Webflow vs Wix: What's different and what's similar in 2024?

This comparison review reveals the secrets of picking Webflow vs. Wix, supported by our first-hand experience.

Both are drag-and-drop website builders, except that Webflow is excellent for fully customizable websites.

Wix, on the other hand, features fully organized templates that are suitable for those who don't want to play with coding.

So, if you're new to website building, Wix is a solid choice. However, it does come with design limitations.

And Webflow?

It's a much larger learning curve—but once you get the hang of it—you'll find it to be the most user-friendly website builder available.

We've tested both platforms, so let's dive into their differences and similarities.

Why Webflow?

Webflow is a popular website builder that lets users create fully customizable websites with basic coding knowledge.

It's the most intuitive and effective website builder we've ever encountered (but keep in mind that we are developers with years of experience).

The bottom line is that Webflow is genuinely a revolution for the category of website builders.

It's a good option for people with big ideas and need large websites but assistance.

That's when Webflow agencies come into play, helping those who lack the coding skills to build a robust website from the ground up.

For more information, read our full Webflow review.

So, Webflow features easy-to-use editor dashboard and clean and semantic code which is great for fast loading times (or technical SEO).

It also allows you to have extensive control over your site's layout and styling. Essential on-page SEO settings can scale your rankings.

And having control over HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript is perfect for web developers.

Webflow features a content management system that allows (content) editors to add text or visual elements easily.

Now, let's examine why Wix might be a prevalent choice.

Why Wix?

Wix is another popular online drag-and-drop editing tool that lets users create personal or business websites without using coding knowledge.

It features easy-to-use 800+ templates, which is great for web design novices.

Wix integrates with 300+ apps to enhance website functionality (for comparison, Webflow's list features 230+ plugins and tools that can be integrated into it).

This website builder doesn't require coding knowledge and has built-in artificial design intelligence (Wix ADI) that generates designs.

So, Wix features 24/7 phone support, a community forum, and top-tier plans, including priority support.

It offers e-commerce features that surpass those available in Webflow, including abandoned card recovery, unlimited products and native point-of-sale system.

Wix offers a great amount of templates, letting you drop elements anywhere on the page. It also simplifies creating a blog on your website; either choose a specific blog template or a template with a pre-build blog section.

Now, let's delve into the target audiences for these platforms.

Who is Webflow for?

Webflow is best for experienced developers and business owners.

It's great for building sites for:

• Software as a service (SaaS)
• Startups
• Small to medium businesses (SMEs)
• Agencies
• Venture capital (VCs)
• Enterprise
• and more..

That being said, this website builder is best for businesses of all sizes. And for beginners who want to learn Webflow, Webflow University is a rich knowledge base.

Webflow Site Examples

The quickest way to understand the possibilities is to look at some of the Webflow sites we have created:

1. MoVi: A website about driving changes for investors and portfolio companies, where MoVi features great use of photos, features, hover effects, and advanced animations to create a modern and appealing site.

Hover effects:

Use of colors:

1. Tensec: As a new, global fintech making it easy for small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) to thrive in global trade, Tensec features: simple graphics, scrolls, and animation effects to grab and hold your attention.

Eye-catching graphics:

Animation:

Who is Wix for?

Wix is best for novice website users and creatives.

As one of the community contributors said:

WIX is an easy drag-and-drop builder. I would recommend it to my mum, who has little experience in website building.
‍Bastian, BR Design

Then, he continues:

Webflow is like Wix on steroids. It has a vast amount of options and features, so you can design almost anything and animate things with it.Therefore, Wix is suitable for simple websites (e.g., portfolios).

Wix Site Examples

Here are some of the Wix sites examples:

1. Loom.ai: Loom Al has a a very simple Wix website. They are a group of engineers and artists that create fun and personalized faces for use on mobile devices.
2. Wood & Spoon: Wood & Spoon is a catering company that needed a simple site to express their idea of using only the best local ingredients for their menu. They also feature a small online shop on their Wix site.

9 Facts That Make Webflow vs. Wix Different

These facts will affect your final decision.

Let's dive in.

1. Wix has less templates than Webflow

Wix offers 800+ simple drag-and-drop templates, while Webflow offers 2000+.

You can choose from Wix's blank templates to those suitable for your business type.

While Wix allows complete site customization, it cannot switch templates after your site is live. The same goes for Webflow.

Here is the Webflow library of templates:

However, Webflow provides users with a wide range of fully responsive and customizable templates. Yet the majority of templates leverage Webflow's custom animation feature.

2. Wix is better than Webflow in terms of e-commerce functionality

With Wix, accessing e-commerce capabilities requires purchasing a dedicated e-commerce plan.

Once you've done that, setting up your online store is a breeze.

Wix offers comprehensive e-commerce capabilities across all its plans.

It offers support for:

• Unlimited products: Wix allows you to sell an unlimited number of both digital and physical products. It handles everything from payment processing to product tracking and shipping logistics.
• Abandoned cart automation: By automatically identifying and reaching out to shoppers who abandon their carts, Wix helps businesses recover potentially lost sales and fosters user retention.
• Dropshipping services: Wix seamlessly integrates with dropshipping services, offering a significant time-saving solution for online store owners.

And Webflow lacks native support for these advanced e-commerce features.

If you want to set up abandoned card recovery in Webflow, you'll need to integrate your Webflow website with a third-party plugin.

In contrast, Webflow imposes limitations on the number of products (physical or digital) you can sell based on your chosen plan. Still, Webflow stands out with its extensive customization options for online stores.

You are flexible when creating custom product fields and designing bespoke landing pages.

3. Webflow suits businesses of all sizes, whereas Wix is more tailored to individual or small business websites

Wix isn't the best option for large websites, mainly because it does not support exporting files to an external destination (or host).

Also, the degree of freedom Wix's editor gives is challenging to manage, especially for less tech-savvy users.

4. Webflow can do advanced animation, while Wix features limited interactions and animations.

In Wix, you can customize interactions and animations, but they are limited. For instance, you can modify hover and disabled states for buttons.

On the other hand, Webflow offers greater flexibility, allowing you to apply interactions to all design elements.

We explained Webflow's animation capabilities extensively in our Webflow review.

5. Wix doesn't let you edit XML sitemaps, but Webflow does (+ offers more SEO features)

When it comes to SEO capabilities, Webflow offers more extensive control over your website's optimization than Wix.

Webflow enables you to optimize, edit and set:

• XML sitemaps: You can auto-generate an XML sitemap or add a custom one.
• URL slugs and meta tags: These components directly impact how search engines perceive your content. When optimized right, they can enhance a page's visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs).

Here is an example of Webflow SEO settings for editing meta tags for a specific web page:

And here is a simple step-by-step guide for editing internal links for blog posts:

1. Go to the Webflow Editor and click on the "Link" icon.

You can copy-paste your desired link or if you already have it, you can change it manually.

2. Click on the "Settings Icon" and choose if you want to open it in a new tab (external link) or keep it on your site (internal link)

• Indexing rules: To assist search engines in effectively crawling and indexing your pages, Webflow lets you include your target keywords in appropriate places (e.g., page URL, meta tags, backlink anchor text, images H1, H2, H3 etc.)
• Schema markup: This structured data is a code that resides on a website (or specific webpages) in order to help Google understand content.

Here is how this process works in Webflow:

1. Choose the pages that you want to add Schema Markup to (e.g., blog). Utilize a Schema Markup generator tool to craft the suitable code for each page.

1. Access your Webflow website in the "CMS Collection Pages" and navigate to the page where you want to incorporate Schema Markup.

1. Click on the page settings icon located in the top bar, then select the “Custom Code” tab. From there, paste the Schema Markup code into the “Head Code” section of the custom code editor.

Save your Schema Markup and publish your changes.

• Page speed: PageSpeed Insights (PSI) evaluates the user experience of a webpage on both mobile and desktop devices. And since Webflow generates clear code, it positively affects the page speed—essentially when it comes to business websites.

Here's an overview of the website page speed score for the Webflow site we developed for our client MoVi:

• Code minification: Yes, Webflow lets you do code minification. As the name says—it’s the process of minimizing code (i.e., removing unnecessary characters from source code) used to  improve page load times.

With clean code, Webflow ensures fast page loading and mobile responsiveness, both crucial for SEO success.

In contrast, while Wix might come with unnecessary code “bloat” (i.e., excessive use of code). This will slow your site down and negatively affect your SEO efforts.

What’s more, there are no built-in customizations or automations when it comes to schema markup in Wix. So, you’ll have to apply schema markup manually.

There is also a Wix SEO tool that gives you a personalized SEO checklist based on your site. This tool is great for anyone new to the SEO world.

6. Wix provides more reliable customer support than Webflow

Even though Wix provides better customer support available 24/7. You can reach out to the Wix’s customer support through:

• 24/7 phone support
• Live chat (Monday to Friday, between 2AM and 6PM EST)
• Help Center (within the Editor)
• Community forum

Even though Wix provides assistance through various channels, Webflow has a comprehensive Webflow community. And there, you can gain incredible knowledge.

It still remains true that Webflow's support options are not as extensive as Wix's.

7. Setting up a blog requires more effort with Webflow

Webflow offers customization options that are much better than Wix. You can create custom fields, unique landing pages and much more. But to do all that, you need to invest more energy.

It’s completely free to start a blog with Webflow and Wix (if you are on a free plan, of course). With Wix, you’ll get access to Wix Analytics and other blogging features including free AI title generator, SEO tools, design capabilities, collaboration and managing tools.

And since Webflow includes an intuitive CMS, it’s easy to do on-page editing and tweak existing Collections.

You can either pick a Webflow CMS template or start from scratch.

8. Pricing specifics

You can get started with both Webflow and Wix for free.

Wix has three types of premium plans to choose from: Website, Business and eCommerce, and Enterprise. These Wix’s pricing plans range from $4 to $35 per month.

Wix offers only 500MB storage and bandwidth with its cheapest plan: enough to test the service.

First let’s compare the most basic plans.

Webflow’s price start at $14 per month, where you get 50GB. You are allowed to have 150 static pages.

The maximum monthly visitor limit for the Basic Webflow plan is 250,000.

On the other hand, the most basic Wix plan starts at $4.5 per month and gives you 1GB of bandwith and 500MB storage space.‍

The most popular Webflow CMS plan tailored to blogs and other content-driven sites starts at $23 per month. It provides overall the best value for the money; 200 GB bandwith, 250, 000 visitors per month, 3 content editors, 2000 CMS items, 1000 form submissions, and 150 static pages.

Wix’s most popular plan features roughly the same price—it starts at $25. Compared to Webflow, it gives you an unlimited bandwith + 35GB storage space, 75 lead capture forms (e.g., add registration forms to your site), and the same amount of fields per form (e.g., collect contact details or customer feedback).

Note: If your website is an online store with high sales volumes, you should definitely go with Shopify.

9. Export functionality is not available on Wix

One major drawback of Wix is the inability of exporting your content if you decide to switch to another platform.

Wix lacks this functionality, which could pose significant issues if your business outgrows Wix's capabilities in the future.

In contrast, Webflow enables you to export your site’s HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and assets directly from the Webflow Designer. But this feature is available only on paid Workspace plans.

This functionality is useful for backing up your code and providing it even to clients upon request.

3 Facts That Make Webflow vs. Wix Similar

1. It’s not possible to switch templates

When it comes to both Wix and Webflow, users can't switch from one template to another. That being said, once you've selected a template and begun adding your content, there's no turning back.

And no one want's to start over entirely or transfer content manually.

2. They are both drag-and-drop website builders

Both Webflow and Wix have easy-to-use templates that allow users to drag and drop content without coding knowledge.

You can easily create and manage web pages by simply dragging and dropping elements like text, images, videos, and more.

3. Free and e-commerce plans are available

They both offer users a number of different plans to meet personal and business needs, including e-commerce plans to help users create online stores.

They both also have a free plan available, something that is rare in the website building space.

Webflow vs. Wix: What’s Your Final Decision?

Deciding between Wix vs. Webflow depends on your personal or business needs.

The biggest differences between these website builders include e-commerce capabilities, ease of use, and level of customization.

Remember that Wix lets you sell unlimited physical, digital, and subscription products—a feature not available in Webflow.

Neither of these two is great for those who require extensive e-commerce functionality.

So, consider Wix if you seek a user-friendly website builder. It has a drag-and-drop editor and lots of templates that will help you craft simple websites.

Webflow is the best choice if you’re an experienced web developer who wants lots of flexibility and customization options to create sites that require scaling. It’s even better if you want to scale your business with a reliable, full-service Webflow agency.

And if you want to drive more sales to your e-commerce online store—simply choose Shopify—which surpasses both Webflow and Wix in this regard. Also, remember that the choice of website builders can make or break your (business) goals.

Be careful, though.

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