Wix vs WordPress: The True Cost of Ownership Over Three Years

Price comparisons between Wix and WordPress usually compare a Wix plan to a hosting plan and stop there. That misses most of what you actually pay, on both sides. The honest three-year picture for a typical small business site looks like this.

The Wix side of the ledger#

Wix pricing looks simple: one subscription, everything included. In practice a business site accumulates costs in layers.

The plan itself. A business-grade Wix plan runs roughly $27–36/month depending on tier and promotion. The cheapest plans are not realistic for a business, they carry Wix ads or lack features you will need.

Apps. The Wix App Market is where the real creep happens. Reviews, advanced forms, booking, pop-ups, chat, each app is $3–15/month. Three or four modest apps add $20–40/month. Some apps that were free when you installed them have since moved to paid tiers.

The costs you cannot control. Wix has raised prices repeatedly, and as a closed platform there is no way to shop around while keeping your site. Your renewal price is whatever Wix decides it is.

Three-year total: a business site with a handful of apps lands somewhere between $1,700 and $2,700.

The WordPress side of the ledger#

WordPress costs are spread across more line items, which makes them look scarier than they are.

Hosting. Good managed WordPress hosting for a small business runs $10–30/month. Budget shared hosting is cheaper; serious managed hosting is more. You can change hosts any time without losing your site, which keeps this market competitive.

Domain. ~$10–15/year, same as anywhere.

Plugins. Most sites run fine on free plugins. A typical business might buy one or two premium ones, a form builder, an SEO tool, at $50–100/year each. Plenty of sites pay nothing here.

Maintenance. This is WordPress's real hidden cost. Updates, backups and security are your responsibility. Either you spend a couple of hours a month, pay your host to handle it (often bundled in managed hosting), or pay a maintenance service $30–100/month. Be honest with yourself about which you will actually do.

Three-year total: between $700 and $2,200, with the wide range driven almost entirely by how you handle maintenance.

The line item nobody prices: exit cost#

Here is the asymmetry that matters more than any monthly fee.

Leaving WordPress costs almost nothing. Your content exports cleanly, any developer can work with it, and hundreds of hosts compete for your business. The platform's openness is a permanent discount on every future decision.

Leaving Wix costs a full rebuild. There is no site export, pages, design and structure must be recreated by hand on the new platform, and done carefully if you want your search rankings to survive. That is a real invoice: professional migrations run $500–1,500, and doing it badly costs far more in lost traffic.

This means every year you stay on Wix, the eventual exit is still waiting, at full price. The subscription is rent; the exit cost is the deposit you never get back.

When Wix is still the right answer#

An honest comparison admits this column exists.

• You have no time or appetite for any maintenance, ever.
• Your site is genuinely simple and likely to stay that way.
• The person maintaining it is a non-technical owner who values the editor.
• Your traffic does not depend on search rankings.

For a five-page site that functions as a digital business card, Wix's premium over cheap WordPress hosting buys real convenience. That is a legitimate trade.

When the math flips#

The calculation turns against Wix when any of these become true:

• Search traffic matters to your revenue. The SEO ceiling and the exit-cost trap compound each other, the more your rankings are worth, the more expensive leaving becomes later.
• You are adding apps. App creep is the sign you have outgrown the platform's core. Each app is both a monthly fee and one more thing that will not export.
• You want anything custom. On Wix, custom means Velo or nothing. On WordPress it means any freelancer on the market.
• The site is becoming your main sales channel. Businesses that depend on their site eventually need control over speed, structure and data. Closed platforms sell convenience, not control.

The short version#

Over three years, Wix typically costs somewhat more in cash and much more in optionality. WordPress costs less on paper but asks for maintenance discipline. The decisive number is the one that never appears on either pricing page: leaving Wix means paying for a rebuild, and that cost does not shrink by waiting. If you are going to move eventually, every year of delay is a year of subscription paid toward a platform you have already decided to leave.