Wix has made real technical progress since 2024. When it comes to SEO<\/a>, it’s no longer the disaster it was in 2020. But Wix’s progress doesn’t solve the fundamental problem: you’re not in control. You don’t own your website. You can’t really grow smoothly. And when you want to leave, you’ll have to start from scratch. Find out in this comprehensive guide why migrating from Wix to WordPress remains the best decision for an SME looking to move forward. <\/p>\n\n Here’s what Wix charges you, literally and figuratively, and why migrating your Wix site to WordPress in 2026 isn’t a technophile fad. It’s a strategic decision that every SME that wants to grow should seriously consider. <\/p>\n\n On Wix, you have a subscription. It’s not your website, it’s temporary access to a tool you don’t control. Your site lives on Wix’s servers, your data stays with Wix, and you can’t move anything else without starting almost from scratch. Migrating your content from Wix to another host is a problem. It’s exactly like renting commercial premises: as long as you pay, it’s your shop window. The day you stop, you lose everything. <\/p>\n\n In practical terms, this means four things you have to accept.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n 1. If Wix raises its rates, you pay more.<\/strong> It’s happened many times before.<\/p>\n\n 2. If Wix removes a feature you’re using, you lose it.<\/strong> You have nothing to say.<\/p>\n\n 3. If you really want to leave Wix for another provider,<\/strong> you can’t simply export your site. You’ll have to rebuild your Wix site to WordPress almost from scratch. <\/p>\n\n 4. If you plan to resell your business, your Wix site is worthless.<\/strong> It’s a zero asset because nobody can use it anywhere else.<\/p>\n\n With WordPress, it’s the other way around. Your WordPress site really belongs to you. The files are on your own host, which you choose freely. Your database is exportable. You can change service providers, agencies and countries without losing your website. And when you sell it, it’s a real asset that weighs in the valuation. <\/p>\n\n SMEs always forget the total cost over three to five years. You compare monthly payments without projecting the real need. A Wix business plan, the one you need as soon as you set up your personal domain name and open an online store, runs between 17 and 39 euros per month. That sounds reasonable on a monthly basis. <\/p>\n\n Over three years, you’ve invested between 900 and 1,400 euros just for the tool, not counting customization or professional support. But that’s not the real problem. It’s that every time you want to add something (a real store, a booking engine, a complex form, a customer area), Wix suggests you buy an additional plugin, or worse, go up a subscription level. <\/p>\n\n With WordPress, you pay a hosting company between 10 and 25 euros per month, or between 360 and 900 euros over three years. You can add 99% of the functionality you need with free extensions. Premium plugins cost around 50 euros a year, a WordPress theme a few dozen euros. And that’s all there is to it. There’s no subscription tier that goes up without warning. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n The infrastructure gap isn’t huge. But look at five years. Over five years, you’ve paid 2,100 to 2,300 euros for Wix. Over five years, you’ve paid 600 to 1,500 euros for WordPress, even with maintenance and paid plugins. That’s almost three times less. And you own your website at the end. Not to mention that you have a lot more freedom to customize your WordPress site and add content. <\/p>\n\n It’s the problem nobody sees until it becomes crucial to your need for growth. Wix shows you a few figures: visitors, page views, traffic source in a nutshell. Sounds like enough when you’ve never seen better on your site. <\/p>\n\n But these figures are incomplete and misleading. You don’t really know where your traffic is coming from. You don’t know who converts and who doesn’t. You don’t know which pages retain your visitors. You don’t see the exact path a prospect takes before becoming a customer. You’re flying by the seat of your pants, guessing from a few fuzzy numbers. This is the major problem with the Wix site: you lack the data to know what content really works. <\/p>\n\n On WordPress, you connect Google Analytics correctly. You install professional tracking pixels, you integrate your CRM, you track every step of the customer journey. You know exactly what’s working and what’s not on your website. And you can iterate knowingly, by strategically modifying your content. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n It’s the difference between flying a plane with instruments or relying on the sun.<\/p>\n\n Wix is built for one purpose: to enable someone with no technical skills to make a website quickly and cheaply. That’s fair enough. It’s also its limitations. You can make a pretty showcase site. You can make a small store. But as soon as your needs become a little specific, Wix says no. <\/p>\n\n Want a customized booking engine that really works? No, use Wix’s Booking.com<\/a> app, which is never one hundred percent suitable. Want to integrate your ERP or accounting software? No, that’s too specific. Do you want a members’ area with different content for different subscription levels? No, that’s not in the cards. Do you really want to be multilingual? It’s complicated and slow on your Wix site. <\/p>\n\n With WordPress, you can integrate just about anything. A customized booking engine, a CRM, an ERP, a subscription system, an API to your business software, a WooCommerce store with specific VAT rules, fluid multilingualism with <\/strong>WPML<\/strong><\/a> or Polylang. The WordPress ecosystem boasts over 60,000 extensions, most of them free. Your need for customization is never a problem. It’s the difference between a locked-in tool and one that grows with you. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n For an SME that’s evolving, testing new channels and adding services, this functional freedom is not a luxury. It’s the prerequisite for your website to become a real business tool, rather than a static shop window. <\/p>\n\n Let’s start by recognizing real technical progress. Wix in 2026 doesn’t index as badly as Wix in 2020. The platform has invested in search engine optimization. Recent Wix sites benefit from a better technical infrastructure, better sitemaps, better metadata management. For a very simple site, a small local store or a showcase page that isn’t intended to exceed a few dozen pages, Wix today delivers decent SEO without any additional plugins. <\/p>\n\n We have to recognize this, because otherwise, we’re not credible. Many articles in 2026 describe Wix as if we were in 2020. This is no longer true. This maintains the mistrust of the customers who consult us. But these technical advances on your Wix site don’t solve the real problems. <\/p>\n\n Now, here’s what hasn’t changed: you still don’t own your website, you don’t control your data, you’re dependent on Wix pricing, you don’t see your real numbers, and you can’t grow without hitting the platform’s limits. Wix has made progress on the details. But the fundamental problem remains intact. <\/p>\n\n It’s important to say this clearly, because many articles hide it. Migrating from Wix to WordPress isn’t a simple matter of importing content from Wix. It’s not pressing a button and waiting for everything to reinstall on WordPress. <\/p>\n\n Wix doesn’t allow you to export your entire website. You can export an RSS feed from your blog and a CSV file of your contacts if you have the right formula. Everything else – pages, design, forms, galleries, integrations – must be recreated on WordPress. This is a deliberate limitation of Wix, not a technical oversight. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n In concrete terms, a Wix to WordPress migration requires a partial or complete redesign of your website<\/a>. It’s fairer to call it that than to sell it as a “transfer”. And it’s also an opportunity: rather than endure this constraint, you might as well take advantage of it to rethink your tree structure, your visual identity and your user paths. That’s exactly what we did with Bel’Soleil. This transition allows you to improve your site at the same time. <\/p>\n\n Bel’Soleil<\/a> is a vacation rental site in Martinique that we’ve been working with at Altosor for several years. Before the redesign, Bel’Soleil was running on Wix. Everything seemed to be going well with their website. But on closer inspection, there was a major problem: the site wasn’t being measured, and traffic wasn’t being analyzed. <\/p>\n\n No serious Google Analytics integration. No tracking of the booking tunnel. No data on who was visiting the site, where they were coming from, what was converting. Bel’Soleil was flying by the seat of its pants, guessing. And it sounds strange to say it like that, but that’s exactly the situation of many small and medium-sized businesses on Wix. Their website worked technically, but didn’t give them the information they needed. <\/p>\n\n Visit <\/strong>Bel’Soleil redesign project<\/strong><\/a>which required a migration from Wix to WordPress, wasn’t just a technical migration. It was a complete overhaul: new identity, new logo, new graphic charter, and above all, full integration of Analytics, Search Console, a customized booking engine, a real high-performance photo gallery, and a structured customer review management system for Google. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n Before the redesign, Bel’Soleil didn’t depend on a poorly performing site. It depended on Booking and Airbnb for the bulk of its bookings, with no direct channel, no organic traffic to speak of, and no data on its visitors. Two years after migrating to WordPress and implementing properly configured Analytics, organic traffic reached 5,346 annual sessions with an engagement rate of 69%. A channel that didn’t exist now does. That’s the real result. <\/p>\n\n If you recognize yourself in Bel’Soleil’s situation before, with a Wix website that seems to work but that you’re really not piloting, then you have a need that a migration to WordPress can really solve. This type of transition is also known as “going from Wix to WordPress”. See “Before-After redesign” case studies.<\/a><\/p>\n\n <\/p>\n\n Migrating from Wix to WordPress requires a step-by-step approach. Here are the eight steps we apply at Altosor to ensure a smooth migration. <\/p>\n\n Before we touch anything, we draw up a complete map of your website, including an SEO audit<\/a> and an analysis of your site’s traffic. Which pages are generating traffic? What are your real visitor sources? Which forms or conversion flows are important? What external tools or services are connected to your site (newsletter, CRM, booking calendar)? We extract the content that can be extracted, list all your URLs with a crawl tool, and note any integrations that need to be recreated. <\/p>\n\n This preparation, which takes a few days, conditions the rest of the migration. It sounds tedious, but it’s the way to make sure you don’t forget anything and avoid surprises halfway through the project. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n Hosting<\/a> is the foundation of your WordPress website<\/a>. It determines the site’s speed, security and your ability to grow smoothly. For a French SME, OVH, Infomaniak or O2Switch<\/a> offer good value for money for your new site. If you have a large site or a high-traffic online store, Kinsta or WP Engine are more robust but more expensive. <\/p>\n\n Avoid offers at 2 euros a month. You pay in loss of site speed and security what you save in subscription. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n One-click installation on almost all hosting providers. The choice of the basic WordPress theme is strategic. For an SME looking for a high-performance website, we recommend a lightweight, well-coded theme (Astra, GeneratePress, Blocksy, Kadence), coupled with a page-builder like Elementor or Bricks. Avoid ThemeForest’s slow, overloaded themes, even if they look good when you buy them. <\/p>\n\n A good WordPress theme is the difference between a site that climbs at 3 seconds and one that climbs at 1.5 seconds.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n This is where WordPress reveals its true value compared to Wix. Before transferring anything, install and configure the plugins specific to your business: booking engine, WooCommerce<\/a> online store module with your VAT rules, CRM integration, member area. Test everything in real-life conditions while the site is still empty. Every feature added after the fact creates extra work and the risk of conflicts. <\/p>\n\n It’s also a good time to get to grips with your WordPress dashboard. Two or three hours’ training is all it takes to publish an article, manage your media and set your team’s access parameters. It’s better to learn now than in a hurry after you’ve gone live. <\/p>\n\n Don’t skip this step.<\/strong> Wix locked you into its choices. WordPress gives you the freedom to build exactly what you need. You might as well take advantage of it right from the start. <\/p>\n\n If you have a blog on Wix, you can export an RSS feed file. WordPress has a native importer for this (Tools > Import > RSS). You load the RSS feed file, and boom, all your articles arrive in WordPress with their titles, dates and categories. <\/p>\n\n Please note one important thing:<\/strong> images arrive as external links. They always point to the Wix servers. The day you cancel your Wix subscription, these images will suddenly break on your new WordPress site<\/a>. You need to use a plugin like Auto Upload Images to upload all the images to your WordPress media library. This is a critical requirement. <\/p>\n\n It’s a step that’s easy to forget, and catastrophic if you skip it. So Wix’s RSS feed isn’t enough. <\/p>\n\n If your domain name is with Wix, we transfer it to an independent registrar(O2Switch,<\/a> Gandi, OVH, Infomaniak). Otherwise, we update your DNS to point to your new WordPress host. The domain name remains the same. This is crucial for maintaining your referencing history and site security. <\/p>\n\n Next, the redirects. Each old Wix URL must redirect to the equivalent new WordPress URL. This is done at server level or via a plugin. This is the most critical step in the migration process, to prevent traffic from plummeting. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n If you skip redirects, Google will see hundreds of 404 errors, your authority will plummet, and you’ll lose your positions in a matter of weeks. It’s no exaggeration to say that this domain transfer and redirect plan are crucial to the success of the entire migration. <\/p>\n\n Once WordPress is up and running, recreate the meta tags, set up the structured schemas (automatic with a plugin), create the sitemap and submit it to Google Search Console. We activate a cache plugin to ensure your website loads fast, compress images, and test speed with PageSpeed Insights and GTmetrix. We also make sure your site is secure by installing a security plugin. This step takes a few days, but it determines whether your WordPress site<\/a> is really going to be fast, or whether it’s just going to look fast.<\/p>\n\n Once online, we monitor step by step. 404s in Search Console and add any missing redirects. Forms: do they send messages? Conversion tunnel: does it work on phone and computer? Pages that indexed well before: are they still indexing? <\/p>\n\n This phase of careful, step-by-step monitoring is often the difference between a successful migration and one that kills your traffic for two months. It’s not glamorous, but it’s decisive. <\/p>\n\n Your static pages (home, about, services, contact) are not automatically migrated. There is no “export all my pages” button. You have to copy them manually and rebuild them on the WordPress CMS<\/a> with the page builder you’ve chosen. It’s this transition from Wix pages to WordPress that takes time. <\/p>\n\n Yes, it’s tedious. But it’s also an opportunity to improve the content that deserved to be improved on your old Wix site. You can revise the main message, improve the hierarchy of information, add clear calls to action, rewrite the contact form so that it converts better. Your content can become more strategic. <\/p>\n\n A redesign, when well done, is never a waste of time. It’s time invested in improving your website. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n How long will it take? It all depends on your website. For an SME, a complete Wix to WordPress migration and redesign takes six to ten weeks. A simple showcase site (10 to 20 pages): four to six weeks. A website with store, reservation or customer area: eight to twelve weeks. Most of the time is spent on design and rebuilding functionality, not on pure content transfer. <\/p>\n\n How much does it cost? A serious redesign of your site by a <\/strong>web agency<\/strong><\/a> The cost of a French website ranges from 4,000 to 15,000 euros, depending on its complexity. This covers audit, strategy, design, development, content migration, SEO optimization, training and start-up maintenance. Below 3,000 euros, be careful. Either the service is really cut, or the service provider can’t live on this price and will disappear after three months. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n Over the three years following the redesign of your site, you’ll invest between 1,500 and 4,000 euros in hosting, maintenance and ongoing upgrades. This compares with 1,000 to 1,500 euros for a pure Wix subscription over the same period. The return on your WordPress investment depends less on the initial cost than on your ability to grow the website without a ceiling, which Wix structurally limits. <\/p>\n\n We’re an agency, so our opinion on migration is biased. But let’s try to be fair. Doing the migration yourself is possible if you have a very simple Wix site (less than 10 pages, no store, no booking), if you have technical skills or someone on your team who does, and if your time isn’t worth much economically. <\/p>\n\n In this case, you can get by for a few hundred euros and several dozen hours of personal work, by following the online guides. It’s a good way to learn how to migrate from Wix to WordPress. <\/p>\n\n Going through a web agency really comes into its own when your website is a critical business tool for you. That’s when a mistake on redirects is costly. That’s when forgetting Analytics or forms affects your sales. This is where letting a non-expert manage the migration is risky. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n At Altosor<\/a> Communication, what we guarantee in a Wix to WordPress migration is that you get your site back intact, with no loss of traffic, with your data properly reinstalled, and with a tool you can really control. If this is your SME’s situation, it’s probably worth giving us a call to discuss it. <\/p>\n\n The same principles apply if you want to migrate from Squarespace to WordPress. Squarespace allows XML export of content, which makes initial import easier. Be careful with images, however. As long as you retain your Squarespace subscription, they will normally be displayed on your new website because they are still hosted on their servers. <\/p>\n\n The day you cancel, they’re gone. You have to download all the images before you leave. Another point: Squarespace images use non-standard codes that Google doesn’t read very well. You have to do a search-and-replace operation to convert them to standard. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n Otherwise, the logic is identical to a Wix to WordPress migration. The decisions you make to move from Squarespace to WordPress are the same. <\/p>\n\n Migrate now if you have any of these three signals. Your website is a direct sales tool (reservations, store, B2B leads) and you’re running up against Wix’s technical limitations. Your competitors are gaining ground in SEO and you can’t respond from within Wix. You’re planning a major upgrade (store, customer area, multilingual) that would overwhelm Wix. <\/p>\n\n You can wait in two cases. Your Wix website is a simple showcase page, with no SEO or functional ambitions, and you’re happy. You’re in the middle of a major identity or strategic redesign, and you’d better finish it before adding a technical migration to the pile. <\/p>\n\n For all other situations, migration is not a question of “if”. It’s a question of “when”. The longer you wait, the more your content, domain authority and user base become entrenched in a closed ecosystem. And the higher the cost of leaving Wix. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n Migrating your Wix site to WordPress in 2026 isn’t a technophile fad. It’s a strategic decision for your SME. It takes back ownership of your website, opens up your SEO potential, and gives your SME the means to grow without a functional ceiling or dependency on Wix. <\/p>\n\n Wix has progressed technically, it’s true. But it remains a rented tool, not a strategic tool for your growth needs. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n A Wix to WordPress migration is a redesign, not a simple import. Done right, it preserves and can even improve your SEO. Done badly, it’s costly in lost traffic. That’s why the choice of service provider for this transition and the quality of the redirection plan are more important than the theme or plugin. <\/p>\n\n If you’re in Bel’Soleil’s situation before the redesign, with a Wix website that works on the surface but that you’re not really piloting, the real question is no longer “should you migrate from Wix to WordPress”. It’s “when, and with whom”. <\/p>\n\n You risk a temporary drop of two to four weeks if done incorrectly. With a complete 301 redirect plan, domain retention, clean metadata recovery and prompt submission to Google Search Console, the loss is minimal and recovered in less than two months. A good Wix to WordPress migration can even improve your SEO<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Between four and twelve weeks, depending on the size and complexity of your website. A simple showcase site: one month. A website with online store<\/a> or reservation: two to three months. <\/p>\n\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Yes, with two to four hours’ training. With a tool like Elementor, you can edit your pages, publish articles and manage your images without any technical skills. Website maintenance (updates, security, backups, development) can be delegated to a service provider for 50 to 150 euros a month. <\/p>\n\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Technically, WordPress is free. But you’ll pay for a web host (120 euros per year), a domain name (10 to 15 euros per year), possibly a theme and plugins. And above all, you’ll be investing weeks of work in design, redirects and SEO configuration. The free DIY faux pas of this transition often costs much more than a serious service. <\/p>\n\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\nWhat you don’t really own on Wix: ownership of your website<\/h2>\n\n
![\"WIx](\"https:\/\/www.altosor-communication.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/WIx-a-wordpress-3-1024x576.jpg\" "\\"\\"")
<\/figure>\n\nThe true hidden cost of Wix: five-year calculation<\/h2>\n\n
The problem of lack of analytical control: referencing managed blindly<\/h2>\n\n
The Wix functional ceiling: what you can’t do<\/h2>\n\n
Yes, Wix has made progress. But on what, really? <\/h2>\n\n
What a Wix to WordPress migration is NOT<\/h2>\n\n
Case study : Bel’Soleil, how to successfully transfer a Wix site to WordPress<\/h2>\n\n
![\"WIx](\"https:\/\/www.altosor-communication.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/WIx-a-wordpress-2-1024x576.jpg\" "\\"\\"")
<\/figure>\n\nHow it works in concrete terms: migration stages<\/h2>\n\n
Step 1: Preparing with an audit of your current Wix site<\/h3>\n\n
Step 2: Choose the right WordPress host<\/h3>\n\n
Step 3: Install WordPress and choose a good base with a suitable theme<\/h3>\n\n
Step 4: Customize and configure features before importing content<\/h3>\n\n
Step 5: Retrieve blog content via RSS feed<\/h3>\n\n
Step 6: Transfer your domain name and set up redirects<\/h3>\n\n
Step 7: Optimize, configure website security and test<\/h3>\n\n
Step 8: Step-by-step monitoring of the first two weeks<\/h3>\n\n
![\"WIx](\"https:\/\/www.altosor-communication.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/WIx-a-wordpress-4-1024x576.jpg\" "\\"\\"")
<\/figure>\n\nWix to WordPress pages: what happens to your Wix content<\/h2>\n\n
Time and money: the real figures on migration<\/h2>\n\n
Do the migration yourself or use a web agency<\/h2>\n\n
And if you’re on Squarespace to WordPress<\/h2>\n\n
Should I migrate now or wait?<\/h2>\n\n
In conclusion, why migrate from Wix to WordPress?<\/h2>\n\n
Frequently asked questions about migration<\/h2>\n
Will I lose my Google ranking if I migrate my Wix site to WordPress?<\/h3>\n
How long does it really take to migrate from Wix to WordPress?<\/h3>\n
Is WordPress really manageable for a non-technical SME?<\/h3>\n
Can I migrate from Wix to WordPress for free?<\/h3>\n