Wix is one of the easiest ways to build a website from scratch, and one of the most advertised. It's a legitimate product with tens of millions of users, and it has one structural quirk worth understanding before you commit.

What you get

• A visual editor — you drag elements anywhere on the page, rather than filling in a fixed template. More freedom than Squarespace, more opportunity to make it look wrong.
• Hundreds of templates — more variety, more quality range.
• Hosting and SSL — included in every paid plan.
• Apps — bookings, stores, forms, chat, added from a marketplace.
• A free plan — real, permanent, no card required.

What the free plan actually gives you

This matters because "free website" is what most people search for:

• An address like username.wixsite.com/businessname, not your own domain.
• Wix ads on your page.
• Limited storage and no ability to take payments.
• You can connect a domain only on a paid plan.

It's fine for a portfolio, a club page or trying the tool. For a business, the ads and the address both work against you — which is the honest reason the paid plans exist.

What it costs

Plan	Roughly per month
Free	$0, with ads and a wixsite.com address
Light / Core	$17–$29
Business	$29–$36
Business Elite	$159+

Annual billing is cheaper than monthly. The cheapest paid tier is often enough for a brochure site; check whether it includes the domain you want, because some plans do for the first year only.

The trade-off: you can't leave easily

Wix sites are built in Wix's own system, so there's no file you can download and move to another host. If you outgrow it, or the price rises beyond what you want to pay, the site gets rebuilt somewhere else.

That's true of Squarespace too, and it's not a scandal — it's the deal with hosted builders. It does mean the decision is stickier than it looks. A WordPress site can be moved; a Wix site can't.

There's also no way to export your content in a structured form. Keep your text in a document somewhere, whichever platform you use.

What it's good at

• Getting something live fast, with no technical knowledge at all.
• Layout freedom — you can put a thing where you want it.
• Templates for almost any business type.
• A real free tier, unlike some competitors that only offer a trial.

What it's bad at

• Layout freedom cuts both ways. Drag-anything means you can accidentally build a page that breaks on a phone. Wix has a mobile editor, and it's easy to forget it exists.
• Speed. Wix sites have historically been slower than plain HTML. It's improved, but a heavy page is still heavy.
• Ad-heavy ecosystem. The app marketplace pushes paid add-ons.
• Lock-in, as above.

Should a local trade use it?

It's a reasonable choice if you want to build it yourself, want more layout control than Squarespace gives, and don't mind $17–$29 a month.

If what you actually need is one accurate page with your phone number on it, a builder is more tool than the job requires. Free options exist, including the one this site runs — see free vs paid.

Compare: Squarespace, WordPress.