Wix is a professional website builder, web host, domain name registrar and suite of tools combined into one package. They aim to be your all in one solution for any type of website. From creating an online portfolio, blog or ecommerce store. Wix has the tools to help you create what you need, but is Wix for blogging or only creating websites?
In this Wix blogging review, I’ll be focusing in on the blogging functionality that Wix provides. Is it a viable content marketing solution? Can you actually blog with Wix and rank well in the search engines? How easy is it to use and are there any glaring limitations that you need to know about?
This is important to know because if you can’t get traffic to your website through blogging with Wix, you’ll have a tough time making sales of products as an affiliate or through your ecommerce website if you choose to make an online store with Wix in the future.
Is Wix Good for Blogging?
In short, yes Wix is good for blogging. You get control over the meta data and the on page SEO of your blog posts as well as the permalink structure. You can also set headers, sub headers, embed videos and pictures and add in accurate alt tags.
Best of all, with Wix you can custom design your individual blog posts to your liking as well as the blog and category pages. With search rankings rankings Wix IP address are also trusted so with good content going after under served topics you can do quite well with your rankings.
Best of all with a Wix account you can get unlimited traffic to your website without needing to upgrade your plan (unlike a web hosting account where you’ll have to upgrade from shared hosting to cloud hosting or a VPS).
Last, one very under-rated feature of Wix blogging is the ability to content lock your blog posts with a paid subscription. That means you can have some blog posts be public and other blog posts be private for paying subscribers only.
Wix plans and Pricing
Wix has two groups of pricing plans. One group is for blogs and websites and another set of pricing packages is for business and ecommerce plans.
The website plans enable you to build a website and blog where you can engage in affiliate marketing and running paid ads on your website. If you want to sell your own digital products directly or drop ship, you’ll need to get a business/ecommerce plan instead.
With regards to the pricing plans, the only viable option is the “unlimited” plan offered by Wix. While the “combo” and “connect domain” plans are more affordable, they are far to limiting in the amount of resources they provide and thus very expensive:
For the connect domain plan, you will still have Wix ads showing on your website despite you paying for a plan. The combo plan removes Wix ads, but limits your bandwidth to an unusable 2 GB. This amount of bandwidth will allow your website to only 15-20 visitors a day max.
The “unlimited” plan does not limit your bandwidth, removes all Wix ads and allows you to fully own your website. With all Wix accounts, you get a free domain for the first year that renews at $15 a year.
Wix domain name price
With setting up your website and blog with Wix you can get started completely for free. Your website will begin as a subdomain of “WixSites.com” and when you’re ready to upgrade your account you can either get your domain name directly through Wix or use an independent domain registrar.
The advantages of going directly through Wix are that you get the domain registration fee waived for the first year and everything is setup fast and correctly. So within a few minutes of upgrading your account and purchasing a domain, you’ll have your own custom domain with an SSL certificate.
The price of a .com domain name with Wix is $15 a year (after the free first year). You also don’t get WHOIS protection with Wix. For that you’ll have to pay an additional $10 a year. So all in all, expect to pay a $25 a year, per year for your domain with Wix.
Domain registrar vs Wix domain
By contrast, you can always go with an independent domain registrar like Namecheap and connect your website through them. The advantages of this are that Namecheap charges $8.88 per year and provides WHOIS protection for free.
The renewal rate for Namecheap is $12.99 per year, but you can lock in the $8.88 a year price for multiple years in advance. So long term you’ll save a considerable amount of money by using Namecheap as your domain registrar.
The only downside of going through Namecheap is that it’s a bit techy and slow to set everything up to with Wix. It can be done, but it you’ll have to wait a few hours for everything to propagate once finished.
I have a free video tutorial on how to set a custom domain with Wix and Namecheap.
Templates and design for Wix blogging
Designing your own blog can be time-consuming, so many bloggers turn to Wix templates and design for blogging, particularly those who are just starting out. Though if you want to start from scratch by using a blank template, you can.
When it comes to blog design, Wix has a vast array of templates for bloggers. These are available in themes for personal blogs, tech websites, lifestyle bloggers as well as fashion and beauty.” The selection is so large that you’re sure to find something that will work well with your blog.
Wix editor
In addition, if you need help designing your website yourself there’s a wide variety of tools from which to choose from with the Wix editor. Everything from selecting fonts and colors, to uploading photos or videos. You can edit content by inserting links or assigning tags within seconds and move elements around with ease.
The Wix editor we would describe as an unstructured editor that allows you move and resize on page elements at the click of a button. You can also add in premade sections which you can then edit.
Last, you can optimize your website for mobile with the Wix editor. Overall, the Wix editor is feature rich and easy to use. It does have a learning curve, but it’s designed with a beginner in mind. Check it out by creating a free Wix account.
Hire a professional through the Wix marketplace.
We also want to mention that Wix does have a built in marketplace of designers you can take advantage of if you don’t want to design your website yourself or use a template. With Wix, you can hire a Wix Partner to help you with design, SEO, branding or some custom work you want to outsource.
Blogging on Wix
Once you have your website setup, you easily add a blog to your Wix website by going to the menu and finding where it says “blog.” Simply add a blog and the Wix editor will automatically create a dedicated blog page and demo blog posts. You can also at your most recent posts to any page you like via the editor.
Most bloggers would want to add a simple grid layout of their most recent posts to the homepage and with Wix you can do just that at the click of a button.
Creating blog posts with Wix
Once the Wix editor finished setting up your blog, you’ll have a dedicated blog roll page found at example.com/blog. Your individual blog posts will be example.com/blog/post-title. This is an optimal URL structure for a blog and what we use here at Website Creative Pro.
To create blog posts you’ll now have now have a “blog” section in your Wix dashboard for your website. It comes with a bunch of demo blog posts you can go ahead and delete.
Blog post dashboard with Wix
I’m quite happy to see how seriously Wix takes blogging now. From being an after thought years ago to now being as feature rich as WordPress. The Wix blog post editor has everything a professional blogger needs to create high quality content.
With blogging on Wix, you can set a each blog post to have a feature images, header tags like H1, H2 and H3 as well as drag and drop elements into place like GIF’s, videos and images.
You can also add each blog post to a keyword rich category and optimize the blog post’s on page SEO through direct control of the blog post’s SEO title and meta description. You even get full access to advanced features like custom CSS, HTML and structured data.
Blogging paid subscriptions
With Wix, you can content lock blog posts similar to what Mark Manson does on his massive personal development blog. That means you can have some blog posts be available for free that can get indexed in search engines, and other blog post you can hide behind a paywall.
So over time, you can potentially build up a large audience that pays a monthly subscription to get access to your private blog posts. We find this feature really impressive and something that still is quite clunky to do with WordPress.
Wix blogging pros and cons
So in general, I find that Wix is a viable option for blogging and on par with WordPress with regards to SEO, design and monetization strategies. With Wix, you’re not limited in any real way and can build up a high traffic website and blog.
Pros:
- Feature rich design editor for your blog posts.
- Easy to use templates that can be edited to your liking.
- Advanced blog editor features for your URL structure, categories, tags, feature images and on page SEO.
- Easy to use monetization strategies. Can easily add Google AdSense, affiliate marketing or content lock your blog posts.
- With the click of a button you can show or hide any type of meta information you like, from the author to the dates as well as the category.
Cons:
- The only con, and it’s a big one is a lack or support for affiliate link cloaking. That means taking a long ugly affiliate link and turning it into something more visually appealing like websitecreativepro.com/product.
- Cloaked affiliate links are more trustworthy and it’s easier to manage on the back end as blogger. If an affiliate program changes their platform, it’s much easier to change where websitecreativepro.com/product redirects to instead of manually scouring your website for a few hours, updating each affiliate link one by one.
Wix blogging review conclusion
Wix blogging has come along way over the years to truly rival WordPress. Not only do you have an unstructured, drag and drop editor to design your website and blog with, the actual blogging features are advanced and feature rich.
You have full access to the on-page SEO of your website and can monetize your blog in unique ways. Our biggest complaint however is the lack of URL redirection and affiliate cloaking to make managing your marketing efforts easy. With Wix, it’s a bit of a headache as you’ll have to use a different service like bit.ly.
Last is the price. Wix is a bit expensive. For $12.50 a month, you can only have one website. On top of that, your domain through Wix with WHOIS protection will cost $25 a year. So you’ll be paying about $15 a month for one website. Which, compared to a shared host like Bluehost where you can have multiple websites for a cheaper price is simply not comparable.
Who should go with Wix?
So who is Wix ideal for? Anyone who wants an easy to use, all in one solution and does not want to be bothered with developing the technical skills to manage their own self hosted website. But who still wants advanced, professional features needed to build a profitable, high traffic website.
