Initially, I started my blog as a way to keep myself occupied during the start of the pandemic. I had cycled across Europe and Turkey to reach Georgia and over that period I felt I had some worthwhile tales to tell. In hindsight, I should have researched all the available blogging platforms more thoroughly, but I took a friend's advice and just went with a free plan with WordPress.com. I was also unaware there were essentially two ‘versions’ of WordPress.
As expected, I became more and more interested in progressing my blog and gradually became unhappy with the available features with the free plan. So, I decided to spend the money and upgrade to a paid plan. However, this didn't keep me happy for long, and I soon sought an alternative.
My Complaints About WordPress.com
The main complaint I had with WordPress.com was the general lack of professional level blogging features with the two lower cost plans. I paid for a Premium plan which is a reasonable $8/month if you pay annually, but even this lacks quality SEO tools and no ability to add plugins.
If you know anything about WordPress.com, it’s that without plugins you essentially have a very stock standard platform. Not only this, but I was massively unhappy with the themes and the inability to customize them exactly how I wanted (without coding skills).
It would be fair to say I just never really warmed to WordPress. No matter what I did, it never seemed like my site indexed properly and it just didn't look great. To add to that, even though my plan included customer support via email, when I did get in contact with customer support to ask about the migration process I heard nothing back from them. This was definitely the last straw for me.
On the Hunt For Something Better
I started looking for an alternative that better suited my needs. I prioritized design freedom and having a wide range of built-in features and functionality. It was also important to me that my chosen platform was very hands off in terms of management. I wanted to be able to pay my subscription and step back knowing security updates are all taken care of.
But ultimately, price was also a deciding factor. I looked at a few of the major platforms like Weebly and Webflow, but ended up settling with Wix.
Why I Chose to Switch From WordPress to Wix
What attracted me to Wix was the strong emphasis on design and the easy to use, no coding required, drag-and-drop Wix editor. In addition to this, it appeared to have reasonably good blogging functionality similar to the WordPress style I was already familiar with.
It also includes a really wide range of built-in features, so there's no need to add plugins that can have a tendency to slow down a site.
Migration and The Early Days With Wix
I was apprehensive about having to migrate all my existing blog posts over from WordPress, but it was surprisingly easy. The Wix team have a really simple guide to follow and a tool that imports all your posts with the click of a button. Of course, I still had a bit of work to do to double check everything. I needed to go back through each post to ensure all the images carried over and readjust the formatting, but all in all, this was pretty painless.
Wix has a really nice user interface and certainly does make it easy to learn how to use its’ website builder, and get the most out of the platform. An SEO setup checklist and other tips will pop up when you get started. In comparison, WordPress.com has a really lackluster user interface that is terribly uninspiring.
So far, so good. I’m happy I made the switch from WordPress to Wix. I’m still learning just what potential there is, but I like what I’m seeing.
Which blogging platform do you prefer?
- 0%WordPress
- 0%Wix
- 0%Other?