Wix vs. GoDaddy: Same Same But Different?

Wix and GoDaddy are two prominent names in website creation and web hosting. Both are well-known platforms that help you establish your website and grow your online presence.

At a Glance: Wix vs GoDaddy

Using Wix

Wix is jam-packed with many built-in features. There’s everything from the website builder with tons of professionally-designed Wix templates, custom forms, analytics, SEO and email marketing, eCommerce, and blogging, to member login features, social tools, events, and more. Wix's offerings include many tools that confirm its capabilities to help you expand and scale up.

Website Builder

With an online pure drag-and-drop by-pixel editing editor, Wix offers an unstructured editor. You have absolute freedom when moving anything to any part of the page; you can customize it extensively. Since Wix gives you a blank canvas, advanced users would appreciate Wix more for its unlimited creative freedom and almost limitless customization options.

You can use Wix ADI or Wix Editor to start your website-creation journey. The former automatically builds the website based on some provided information. The latter affords you more control when creating your website based on a pre-design template. Both ways end up with Wix Editor giving you the helm to further customize your website.

Wix Website Templates

Armed with an impressive collection of over 800 attractive templates in different categories to suit various industries, Wix makes your website creation easy. Wix templates are professional, modern, sleek, and mobile-responsive. From minimalist to complex, Wix nails the templates with the right mix of styles.

With so many templates, you know the chances of ending up with a website similar to others are low.

SEO and Marketing Features

I like that Wix continuously adds and revamps features in line with the latest trends; this is evident in its latest SEO Wizard, where you build your personalized SEO checklist. You peruse the checklist and tick each task for your website to rank higher on Google. It is that easy. Also, you can integrate your site with Instagram, Facebook, and other social media networks.

Use third-party analytics apps and marketing tools to help boost your marketing effort. The Wix Chat app enables you to talk directly to potential customers. Wix’s website builder has incorporated SEO-friendly tips to enhance your web pages to be more Google-ready.

There’s also email marketing to help build your email campaigns. Build branded messages using the provided professional email templates. Also, create and schedule marketing activities, monitor your campaign’s performance, and more. Wix offers promotion options, including Facebook ads, discount coupons, and free promotional videos.

Wix App Market

Wix has a comprehensive App Market with apps developed by Wix and third-party developers. These apps help extend functions to your website. With over 300 web apps (analytics, Wix Chat, social media buttons, and more), you have plenty of room to expand your website and grow your business.

There are both in-house and third-party apps, which are mostly free. Premium apps require a premium upgrade. Also, most apps are mobile-optimized.

Wix eCommerce

Wix emphasizes eCommerce, as evident in their specially-crafted stand-alone eCommerce plans. You get unlimited bandwidth and a host of solid eCommerce essentials, including abandoned cart recovery, subscription plans, multiple currencies, automated sales tax, and more. Subscription plans help give your customers the flexibility to pay monthly or yearly.

You can extend your selling on Amazon and eBay via third-party apps in the Wix App Market. Additionally, expand your reach through social commerce networks.

With Wix, you get an all-inclusive eCommerce platform for designing online stores, building your products, configuring digital selling channels, managing inventory, running marketing campaigns and tracking their performance, monitoring sales, and scaling your business.

Accepting International Payment Online with Wix

Wix helps imprint your business’s footprint internationally. Providing global payment processing, cross-border shipping, and translating your store into the respective languages are among the few features offered by Wix. The Multilingual App caters to over 180 languages, and Wix’s local currency converter makes for price viewing in the local currency.

International payments are via its Wix Payments or over 80 worldwide payment gateways. Avalara computes the sales taxes accordingly based on pre-configured tax rules, or you manually calculate the sales tax rates. Also, set your shipping fees, rules, and other shipping options.

Web Hosting

You get free web hosting with Wix. Once you have published your website, your free web hosting automatically sets up with no installation or configuration needed. Wix hosts your website on a CDN, a network of secure global servers. Your audience is automatically directed to the nearest server for faster access.

With a 99.9% uptime, you get data backup protection, 24/7 security monitoring, HTTPS and SSL protection, hacker testing, and DDoS protection. The free plan affords you 500MB of cloud storage and 500MB of bandwidth. However, you can get up to 50GB of cloud storage and unlimited bandwidth for your website with a premium plan.

Unlike GoDaddy, Wix does not allow you to configure and manage your web hosting. Wix offers web hosting as an intrinsic part of the website builder package.

Domain Registration

Wix is a certified registrar. You can browse and purchase a domain from Wix for your site. Choose a domain name that best describes your business. Search for the desired name and extension. Then decide the best period for your needs (one to three years). However, you upgrade to a Premium plan to connect your domain.

Using GoDaddy

GoDaddy stands out as a domain registrar. It later expanded into a traditional hosting provider in its web hosting solutions. Also, they introduced a website builder to help you build a website with zero coding knowledge. Let’s take a look at GoDaddy’s features and tools.

Domain Registration

GoDaddy started as a domain registrar and has recently secured over 84 million domain name customers. They claim to be the world's largest and most trusted domain registrar. Use their domain search and domain name generator tools to find the best website address for your business.

Web Hosting

Unlike Wix, GoDaddy is a traditional web hosting provider with three product categories - basic hosting, WordPress hosting, and advanced hosting which they sell separately. These are typically shared hosting, VPS hosting, and dedicated hosting solutions. Unlike Wix, you can manage your hosting solution with GoDaddy.

Although you can use GoDaddy’s website builder to create your website and host with them, you can purchase a web hosting package from GoDaddy independently to host your website, built through other ways. For example, you already have a WordPress website, so you purchase GoDaddy’s WordPress hosting, optimized to run your WordPress website.

SEO and Marketing

Like Wix, GoDaddy has a section for SEO and marketing. GoDaddy’s website builder plans come with built-in SEO tools. For first-timers, the SEO wizard will guide you to help optimize your homepage by adding relevant keywords and descriptions. If you've run the wizard before, you can opt to optimize the home page or any other pages. Also, monitor your site’s ranking and track your metrics through your Google account.

GoDaddy InSight gives you recommendations and insights based on information from GoDaddy’s customers in various countries. People have commented that GoDaddy’s SEO and marketing tools are barely there. If you need more email and marketing features, you’ll have to pay more.

eCommerce

GoDaddy facilitates eCommerce essentials. Not only do you build your online store, but you also have the subsequent management and marketing of your eCommerce business features. GoDaddy enables eCommerce through its Online Store, a feature integrated into its website builder.

You set up your eCommerce site, define products, add content, control pricing, link sales channels, configure your shipping, and more.

GoDaddy Website Builder

GoDaddy Website Builder makes for easy website creation regardless of your technical skill level. The built-in editor gives you a drag-and-drop editing canvas and allows you to customize your website based on your business needs.

From multiple site pages to scrollable sections to a gallery of images, menus and price lists, and YouTube or Vimeo videos, you design your website how you want it. GoDaddy’s websites are also responsive. Unlike Wix, GoDaddy offers its website builder separately from its traditional web hosting packages.

GoDaddy Website Templates

GoDaddy has about 100 designer-made templates. They are modern, clean, and professional. The templates are categorized into various categories (Fashion & Beauty, Health & Fitness, Home Services, Photography, Restaurants & Food, Professional Services, and more). These are responsive and mobile-friendly templates.

Comparing Wix & GoDaddy User Interfaces

Wix Offers Drag-and-Drop and AI-powered Site Builder

Wix has a drag-and-drop by-pixel editing interface; you literally drag and drop any element of your site almost anywhere on the page. You place your content exactly as you like. Change every color, background image, and font. You have absolute creative freedom.

Wix gives you an AI-powered design engine called Wix ADI, which generates an entire website. All you have to do is answer some questions. Or you can use Wix Editor to design your website based on a pre-designed template. Either way, you use the Wix Editor for any customization effort.

GoDaddy Offers Drag-and-Drop Site Builder Only

GoDaddy Website Builder sports a clean and sleek interface. Deploying some drag-and-drop functionality, the website builder allows customization options too. However, this is a structured editor where you can place web elements in specific places. Hence, you’ll find many creativity restrictions if you’re an experienced user.

While both are easy to use and sport a user-friendly interface, Wix may require a learning curve with so many features and options available. After all, Wix is entirely customizable; you are in the airplane driver’s seat with so many board controls. That said, Wix isn’t difficult to master but may need some time to familiarize everything.

GoDaddy does not give you the same flexibility as Wix does. Perhaps that is why it’s simpler in that sense. The design system has premade components that you arrange in a structured grid layout and rides on block-based editing. This lack of flexibility also means you cannot be as creative as you want.

Advanced users would choose Wix without a doubt. Where Wix excels in its design tools, GoDaddy offers design presets. Food for thought.

Comparing Wix & GoDaddy Website Templates

When it comes to website builders, you want one that can help you create a unique and aesthetically pleasing website. You wouldn’t want to run your professional business website looking the same as a competitor’s! This is where Wix comes in handy. Wix’s over 800 website templates have been carefully researched, designed, and curated by their designers.

Hence, Wix's customizable templates are highly-sophisticated and professionally designed for businesses regardless of industry. They fit current trends and industry needs. Since Wix has a massive templates library, chances of you landing on the same template as others are minimal. Plus Wix’s unstructured drag-and-drop editor enables a more creative original design.

On the other hand, GoDaddy’s website builder offers only a handful of themes with basic design layouts. GoDaddy’s measly 22 themes and around 100 templates are not impressive, especially when pitted against a website builder behemoth like Wix.

Also, GoDaddy Website Builder is structured, so you face much design presets. Chances are high that you may end up with a similar website. That said, GoDaddy's themes and templates are high-quality, gorgeous, and impressive. Both Wix and GoDaddy’s website templates are mobile responsive. My vote goes with Wix.

Wix vs GoDaddy in Pricing

Affordability is one of the concerns for business owners. Both GoDaddy and Wix offer affordable solutions. However, unlike GoDaddy, Wix offers a free forever plan with up to 500MB of SSD storage and bandwidth usage.

While this is an enticing offer, you may think otherwise when you see Wix branding on your website and cannot use your domain name.

Wix Plans and Pricing

Wix's paid plans are into non-eCommerce and eCommerce plans. Opt for the Combo plan at $8.50/month if you want to remove Wix branding. And if you want to start an online store, the minimum plan that accepts online payment is the Business Basic plan at $17/month.

However, there is a processing fee for each transaction you receive through Wix Payments.

Also, Wix’s pricing is annual figures. Although there's a fine print at the bottom, you may find this misleading.

GoDaddy Website Builder Plans & Pricing

GoDaddy’s website builder plans are all-in-one packages. They come with their website builder and a web hosting plan. All plans come with a custom domain connection, on-the-go editing, GoDaddy Insight, and others. The plans cater to different needs from $9.99/month.

All of GoDaddy’s plans include a marketing tool called GoDaddy Insight, which uses data to help you improve your online presence. And the features included in each plan are pretty enticing too. If you need more, you need to go up the tiers. Given the wealth of tools each plan brings, I’d say the price is reasonable.

Comparing what both Wix and GoDaddy have to offer, you’ll realize that Wix has broken down its plan into vastly different categories that suit from the most basic to the more demanding website needs. If you want a simple blog that connects to your domain, the Connect Domain plan at $4.50/month suffices. You don’t have to break the bank for it.

GoDaddy’s plans are more streamlined, and given some of the things that Wix’s plans don’t offer, GoDaddy gives you more value for money. With Wix, your costs can quickly increase when you use many premium third-party apps.

Although GoDaddy’s plans allow you to connect a domain name, you’ll still have to pay for a domain name separately. After all, domain names contribute to most of GoDaddy’s revenue. It all boils down to what your business entails and its future expansion needs.

Final Thoughts

It isn't easy to formulate a straightforward Wix vs GoDaddy verdict since website design is to Wix what web hosting is to GoDaddy. Despite being similar on a few fronts, the structure and build of their respective services place them in different market segments.

Wix comes from a website builder perspective. They have invested much effort into building a capable and flexible website builder. Their focus is for you to establish an online presence with much design flexibility and functionality. Web hosting is thrown into the picture to complete the picture. Wix takes the trophy as a better website builder than GoDaddy.

While GoDaddy does a decent job with its drag-and-drop editor, it is much simpler and can't match the capabilities of Wix's site-building resources. Also, the massive number of Wix's third-party apps makes for easy site functionality expansion. However, if you don't need a website builder and plan to hire a web developer to code your website, then GoDaddy's varying web hosting offerings are a better choice.