Wix is the world’s most widely used website builder, and in 2026 it has widened its lead with a serious AI toolkit and plans starting at just £9 per month. Whether you’re a sole trader who needs a professional site in an afternoon or a growing small business eyeing eCommerce, Wix has a plan built around your budget. But with a 3.6/5 Trustpilot rating and limitations on lower-tier storage, it isn’t perfect for everyone.
We tested Wix thoroughly against its main UK rivals – Squarespace, Shopify, and WordPress.com – to give you an honest picture of where it excels and where it falls short. Every price in this review is taken directly from Wix’s UK pricing page, verified in March 2026, and inclusive of VAT.
- Wix plans start from £9/month (Light) in the UK - but the Core plan at £16/month is the sweet spot, unlocking eCommerce and removing the storage bottleneck
- 900+ templates and a freeform drag-and-drop editor - the most design flexibility of any website builder, but can feel overwhelming for first-time users
- AI website generation creates a draft site in under 2 minutes - 20+ AI tools included across all plans, from text generation to image editing and SEO suggestions
- Only upgrade to Business (£22/month) when you need multi-currency - or more than 5 collaborators; most small businesses never outgrow the Core plan
- Wix App Market offers 300+ integrations - including Xero, Mailchimp, and Google Analytics, but some premium apps add £5–£15/month to your total cost
- The sweet spot for most - UK small businesses is the Core plan at £16/mo
- it unlocks eCommerce - removes the storage bottleneck, and costs just £7 more than the entry-level Light plan
- Only step up to Business - when you need multi-currency or more than 5 collaborators
Wix Features
Wix’s core feature set includes 900+ templates, a freeform drag-and-drop editor, 300+ app integrations, built-in SEO tools, and a dedicated mobile editor for all plans.
Drag-and-Drop Editor
Wix uses a freeform drag-and-drop editor – elements can be placed anywhere on the canvas, not just inside grid columns. This gives designers and creative business owners maximum flexibility, and it is the main reason Wix dominates on design freedom compared to rivals like Squarespace, which constrains layouts to a rigid grid.
The trade-off is consistency: it is easy to create a site that looks slightly off on different screen sizes if you haven’t carefully checked the mobile view. Wix’s mobile editor lets you adjust the mobile layout independently from the desktop version, but this dual maintenance can trip up inexperienced users. For most businesses, the control Wix provides far outweighs this consideration.
Templates
Wix offers over 900 templates, organised by industry: restaurants, salons, retail, professional services, portfolios, and more. Each template is fully customisable – fonts, colours, layouts, and sections can all be changed. The quality is notably higher than older Wix templates from five years ago; most current designs would be competitive with bespoke sites costing £2,000+ from a freelance designer.
One important limitation: once you choose a template and build on it, switching to a different template means starting your content from scratch. Unlike some rivals, Wix does not allow template swaps while preserving your existing content. Choose carefully at the outset.
App Market
The Wix App Market provides over 300 integrations covering booking systems, live chat, email marketing, social feeds, CRM, events, and more. Most popular apps have native Wix versions or tight integrations – Mailchimp, Tidio, Omnisend, and Bookings (Wix’s own) are all well-supported. Many apps have free tiers, though premium functionality typically requires a separate subscription on top of your Wix plan.
Built-in SEO Tools
Wix’s SEO panel covers the fundamentals: custom meta titles and descriptions per page, canonical URLs, structured data (schema) for many content types, 301 redirects, XML sitemap auto-generation, and Google Search Console integration. Wix has invested heavily in SEO improvements since its earlier reputation for poor SEO performance – the platform now generates clean HTML and renders pages in a way Google can crawl efficiently.
The SEO Setup Checklist (available from the dashboard) walks users through step-by-step optimisation, and Wix’s AI SEO meta generator can draft title tags and descriptions automatically. It is not a substitute for a dedicated SEO strategy, but it is significantly better than it was three years ago.
Mobile Editor
Every Wix site generates a mobile version automatically, with a dedicated mobile editor for fine-tuning. You can show or hide elements on mobile independently of the desktop layout, reorder blocks, and adjust font sizes. This is more granular control than many rivals, though it does require a second pass after building the desktop version to ensure the mobile experience holds up.
Wix’s 900+ templates and freeform drag-and-drop editor give UK businesses more design control than any comparable website builder at this price point. The App Market with 300+ integrations means you rarely need to build custom functionality from scratch.
Wix AI Tools
Wix includes 20+ AI tools in 2026 – from a full site generator that builds a complete website from a text prompt, to AI-written meta descriptions, blog posts, and image creation.
Wix has pushed further into AI than any of its direct competitors in 2026. The breadth of tools is genuinely impressive – and the majority are available across all plans, including the free tier for content features.
The AI Website Builder is Wix’s flagship AI feature: answer a few questions about your business and Wix generates a complete, multi-page site – with placeholder content, images, and a colour scheme. The output is a starting point, not a finished site, but it dramatically shortens the time to a first draft. In testing, a serviceable five-page site for a local plumber took under four minutes from prompt to preview.
Beyond site generation, the AI toolkit includes:
- AI text creator – drafts section copy, headings, and calls to action based on brief descriptions
- AI image creator and editor – generates images from prompts and applies background removal
- Auto background removal – one-click product photo cleanup for eCommerce listings
- AI SEO meta generator – drafts title tags and meta descriptions for each page
- AI colour scheme and theme design – generates cohesive brand palettes from a single reference colour
- AI blog post writer – outlines and drafts full blog articles from a topic prompt
For UK small businesses, the most practical tools are the AI text creator (useful when you’re stuck on copy) and the AI SEO meta generator (which can process all pages in a site at once). The AI image creator is a useful fallback if you don’t have professional photography, though the output quality still falls noticeably short of a real photographer for product-heavy businesses.
No other UK website builder at this price point offers 20+ integrated AI tools. Wix’s AI suite covers the full workflow – from generating a site, to writing copy, to creating images and SEO metadata – and most features are available from the free plan.
Wix eCommerce
Wix eCommerce starts on the Core plan (£16/mo) with a 0% platform fee. Wix Payments charges 2.1% + 20p per transaction for UK businesses, with full multi-currency on Business (£25/mo) and above.
Wix takes a 0% platform commission on sales – you only pay the payment processor fee. If you use Wix Payments (the built-in gateway for UK businesses), the rate is 2.1% + 20p per transaction. If you connect a third-party gateway such as Stripe, PayPal, or Square, their standard fees apply instead.
Core Plan – Basic eCommerce (£16/mo)
The Core plan enables a functional online store: product listings with variants, inventory management, discount codes, abandoned cart recovery emails, and digital product downloads. Currency is fixed to a single currency (GBP for UK businesses), and tax automation is not included at this tier. Suitable for businesses selling fewer than 100 products in a single market.
Business Plan – Full eCommerce (£25/mo)
The Business plan adds multi-currency checkout (sell in USD, EUR, GBP, and more simultaneously), automated tax calculation for up to 100 transactions per month, subscriptions, and up to 10 team members. This is the minimum requirement for businesses selling internationally or to customers across different VAT jurisdictions. It also unlocks Wix’s loyalty programme tools and more advanced analytics.
Business Elite – Advanced eCommerce (£119/mo)
Business Elite is built for volume: unlimited storage, automated tax for up to 500 transactions per month, dropshipping integration at scale (via Modalyst/Printify), VIP priority support, and up to 15 collaborators. At £119/mo it is a significant jump in cost and most businesses won’t reach the ceiling of the Business plan before considering a dedicated eCommerce platform like Shopify.
For pure-play eCommerce at scale, Shopify remains stronger – its inventory, fulfilment, and POS integrations are more mature. But for businesses where the website is the primary identity and the shop is a secondary function (a local retailer adding an online store, a consultant selling a course), Wix’s eCommerce is fully capable without the added complexity of a Shopify setup.
Wix eCommerce is a strong choice for UK small businesses with a basic to mid-range online store. The 0% platform fee and 2.1% + 20p Wix Payments rate are competitive. Move to Shopify only if you’re processing 500+ transactions per month and need advanced inventory management.
Wix Ease of Use
Wix’s editor has a moderate learning curve – more flexible than Squarespace but less beginner-friendly than GoDaddy. Most users build a functional site within a day; mastering advanced features takes longer.
Wix consistently ranks as one of the easier website builders to use, but “easy” is relative. The freeform editor gives you power that some beginners find slightly overwhelming compared to constrained drag-and-drop editors. The difference is roughly this: Squarespace is like building with Lego (everything snaps together neatly), while Wix is like working with modelling clay (total freedom, more responsibility for the result).
In practice, most business owners with basic computer literacy can build a functional, good-looking Wix site in four to eight hours. The AI Website Builder shortens this significantly – if you start from an AI-generated draft and refine it, you can have a presentable site live within an hour. For complete beginners with no design instincts, the constrained grid approach of Squarespace may produce a more consistent result with less effort.
Wix Studio – for Agencies and Freelancers
Wix Studio is a separate product (distinct from the standard Wix editor) aimed at professional web designers, agencies, and freelancers building sites for clients. It offers CSS Grid-based layouts, responsive design controls, advanced animations, and a collaborative client workspace. Wix Studio has its own pricing structure and is not part of the standard plan tiers reviewed here – if you’re a professional building sites for multiple clients, evaluate Wix Studio independently.
For this review, we are assessing the standard Wix editor used by the overwhelming majority of UK small business users.
Wix is genuinely beginner-friendly, but not the simplest option on the market. If you can use Google Docs with confidence, you can build a Wix site. The AI Website Builder now makes the initial build accessible to almost anyone – the main effort goes into customising and refining the AI output.
Wix Pros and Cons
Wix’s main strengths are design flexibility, 20+ AI tools, and a genuine free plan. Its main weakness is the tight 2GB storage on the cheapest paid plan and a 3.6/5 Trustpilot rating.
Who Is Wix Best For?
Wix is best for UK small businesses, sole traders, and creative professionals who want design flexibility and AI-assisted content – and who don’t need a high-volume eCommerce operation.
Wix is a strong fit if you are:
- A sole trader or small business owner who needs a professional online presence without hiring a web designer – the AI Website Builder and 900+ templates make this achievable in a day
- A service business (consultant, therapist, trainer, contractor) where the website’s primary job is to present your services and generate enquiries – Wix’s booking and contact tools handle this well
- A creative professional (photographer, designer, musician, artist) who values design freedom over simplicity – Wix’s freeform editor lets you create distinctive layouts that constrained editors can’t match
- A small retailer adding an online store to an existing physical business – Core at £16/mo gives you a functional shop without the complexity of Shopify
- A content creator or blogger who wants integrated AI writing tools and a free plan to start on
Consider alternatives if you are:
- Running a high-volume eCommerce store (500+ monthly transactions) – Shopify’s inventory, fulfilment, and POS ecosystem is more mature at that scale
- A pure beginner with no design confidence who wants everything to look good automatically – Squarespace’s constrained layouts produce more consistent results with less effort
- A developer or agency building bespoke client sites – Wix Studio (separate product) or WordPress with a proper theme framework will serve you better
- A business that needs complex custom functionality beyond what the App Market offers – self-hosted WordPress remains the most extensible option
Squarespace is the most credible alternative at a similar price point. It starts at £11/mo (annual billing) and produces polished designs with less effort. The trade-off is less flexibility and no AI site builder. If you’ve tried Wix’s AI builder and find the editing work overwhelming, Squarespace is the natural next step to try.
Wix is the default recommendation for most UK small businesses in 2026 – not because it’s perfect, but because its combination of flexibility, AI tools, and free plan covers more use cases than any single competitor. The main reasons to look elsewhere are high-volume eCommerce (Shopify) or wanting simpler design constraints (Squarespace).
Our Verdict
Wix earns 8.0/10 – the strongest all-round website builder for UK small businesses in 2026, with 900+ templates, 20+ AI tools, and plans from £9/mo with a genuine free plan.
Wix has earned its position as the world’s most-used website builder. In 2026, the AI toolkit gives it a meaningful lead over Squarespace and WordPress.com for users who want to move fast and need help with content. The 900+ templates are genuinely high-quality. The 0% platform fee on eCommerce is competitive. And the free plan – a rarity among serious website builders – removes the barrier to trying before you buy.
The weaknesses are real but manageable. The 2GB storage limit on the £9/mo Light plan is tight – budget for Core at £16/mo if your site will contain more than a handful of images. The Trustpilot rating of 3.6/5 reflects genuine frustrations with customer support and billing; read the recent reviews to set expectations before committing to an annual plan. And the inability to switch templates without rebuilding is a genuine constraint that other builders don’t impose.
On balance, Wix is the safest default recommendation for most UK small businesses in 2026. Start on the Core plan (£16/mo) unless your needs are clearly more advanced or more modest.
Wix plans start from £9/month in 2026. Full UK review covering pricing, AI tools, ecommerce, templates, and who Wix is best for.
Related Guides
Wix is one of six builders we compared in our best website builders UK guide – see how it stacks up against Squarespace, Shopify, and others.
For broader pricing context including agencies and freelancers, see website design costs.
Selling products? Compare Wix eCommerce with our Shopify pricing breakdown.
