Wix, WordPress or a Custom Website: Which One for Your Business?

Wix, WordPress or a custom-coded website? All three can make a good site. What changes is what you pay over a few years, who does the work, how much control you have over SEO and what happens the day you want to leave. Here is an honest comparison, with the prices each platform publishes and Google's rules.

Key Takeaways

• Over 3 years, a Wix or WordPress.com subscription costs less than a custom website, but you build and maintain the site yourself, or pay someone to do it
• Wix and WordPress both let you handle the SEO essentials: titles, addresses, 301 redirects, structured data
• A Wix site has to stay on Wix's servers: to leave, it has to be rebuilt and every address redirected
• WordPress is open source and moves from one host to another, but WordPress and every plugin have to be kept up to date
• Our custom-coded websites start at $3,000 before taxes, managed hosting and maintenance included

The Cost Over 3 Years

Here is what the subscription alone costs, at the prices shown on October 28, 2026 in Canadian dollars, before taxes.

Sources: the pricing pages of Wix and WordPress.com. Wix also shows 50% discounts on some plans, but they are only valid for the initial term of the subscription: the table uses the regular prices. Both platforms include the domain for the first year only.

What these prices do not include:

• The time to build and update the site. With Wix or WordPress.com, you do it yourself, or pay someone extra.
• The domain after the first year, paid apps or plugins, and taxes.
• The SEO work: content, the Google Business Profile and follow-up come with no subscription.

Our price includes the design, the development and managed hosting after launch, under the terms of your quote. The number of pages, the English version and the integrations change it. Our article How much does a website cost in Quebec details what drives that price.

Speed

Google highly recommends that site owners achieve good Core Web Vitals, which measure the loading, interactivity and visual stability of your pages as your visitors experience them (Google). Google also uses the mobile version of your content for indexing and ranking (Google).

No platform is fast or slow by itself: speed depends mostly on what each page loads, such as images, apps, plugins and scripts. A custom website loads only what we put in it. The only way to know is to measure, for example with Google's PageSpeed Insights. Our free SEO audit measures your page's mobile performance and detects your website's platform.

SEO Control

Wix now lets you handle the essentials, according to its help center:

• edit the title tag and meta description of each page;
• customize addresses, even though blog posts use the "domain.com/post/…" form by default;
• set up 301 redirects, as long as you have a custom domain;
• edit the robots.txt file and add structured data by hand;
• publish each language in a subdirectory, such as "/fr".

The limits are elsewhere. Wix says its support cannot help with changes to the robots.txt file or to structured data markup. And tracking scripts such as Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager and ad pixels don't work through custom code: they go through Wix's marketing integrations.

WordPress gives the most freedom through its plugins: there are tens of thousands of them, and WordPress.com lets you install them on every paid plan. It is also the most used CMS on the web, according to W3Techs. The flip side: every plugin is more code to update and secure.

A custom website writes the SEO structure directly into the code: titles, structured data, redirects, and a separate address with hreflang tags for each language, as Google recommends for a bilingual site (Google). Most of the websites we build use Next.js, a modern web development framework. In return, a structural change goes through a developer: ask how changes are made, and billed, after launch.

Who Owns What?

• Wix: according to Wix, the content you build on Wix belongs to you. But a Wix site needs to be hosted and operated on Wix's servers to work: it does not move to another host. A domain bought from Wix, on the other hand, can be transferred elsewhere.
• WordPress: the software is released under the GPL licence. The site belongs to you and can move to a new server by copying its files and database.
• Custom website: at Expert Local, you remain the owner of your site, your domain name and your content.

Whatever the option, get it in writing that the domain name is registered in your name, and that your Search Console, Google Analytics and Google Business Profile are in your name; the provider only has access.

Want to leave a platform? Every old address has to be kept or redirected to the new page. Our website redesign guide for SMBs explains this migration step by step.

Upkeep

• Wix performs the platform's software updates itself. You keep your content and apps up to date.
• WordPress.com manages the hosting and the platform as part of its subscription.
• WordPress installed with a hosting provider: WordPress recommends that you always update it to the latest version and keep plugins updated, and that is up to you or your provider.
• Our custom websites: managed hosting and maintenance are included. Your site is checked automatically every 15 minutes, every change passes a health check before going live, and we restore the previous version if something goes wrong.

When Wix or WordPress Is the Right Choice

• Wix, if you want to build and edit your site yourself, on a small budget, and a simple site of a few pages is enough.
• WordPress, if you publish a lot of content, if several people write on it, or if you want a wide choice of plugins and hosts.
• Shopify or another e-commerce platform, for an online store with a large catalogue.
• A custom website, if your site mainly has to bring in calls and requests, in French and English, with forms wired to your inbox or software, and you would rather not maintain it yourself.

How to Choose

Not sure? Start with our free SEO audit: it detects your current website's platform and measures its mobile speed. For a precise price, book a discovery call or see our web design service. Our custom websites start at $3,000 before taxes, managed hosting included; the final price is set by scope, after the free diagnostic.