Wix Review: An In-Depth Comparison of 10,000 Websites

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Where you build your online business matters.

The platform you choose has an impact on whether or not customers will find you or not. In this Wix review and comparison, we are going to look at the data to determine if Wix is right for your business.

Results like this are only magical if the difference in performance can’t be explained. Both studies prove how and why SBI! delivers such strong results compared to poor results elsewhere.

Which brings us to the point of this study: an in-depth Wix review comparing it to other options for building an online business.

Previously, we have performed rigorous studies of solopreneur results achieved using Wealthy Affiliate or GoDaddy vs. Solo Build It! (SBI!).

We found that a significantly higher percentage of Solo Build It! users (as much as 33X more) were building successful, high-traffic online businesses, including affiliate marketing, ecommerce, and other business models.

So are there similar Wix success stories, and does their website and blogging platform make website promotion easy?

Important: The study outlines the methodology in so much detail that anyone can do the study and check the results. We’ve detailed at length why using verifiable data is so important in choosing the best blogging platform.

Let’s get right into the methodology and results specific to this study.

Wix Website Review: The Focus of This Study

This Wix review and comparison study has been designed to cut through all marketing claims and get straight to the bottom line — success rates.

It’s an unbiased look at how each platform stacks up when it comes to offering solopreneurs the best chance for success.

While SBI! and Wealthy Affiliate users are 100% solopreneurs, Wix likely has some larger customers. So we expect a slight bias in favor of Wix for this reason (larger businesses, overall, have more traffic). We accepted this slight bias rather than complicate the study (which would make it less reproducible).

Ditto for sites that build traffic using pay per click (PPC) advertising to sell products. Few SBIers buy ads, because they build traffic organically. This would also tend to favor Wix sites. Again, it would be too complicated to sort these out of the study.

Overall, Wix starts with some traffic bias in its favor.

The comparison study asks 2 questions:

  1. How successful are people using Wix for business?
  2. How do these results compare to the suite of services included within Solo Build It!?

Wix claims that with their tools have “Everything You Need to Create Your Stunning Website.” The emphasis is on how a site looks (“stunning”) and how quick and easy it is to build.

using wix for business stunning website

What’s the problem with that?

Most people make the mistake of equating website with web business. The difference, though, is huge.

It’s clearly not possible to build an effective, traffic-building, income-generating website in an hour. And if the “look” of Wix sites matters, that should show up in its results.

The ultimate goal is to have a successful business. So this study focuses on comparing business outcomes.

Let’s proceed to the study, its data, then the analysis and Wix website review.

Wix Review: Data and Analysis

For our Wix review and comparative analysis, we selected 10,000 sites at random from a list of 2.5 million Wix domain names listed at BuiltWith.

Not all of Wix’s domain names represent online businesses. Many domain names are parked (inactive), while many others point to landing pages or other websites.

Even after filtering out these “non-site” domain names, more than 30% of all Wix-built websites had no content, were in the process of being built, or had setup errors.

Real Effort Defined

We use the term “Real Effort” to designate websites that have:

  1. A completed homepage
  2. At least five links to internal pages

This indicates a certain level of site-building effort. It also yielded the first surprising result…

We had to parse through 190,077 domain names in order to find 10,000 “Real Effort” websites at Wix.

This suggests that only 5% of Wix websites (10K/190K) fulfill the Real Effort definition.

By comparison, SBI!’s Real Effort website percentage was 92%, which is the dataset we used for this study. Conclusion so far?

Solo Build It! members (SBIers) get started more effectively, likely due to the clear, step-by-step Action Guide. They advance through the early steps significantly better. While there are more conclusions to come, it’s hard to underestimate the importance of this finding…

Effective early progress is one of the most important online success factors.

Wix Website Distribution

We conducted a manual review of 500 randomly selected Real Effort Wix websites (out of the 10,000) to check whether this filter had selected comparable populations for comparison.

The review confirmed that. It showed this distribution:

  • 371 solopreneur content and blogging sites (blogs, infopreneurs, etc.)
  • 65 service sites (lawyers, dentists, service sellers, etc.)
  • 26 local sites (local restaurants, schools, etc.)
  • 18 online stores (small to medium retailers)
  • 16 brochure sites (company sites with products/services)
  • 4 junk sites (sites with poor content / no real effort)

The Real Effort criterion successfully narrowed the study’s focus to legitimate, business-oriented, solopreneur-built websites. Some exceeded “solopreneur” size and scope, but we accept that and other skews in favor of Wix in order to keep the study simple and reproducible.

Armed with a sufficient “apples-to-apples” sample of active websites from Wix, we were ready to compare them against online businesses built by solopreneurs using Solo Build It!.

The Results: Wix vs. Solo Build It!

We’ll review how Wix and Solo Build It! Real Effort websites performed for each of the three traffic metric tools.

First, we summarize the overall results:

  • SBI! websites are 115 times (115X) more likely to achieve “Outstanding – Excellent” levels of traffic than Wix.“Outstanding – Excellent” is defined as being among the top one million websites on the Internet (<1M at Alexa and SimilarWeb).
  • SBI! websites are 7.1 times (7.1X) more likely to achieve “Medium” levels of traffic than Wix.

“Medium” level of traffic is defined as websites having traffic that places them among the top one million to ten million websites (1M – 10M at Alexa and SimilarWeb).

  • 84% of Wix Real Effort websites are Invisible. Solo Build It!’s “Invisible” rate is only 40%.“Poor to Invisible” is the lowest traffic category.Wix “beats” Solo Build It! in the lowest traffic range within this category (called “Invisible,” these sites get no detectable traffic).
Note: “Invisible” (the lowest traffic range of the “Poor to Invisible” category) has Alexa rankings of greater than 20 million (>20M). At these levels, sites get zero to near-zero traffic. Previously, Alexa offered a ranking of sites between 20M and 30M, which meant that it was only sites ranked higher than 30M that were “invisible.”

The shift in Alexa’s ranking is what accounts for a 3% increase in Solo Build It!’s “Invisible” rate compared to the Wealthy Affiliate study.

How Do We Calculate These Numbers?

We reach those conclusions by averaging the results for each of the three traffic metric tools (Alexa, SimilarWeb, SEMrush) for each traffic range.

Now let’s break down the results of the 10,000 Real Effort Wix websites versus Solo Build It! websites.

Alexa Websites Comparison: Wix vs Solo Build It!

First, let’s look across the entire range of website traffic according to Alexa.

Here’s how to read the chart below:

  • Alexa ranking ranges appear on the Y-axis
  • The % of SBI! and Wix websites in each range

wix-percent-of-total-real-effort-alexa-ranks-ranges

Note: Alexa ranking’s lowest numbers have the highest traffic. For example, #1 (Google.com) has the most traffic, so would be included in the 1 to 100K range. Traffic decreases as we move down the graph from the top (i.e., increasing Alexa ranking reflects decreasing traffic).

The Patterns in the Data

A clear pattern emerges in the highest traffic ranges. SBI! massively outperforms Wix review results at each of these ranges. For example, within the best possible Alexa range, 1 – 100K, there are 21 Solo Build It! websites and only 1 Wix website — 95% SBI! (21/22) and 5% Wix (1/22).

This continues until we reach the Alexa ranking range of 1M – 2M (the higher traffic end of “Medium”). From 1M – 2M until 9M – 10M (“Medium” ranges), SBI! continues to outperform. The gap narrows at a fairly steady rate along these ranges until we reach the “Poor to Invisible” ranges.

As we approach “Poor to Invisible,” the gap narrows, with the percentage of low-traffic SBI! sites decreasing rapidly, while increasing with Wix.

Next, let’s use bar charts to look at the total number of sites that fall within each of the three major categories of traffic (Outstanding – Excellent, Medium, Poor to Invisible).

Alexa Traffic rank of 1 – 1M “Outstanding – Excellent”

total-real-effort-websites-alexa-rank-ranges-outstanding-excellent
Solo Build It! sites are 161X more likely to achieve these traffic levels.

Alexa Traffic rank of 1M – 10M “Medium”

total-real-effort-websites-alexa-rank-ranges-medium
Solo Build It! sites are 8X more likely to achieve these traffic levels.

An interesting pattern appears here. The ratio of SBI! to Wix effectiveness is highest at 1-2M (the highest “Medium” range), leveling out at the lower levels of 7-10M.

The consistency is striking, with an obvious conclusion…

The SBIer has much higher odds of success, highest for the best results. The difference narrows until we reach poor results, which is where the majority of Wix sites reside.

We can see the continuation of this pattern in the “Poor to Invisible” ranges, where Wix surpasses SBI! in delivering poor results.

The worse the result, the more Wix “dominates,” as shown here:

Alexa Traffic rank of 10M – 20M+ “Poor to Invisible”

total-real-effort-websites-alexa-rank-ranges-poor-to-invisible
Wix sites are 2X more likely to achieve these poor traffic levels.

SimilarWeb Comparison: Wix vs Solo Build It!

Like Alexa, SimilarWeb ranking starts with #1 at the top and goes “down” from there. As you move down the graph, the SimilarWeb rank increases, reflecting sites that get less and less traffic.

The bars on the chart indicate, of the combined total number of websites that fall within each range, what percentage are Wix and what percentage are Solo Build It!.

For example, within the best possible SimilarWeb range, 0 – 100K, we found 20 Solo Build It! websites and 0 Wix websites that fit our criterion for Real Effort. That obviously equates to 100% Solo Build It! (20 websites out of 20 total) and 0% Wix (0 out of 20).

Here’s how the spectrum of websites ranks according to SimilarWeb:

wix-percent-of-total-real-effort-websites-similarweb-rank-ranges

Next, let’s look at the total number of sites that fall within each of the three major categories of traffic (Outstanding – Excellent, Medium, Poor – Invisible).

Important: You’ll note identical patterns in the SimilarWeb and Alexa results, strong confirmation because the two metrics systems generate their numbers differently.

SimilarWeb Traffic rank of 1 – 1M “Outstanding – Excellent”

total-real-effort-websites-similarweb-rank-ranges-outstanding-excellent
Solo Build It! sites are 60X more likely to achieve these traffic levels.
Important: This is less than the Alexa multiple. Still, being 60X more likely to rank in this highest traffic category is remarkable. Only Solo Build It! delivers this level of results at this rate.

SimilarWeb Traffic rank of 1M – 10M “Medium”

total-real-effort-websites-similarweb-rank-ranges-medium
Solo Build It! sites are 6X more likely to achieve these traffic levels.

SimilarWeb Traffic rank of 10M – 30M+ “Poor to Invisible”

total-real-effort-websites-similarweb-rank-ranges-poor-to-invisible
Wix sites are 1.91X more (twice as) likely to achieve these poor traffic levels.

SEMrush Website Comparison

Finally, here’s how the spectrum of websites ranks according to SEMrush:

wix-percent-of-total-real-effort-websites-semrush-organic-traffic-ranges

SEMrush presents counts, not “traffic ranking” (as Alexa and SimilarWeb do). So 0 means no organic search traffic.

The bars on the chart indicate, of the combined total number of websites that fall within each range, what percentage are Wix and what percentage are Solo Build It!.

For example, within one of the highest possible SEMrush ranges, 90K – 100K, we found 15 Solo Build It! websites and 0 Wix websites that fit our criterion for Real Effort. Again, that equates to 100% Solo Build It! (15 websites out of 15 total) and 0% Wix (0 out of 15).

You can see how SBI! dominates at the high-traffic (bottom) portion of the chart while Wix takes an increasingly large share as traffic decreases (top).

Note: In the SEMrush bar charts, traffic decreases as you move down, reflecting less and less traffic from search engines. In our Wealthy Affiliate study, we performed an analysis that correlated SEMrush organic search traffic numbers to Alexa’s and SimilarWeb’s traffic ranking…
  • SEMrush traffic of greater than 5,000 was the equivalent of being in the Top 1M sites (“Outstanding to Excellent”)
  • 100-5,000 was equivalent to “Medium” (1M – 10M)
  • 0-100 was equivalent to “Poor to Invisible.” (>10M).

We don’t chart these here, but search traffic correlates well with the total traffic of Alexa and SimilarWeb. In fact, the above chart shows the same patterns described in the previous line graph at the change from Top 1M – 2M to 10M and with a sudden burst in percentage of Wix sites at 0 (no search traffic).

Next, let’s look at the total number of sites that fall within each of the three major categories of traffic (Outstanding – Excellent, Medium, Poor to Invisible).

SEMrush Organic Traffic of 5,000 – 400K+ “Outstanding – Excellent”

total-real-effort-websites-semrush-organic-traffic-ranges-excellent
Solo Build It! sites are 126X more likely to achieve these traffic levels.

SEMrush Organic Traffic of 100 – 5,000 “Medium”

total-real-effort-websites-semrush-organic-traffic-ranges-medium
Solo Build It! sites are 7X more likely to achieve these traffic levels.

SEMrush Organic Traffic of 0 – 100 “Poor to Invisible”

total-real-effort-websites-semrush-organic-traffic-ranges-invisible-to-poor
Wix sites are 2X more likely to achieve these poor traffic levels.

Using Wix for Business: The Conclusion

Now that we’ve taken a deep dive into the data, let’s come back up for some air.

The data (averages of all 3 traffic metrics) shows, in a few different ways, that online businesses started with Solo Build It! get more traffic than those built with Wix.

Let’s revisit the conclusions of our Wix review that we shared earlier:

  • SBI! websites are 115 times (115X) more likely to achieve “Outstanding – Excellent” levels of traffic than Wix.“Outstanding – Excellent” is defined as being among the top one million websites on the Internet (<1M Alexa and SimilarWeb).
  • SBI! websites are 7.1 times (7.1X) more likely to achieve “Medium” levels of traffic than Wix.“Medium” level of traffic is defined as websites having traffic that places them among the top one million to ten million websites (1M – 10M Alexa and SimilarWeb).
  • 84% of Wix Real Effort websites are Invisible. Solo Build It!’s “Invisible” rate is only 40%.The “Poor to Invisible” is the lowest traffic category. Wix “beats” Solo Build It! in the lowest traffic range within this category (called “Invisible,” these sites get no detectable traffic).

The first two conclusions are based upon the total number of Solo Build It! and Wix sites within each range, averaged across all three traffic metric tools. You are 115X more likely to develop a high-traffic site with Solo Build it! than at Wix, 7.1X for Medium.

If you look solely at SEMrush, Solo Build It! websites outpace Wix sites by a whopping 126X! Why is this so important?

Organic search traffic is important to solopreneurs, who tend to be constrained by money (not just by time!). Whether you monetize passively with affiliate marketing programs or actively…

More targeted traffic = more income.

Solo Build It! for Your Business Website

solo build it everything you need for websiteSBI! is an all-in-one package of step-by-step process, software tools, keyword brainstorming, comprehensive guidance, 24/7 support and “auto-updating” that enables 1,000s to build profitable online businesses.

We’re thrilled with the success that so many of our customers achieve. Those numbers translate into real people. Read these real-life success stories to see what we mean.

It’s more important than ever to help everyday people cut through intense and contradictory noise so that they can focus their time and energy on what’s important — becoming extraordinary.

But what about the tens of thousands of would-be solopreneurs who haven’t yet joined Solo Build It!? There’s a critical decision to make.

Do You Want to Start an Online Business?

Have you been tempted by celebrities talking about how “it’s easy” to start a website?

It’s critical to remember this: It’s not a website you’re starting. It’s an online business.

You need more than a shiny site builder to succeed with your home-based business idea.

You need more than a promise to have your site up in 5 minutes.

You need more than useless specs and features like “unlimited domain names.” One serious business is all that most people ever need or have time for.

You need and deserve more than “being sold.”

You need to be able to see the real differences between platforms — data-supported results.

Who cares which one offers more domain names or storage space?  Which one offers proven processes that are going to help you succeed?

You need to have access to real reviews and real proof about a company’s track record of success. You need SBI!.

Wix Review: An In-Depth Comparison of 10,000 Websites
Mike Allton

Mike Allton

Mike is an award-winning blogger, speaker, and author at The Social Media Hat, and Brand Evangelist at Agorapulse where he strengthens relationships with social media educators, influencers and agencies.

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