Wix vs. WordPress for Contractors: Honest Comparison

Wix or WordPress? Ask online and you'll find two camps, each sure the other one is wrong.

Here is the plain version, checked against each company's own pages and public speed data. Neither platform makes your phone ring on its own. But they are different, and the differences matter for a contracting business.

First, which WordPress?

There are two, and most comparisons blur them.

• WordPress.com is a hosted service, like Wix. You pay for a plan, and they run the hosting, security and updates.
• WordPress.org is the free, open source software. You install it on hosting you pay for separately, and keeping it secure and up to date is your job.

When a web designer says they build on WordPress, ask which one. WordPress is also everywhere: W3Techs finds it on 40.2% of the websites it surveys, against 4.2% for Wix. That is one reason it is easy to find someone who can work on it.

What each one costs

These are the US prices on each company's own pricing page on 23 September 2026, billed yearly, before tax.

Option	Price a month	Hosting included	Worth knowing
Wix	$17 to $159	Yes	Core ($29) and up can take payments
WordPress.com	$4 to $45	Yes	Plugins on every paid plan
Self-hosted WordPress	Software is free	No, you pay a host	Paid plugins are extra

Wix has four paid plans: Light at $17 a month, Core at $29, Business at $39 and Business Elite at $159. Each one includes hosting and a free domain for the first year.

Both platforms have free plans, and neither suits a business. Wix's free plan carries Wix branding, and you need a paid plan to connect your own domain. WordPress.com's free plan gives you a WordPress.com address, shows ads to your visitors and doesn't allow plugins.

WordPress.com runs from $4 a month for Personal to $45 for Commerce. Self-hosted WordPress costs nothing to download, but hosting is a separate bill, and prices vary a lot from host to host. Our guide to contractor website hosting covers what to look for. Many plugins also have paid versions: Yoast SEO Premium, a popular SEO plugin, is $118.80 a year.

The honest point: the platform fee is the smallest number here. If your average job is a few hundred dollars, one extra booked job a month covers any plan in that table. The real question is which setup brings in more of those jobs.

Speed: the data favors Wix

Google's ranking systems use Core Web Vitals: three measures of how fast a page loads, how quickly it responds to a tap, and whether it jumps around while loading. They come from real visits in Chrome.

The usual advice is that WordPress is faster. The real-world data says the opposite, on average.

Pass all three Core Web Vitals on phones

Wix81%

WordPress49%

The reason is control. Every Wix website runs on Wix's own servers and technology. A WordPress website is only as fast as the host, theme and plugins someone picked for it. A carefully built WordPress website can be fast. The average one is not.

You can check your own. Put your address into Google's PageSpeed Insights. If your website gets enough visits, it shows whether you pass the Core Web Vitals assessment, based on real Chrome visits rather than a test run.

Keep speed in proportion, though. Google says it still shows the most relevant page, even when that page's experience is poor. Speed helps. It does not beat being the best answer to the search.

SEO: both cover the basics

The old knock on Wix was that you couldn't control your SEO. That is out of date. On Wix you can set each page's title, description and web address, hide a page from Google, and add structured data, the code that describes your business to search engines. Wix builds and updates your sitemap on its own. Once you add your business name and location, it creates local business markup for your homepage automatically. With your own domain connected, you can redirect old page addresses to new ones.

WordPress goes further. A plugin like Yoast SEO gives you finer control over every page, and because the software is open source, a developer can change anything.

For most contractors, the platform isn't what holds rankings back. Before you blame it, check the things that count on either one: a page for each service you offer, a complete Google Business Profile, and steady reviews. Here's how to get your website to show up on Google.

Plugins, apps and upkeep

WordPress's plugin directory lists over 73,000 free plugins: forms, galleries, SEO tools, speed tools and more. If you can describe a feature, someone has probably built it.

That choice comes with upkeep. Security company Patchstack counted 11,334 new vulnerabilities in the WordPress world in 2025. 91% were in plugins and 9% in themes. WordPress itself had 6, all low priority. The core software is solid; the risk sits in the add-ons. On self-hosted WordPress, keeping all of it updated falls to you or whoever you pay. WordPress.com takes part of that off your plate: every plan includes automatic core updates and malware detection and removal.

Where the 11,334 new WordPress vulnerabilities of 2025 were

Plugins

Plugins 91%Themes 9%WordPress itself 6, all low priority

Wix works differently. You add features from the Wix App Market, and Wix runs the hosting and security. Once your website has its own domain connected, you can add your own code too. There is less to tinker with, and less to look after.

Can you take it with you?

This is the one to settle before you build, not after.

A Wix website can't leave Wix. Wix's own help center says your website has to be hosted and run on Wix's servers, so there is no export. Your domain can move to another company. The website can't. WordPress.com's import tool can bring over a Wix website's pages, images, menus and title, but not its design, and blog posts only through the RSS feed, which carries the 20 most recent. Switching later means rebuilding.

WordPress can go anywhere. The software is open source, so you can move your website from one host to another.

If you plan to be in business ten years from now, that is worth weighing before you build.

Which one fits your business

The honest answer depends on who builds it and who looks after it.

If this is you	Pick
You'll build it yourself and don't want to maintain anything	Wix
You want WordPress without running the hosting and updates	WordPress.com
You want full control and the freedom to change hosts	Self-hosted WordPress, with someone to keep it updated
You're paying someone to build and run it	Whatever they keep fast and updated, as long as you can leave with it

Website design vs. Wix: what you're really choosing

Plenty of owners aren't choosing between two platforms. They're choosing between building it themselves on Wix and paying someone to do it. Either way, the platform matters less than the answers to these questions. Ask them of any web designer, us included.

1. Is the domain in my name? It should be, from day one.
2. Can I leave with my website? On Wix, the pages stay on Wix. Anywhere else, get the answer in writing.
3. Who keeps it updated, and who fixes it when it breaks? On self-hosted WordPress, that is ongoing work, not a one-time job.
4. How will I know it brings calls? Ask what gets counted: form fills, taps on the call button or tracked calls. Here's how to track phone calls from your website.
5. What happens after launch? A website isn't finished the day it goes live. Ask what gets done in month two.

Our answers, on Foundation: your domain and your Google listing are in your name from day one. If you leave, you get your website files once your balance is clear. Your dashboard counts form fills and call-button taps. And the work to get you found carries on every month.

What matters more than the platform

Whatever you build on, the same few things matter more than the platform: your phone number and a call button at the top of every page, one clear line saying what you do and where, reviews people can see, and a page for each service. Here are the calls to action that get contractors more calls, and contractor websites that get it right.

Fix those first, on whatever platform you have today. If you're weighing Squarespace too, we compared Squarespace with a custom website the same way.