Which Is Better, Wix or Godaddy? A Complete Answer For You

Get ready for an in-depth showdown between Wix and GoDaddy, two giants of the industry. We are going to discover the strengths, weaknesses, and unique offerings of each to find the perfect fit for your online ambitions.

Key Takeaways

• Wix shines with extensive design options and advanced e-commerce features, making it perfect for creative businesses looking to sell online.
• GoDaddy offers user-friendly and basic but comprehensive website-building tools at affordable prices, making it a great choice for beginners and small businesses seeking straightforward solutions.

Reasons To Use Wix

Wix stands tall as the most versatile and compelling choice for creators and businesses alike, empowering over 8 million currently live websites around the world. So, how can it gain such huge trust from the user community?

• Comprehensive Tools: Wix equips users with a wide range of tools, including a user-friendly drag-and-drop editor, customizable templates, and an extensive app marketplace to enhance site functionality.
• Powerful e-commerce capabilities: Wix provides a seamless platform for building and managing online stores, with features like product galleries, secure payment options, and inventory management.
• Robust blogging tools: For bloggers, Wix offers a suite of blogging tools, including various post formats, scheduling, social media integration, and reader engagement features.
• Vibrant app marketplace: Wix’s App Market offers a vast array of third-party apps and integrations, allowing you to add features like booking systems, analytics, and marketing tools to your site.
• Wix ADI: You only need to provide basic information about your desired online presence. Wix will automatically create a visually stunning website for you.

Reasons to Use GoDaddy

GoDaddy holds its reputation as the largest and most renowned domain registrar and a pioneering force in website hosting for valid reasons – they excel in their field. Some compelling motives to choose GoDaddy are:

• Affordable price: GoDaddy offers budget-friendly plans starting at $9.99 per month, making it accessible for individuals, small businesses, and startups looking to establish an online presence.
• Secure: GoDaddy has integrated top-tier security features, encompassing site scanning and SSL certificate provision. These measures safeguard your website’s data and the visitors who access it.
• Reliable: Users can experience exceptional uptime, ensuring the online presence remains consistent and enabling users to consistently deliver top-notch services to your clients.
• Ease of use: With a user-friendly interface and intuitive tools, GoDaddy simplifies the website-building process, even for beginners without technical expertise.
• GoDaddy ADI: A website builder tool designed to help users create websites without design or coding experience.

How do Wix and GoDaddy Stack Up?

When it comes to crafting an impactful online presence, GoDaddy and Wix have emerged as formidable contenders. They provide primary and essential tools to build an exceptional and outstanding website in digital competition. Each platform empowers unique features.

In many ways, Wix and GoDaddy are comparable. Both services include paid packages that come with a custom domain connection, SSL certificate, robust SEO tools integrating with Google, and website statistics. Additionally, both platforms offer impressive template libraries, enabling users to choose from a wide array of professionally designed templates. Customization options, such as modifying layouts, colors, fonts, and content, are available on both Wix and GoDaddy,

As it focuses more on managing and developing websites, GoDaddy seems to shine more on the website metrics aspect. The key differences between the two builders come from the hosting solution, marketing tools, etc. GoDaddy offers a range of hosting options, including shared hosting, VPS hosting, etc., while Wix primarily offers hosting as part of its website-building package, focusing on simplicity and ease of use. However, GoDaddy does not support a dedicated app market like Wix.

Pros and Cons

GoDaddy vs Wix: Our Expert Review

Pricing & fees

Wix

Besides a free plan option to build a website on a Wix subdomain, Wix offers 5 paid plans, ranging from $16 to $159 per month, and empowering more advanced features. They are:

• Light plan: Designed for simplicity, this entry-level plan comes at an affordable $16 per month. While it features a light marketing suite, it lacks extensive additional features.
• Core plan: At $27 per month. This package introduces valuable perks not found in the cheaper tier. 
• Business plan: Slightly higher at $32 per month, the Business plan enhances amplified eCommerce functionalities. 
• Business Elite plan: The premium offering at $159 per month delivers access to tailor-made data reports for optimizing sales performance.
• Enterprise: Custom pricing for businesses that need to manage sites at scale.

GoDaddy

Similar to Wix, there are also 4 paid plans. You can opt for an annual subscription to save up to 33%.

• Basic plan: True to its name, the Basic plan provides the essential foundation to kickstart your business journey with a starting subscription of $9.99/month, renew at $11.99/month
• Standard plan: At $14.99/month, the Premium plan takes your marketing efforts up a notch. The plan will renew at $21.99/month.
• Commerce Plan: If venturing into e-commerce is on your agenda, the Commerce plan at $16.99/month is tailored for you.  The plan will renew at $24.99/month.
• Ecommerce Plan: Upping the ante, the Commerce Plus plan, priced at $29.99/month, renews at $44.99/month

Verdict: Undoubtedly, GoDaddy presents entry-level plans with a more competitive pricing edge, coupled with its focus on hosting and business services, making it a solid choice for newbies and small businesses looking for a holistic online solution. While Wix is a little more pricey, it encompasses more e-commerce tools, and it can be affordable in the long term.

Ease of Use

Wix is renowned for its user-friendly approach, Wix stands out by offering an unrestricted drag-and-drop experience, granting you the freedom to position elements wherever you envision, making website creation a breeze. 

For total beginners, Wix might seem a bit complex. However, there are helpful hints and tips provided throughout the process. Just search for the small question mark icons if you need guidance. If you prefer an easier route, you can also use Wix’s ADI builder.

Wix’s user-centric design and extensive app market make it easy to navigate through various plugins and tools to customize, enabling seamless website building without coding expertise. 

As an Artificial Design Intelligence builder, GoDaddy takes on the heavy lifting in the initial step while requiring additional input from you. It also offers a drag-and-drop format.

Unlike Wix, where sections can be freely manipulated, GoDaddy’s approach involves pre-built sections that offer less flexibility. Interestingly, this streamlined approach contributes to its user-friendliness, making it particularly suitable for newcomers just starting their website-building journey.

Verdict: While GoDaddy’s simplicity arises from its more constrained options, Wix remains remarkably user-friendly without becoming intricate. If prioritizing ease of use and being content with a bit less flexibility is paramount, GoDaddy is the ideal choice. On the other hand, Wix maintains its intuitive interface and accessibility, even for beginners.

DesignDesign

When it comes to assessing the website designs of Wix and GoDaddy at a glance, singling out a clear winner might prove challenging. Both platforms offer an extensive array of options spanning various categories, each exuding professionalism and quality. However, beneath the surface, a few nuances set them apart.

Themes and templates

With a selection of over 900 templates, Wix caters to a diverse range of niches. These templates are organized into five primary categories: business, store, creative, community, and blog – each further divided into specialized sections. This segmentation ensures options tailored to multiple specific industries. The list of available subcategories is immense on Wix.

GoDaddy proudly offers a collection of modern templates numbering in the hundreds; however, it doesn’t categorize them into specific niches as Wix does. Instead, you’ll encounter versatile templates suited for online stores, professional services, blogging, fitness, and an array of other domains. GoDaddy’s template assortment is broader in scope, yet it differs from Wix in not featuring the same level of subcategorization.

Templates flexibility

Wix’s vast design options offer flexibility during the process, including cool animations. However, the abundance of choices might inadvertently lead to design missteps. Once you’ve settled on a design of Wix, it’s important to note that you can customize it extensively, but you’re not able to seamlessly switch to an entirely different design. This reinforces the importance of careful consideration during the initial design selection phase.

On the other hand, GoDaddy will not give you complete control over every design aspect. On the upside, GoDaddy allows users the flexibility to switch between different designs, offering the opportunity to explore and experiment until they find the most suitable fit for their website’s aesthetics and functionality.

Mobile responsiveness

Both platforms prioritize delivering a seamless browsing experience for mobile users. Wix, renowned for its visually appealing templates, ensures that its designs are optimized for mobile viewing, automatically and easily adjusting layout and content for smaller screens. Nevertheless, GoDaddy emphasizes responsive design, aiming to maintain consistency and user-friendliness across devices. Therefore, there is a restriction on customization options for the mobile display of GoDaddy.

Photography

Wix’s complimentary media collection boasts an extensive array of breathtaking images sourced from leading stock photo platforms or crafted directly within the Wix Pro gallery. With a selection exceeding 500,000 images that can be freely incorporated into your website, you’re bound to discover the ideal visuals to enhance your website’s aesthetics.

GoDaddy Studio, a part of GoDaddy, is an advanced image editor that allows you to create ads, posts for social channels, promotions, stories, and branded content using millions of free stock photos. It has been developed and optimized as a mobile app for users to easily approach. Although it provides a free plan to experience, you must pay for the paid plan to address this prospectus photography source.

Video background

The Wix’s video background involves embedding videos using the Wix Video app or integrating YouTube, Vimeo, or Facebook video players. It can be auto-played on the desktop and can’t play on mobile devices, and there won’t be any sound if they are used in this manner.

Likewise, GoDaddy incorporates video backgrounds to effortlessly integrate videos from YouTube, Vimeo, or Dailymotion as captivating site backdrops. Users can create professional instant videos on the GoDaddy Studio with powerful AI tools.

Verdict: While both options appear impressive, I lean towards Wix for superior customization, especially due to its huge range of templates and other aspects of design. Wix’s designs possess a distinct and unique essence, with animations that truly elevate their visual impact.

Ecommerce features

The online store features of both GoDaddy and Wix have been developed and are seamlessly integrated within their respective website builders, so the free plan is not capable of selling products. You need to upgrade it to ecommerce plans with higher prices to start selling.

Wix offers robust ecommerce features that seem a little advanced:

• Products: Wix is able to sell up to 50,000 products and categories in the online store.
• Multichannel selling: Wix’s integration with mobile and web storefronts, online marketplace, and social media channels allows users to easily sell products through the dashboard, which are Amazon, eBay, Facebook, and many more.
• Automated sales tax: Wix’s automated sales tax calculation feature streamlines the complex process of calculating and collecting sales taxes based on different jurisdictions. 
• Effortless payment solutions: Wix seamlessly integrates with over 70 renowned payment providers, including Wix Payments, PayPal, Stripe, and Square. 
• Abandoned cart recovery: This feature assists in recovering potentially lost sales by automatically sending reminders to customers who abandoned their shopping carts. 
• Email marketing: Wix enables you to establish a domain-specific email account via G Suite. Additionally, you can seamlessly integrate your existing email marketing account using the Wix App Store, including popular platforms like Mailchimp, Constant Contact, Smoove, and Privy.
• Versatile app integration: Wix’s vast collection of approximately 200 apps in its app market allows users to create a highly customized and feature-rich e-commerce store by incorporating various functionalities.
• Advanced shipping: Wix provides advanced shipping options that allow users to set up complex shipping rules based on factors like location, weight, or total order value.

On the other side, GoDaddy provides an accessible set of ecommerce tools tailored for beginners

• Unlimited products: The ability to list an unlimited number of products enables businesses to scale their online store without constraints
• Marketplace and social selling through auto online inventory: GoDaddy e-commerce enables you to connect your store with your social media accounts, such as Facebook, Instagram, Amazon, Etsy and more, directly selling by syncing your product catalog and inventory with your social shops.
• Diverse payment methods: You can accept payments from your customers using various methods like credit cards, PayPal, Apple Pay, Google Pay, and more.
• Promotional features: GoDaddy’s promotional tools enable businesses to run sales, discounts, and special offers to attract and engage customers. They also offer gift cards that can boost revenue.
• Real-time shipping rates: Providing customers with accurate real-time shipping rates during the checkout process ensures transparency and helps manage expectations.
• Email marketing: The built-in email marketing tool of GoDaddy provides the capacity for sending up to 10,000 emails per month, enabling businesses to efficiently craft email marketing campaigns to foster connections and drive increased sales.

Verdict: At a surface level, Wix and GoDaddy appear to provide comparable eCommerce functionalities. Nevertheless, upon closer examination, Wix stands out with a more enticing array of features aimed at enhancing the sales process. Notably, elements, like abandoned cart recovery and loyalty programs contribute to the seamless transition of initial customers into repeat purchasers. Moreover, Wix’s advantage lies in the extensive customization options afforded by third-party add-ons.

SEO

Fortunately, GoDaddy and Wix offer SEO Wizards that guide you through optimizing titles, descriptions, and content. While this helps beginners get started, a robust strategy is essential for higher rankings.

GoDaddy’s ecommerce platform takes care of search engine optimization (SEO) for your store by generating SEO metadata, sitemaps, and robots.txt files. You have the flexibility to modify SEO settings individually for each page and product, including titles, descriptions, and keywords. Additionally, GoDaddy offers guidance and suggestions to enhance your website’s ranking and overall visibility on search engines.

Wix’s SEO capabilities are more advanced compared to some other website builders.  In addition to the basics, like editing page titles and descriptions, Wix allows users to have greater control over their website’s SEO. You can edit URLs, implement 301 redirects to maintain SEO value when changing URLs, and create rules to optimize the text on your website. This level of control over SEO factors can contribute to improving your website’s overall visibility.

Verdict: In the realm of SEO features, both GoDaddy and Wix offer satisfactory options. However, Wix’s website builder emerges as the stronger contender in this aspect with its more comprehensive and advanced set of SEO tools

Security

Wix prioritizes website safety and security. It holds PCI compliance, meeting credit card companies’ security standards. All Wix websites come with automatic backups and SSL certificates. Furthermore, Wix maintains a dedicated team that conducts 24/7 server monitoring to proactively mitigate potential threats.

GoDaddy offers some security features within its web hosting plans, although they are somewhat limited. For the first year, you receive a complimentary basic SSL certificate, along with daily backups and network security for their servers, which are constantly monitored. However, for enhanced security, additional payment is required. They offer three site security plans with features like malware scanning, backup recovery, site cleanup, and a web application firewall.

Verdict: Wix’s commitment to international privacy and security regulations, as well as its comprehensive security measures, positions it as a more reliable choice for users who prioritize website safety and data protection.

Support

When it comes to support, the comparison between GoDaddy and Wix reveals a close match. Both platforms provide a variety of communication channels for users to reach out to their support teams, which are:

• Extensive online resources such as pop-ups, documentation, and community forums.
• 24/7 live chat and phone support

Besides, for more particular, we will get exclusive services when using each platform.

• Wix: The platform offers 24/7 callback requests. For those seeking faster support, Wix’s VIP plans offer priority for both ticket responses and phone calls. Moreover, Wix extends its support to user feedback, allowing users to suggest new features that might be integrated into the platform in the future.
• GoDaddy: An exceptional aspect of GoDaddy’s customer service is its provision of assistance through SMS. You have the option to send a text message to a dedicated support phone number at any hour, be it day or night.

The customer services are supported on all the GoDaddy’s plans. However, its knowledge center is less comprehensive than Wix’s. During the experience, some people encountered difficulty in locating precise answers to all our inquiries within the knowledge center.

Verdict: Though the decision is tight, both platforms provide around-the-clock support via phone and live chat. However, Wix gains the upper hand due to its slightly broader range of support options and more thorough on-page assistance.

Wix and GoDaddy: Who are they for?

Wix is completely ideal for

• Small businesses with niche industries: With its huge range of industry-specific templates and comprehensive features, small businesses can create professional websites and start their online business.
• Freelancers and creative professionals: Freelancers and creative professionals from various fields can benefit from Wix’s customizable templates and creative freedom. It allows them to showcase their skills and services effectively.
• Content creators: Wix offers multimedia integration and blogging tools, making it an attractive option for content creators seeking to engage their audiences with a mix of media.

GoDaddy is best for

• Businesses concentrated website management: The uptime guarantee incorporating website features such as domain registration, website building, and hosting services ensures a good quality and high protection website for businesses.
• Local businesses: GoDaddy’s website builder and marketing tools, such as online booking and appointment scheduling, are valuable for local businesses aiming to connect with customers in their vicinity.
• Tech-savvy users: GoDaddy provides users with cPanel access, offering more control over hosting and website management. This can be attractive for individuals comfortable with technical aspects.

FAQs