The easiest one here, and what that costs later
If you have never built a website and you want one finished this week, Wix is the answer in our comparison. It is genuine drag-and-drop rather than a section system, the AI first draft gets you to something editable in minutes, and there is nothing here a beginner will find easier.
It scores 7.8 under how we rate and it is our Best Overall pick, which is not the highest score on the page. WordPress.com scores higher and costs a quarter as much, and it hands a beginner an editor they will struggle with. The head term asks for a builder, and this is the best builder.
What twelve months buys
Every price on this site is quoted at the same size. Ours is twelve months of the cheapest plan that gives you your own domain and no vendor advertising, and at Wix that is Light: $17 a month billed yearly, or $204 for the year.
Light removes Wix branding and connects your own domain, and carries 2 GB of storage, which is the thing the ladder is really selling. Core takes it to 50 GB and Business to 100 GB. Core is $348 and is the first tier that can take a payment. Business is $468. Business Elite is $1908 and is priced for a company rather than a site.
One thing the pricing page does not lead with. The free domain voucher is good for one year, on a first yearly purchase, and Wix states it "cannot be used to renew or extend a domain you already own". So year two carries a domain bill the first year did not, on every plan.
The one thing Wix does that nothing else here does
Wix prints, under its pricing table, that USD prices are displayed for reference only.
That sounds like boilerplate. It is the most useful line on any pricing page in this category. Every platform here localises its prices, and Squarespace and Framer both stop there, which means a reader outside the United States cannot compare them against anything. Wix shows the local price and the dollar reference, and the comparison on this site is possible because of it.
We are hard on Wix further down this page. This is worth saying first.
Leaving, which you cannot
Here is the expensive part, and it is the reason a Wix site is a decision rather than a purchase.
There is no code export. None, at any tier. What you build stays on Wix.
Changing template means rebuilding. Not reskinning, rebuilding. Squarespace, which is the direct rival most people are comparing against, lets you swap template on a live site. Shopify swaps themes without touching the catalogue. Wix does not, which means the design decision you make in week one is the design you have until you start again.
Put those two together and Wix is the hardest platform in this comparison to leave, which is why it scores lowest of the seven on scalability despite scoring near the top on almost everything else. That is not a criticism of the editor. It is the trade the editor is built on: the flexibility that makes it easy to use comes from Wix owning the output.
What the money actually gets you
Round the clock support on the cheapest paid plan, which is not true of Webflow, Framer or WordPress.com at similar money. More than two thousand templates. A real app market. Bookings, payments and a site on one bill, which for a small service business is a genuine reason to pay more than the cheapest option here.
The published sites are heavier than what Framer or Webflow produce. That is the price of an editor that lets you drag anything anywhere, and for most sites it does not matter.
Who should buy it
This is a first website, built by the person who will look after it, and on that brief nothing here beats it. Light is enough unless you need to take payments, where the jump to Core is real and worth paying. Round the clock support at the cheapest tier is genuinely rare and genuinely useful when something breaks on a Sunday.
The case against is one sentence long and it is about year three rather than week one. You are picking a platform you cannot leave and a template you cannot change, so pick both as though you meant it. If the easy editor is not what you are paying for, WordPress.com is a quarter of the price and you can walk away from it.
Prices, plan contents and the domain voucher terms on this page were read from the vendor plans page and support centre on .
