coming years.
- You don’t want to be locked into one platform and its subscription pricing.
WordPress vs Wix and SEO
Both systems can rank well, but WordPress gives you more control: you choose the hosting (and with it, server speed), install SEO plugins, customise schema markup and URL structure without platform limits. Wix has improved its SEO options significantly in recent years, but you’re still working within what the platform allows you to change. For a site that relies on organic traffic — much like the kind of businesses that build content around pricing and services — that difference in control shows up over time.
What if you need a shop, not just a website
This is where the comparison with Wix stops being useful. Wix eCommerce plans formally exist, but few people build a serious shop with them on their own — for a self-built shop, people more realistically pick Shopify, which is actually built for that. If you’re weighing a hosted platform for a shop, the comparison should be WordPress + WooCommerce vs Shopify, not vs Wix.
WooCommerce doesn’t take a commission on revenue, only the payment processor’s fee, while Shopify’s monthly plan is often paired with a transaction percentage if you’re not using their own payment system. For a detailed cost breakdown of a WordPress shop, see our WooCommerce online shop cost article.
Not sure what you need yet
If you’re still validating an idea and don’t know whether you need a full website at all, a single landing page is a cheap way to test demand before committing to either WordPress or a Wix subscription. See our landing page guide.
What it costs with Kurbatov Dev
We build sites on WordPress, with full ownership of the code and content, no lock-in to someone else’s platform.
| Service | Price | What’s included |
|---|---|---|
| Business website | from €700 | Company presentation, up to a few pages, basic SEO structure |
| Online shop (WooCommerce) | from €900 | Delivery from 20 days; the full customer journey from filters to payment and order tracking |
| Ongoing technical support | €55/month | Backups, updates, performance monitoring, bug fixes |
After a brief you’ll get a non-binding preliminary quote with a timeline and price.
Frequently asked questions
Is WordPress free? The software itself is, but you pay for hosting, the theme, plugins and build work.
Is Wix cheaper than WordPress? Not always. For a site with business functionality (Core plan, €29/month), Wix is more expensive than WordPress within the first three years, because the monthly subscription adds up quickly.
Can I switch from Wix to WordPress later? Yes, but migration requires manually moving content and you typically lose some SEO history, so it’s cheaper to pick the platform you plan to stay on from the start.
Is WordPress harder to use? Content management is similar to Wix. The difference is in setting up hosting and technical details, which an agency usually handles during the build.
Is Wix better for SEO than WordPress? No, generally the opposite: WordPress gives you more control over technical SEO detail. Wix is good enough for a small site but limits advanced settings.
Not sure which one fits you?
Send us a few lines about what the site needs to do, and we’ll tell you whether WordPress or a hosted platform makes more sense in your case. Request a free consultation