Leaving Wix is easier than staying.
A Wix plan bills every month, forever, and at the end of it you still do not own the site. Your first preview usually comes within a few days, and the finished site takes 5 to 21 business days, depending on the build. Your content moves. Your domain moves. Your SEO baseline transfers. You’d own the new site outright once the build is paid - no Wix monthly trap. Pay the build upfront instead of monthly and the source files are yours at launch.
Four reasons to leave Wix.
The site is slow. Page-builder platforms ship framework code your visitor has to download before your content appears, and Google measures that. When I measured my own site on 2026-08-27 it scored 100 on SEO, accessibility and best practices on mobile and desktop, with performance at 92 mobile and 99 desktop. The tool is free, run it on both. The longer write-up is why a Wix site scores lower on Lighthouse.
“I can’t rank for local searches.” Wix gives you a single SEO panel and limited control over what Google reads. I set up every page so Google reads your business details correctly, clean up your page addresses, and build city + industry landing pages that Wix doesn’t let you build cleanly.
The monthly keeps climbing. A plan, then a business email, then a booking app, then a forms app, then a premium template. Each one is its own charge. Sound familiar? See the year-over-year math.
Platform updates change the site under you. Page-builder platforms push template updates that can break custom layouts without warning. Custom sites don’t change unless I change them.
Five-year math, side by side.
Straight math, using the Core and Business prices on Wix’s own pricing page, billed yearly, checked October 22, 2026. I cost more. The difference pays for a site you own and a person who makes your changes.
| Cost | Wix Core or Business | SWS Standard |
|---|---|---|
| Build / setup | $0 if you build it yourself | $1,200 once |
| Monthly platform | $29-$39 (Core and Business, billed yearly) | $95 (Hosting plan) |
| Common add-ons | varies by app | Contact form included. Business email and booking tools are set up separately. |
| Lighthouse, SEO / accessibility / best practices | varies | 100 / 100 / 100 (measured 2026-08-27) |
| 5-year total | $1,740-$2,340 plus add-ons | $6,900 |
| Site portability | Locked to Wix | Standard HTML/CSS, yours once the build is paid |
What gets kept, what gets rebuilt.
No black box. Here’s exactly what happens to your existing Wix site during the switch.
Kept (moved to the new site)
- ✓ Domain name - you keep ownership, I just point DNS
- ✓ All page content (text, photos, service descriptions, business info)
- ✓ Blog posts - URLs preserved or 301-redirected so SEO isn’t lost
- ✓ Google reviews (they’re on Google Business Profile, not Wix - nothing changes)
Rebuilt (because it’ll be better)
- ↻ Page layouts - custom-coded HTML instead of Wix widgets (5MB → 50KB)
- ↻ Every page set up so Google reads your business details and services
- ↻ Contact form - routed through a relay I run (no Wix add-on fee)
- ↻ Photos - optimized + served as WebP. The same screenshot on my own site is 93 KB as PNG and 53 KB as WebP, 43% smaller
Left behind (intentionally)
- × Wix subscription - you cancel it after the 30-day overlap
- × Wix add-on apps - replaced where needed (the list below says how)
- × Wix-branded URLs (yoursite.wixsite.com) - 301-redirected to clean URLs
How long it takes: once your deposit and intake form are in, your first preview usually comes within a few days. The finished site takes 5-7 business days for Starter, 10-14 for Standard, and 14-21 for Premium. The clock pauses while anything waits on you, like your Wix exports or your feedback, or on outside services I don’t control, like your domain.
Features that don’t directly migrate.
Wix has several proprietary apps that don’t have a 1:1 equivalent. Here’s the honest list of what won’t carry over and what I’d do instead.
Wix Forms (custom form builder)
Replacement: My contact form, through a Cloudflare Worker. Same fields, sends to your email, you own the data. Included in every build.
Wix Bookings (appointments)
Replacement: Cal.com or SimplyBook embed (both have free tiers), or I can build a basic booking flow into your site. Cost depends on complexity - flag this when you quote and I’ll scope it.
Wix Stores (e-commerce)
Replacement: My store options (Catalog $1,000, Buy Now $3,500, Full Store $5,500 plus $250 a month). Native Stripe checkout, no transaction fees beyond Stripe’s standard 2.9%+30¢.
Wix Members / Login portal
Replacement: Rarely needed for local-service businesses. If you genuinely need member areas (gated content, customer dashboards), this becomes a custom build - text me first.
Wix Chat widget
Replacement: Crisp or Tawk.to (both free tiers) embed cleanly into custom sites. I can wire it in during the build.
Wix Email Marketing / Ascend
Replacement: Mailchimp, ConvertKit, or Resend depending on volume. Existing subscriber list exports cleanly. Honest note: if Wix Ascend was core to your workflow, this requires migration work that’s outside the build itself.
Bottom line: if your Wix site is mostly pages + a contact form, migration is straightforward. If you’ve built half your business inside Wix apps, I’ll talk through which ones replace cleanly and which would mean compromising on functionality.
The full migration walkthrough.
If you want the step-by-step on how to actually do the Wix-to-custom-coded move without losing rankings, I wrote a 10-minute read covering how your old page addresses point to the new ones, keeping what Google already knows about you, the 30-day overlap, and an honest list of when you should NOT switch.
Cheaper way in
Don’t want a redesign? You don’t need one.
A Site Transfer rebuilds what you already have on my stack for $400 one-time plus a monthly plan. Same words, same layout, same photos. What changes is the part Google reads.
Want the version I would have built instead? Add it for $350, during the transfer or a year later.
Get a real number. Five quick questions.
SEO Onboarding ($400) is waived with every build, switchers included. You already have established content; I just need to rebuild the structure around it.
Coming from somewhere other than Wix? There are guides for moving a Shopify store and leaving an agency contract.
8 measurable promises by day 30.
Lighthouse 90+ or I fix it free, every page set up so Google reads your business details correctly, submitted to Google on launch day, mobile-tappable phone everywhere, contact form delivers through a relay I run and health-check end to end every week, 301 redirects from every old URL, 30-day overlap window, weekly ranking monitoring from launch. Miss a technical promise, I fix it in 7 days or refund 25% of that month’s hosting.
Hosting is month to month. Cancel any month. Your domain stays in your name. Once your build is paid off, your code is yours, with one-click site export in your client portal.