Approximately 18 million websites currently online are created with website builders alone. 23 million websites are built using a hosting provider and a website builder. This means that more people are gravitating towards hosting service that also provides the tools to create a website as a way to streamline their processes.
Wix and Bluehost are two of the most popular brands in the website-building industry. They each have a lot to offer, but they also have a lot of differences that make them uniquely suited to different types of users.
I have spent over 7 hours researching both services and in this guide, we’ll take a look at how these two powerful platforms stack up against each other in terms of features, ease of use, pricing, support, and more.
By the end of this Wix vs. Bluehost comparison, you’ll know whether one is better than the other in terms of features and functionality, and you’ll be able to decide which one is best for you.
1. Ease of Use
It may seem like the Wix vs. Bluehost comparison compares two entirely different online services: Wix, a website builder, and Bluehost, a web host. However, it is possible to compare the two since both platforms cater to users who want a quick and easy way to build a website.
They have beginner-friendly site-building tools and offer free plans to get started. But, how easy is it to create a website using each platform?
Let’s take a look.
Wix:
Wix is a versatile website builder that works for both beginners and experienced website creators. The platform offers easy one-click CMS installs and thousands of prebuilt templates, many of which come with built-in tools for marketing and sales
You can use the simple drag-and-drop editor to customize your site to match your needs. Alternatively, you can use Wix ADI (artificial design intelligence) to create your website for you.
Just answer a few short questions about the type of site you want to create, the specific pages you need to add, and so on. The AI-powered builder will then build your website for you.
All in all, Wix’s site builder offers everything you need to make your web environment and website-building journey easier.
Summary of Wix’s Ease of Use Features:
- No code, drag-and-drop editor ideal for beginners
- AI-powered Startup Wizard for quick website setup
- High-quality pre-made templates for all industries
- Built-in email marketing and payment tools
- Wix Code editor for advanced users
Bluehost:
Unlike Wix, which is a simple website builder, Bluehost is a web hosting provider that also offers website-building tools.
While its core service is focused on providing space on servers for you to build your websites, the platform also offers a suite of other products and services that make it easier for you to build and manage your website.
These include WordPress integration, custom domain, built-in email marketing tools, total data control, and complete export options.
Bluehost also supplies different types of web and hosting services, including:
- Shared hosting
- Dedicated hosting
- VPS hosting
- WordPress Hosting
The platform’s cheap hosting includes modern hardware, instant provisioning, and 24/7 customer support, among other features. In contrast to web hosting companies, Wix only offers simple website and eCommerce hosting.
Although creating a website with Bluehost may not be as simple as Wix, you do have maximum control over your design and content options.
You can make as many changes as you want to your design – even move your site to a different host – without losing your content (something that you can’t do with Wix).
The trade-off is that you have to do much of the legwork yourself, which isn’t very convenient for new users. For example, when you sign-up, you have to do things like connect your domain to the right install or set up your DNS – a process that most new users are not familiar with.
The good news is that once you are subscribed to a Bluehost plan, the platform will automatically install WordPress on your website and enable the drag-and-drop page builder so you can customize your site.
You can email Bluehost support to ask specific questions about the process to follow after WordPress is installed.
Summary of Bluehost’s Ease of Use Features:
- Simple user interface that’s easy to navigate
- Reliable and flexible web hosting plans
- Preconfigured website templates for all businesses
- Advanced web design and customization options
- Ability to move website to a different host easily
Winner: Wix
Wix is much easier to use compared to Bluehost but, it doesn’t have as much flexibility. Your choice will ultimately come down to whether you prioritize control or convenience. In order to get the most convenience from a site builder (such as Wix), you have to give up some control and some advanced features.
For this reason, beginners may choose Wix because of the platform’s ease of use while more experienced users may prefer Bluehost in order to access advanced technical and customization features.
2. Design and Customization
If you are new to the website building space, you might need with where to start designing your site.
Fortunately, both platforms come with a huge selection of pre-designed templates, as well as a drag-and-drop editor and intuitive processes for creating a new website.
Let’s take a look at what they offer.
Wix:
Wix has an impressive selection of templates (over 900 in total), segmented into two dozen categories. You’ll be able to find industry-specific templates, all of which are mobile-responsive and optimized for speed.
Wix’s drag-and-drop editor is the new standard in site design. It has a smooth drag-and-drop functionality and advanced design features that let you define the exact behavior and position of each and every element with both flexible and grid layouts.
This editor also has features for teamwork and collaboration. Multiple users can work on the same website at the same time. They can also give and receive feedback using live comments and share reusable design assets.
You can customize your site with free images, icons, etc. from the Wix library. There are tons of customization options but this level of choice comes with a bit of a learning curve. Alternatively, you can let Wix ADI design your site for you.
Summary of Wix’s Design and Customization Features:
- Industry-specific rag-and-drop templates
- 100% customizable and mobile-friendly templates
- High-quality photo and video backgrounds
- Huge app market available for additional tools
- Massive library of free images, icons, and vector art
Bluehost:
Bluehost succeeds at satisfying an entirely different function compared to Wix. When it comes to web design options, the site builder lets you edit just about anything you want, including HTML and CSS.
You have direct access to your files on the server which means you can build a website with whatever design you want. In contrast, Wix does not allow you to access HTML/CSS in the Wix classic editor. All your changes will have to be made using the site builder unless you’re using the developer platform.
Like Wix, Bluehost has a huge number of accessible plug-and-play designs to choose from. These preloaded designs are available in every category, including real estate, portfolio, restaurant, etc.
When it comes to technical and customization features, Bluehost has a lot more to offer compared to Wix. You have unlimited options that allow you to improve your website’s functionality without the need for third-party apps.
Summary of Bluehost’s Design and Customization Features:
- Unlimited design options for truly unique websites
- Simple, user-friendly design interface
- Plug-and-play designs for every type of business
- HTML and CSS access on all plans
- High-quality one-page website templates available
Winner: Wix
Wix websites are extremely easy to design but still look amazing compared to a Bluehost site. Although you can achieve infinite design freedom on a Bluehost WordPress website, you will ultimately need more advanced knowledge which means the site builder isn’t ideal for beginners or non-tech savvy users.
3. eCommerce Capabilities
The next area we’ll be taking a look at in this Wix vs. Bluehost comparison is eCommerce capabilities.
If you’re looking to build an online store, you need a website builder with the right built-in tools to make it easy for you to sell your products or services, collect payments, and communicate with customers without having to piece together a range of different tools.
The good news is, both Wix and Bluehost have built-in eCommerce functionality to handle all your business operations from one place.
Wix:
Wix has a range of powerful eCommerce features, one of which is the POS (point of sale) system, This allows you to sell online and in physical stores. It also lets you sync your inventory easily.
You can filter and sort your website products quickly, and manage your store on the go using the Wix App.
Gain valuable insights into your online store’s performance and find ways to make improvements to your marketing and sales efforts thanks to Wix’s built-in website analytics tools.
There are also appointment management tools, attendance management tools, and attendance tracking tools
The Business plan comes with an abandoned cart saver tool that automatically contacts visitors who leave your website before completing their purchase. Visitors get an offer of a discount code to encourage them to complete their transactions.
These are just some of the tools in this comprehensive business management platform that you can use to run your entire eCommerce business with ease.
Summary of Wix’s eCommerce Capabilities:
- Powerful online store analytics
- Built-in booking management features
- Billing, inventory management, and invoicing tools
- Built-in email marketing feature
- Membership management tools
Bluehost:
Bluehost has an eCommerce-focused plan that’s great for selling products or services online. It comes with a range of custom WordPress themes, exclusive store themes, and web store analytics built in.
You get safe and secure online payments, as well as free SSL to keep your online store secure, daily website backup, malware scanning, and domain privacy features.
The platform also provides you with an impressive range of additional plugins that allow you to sell unlimited products, schedule appointments, offer gift cards, and allow customers to create accounts.
Summary of Bluehost’s eCommerce Capabilities:
- Support for popular shopping carts with free SSL
- Secure payment options
- Automatic malware scanning
- Domain privacy features
- Daily website backup
Winner: Tie
Both platforms offer robust eCommerce tools. Beginners can’t go wrong with Wix, but larger stores stand to benefit from the scalability of Bluehost’s eCommerce plans.
4. Blogging Tools
A blog allows you to keep your website updated with fresh content. This is something search engines love and will ensure that your website can be found by your target customers through organic search.
For this reason, you need a dedicated website builder, that offers adequate blogging capabilities.
Wix:
Wix has a powerful blogging engine that simplifies content creation. All the tools you need are at your fingertips, including image editing and optimization tools for beautiful blog images.
You can choose from the platform’s blog templates that determine the layout of your blog. These are independent of your main website template and can be customized to look exactly the way you want them to.
Most of the templates allow you to pick a featured image and post header and you can populate your content with different types of elements, including stylish headings, embedded videos, images, audio, and more.
You can organize your posts using categories and tags. You can also enable commenting to increase interaction with your blog visitors.
Summary of Wix’s Blogging Tools:
- Simple and fast blog setup process
- Choose from dozens of predesigned blog layouts
- Seamless, no-code content editing experience
- Activate comments for higher reader engagement
- Organize posts with categories and tags
Bluehost:
Bluehost comes bundled with free website software like WordPress. WordPress is great for blogging and comes with powerful content creation and management features.
Many of its templates are blogging-focused which makes your content creation processes a lot easier. Out of the box, these themes are great-looking (although nowhere near as modern and sleek as Wix’s templates).
If you have coding knowledge, you can transform the WordPress CMS to create unique pages that are loosely based on whichever WordPress theme you choose.
Summary of Bluehost’s Blogging Tools:
- Free blogging tools and templates
- Easy WordPress integration
- Access to CSS and HTML
- Free plugins for extended blog functionality
Winner: Bluehost
Thanks to its WordPress integration, Bluehost has more powerful blogging features. However, for new users who want a simple blog, Wix is a perfect option that requires virtually no learning curve to build a beautiful blog.
5. Search Engine Optimization Tools
Another important factor to consider before choosing your website builder is the built-in search engine optimization features.
There are multiple elements regarding SEO in web design. Here’s a quick look at what each offers so you know which one will make it easier for you to gain visibility for your new website.
Wix:
Wix has a fantastic SEO setup wizard, Wix SEO Wiz, which creates a unique SEO plan for your new website and provides you with recommendations for how you can rank higher in search engines.
You have full control and flexibility for customizing your website SEO. You can alter settings for meta-tags, canonical tags, URL slugs, structured data, and various other elements.
Wix also has built-in marketing tools to help you promote your business online. You can also connect with social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook to further expand your reach and boost your SEO.
If you’re not sure how to go about any of this, you can let Wix AI take care of everything for you. Between the AI and the SEO Wizard, there’s no way you’ll fail to optimize your new website for search.
Additionally, Wix provides you with A/B testing tools and customer targeting features to further enhance your SEO efforts.
Summary of Wix’s Search Engine Optimization Tools:
- Wix SEO Wizard for easy search engine optimization
- Image optimization for improved website performance
- Structured data to help Google contextualize your content
- Canonical URL to solve identical page issues
- Auto-create and submit a site map
Bluehost:
WordPress websites typically generate well-coded HTML and CSS for a high-performing website that works well for marketing and SEO. This is one of the biggest edges Bluehost has over other website builders.
Bluehost also has a monitored uptime of 99.99%. The company has servers all across the US and offers free SSL security, 24/7 server monitoring, and cloud flare DDoS protection.
When you sign up, you get a personal SEO report, site audit, and keyword target tools. You also get on-page optimization, competitor reports, and real-time notifications of your website SEO so you can modify your strategy the minute something needs your attention. This will help you stay ahead of the game and keep up to date with the constant changes in the SEO world.
All of these features together ensure that your website is always online and available to your audience which is great for SEO.
Summary of Bluehost’s Search Engine Optimization Tools:
- Industry-leading hardware and uptime rates
- Servers all across the US for faster performance
- Reliable hosting service
- Free SSL certificate with each site
- 24/7 website server monitoring
Winner: Bluehost
Bluehost wins this one because it’s more SEO-friendly, particularly if you’re running a large content or eCommerce website.
Although Wix has an in-house SEO tool and plenty of other in-house marketing apps to help boost your website visibility, it’s still limited in its SEO functionality. Also, Wix generates pages via JavaScript which means they aren’t as SEO-friendly as Bluehost’s HTML and CSS pages.
Of course, this may not matter much if you are running a small website with just a few dozen pages.
6. Community and Support
Most website builders strive to create the simplest possible process for building a website. However, even with intuitive tools and pre-built templates, you may still require support during the site creation process.
Here’s what Wix and Bluehost offer with regard to community and support.
Wix:
Wix offers support through email, live chat, or phone. You can get in touch with the support team Monday to Friday between 5 AM and 5 PM PT. Those on the VIP plan get priority phone support at any time of day or night.
You can also get in touch with the support team on social media. Here you can leave comments and feedback, ask for assistance, and receive answers to your questions at any time.
Support is available in nine languages, including English, Spanish, and Portuguese. There’s also a well-curated knowledge base on the website filled with how-to guides and tutorials to help you learn every aspect of the platform.
Bluehost:
The Bluehost site builder is well known for its customer support and service. The platform offers solid beginner support through various channels, including 24/7 live chat, a knowledge base, and phone support.
The customer support team is responsive and always on hand to assist you in building and managing your website. However, since Bluehost is not a dedicated site builder like Wix, it doesn’t offer the same level of on-the-job guidance for designing your website.
Winner: Tie
It’s hard to say which platform has better support, Wix or Bluehost since they offer different types of support.
Depending on what you’re looking for, you may prefer Bluehost’s 24/7 live chat which Wix does not offer, or maybe you’d rather have Wix’s email and phone support which are offered in nine languages. I recommend beginners go with Wix because of its responsive support team, as well as the built-in tips in the Wix editor.
7. Pricing
Pricing is yet another important consideration. You want a website builder that provides you with all the features you need at an affordable price. Here’s how Wix and Bluehost compare in the pricing department.
Wix:
Wix offers a range of plans to suit different needs. Here’s what each premium plan entails:
- Wix Free Plan: Wix has a free forever plan that lets you build a simple website. The plan includes free web hosting and a sub-domain (e.g. YourSite.wixsite.com). This is an ad-supported plan, which means Wix ads will be shown on every page and favicon in the URL. You get up to 500 MB of storage and bend with. Unfortunately, this plan doesn’t include customer support, Google Analytics, or online payments. You’ll have to upgrade to one of the premium plans to unlock these and other features.
- Combo Plan: $15/Month: This plan is ideal for personal use. It comes with a custom domain, a free SSL certificate, and 2GB of storage space and you can host up to 30 minutes of video. You can sign up for a free trial on any of the premium plans to get access to the core features before deciding whether or not this SiteBuilder is right for you.
- Unlimited Plan: $22/Month: The Unlimited plan comes with everything in the Combo plan + 5GB of storage space, one hour of video, and a visitor analytics app. This plan is ideal for entrepreneurs and freelancers and comes with a Google Ads budget to help promote your business.
- Pro Plan: $27/Month: The Pro plan is ideal for complete online branding. It comes with all the features in the Unlimited plan, as well as 50GB of storage space, two hours of video, an events calendar app, and over 40 different sizes of your logo ready to use on various social media channels.
- VIP Plan: $45/Month: This plan has everything in the Pro plan, as well as 100GB storage space, 5 video hours, and priority customer care. If you value first-priority support, then this plan is ideal for you.
Bluehost:
Bluehost has a range of pricing plans for websites or eCommerce stores. The plans are as follows:
- Basic Plan: $2.95/Month: Discounted from $10.99/month, this plan is ideal for building one blog or website. It comes with hosting, 10GB SSD storage, a drag-and-drop website builder, and custom WordPress themes.
- Choice Plus Plan: $5.45/Month: This plan comes with features for added security and privacy. It includes free web hosting for 3 websites and comes with a free CDN and 40GB SSD storage. When you sign-up for the 12-month subscription, you get a free domain for the first year. You also get a free SSL certificate, daily website backup for the first year, domain privacy, and malware scanning.
- Online Store Plan: $9.95/Month: This is a great plan for anyone who wants to start selling products and services online. It comes with all the features in the choice plus plan, as well as built-in eCommerce tools. It’s discounted from $24.95/month, and you can save an additional 35% if you opt for the 36-month plan. Sell unlimited products, get secure online payments, bookings and appointment tools, shipping labels, and customer account creation.
- Pro Plan: $13.95/Month: This plan offers more power with optimized web resources. It’s normally $28.99 and allows you to build up to 5 websites. It comes with 100GB SSD storage and all the features in the Online Store plan.
Winner: Bluehost
The Bluehost site builder has lower pricing than Wix across all the plans which makes it an affordable option for beginners and small businesses on a budget. On Wix, you will pay a premium for the added convenience, but it’s certainly worth it if you’re building a website for the first time.
Final Thoughts
It’s time to wrap up the Wix vs. Bluehost comparison and give a verdict.
Wix and Bluehost are leaders in the website-building industry for good reason. They are committed to making it easier to build and maintain a website, and both companies continue to improve the products and services they offer.
However, in a head-to-head comparison, one has the edge over the other depending on which features you prioritize.
Choose Wix if: You value convenience and want to create a general-purpose website with traditional drag-and-drop design, customer support, built-in marketing, and SEO tools, as well as automatic backups, security, and maintenance. Wix handles everything on the technical side so you can focus on creating awesome content for your site.
Choose Bluehost if: You want an affordable way to build a powerful and flexible WordPress website that isn’t tied to any single platform. Bluehost provides you with advanced design and customization tools to build any type of website, blog, or eCommerce store with custom functionality.
If you still aren’t sure which platform is right for you, you may want to consider reading about other Wix Alternatives.