Site builders are web applications that allow you to build and design websites. Although WP is known as a content management system, you can consider it a website builder. The reason for this is Gutenberg and page builders are available for the content management system. Before Gutenberg was introduced, WP CMS users had to depend on the theme’s options or third-party page builders for designing pages. One of the most popular website builder tools is Wix. WordPress must be installed on a server. One of the leading WP hosting companies is Bluehost.
Wix lets users build and launch an eCommerce site, blog, or anything else. The sites you build are automatically hosted on the company’s servers. You don’t have to use a control panel tool or any other software to install the site on the server. Bluehost is a hosting company that specializes in hosting WordPress content management systems. Below, we’ve compared Wix with Bluehost.
Plans
Wix has launched three plans each in these two categories – Website, Business & eCommerce. The cheapest subscription of the site builder is the Connect domain plan which lets you link your domain with the website you’ve created. Although you can connect your domain and use other features of the website builder, the site will feature the company’s branding if you use the Connect plan.
If you don’t want to see the branding, you can subscribe to one of these three plans – Combo, Unlimited, and VIP. These packages are priced around 2, 3, and 4 dollars, respectively, and offer 3GB, 10GB, and 35GB storage memory. The three packs restrict the number of minutes an uploaded video can be watched by the user from 30 minutes to 300 minutes.
The VIP and Unlimited packs offer the following features – access to site booster and analytics app. The VIP subscription lets users design a logo. Once your logo is ready, you will get over 40 logos of different sizes. Sites built using the Combo and Connect plans are allocated 1 and 2GB bandwidth. The remaining two subscriptions ship with unlimited bandwidth. The Combo, Unlimited, and VIP plans of the website builder come with a free domain.
Wix eCommerce subscriptions ship with similar features. The only difference between them is the pricing and storage memory that a site is assigned. The three eCommerce plans of the website builder are Business, Unlimited, and VIP. These packages cost around 3, 5, and 7 dollars and ship with 20GB, 35GB, and 50GB storage memory. The sites built using one of these three plans will not have Wix branding.
Bluehost has four shared hosting packages – Basic, Plus, Choice Plus, and Pro. The non-Basic plans let users host multiple websites. You can host only one website if you’re using the Basic hosting subscription. Unlike Wix, which offers a maximum of 50GB of storage memory for files and other data, Bluehost provides unlimited storage memory to the buyers of the non-Basic shared hosting plan. The Basic servers have 50GB of storage space, which is more than enough for a single website. As we’ve mentioned above, you can find 1000s of themes/plugins for WP on the internet. In addition to this, BH also gives you free access to custom-built themes.
Also read: Which Bluehost plan is best?
Plugins and themes
Theme and plugins are a big plus point of WP. As WordPress is the best and most widely used content management system, you’ll find 1000s of themes and plugins built for WP on the internet. Wix might be a popular website builder, but you won’t find plugins and themes built for it on marketplaces other than the ones you’ll find on its official website.
The website builder tool offers over 250 add-ons, aka web applications. Some applications are paid, and some are free. In addition to the plugins, Wix also lets you download/use over 800 templates. The templates are free and customizable. You can find templates of all types on the templates marketplace of Wix.
Drag and drop designer
You can customize a website built with Wix using its editor. If you’re using WP and if the WP template has added a theme settings panel to the WP dashboard, you can customize the theme from the theme settings panel. If the theme has not added a settings panel to the dashboard, you can use the WP live customizer tool to make changes to your website.
SSL certificate
You can enable SSL certification for your WP site on BH with the help of the cPanel tool. Wix also lets users activate an SSL certificate for their eCommerce sites, blogs, etc.
Caching and CDN
Wix, by default, caches the pages on their CDN servers. In other words, the performance of a website is automatically taken care of. Bluehost lets its users activate Cloudflare CDN. You can also install a caching plugin such as WP Rocket or Nitropack to boost your website’s performance further.
Closing words: Wix has affordable plans but limited plugins. The website builder offers a decent number of themes. If you take the plugins and theme builders into consideration, nothing can beat WordPress.
