Recently, I had a family member ask me about using wix.com for their business website. For those who don’t know, Wix is a free website builder that makes it really easy for people without a ton of web design experience to create a website. Since I was curious as well, I decided to give Wix a try.

How Wix Works

The general idea is that you sign up for an account, pick a template, and then customize the template to fit your needs. Based on a quick count, it appeared that they had well over 500 free templates. Many of the templates were geared towards a specific type of site. For example, they had templates for restaurants, food blogs, graphic designer portfolios, clothing, and much more.

Testing it Out

Creating an account and picking a template were super easy. In my test, I picked the template for an app website. After you pick a template, it is time to start customizing the template to fit your specific needs. I spent a few minutes customizing my site and playing around with the site editor. Overall, the editor seemed pretty slick. There were a lot of features and things you could do in the editor. Nonetheless, I could see the average PC user being able to customize a template in a few hours or so. However, this was assuming you are pretty happy with the template and don’t need too many major changes. If you needed to make major changes to the template, I could see this process being more difficult.

After you are finished customizing your site, the next step is to publish your site. You can use a Wix.com based URL or purchase your own domain for the site. If the site is for a business of any sort, you really need your own domain. However, if this is simply a personal site, staying on Wix.com may be fine for you.

Wix App Market

One more solid thing that Wix offers is the App market. The app market allows you to add quite a bit of functionality to your site. From adding payment methods like Paypal to SEO tools to event planners, the app market has a number of great apps to add functionality and useful features for both you and your users.

Free vs Paid

Using the Wix site builder and publishing a site is free to start. However, if you stay with the free version, they put a few ads on your site. With the paid version, you are able to get rid of these ads. Obviously, if you are running a business, you won’t want these ads on your site. The least expensive plan was a bit over $6 per month. However, this price also includes your own domain and hosting as well.

What Wix Would Be Good For

Overall, I could see Wix being a good tool for someone who needs a basic to medium level website with a specific goal. For example, if you own a restaurant, Wix would be a great way to create this website. If you want to setup a portfolio for your work as a designer, yet again, Wix would be great.

What Wix Wouldn’t Be Good For

There are a few sites that Wix really wouldn’t be a great fit for. First, if you need a highly customized site, then Wix may not be for you. Second, if you have a site that requires a lot of backend programming, then it may be better to create your site without Wix. Last, although Wix does offer blogging platforms, you are probably going to be better off using one of the dedicated blogging platforms like WordPress or Blogger.

Overall, Wix.com seemed like a solid tool that fills a certain need in the market. If you need a basic to medium, yet great looking website, you should give Wix a look.