Wix is a highly functional yet easy-to-use platform, featuring a free forever plan along with a robust AI website builder for getting your site live quickly without a lot of know-how. After extensive research and testing, we found Wix to be the best website builder for small businesses.
Wix offers many AI tools and agents, but even they can’t do everything. You’ll need to know how to get your site set up.
Our step-by-step guide has the screenshots, tips, and guidance you need to get the most out of your website from Wix.
Key Takeaways
- Ease of use: Wix is one of the easiest website builders to use in our research, although its vast feature catalog can be difficult to navigate for some beginners.
- Free plan: Wix offers a free forever plan, but it has Wix ads and no custom domain.
- Cost: Wix offers four pricing plans that range in cost from $17 to $159 per month.
- Templates: Wix offers over 2,700 templates.
- Editor: Wix features a drag-and-drop editor with a lot of customizability.
How To Create a Website With Wix
Website builders are designed to gently guide users through the creation process.
- Set up a Wix account
- Choose AI or the standard builder
- Decide on a plan
- Get a domain name
- Pick a template
- Edit your site’s design
- Add text, images, and other content
- Improve your site’s ranking using SEO
- Preview your website
1. Set up a Wix account
If you haven’t already, you’ll need to register with Wix to create your site. Fortunately, Wix makes this process extremely easy. All you need to do is enter your email and a secure password, before clicking on the ‘Create new site’ button on the right of the screen.
The website builder will prompt you with a few questions, like the nature of your website or the name of your business.
Click on the ‘Create new site’ button to get started. Source: Tech.co testing
2. Choose AI or the standard builder
Wix’s AI builder creates a custom website for you by asking you a few questions. If you’re interested in using this method, you’ll be guided through the rest of the steps here at your own pace.
You can use Wix Harmony, a new tool that builds on the existing AI-assisted website building experience, making it even easier to adjust your site with natural language prompts.
Even if you opt out of the AI builder, the AI agent Aria can still make sitewide tweaks from a sidebar chat window within your Wix account.
Decide whether to use Wix’s AI chat feature or build the site manually. Source: Tech.co testing
3. Decide on a plan
Wix offers four different pricing plans to choose from, each with an increasing number of features.
- Light: $17 per month
- Core: $29 per month
- Business: $39 per month
- Business Elite: $159 per month
If you want to build an online store, you’ll have to sign up for the Core, Business, or Business Elite plans, as the Light plan does not provide ecommerce functionality.
Wix also offers a free forever plan that can get your site live and online at no cost. The downside? Your site will be covered in Wix ads and you won’t be able to choose a custom domain, making it hard to get discovered on search engines.
Check out our Wix pricing guide to learn more.
| Plan | Price (1-year contract) The price per month you'll pay if you choose to be billed annually | Best for | Bandwidth | Storage | Staff accounts | Ecommerce | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 | | | | | |||
| Free | Light | Core | Business | Business Elite | |||
| Free |
|
|
|
| |||
| Getting started | Blog and portfolio sites | Small online stores | Large online stores | Unlimited access | |||
| 1GB | 3GB | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited | |||
| 500MB | 2GB | 50GB | 100GB | Unlimited | |||
| 1 | 2 | 5 | 10 | 15 | |||
| | | | | |
4. Get a domain name
A custom domain is the unique name that identifies a website and shows up in the address bar of browsers. You should make sure that your domain name aligns with your brand identity as much as possible. We recommend keeping it short and snappy.
If you enter a name that’s already been taken, Wix will let you know you need to pick another one.
Connect to a custom domain to your website. Source: Tech.co testing
If you aren’t using a free plan, you’ll be stuck with a subdomain that requires the “.wix.com” suffix instead of something simple, like, say, “tech.co.” This hurts your brand reputation and limits SEO, making it harder to reach your audience.
5. Pick a template
Wix offers over 2,700 website templates. This is the best selection of templates that’s offered across the industry, with our second best-rated builder Squarespace only offering a few hundred option in comparison. The builder also breaks its selection down into useful categories, with options including portfolios, blogs, arts and culture, and technology.
Wix lets you choose from many customizable templates. Source: Tech.co testing
A search bar at the top of the template page helps you filter results by business type, industry, and overall aesthetic to connect you to the right theme faster.
If you aren’t a fan of the color scheme or font, don’t worry: you can edit these variables later.
6. Edit your site’s design
The customization stage is when you bring your site to life by re-arranging different components using Wix’s drag-and-drop editor, editing the color scheme of your page, and adding different elements — including anything from text boxes and image galleries to community forums.
Depending on your website’s primary needs, you can also add different sections, from customer testimonials to a ‘Contact us’ box.
Wix is the most customizable website builder on the market, our testers found, and the platform also offers more than 800 web apps, available through its App Market.
Wix’s app market is home to over 800 third-party integrations. Source: Tech.co testing
7. Add text, images, and other content
Wix makes uploading images straightforward. Simply select ‘Upload & Import’ under the Image tab, and select your chosen photos for upload.
Edit the look of your website by adding unique images. Source: Tech.co testing
Don’t have any unique images to include? Wix lets you choose from a wide selection of copyright-free images through its Stock Gallery. The AI Image Creator can also generate custom AI images using targeted keywords.
You can add unique copy to your website, including headers, a brief summary of your business, or even blog content if this is part of your marketing strategy. If you’re struggling to get inspired, you can use Wix’s AI text generator.
8. Improve your site’s ranking using SEO
Next, you’ll need to explain your website in your own words. You’ll want to use the right search engine optimization (SEO), which is the term for the practices that make it easier for Google to send the right visitors to your website. The right keywords, formatting, or features, like embedded videos, can all help draw in readers.
Wix’s SEO dashboard helps users measure page impressions on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis, comparing them to previous periods to see if you are growing or losing an audience.
Improve your website’s ranking by working through Wix’s SEO checklist. Source: Tech.co testing
9. Preview your website
By hitting the preview button you’ll be able to see what a potential visitor sees. Is all the information clear? Are you directing them to the next action a visitor might want to take, such as buying an item or contacting you by email? What questions would a visitor be left with?
Once you have your answers, you’ll finally be ready to publish your website with Wix.
Wix’s website preview includes desktop or mobile views. Source: Tech.co testing
What Is Wix Harmony?
Wix Harmony is the platform’s new AI website builder, launched in January 2026. It’s powered by an AI agent called Aria, and aims to bridge the gap between vibe coding and website creation tools.
It’s available now across all plans, including the free plan. You can prompt it with natural language such as:
- Give me an idea for a new section
- How can I add a sales banner?
- Help my site get found on Google
- How do I connect my domain?
- What is my site missing?
Wix will let you skip questions, ask for help, and even end the chat and continue to build your website manually if you want to opt out of the process early. To see how this AI-builder compares with the competition, read our guide to the best AI-website builders.
Entering a prompt in Wix Harmony is simple with its chat-like interface. Source: Tech.co testing
Wix: Test Summary
Considering Wix is the most feature-rich website builder we researched, the platform is surprisingly easy to navigate. The setup process was particularly streamlined.
Wix’s step-by-step guide gave me an overview of its many features and elements. The builder also asked me what kind of site I was making, before showing me templates that matched my industry.
My experience with Wix wasn’t always smooth sailing, though. Wix’s editor was quite slow and not quite as responsive as alternatives, like Squarespace.
Wix’s interface can be overwhelming, with loads of capabilities. However, whenever I did have an issue locating a feature, I could easily search for it using Wix’s useful search bar.
Is Wix Right for Your Business?
According to our impartial research, Wix is the best website builder overall, due to its impressive customization options, free plan, and raft of useful web creation, design, and ecommerce capabilities. However, you can see how Wix weighs in against the competition with our table below.
| Price | Free plan | Templates How many templates are available? | Rating Overall score based on features, value, support, ease of use, and customer score | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| |  |  |  |  | |
| Wix | Squarespace | Shopify | GoDaddy | Hostinger | |
| $17/month | $16/month | $29/month | $9.99/month | $11.99/month | |
| | | | | | |
| 2,000+ | 180+ | 900+ | 200+ | 300+ | |
| 4.8 | 4.6 | 4.4 | 4.1 | 4.1 |
How Did We Test Wix?
We take our impartial research and analysis seriously, so you can have complete confidence that we're giving you the clearest, most useful product recommendations.
After conducting an initial exploration to identify the most relevant, popular, and established tools in the market, we put them through their paces with hands-on testing to see their real strengths and weaknesses. In this case, we put 16 website builder products to the test across 398 areas of investigation.
Based on years of market and user needs research, we've established a website builder testing methodology that scores each product in six core categories of investigation and 33 subcategories. This covers everything, from customer feedback to design, ease of use, and more.
Our main testing categories for website builders are:
- Website features: The capabilities and functionalities offered by a website builder, e.g. blog functionality, SEO capability, and marketing capacity.
- Design functionality: The aesthetic appeal and visual layout of a website created using a website builder. It encompasses aspects such as page templates and customizable themes.
- Customer satisfaction: External customer opinion. This is the feedback and ratings given by customers who have used a particular website builder — the market position and reputation a website builder holds.
- User experience: How user-friendly and intuitive a website builder is for people with varying levels of technical expertise.
- Value for money: The balance between the cost of a website builder and the benefits it provides. It considers factors such as pricing plans, subscription models, and available features.
- Help and support: The assistance and resources available to users when they encounter issues or need guidance while using a website builder.
When it comes to calculating a product's final score, not all testing areas are weighted evenly, as we know some aspects matter more to our readers than others, which are simply “nice to have”. After hundreds of hours, our process is complete, and the results should ensure you can find the best solution for your needs.
At Tech.co, we have a number of full-time in-house researchers, who re-run this testing process regularly, to ensure our results remain reflective of the present day.
Next Steps: Ready To Try Wix?
Wix has templates for nearly any website, it can guide you through the creation process with AI, and has a great customer support team. We recommend it for everyone.
However, Wix’s feature-rich software can be overwhelming. If you’re not sure, our second-place pick is Squarespace, which offers a great set of marketing tools and designs.
To learn more about the benefits of Wix, Squarespace, and others, check out our free website comparison tool today.
If you click on, sign up to a service through, or make a purchase through the links on our site, or use our quotes tool to receive custom pricing for your business needs, we may earn a referral fee from the supplier(s) of the technology you’re interested in. This helps Tech.co to provide free information and reviews, and carries no additional cost to you. Most importantly, it doesn’t affect our editorial impartiality. Ratings and rankings on Tech.co cannot be bought. Our reviews are based on objective research analysis. Rare exceptions to this will be marked clearly as a ‘sponsored’ table column, or explained by a full advertising disclosure on the page, in place of this one. Click to return to top of page