What Are the Key Differences?
Before diving into numbers, it's important to understand that there is no single right answer for everyone. WordPress, Wix, and custom websites are different tools suited to different situations. The right choice depends on your budget, your technical capabilities, and what you want to achieve.
WordPress
WordPress is an open-source content management system (CMS) that powers about 43% of all websites worldwide. It's an incredibly flexible platform. You can build a simple blog, an online store, a massive information portal, or anything in between. This flexibility is both its strength and its weakness: some technical knowledge is required to manage it.
Wix
Wix is a cloud-based platform built on a drag-and-drop principle. No technical knowledge is needed. Anyone can build a beautiful website within hours. The downside: less flexibility, platform lock-in, and sometimes inferior performance and SEO compared to WordPress.
Custom Website
A website built from scratch by developers, typically with Next.js, React, Vue.js, or similar frameworks. Offers full control, excellent performance, and no limitations, but development costs are significantly higher and every change requires a developer.
3-Year Price Comparison
Pricing isn't just about what you pay today. You need to calculate the total cost over time. Here's a realistic comparison for a small-to-medium business:
Wix (Business Plan)
- Annual subscription: about $330 to $500/year
- Domain: included in business plans
- Initial design (freelancer): $400 to $1,100 one-time
- Maintenance: minimal, managed by the business owner
- 3-year cost: $2,200 to $3,600
WordPress
- Hosting + domain: $160 to $330/year
- Theme + plugins: $130 to $530 one-time
- Initial build: $1,100 to $3,300
- Maintenance and security: $65 to $130/month
- 3-year cost: $5,200 to $9,600
Custom Website (Next.js)
- Hosting (Vercel/Netlify): $0 to $110/month
- Initial development: $5,500 to $22,000
- Maintenance and updates: $270 to $800/month
- 3-year cost: $15,400 to $51,600
The takeaway: a custom site is justified for businesses with unique needs and a high budget. For most small businesses, Wix is the entry point, and WordPress is the next step up.
Which Is Better for SEO?
This is one of the most debated topics in the digital world. Here is the truth, based on data:
WordPress and SEO
WordPress provides the fullest technical control: meta tags, schema markup, speed optimization, robots.txt, sitemaps. Everything is customizable. With the Rank Math or Yoast SEO plugin, even non-technical business owners can manage SEO professionally. It's the preferred tool for professional SEO specialists.
Wix and SEO
Wix has undergone notable improvements in recent years. It now supports canonical URLs, structured data, automatic sitemaps, and reasonable Core Web Vitals. For local businesses with 5 to 30 pages, Wix is perfectly adequate for organic ranking. The gap with WordPress becomes significant only when diving into advanced SEO strategies.
Custom Websites and SEO
A site properly built in Next.js with SSG (Static Site Generation) is simply the fastest option available, and Google loves speed. Excellent Core Web Vitals, low TTI (Time to Interactive), and optimal LCP. But if the site wasn't built with SEO attention from day one, it can also fail in performance.
When Does a Custom Website Make Sense?
A custom website justifies its high investment only when there's a genuine need that existing platforms cannot cover:
- Unique functionality: complex price calculators, ERP integration, a customer portal with unique business logic
- Critical performance: a platform with millions of users that needs to handle high loads
- SaaS product: when the website is effectively the application
- Premium branding: companies that invest in unique user experience as part of their brand (like luxury websites)
For a business that needs a showcase site with a blog and contact page, a custom site is overkill. Invest the difference in campaigns that bring customers.
Full Comparison Table
- Ease of use: Wix 5/5 | WordPress 3/5 | Custom 2/5
- Flexibility: Wix 3/5 | WordPress 4/5 | Custom 5/5
- SEO: Wix 4/5 | WordPress 5/5 | Custom 5/5
- Speed: Wix 3/5 | WordPress 3/5 | Custom 5/5
- Total cost (3 years): Wix low | WordPress medium | Custom high
- Security: Wix 5/5 | WordPress 3/5 | Custom 5/5
- Scalability: Wix 3/5 | WordPress 4/5 | Custom 5/5
Our Recommendation
After building hundreds of websites for businesses, our recommendation is straightforward:
Choose Wix If:
- You're a small business with a limited budget
- You want to manage the site yourself without technical knowledge
- You need a showcase site with a contact page and maybe a gallery
- You don't plan to grow to 100+ content pages
Choose WordPress If:
- You want a serious content blog with dozens of articles
- You have an online store (WooCommerce)
- You want maximum flexibility for the future
- You have a budget for ongoing maintenance
Choose Custom If:
- You're a startup with a unique product
- You're a large brand investing in branding
- You have functional needs that no platform can cover
At JOYO Digital, we've built hundreds of solutions for small and medium businesses. Our approach: we match the solution to the need, not the need to whatever solution is convenient for us to build. Sometimes it's Wix, sometimes Next.js, and sometimes both together.