Wix Review 2026 – My Honest Opinion After 6 Years as a Customer

Is Wix still worth it in 2026? On the Julian Weber channel, Julian answers this question once and for all — drawing on over 6 years of personal experience using Wix for his own website julianweber.com and more than 182 Wix tutorials. In this honest review, you'll discover who Wix is really for, what it does brilliantly, where it falls short, and whether the pricing makes sense for your situation.

Wix is an excellent fit for small and medium-sized businesses that need a professional website without the technical complexity. Whether you want a portfolio, a service site, or a full online shop, Wix has you covered.

It's also a great choice for individuals — a tennis club, a private hobby project, or a freelancer launching their first site. If you want to go from zero to a live website in one or two days, Wix is hard to beat.

You can sign up for Wix completely for free — no credit card required. Once you're in, a built-in AI assistant greets you and helps you set up your project from scratch.

The AI asks a few questions about your goals and then pre-installs all the functionality you're likely to need. It's a smart onboarding experience that saves a lot of time.

After setup, you land in the Wix dashboard — your private admin area. From here you can connect a domain, check analytics, view sales revenue, and reply to messages sent through your site. Everything is in one place.

Click on Design Site and you'll find over 800 professionally designed templates covering virtually every industry imaginable. You can search by keyword — type in "therapist" or "tennis" and you'll instantly see multiple relevant options.

You can also browse by category: business, coaching, law firms, enterprise solutions, restaurants, and more. Julian's tip: take your time here. The closer the template is to your ideal design, the less you'll need to change later.

All templates are mobile optimized out of the box — important since roughly 70% of web traffic now comes from mobile devices. You can preview every page of a template before committing to it.

Wix uses a genuine WYSIWYG editor — what you see is what you get. Every element on the page can be clicked, dragged, and placed exactly where you want it. This level of pixel-perfect control sets Wix apart from most other website builders.

Editing text feels familiar — the toolbar resembles Word or PowerPoint. Changing a background image is just as easy: click, choose from your own uploads or Wix's built-in free stock photo library, and you're done.

If you upload a large photo, Wix automatically optimizes it for the web. For photographers or image-heavy sites, this automatic compression is a genuine time-saver. Adding new pages is unlimited — even on the free plan, which most competing builders don't allow.

For Julian, the Wix App Market is the single biggest reason he chose Wix for his own website. Wix develops over 25 dedicated apps that extend your site's functionality with a single click — no coding, no third-party integrations to wrestle with.

Here are some highlights from the app market:

• Wix Stores — add a full e-commerce store to sell physical or digital products
• Wix Bookings — let clients book and pay for appointments upfront (great for therapists, coaches, personal trainers)
• Wix Chat — add a live chat widget so visitors can reach you directly
• Wix Online Programs — sell online courses and create a paid membership community
• Wix Blog — publish blog posts without needing WordPress
• Wix Events — sell event tickets
• Wix Music — sell your own music
• Wix Restaurants / Hotels — accept reservations online

Most apps are free to install. Some require a paid Wix plan to unlock full functionality, but the fact that all of this is built and maintained by Wix itself means everything works together seamlessly.

The free plan lets you publish a live website that anyone can access via a link. The catch: it shows a "Built with Wix" banner and your URL will include wixsite.com. For testing or sharing with colleagues, the free plan is perfectly fine.

When you're ready to go professional, there are two plans most people should consider:

The Light plan is the right choice if you just need a clean, branded website without payment processing. It removes the Wix banner, connects your own domain, and includes 24/7 customer support.

Upgrade to the Core plan when you want to accept payments — for a shop, bookings, or online courses. The 50 GB of storage also gives you room to upload plenty of images and videos without worrying about limits.

Both plans include a free domain for the first year, which is a nice bonus when starting out. If you need to buy a domain separately, Julian uses IONOS for domain purchases.

The biggest drawback is also one of Wix's biggest strengths: too much freedom. Beginners sometimes drag elements all over the canvas, producing a messy layout that doesn't look professional.

The mobile view can be particularly tricky. While templates are mobile-optimized by default, any custom changes you make on desktop often require separate tweaking on the mobile view to look right. It's not a dealbreaker, but it does take extra time.

The other frustration is custom business email. If you want an address like [email protected], Wix requires you to purchase a Google Workspace plan through their platform — currently around €8/month. It's functional but feels like an unnecessary extra cost and limitation.

A common complaint about Wix has been slow page speed. Julian tested this directly on his own site, julianweber.com, and the results speak for themselves: 1.4 seconds load time on desktop.

Mobile performance is also solid. Wix has clearly invested in infrastructure over the years, and this "Wix is slow" myth is largely outdated. For most small and medium-sized business websites, Wix's performance is more than adequate.

Yes — Wix is one of the most beginner-friendly website builders available. The AI-assisted onboarding, the visual drag-and-drop editor, the stock photo library, and the one-click apps all lower the barrier to entry significantly.

The learning curve mostly comes from the unlimited design freedom. Because you can place anything anywhere, it helps to follow a template closely at first and make incremental changes rather than rebuilding from scratch.

If you want a step-by-step walkthrough of building your first Wix site from zero, check out the How to Build a Free Website with Wix in 10 Minutes tutorial on this blog.

WordPress gives you unlimited customization and a massive plugin ecosystem, but it comes with a steep technical learning curve. You'll need to manage hosting, security updates, plugin conflicts, and backups yourself — or pay someone to do it.

Wix handles all of that for you. Hosting, security, updates, and performance optimization are all included. You trade some flexibility for a dramatically simpler experience.

For most small businesses, freelancers, and solo entrepreneurs, Wix is the smarter starting point. You can build a professional, fully functional website faster and with less frustration. WordPress makes more sense if you need very advanced custom functionality or already have developer resources available.

Pros:

• Free plan available with a live, shareable website
• 800+ professional templates for every niche
• True WYSIWYG drag-and-drop editor
• Built-in AI for content and setup
• Powerful App Market (stores, bookings, chat, blog, events, and more)
• Free stock photo library
• Automatic image optimization
• Unlimited pages on all plans
• Fast page load times
• 24/7 customer support on paid plans

Cons:

• Too much design freedom can overwhelm beginners
• Mobile view often needs separate manual adjustments
• Custom business email requires purchasing Google Workspace through Wix
• Free plan shows Wix branding and uses a Wix subdomain