Wix and StoreBuilder by Nexcess are both great options for building an online store, but each solution has its own set of pros and cons for you to evaluate.
Can I Move My Wix Site to WordPress?
Yes, you can leverage a migration plugin to efficiently convert, move, and import your Wix site to WordPress. Alternatively, you can manually migrate your pages and images from your Wix site to WordPress together with using the RSS feed to import your posts.
Can I Move My Wix Store to WooCommerce?
If you are using Wix Stores for your existing ecommerce site, but you want to move to WooCommerce, then it is possible to move your data over.
Wix will allow you to export out products, orders, and your contacts. The exported CSV from your Wix Store can then be imported into your WooCommerce store using the WP All Import Pro plugin with the WooCommerce plugin, which is provided with your managed WooCommerce plan.
Overview of Wix Website Development vs. StoreBuilder
Website builders have entirely taken over the web in the last few years. No longer is it necessary to learn how to code or hire a web developer to build a website for your business. Instead, you can easily purchase a website builder and create your own website, even with limited technical experience.
Now, the question isn’t so much “How am I going to build my website?” but rather “Which website builder should I choose?”
Two of the leading options out there are Wix and StoreBuilder by Nexcess. Both options have pros and cons and outperform the other in different ways. This article will compare the two and help you decide which is better for your business.
About StoreBuilder by Nexcess
As the name suggests, StoreBuilder is designed around building your own online store. StoreBuilder custom ecommerce is a website builder, website hosting, theme selection, and support all wrapped into one product. It is powered by WordPress, which means you can add plugins and customize your site to do just about anything you want it to do.
StoreBuilder comes with an easy-to-use onboarding wizard that will walk you through every step of setting up your website.
StoreBuilder by Nexcess is a fast-growing option in the ecommerce industry and is making it even easier to get your store online and running. And, of course, you won’t need to write a single line of code.
About Wix Website Development
Wix has been around since 2006, which is an eternity in the web development space. The specialty of Wix is in drag-and-drop websites, which means exactly what you might think. A user can literally drag an image, block of text, product, or any other “element,” and put it anywhere on the screen.
Wix website development hasn’t always focused on the ecommerce industry, but the company did launch an ecommerce-focused product in 2020.
Wix Website vs. StoreBuilder Website
Customizing a StoreBuilder Website
StoreBuilder provides plenty of customization options right out of the box. In addition, StoreBuilder comes preinstalled with Kadence, a premium WordPress plugin that gives you 10 ecommerce-specific templates to start with, along with tons of customization options.
Once you’ve chosen your template, you can select your global fonts and colors, view a live preview, then generate your site with content already filled in.
After the site is generated, you can update the content, change the layout, and customize your site to exactly how you want it to look using Kadence Blocks, an easy-to-use page editor that comes with StoreBuilder.
Although the built-in editor and site generator will provide most users with everything they need, you can search for a WordPress plugin to add to your site if you still find you need additional custom options. And if that’s still not enough for your needs, you can always hire a developer and extend your StoreBuilder site to do anything you want it to. With it being on WordPress, you have access to all your site’s code and files, meaning you can go beyond even the built-in editor and make any changes you need.
To sum things up, the basic editor will allow 95% of users to build an online store without ever touching a line of code. You simply choose options, move things around, and go live. For that other 5% of users that might need complex custom-built features, you still have the opportunity to build anything custom into your site.
Customizing a Wix Website
Wix website development has a much different customizer experience than StoreBuilder. Wix provides you with over 800 prebuilt themes to choose from. Once you select a theme and start building, your theme is set, and you won’t be able to change it. However, you can continue to edit content and move things around using a drag-and-drop editor, as well as changing colors and fonts. This method makes it easy to build a site and get it running quickly.
The downside to Wix website development in the past was that you didn’t have complete control over your website. Sure, you could edit your content and make adjustments, but Wix didn’t give you the keys to do anything on the site. If you needed custom functionality and it wasn’t provided in your plan, you weren’t able to just add a plugin or hire a developer to build it for you.
Wix released a feature called Velo, which is intended to solve this problem. It’s basically a programming language and editing tool built into one, specifically catered to a Wix website. This is intended to create a better Wix website development experience. However, it’s still relatively new, and most developers aren’t going to know how to use Velo. So, at this point, if you want the option to customize your site to do anything you want, you may still be limited. However, Wix does provide over 300 “Wix Apps” which are add-ons you can install on your site to extend functionality.
Wix is excellent for building a quick online store based on a preexisting theme. The basic customization is easy to use, but you may just be limited to an extent if you need custom features for your online store.
Wix Website Hosting vs. StoreBuilder
StoreBuilder is hosted with Nexcess, a fully managed premium hosting service. This fact means you don’t need to know anything about web hosting to get your site up (and keep it up). The engineers and support team at Nexcess take care of all the technical aspects of your website. If you do ever need help, you’ll have access to 24/7/365 support.
With Nexcess, your website will be insanely fast due to caching and other optimization techniques. And as your site grows, it’s easy to scale your hosting with just one click in order to keep your site fast and online.
Wix website hosting is built into the ecommerce option from Wix. They do have support, but they will typically point you to support articles rather than chatting or talking on the phone with a support representative. Wix offers the ability to scale your site as well. As your site grows, you can pay for a more premium plan to keep your site nice and speedy.
The downside to Wix website hosting is that they technically have more control over your site than you do. As a result, it’s very difficult to have access to your content outside of the editor provided. As mentioned before, it’s not as easy as just accessing your site’s files and code as it is with a StoreBuilder site that’s on WordPress.
Bottom Line
Wix and Storebuilder by Nexcess are both great options for building an online store. Pricing is comparable, but StoreBuilder is slightly less expensive at only $19/month.
If you’re looking to get a very basic online store set up and you’re fine with choosing a design, adding some content, and going live, then a Wix website is a great option.
If you want to choose a template but then have more control over your site and the ability to scale, StoreBuilder would suit you better.
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Note: This article was originally published in April 2022. It has since been updated for accuracy and comprehensiveness.
