WordPress.com vs Wix – which free tier is better?

WordPress.com vs Wix is one of the most common questions anyone starting a website runs into — and the two platforms are different enough that picking the wrong one means either rebuilding later or living with limitations that frustrate you every time you log in.

Both offer genuinely free plans with no credit card required. Both are used by millions of people worldwide. This guide compares WordPress.com and Wix section by section — free plans, paid pricing in the USA and UK side by side, ease of use, design, blogging, SEO, and how easy each is to leave later — so you can see clearly which fits what you’re building.

WordPress.com vs Wix: the fundamental difference

Before comparing features and pricing, it helps to understand what each platform is fundamentally designed for.

Wix is a website builder. It was designed to make it easy for anyone to create any kind of website through a visual drag-and-drop interface. Flexibility and ease of use are its core strengths.

WordPress.com is a hosted blogging and publishing platform. It’s built on WordPress software – the same software that powers over 40% of the internet – but in a managed, hosted form that handles all the technical infrastructure for you. Publishing and content are its core strengths.

This difference shapes everything that follows.

What you get on each free plan

Wix free plan

• Full access to the drag-and-drop editor
• 900+ templates
• yoursite.wixsite.com subdomain
• 500MB storage
• Wix branding appears on your site
• Blog included
• Basic SEO tools
• Contact forms
• No custom domain
• No ecommerce
• No email marketing

WordPress.com free plan

• WordPress blogging platform
• yoursite.wordpress.com subdomain
• 1GB storage
• Limited theme selection
• Basic SEO tools
• WordPress.com may display ads on your site (ads you don’t earn from)
• No custom domain
• No plugin installation
• No ecommerce
• Restricted customisation

Ease of use

Wix

Wix is the easier platform for most beginners – especially in the first session.

The drag-and-drop editor is genuinely intuitive to operate. You can click on any element and drag it anywhere on the page, with no code and no rigid block structure to learn first. That freedom is easy to pick up but takes longer to use well – the onboarding is friendly, Wix ADI offers an AI-assisted starting point, and the number of templates means you’ll quickly find something close to what you want, even if getting from “close” to “polished” takes a bit of patience.

For someone who has never built a website before and wants to produce something reasonable in an afternoon, Wix’s editor is the fastest path to that outcome.

Wix was the first website builder I ever used, and I’ll be honest – it wasn’t instant. There’s a steep learning curve the first time you sit down with a completely blank canvas and no structure to guide you; figuring out spacing, alignment, and how sections relate to each other took some trial and error. But with zero prior website-building experience, I was still able to put together a serviceable, smart-looking site in a relatively short period of time. That’s the real trade-off with Wix’s freedom: the ceiling is high and so is your control, but you’re doing more of the design thinking yourself than you would on a template-locked platform.

WordPress.com

WordPress.com’s editor is the Gutenberg block editor – the same one used on self-hosted WordPress. It’s a block-based interface where you add content in individual blocks – paragraphs, headings, images, buttons – and arrange them down the page.

For writing, the block editor is excellent. It’s fast, clean, and distraction-free when you’re in the writing zone. Building a non-standard page layout is less intuitive than Wix’s drag-and-drop approach and requires more familiarity before it feels natural.

Winner: Wix – lower barrier to entry for complete beginners, more immediately intuitive editor.

Design and templates

Wix

900+ templates covering almost every website type imaginable. Quality varies: the best are attractive and modern, the average are decent, and the worst are dated. You’ll almost certainly find something usable.

The free drag-and-drop editor gives you genuine flexibility to customise – move elements, change colours and fonts, add and remove sections. The default output is reasonable, and the flexibility means you can make it more your own if you want to.

One critical caveat: you cannot switch Wix templates after you’ve started building your site. Choose your template carefully at the start – changing it later means rebuilding.

WordPress.com

The free plan includes a limited selection of themes – far fewer than the full WordPress theme directory, and restricted compared to what self-hosted WordPress gives you. The themes available are clean and functional, but the selection is narrower than Wix’s.

Customisation is also more limited on the free plan. Font and colour choices are restricted. You can’t install custom themes. The overall design flexibility is lower than Wix at the free tier.

Winner: Wix – more templates, more design flexibility, better customisation on the free plan.

Blogging and content publishing

WordPress.com

This is WordPress.com’s clearest strength – and the gap between the platforms is significant.

WordPress.com is built for publishing. The Gutenberg editor is excellent for writing. Post scheduling, categories, tags, featured images, and author profiles are all handled cleanly. The overall editorial experience has been refined over twenty years of WordPress development and it shows.

For a blogger who wants a platform that thinks about content the way a writer does – where the focus is on writing rather than building – WordPress.com is noticeably better than Wix.

Wix

Wix has a blog function that works – you can write and publish posts, add categories, and manage content. But it’s clearly not Wix’s primary focus. The writing experience is less refined than WordPress.com’s; post management at scale is more cumbersome, and the overall feel is of a general website builder that added blogging rather than a platform built for writers.

For casual blogging alongside a broader site, Wix’s blog is adequate. For someone whose primary activity is writing and publishing content, WordPress.com is the more natural home.

Winner: WordPress.com – meaningfully better blogging and content publishing experience.

SEO

Wix

Wix’s SEO has improved considerably in recent years. On free plans, you can customise title tags, meta descriptions, and basic URL structure. The built-in SEO checklist walks you through the fundamentals.

The limitations are the subdomain URL (yoursite.wixsite.com rather than a custom domain), which affects how search engines perceive your site, and the platform-level restrictions on more advanced SEO configuration.

WordPress.com

WordPress.com’s SEO on free plans is comparable to Wix – you can set title tags and meta descriptions, and the content-focused architecture is inherently well-structured for search engines.

The subdomain limitation applies here, too – a WordPress.com subdomain is not ideal for SEO versus a custom domain.

One advantage WordPress.com has is that Google is very familiar with WordPress’s architecture and trusts it. A WordPress.com subdomain carries a degree of domain authority from the main WordPress.com domain.

Neither free plan is ideal for SEO. A custom domain – available on paid plans for either platform – is the most important SEO upgrade you can make. On the free tier, neither platform gives you the full SEO control that matters for serious organic search growth.

Winner: Draw – broadly comparable SEO at the free tier level, with WordPress.com having a slight structural advantage.

Ads and monetisation

Wix

Wix doesn’t allow you to run your own advertising on a free plan. You can’t integrate Google AdSense or any display ad network. You also can’t accept payments or sell products.

The Wix branding that appears on your free site is advertising – but it’s Wix’s advertising, not yours.

WordPress.com

WordPress.com’s situation is slightly worse in one respect – the platform may display its own advertising on your free site. These are ads you don’t earn money from. You’re hosting ads on behalf of WordPress.com without receiving any revenue.

You cannot run your own advertising on the WordPress.com free plan either.

Winner: Neither – both platforms restrict monetisation on free plans in ways that limit your options significantly. Self-hosted WordPress is the only platform that gives you full monetisation flexibility.

WordPress.com vs Wix pricing: paid plans in the USA and UK

Once you outgrow the free tier, both platforms bill in your local currency rather than a straight dollar-to-pound conversion, so the USA and UK prices aren’t proportional to the exchange rate. Here’s what each paid plan costs in both markets, billed annually (the rate both platforms push hardest – monthly billing runs noticeably higher on each). Figures below were checked in July 2026 and are the annual-billing headline rate; always confirm current pricing at checkout, as both platforms adjust promotional rates regularly.

Wix paid plans

Plan	USA (per month, billed annually)	UK (per month, billed annually)
Light	$17	£9
Core	$29	£16
Business	$39	£25
Business Elite	$159	£119

Core is Wix’s entry point for ecommerce – Light doesn’t include selling tools.

WordPress.com paid plans

Plan	USA (per month, billed annually)	UK (per month, billed annually)
Personal	$4	£3
Premium	$8	£7
Business	$25	£20

Business is the first WordPress.com tier that unlocks plugin installation and custom themes – a meaningful jump from Personal or Premium.

Neither platform is the obvious pricing winner. Entry-level, WordPress.com’s Personal plan is cheaper than Wix’s Light plan in both markets – but it also does less; Wix’s Light plan removes branding and adds a custom domain at a similar tier to what WordPress.com needs Premium for. Compare like-for-like features, not just the headline number.

Portability – can you move later?

This is an important consideration that most comparisons skip.

Wix

Wix is notoriously difficult to leave. Its export functionality is very limited – you can’t export your site’s content in a format that migrates cleanly to another platform. If you decide to move to WordPress or Squarespace later, you’ll largely have to rebuild from scratch.

This is Wix’s most significant limitation, and it’s worth knowing about before you invest significant time building there. Read our full Wix review →

WordPress.com

WordPress.com is significantly more portable than Wix. You can export all your posts, pages, comments, and media in WordPress XML format that imports cleanly into a self-hosted WordPress site. If you decide to move to self-hosted WordPress later – which many serious bloggers do – the migration is relatively smooth.

This is a meaningful practical advantage. Building on WordPress.com is not a permanent commitment, unlike building on Wix.

Winner: WordPress.com – considerably more portable, with a clean migration path to self-hosted WordPress.

WordPress.com vs Wix: the honest recommendation for each use case

Choose Wix if:

• You want to build a general website that isn’t primarily a blog
• Drag-and-drop ease of use is your priority
• You want the largest template selection to find something close to your vision
• You’re building something low-stakes where portability doesn’t matter

Choose WordPress.com if:

• Blogging and content publishing are your primary activities
• You want a cleaner, more focused writing experience
• There’s any chance you’ll want to migrate to self-hosted WordPress later
• You want a platform you won’t have to rebuild if your ambitions grow

The option most people don’t consider – and probably should

Here’s the honest truth this comparison is building towards.

For anyone serious about building a website – whether a blog, a business site, a portfolio, or anything else – neither the Wix free plan nor the WordPress.com free plan is the right long-term foundation.

The free plan limitations are real and significant. No custom domain. Platform branding on your site. No monetisation. Restricted SEO. Wix’s portability trap. WordPress.com’s ads on your site that you don’t earn from.

Self-hosted WordPress.org – the free, open-source software that powers over 40% of the internet – paired with budget hosting is the third option most people weighing WordPress.com vs Wix don’t consider. Hostinger’s WordPress hosting is a common entry point in both markets:

	USA	UK
Hostinger WordPress hosting (introductory, long-term plan)	from ~$2.69/month	from ~£1.99/month
Renewal rate (after the intro term)	~$10.99/month	varies – check current renewal pricing

These introductory rates require a long-term commitment (typically 24-48 months) paid upfront, and both figures move with Hostinger’s promotions – treat them as a guide and confirm the current rate before buying. Self-hosted WordPress at these prices gives you:

• A custom domain (owned by you, not the platform)
• No platform branding
• Full control over monetisation – Google AdSense, affiliate links, and in time premium ad networks like Mediavine and Raptive
• Complete SEO control with Rank Math
• 60,000+ plugins
• Total ownership of your site and data
• The most portable website possible – you can move hosts any time

At these rates, the first year of self-hosted WordPress typically works out cheaper than a mid-tier Wix or WordPress.com paid plan in either currency – and it gives you capabilities neither platform’s free plan comes close to matching.

If you’re comparing WordPress.com vs Wix because budget is a concern, the most cost-effective option is often self-hosted WordPress at entry-level hosting prices, not a free hosted plan.

Read: How to start a WordPress website for beginners →

When the free plans make sense

Despite everything above, there are genuinely good reasons to use a free plan.

You’re not sure what you want yet. If you’re experimenting with the idea of a website and not ready to commit to any direction, a free plan costs you nothing while you figure it out. Better to start on a free plan and migrate once you know what you want than to pay for something and then abandon it.

It’s a low-stakes project. A personal site for a school project, a hobby page for family and friends, a temporary page for a one-off event – for these, a free plan is entirely appropriate. The limitations don’t matter when the goals are modest.

You want to learn before you build. Using Wix or WordPress.com for free is a good way to understand how website building works before committing to a platform. The learning transfers even if the site doesn’t.

WordPress.com vs Wix: frequently asked questions

Is WordPress.com or Wix better for beginners? Wix is easier to get started with – the drag-and-drop editor has a lower learning curve in the first session. WordPress.com is better for bloggers and anyone planning to migrate to self-hosted WordPress later. For a complete beginner building any kind of website, Wix is the more accessible starting point. For a blogger specifically, WordPress.com is the better fit.

Can I upgrade from WordPress.com free to self-hosted WordPress later? Yes – and it’s one of the cleaner migrations available. WordPress.com lets you export your content in XML format, which imports directly into self-hosted WordPress. The design will need to be rebuilt, but your posts and pages come across cleanly.

Does WordPress.com really show ads on my free site? Yes – WordPress.com may display advertising on free sites to cover hosting costs. These are ads you don’t earn money from. This is one of the clearer reasons to move to either a paid WordPress.com plan or self-hosted WordPress.

Can I sell products on Wix or WordPress.com for free? No – ecommerce requires a paid plan on both platforms. On Wix that means Core ($29/month USA, £16/month UK) or above; on WordPress.com it means Business ($25/month USA, £20/month UK) or the dedicated Commerce plan.

Which free plan is better for SEO? Neither is ideal for SEO – a subdomain URL is a handicap compared to a custom domain. WordPress.com has a slight structural advantage because of WordPress’s architecture and Google’s familiarity with it. Neither free plan gives you the SEO control that self-hosted WordPress provides.

WordPress.com vs Wix: which is cheaper to upgrade? WordPress.com’s entry-level Personal plan starts from $4/month in the USA and £3/month in the UK, versus Wix’s Light plan at $17/month USA and £9/month UK – but Wix’s Light plan already includes a custom domain and no branding, which WordPress.com only matches at Premium ($8/month USA, £7/month UK). Compared feature-for-feature, the two end up closer in price than the entry-level numbers suggest. Self-hosted WordPress with budget hosting often costs less than either at introductory rates, with significantly more capability.