Wix review: pricing, plans and the real limits (2026)

Our verdict in short

Verdict: Wix holds up perfectly well for a small business site, provided you do not pick the wrong tier. Its entry plan is misleading: the $17/month plan cannot take a single payment. The real entry price for a site that sells is $29/month.

• Who it is for: local businesses, service providers, appointment-based activities, small shops — anyone who wants a site, a booking calendar and payments in one place.
• Who it is not for: anyone after fine-grained control of the design, and anyone running several sites.
• Real entry price: $17/month for a showcase site, $29/month as soon as you need to sell — annual billing, paid in full up front.
• Free plan: yes, with no time limit and no credit card, but with a Wix ad banner and a wixsite.com subdomain.

See Wix pricing →

Prices checked on 28 July 2026 on the official plans page and in the Wix help center. Annual prices in US dollars, paid in full at purchase: Wix displays no monthly rate on that page. Prices and currency vary by country, taxes not included.

What Wix actually is

Wix is an all-in-one site builder: hosting, a visual drag-and-drop editor, thousands of templates, and depending on the plan, an online store, appointment booking and marketing tools. You manage no server and no updates.

The problem it solves: plugging a real business into a website — selling a product, letting people book a slot, taking the money — without a developer and without an agency budget. That commercial integration, far more than the quality of the design, explains its position. The trade-off is structural: you are not renting a tool, you are renting an entire platform.

What the plans cover

The paid plans share three things: unlimited bandwidth, multi-cloud hosting and removal of Wix branding. They differ on storage, on the marketing suite (Light, then Basic, Standard and Advanced) and on the right to sell. The free plan is capped at 500 MB of storage and 1 GB of bandwidth.

The Business tier carries the recommended badge. The help center spells out what the pricing grid does not show: 25 lead capture forms, up to 75 fields per form, site analytics, customer accounts, the booking platform, HIPAA compliance and automated sales tax.

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What we like

• The free plan is not a trial in disguise. No credit card, no countdown: the site stays online at its wixsite.com address for as long as you want, and you pay the day you actually need to.
• Site, store, calendar and payments in a single subscription. From $29/month, appointment booking and online selling are included: a practitioner or a tradesperson never has to make two platforms talk to each other.
• Bandwidth is unlimited from the first paid tier. An article that takes off triggers no surprise invoice — where other builders cap traffic plan by plan.
• Wix branding disappears from Light onwards. Custom domain, 24/7 support and branding removal are advertised as standard across every paid plan: you do not need to move up a tier to look professional.
• The upgrade path is real. Collaborators go from 2 to 100 depending on the plan, storage from 2 GB to unlimited: a business that grows does not have to change tools.

The limitations, without hedging

• Light cannot sell. At all. This is the central trap in the pricing grid: the Light card mentions no payments, no store and no appointment booking, and the help center states it in black and white. So the gap between the first two tiers is not $12: it is the line between a showcase and a shop.
• The advertised price is not a monthly price. The $17, $29, $39 and $159 figures correspond to an annual subscription paid in one go. Other durations exist, but their rates are not published: you only discover the cost of monthly payment once you are inside the checkout flow.
• The free domain is a first-year voucher, with conditions. The voucher is only included on a first purchase of an annual plan, must be used within 60 days, and only serves to buy a new domain at Wix — never to renew or extend a domain you already own. From year two, it becomes an invoice line again.
• Processing fees come on top of the subscription. On the US Wix Payments grid: 2.9% + $0.30 per card other than American Express, 3.7% + $0.30 on American Express, 3.49% + $0.49 via PayPal, 6% + $0.30 on buy-now-pay-later, plus 1.5% in cross-border fees (full breakdown at the end of this article).
• One subscription covers one site only. A site plan is valid for a single site. If you deliver client sites, the bill multiplies by the number of projects.
• The 14-day guarantee covers very little. New subscriptions only: renewals, upgrades and domain purchases are all excluded. And a refund can take up to 45 business days.
• Professional email is not included. For an address like [email protected], you have to buy a separate Google Workspace plan.
• Light storage is tight. 2 GB against 50 GB on Core: the price jump between the two tiers mostly buys storage and the right to sell.
• Automated sales tax calculation is capped at 100 transactions per month on the Business plan.

What it really costs over a year

Since billing is annual and paid in one instalment, the first-year cost is the advertised rate multiplied by twelve, before tax:

• Showcase site without selling (Light): $204 for the year, first-year domain voucher included.
• Small shop or appointment-based business (Core): $348 for the year.
• Established business (Business): $468 for the year.
• Volume and advanced development (Business Elite): $1,908 for the year.

You then have to add what the grid does not show: domain renewal from year two, professional email if you want one, and above all the processing fees. On a store running the Core plan and taking card payments, every $1,000 of sales leaves $29 in processing fees, plus $0.30 per transaction; via PayPal, $34.90 plus $0.49 per transaction; on buy-now-pay-later, $60 plus $0.30 per transaction. Depending on the volume you take in, those fees can exceed the cost of the subscription itself.

Wix against Framer and Webflow

Wix is for the person whose site is not the product but the tool: it has to take money, it has to fill the calendar, and then it has to be forgotten about. Framer aims at the opposite — a polished showcase, published very fast, but with a page ceiling that arrives quickly: our full Framer review details where that ceiling sits. Webflow targets people who want complete control over the output, at the cost of a far steeper learning curve — see our Webflow review and the Framer versus Webflow comparison.

The criterion that settles it: if your site has to take payments and run a calendar, Wix spares you from assembling and maintaining a chain of separate tools. If it has to impress above all, look elsewhere.

Verdict

Choose Wix if your site is a commercial tool before it is a showcase: selling a few products, letting people book slots, taking payment without assembling a technical chain. Core at $29/month is then the right entry point — the first tier in the grid that actually allows you to take payment.

Look elsewhere if you manage several sites, or if visual output is your main selling argument. And above all: never subscribe to Light thinking you will sell later. That tier is a showcase, nothing more.

The test that settles it in one evening: build your homepage on the free plan. Banner and subdomain are imposed, but that is enough to judge whether the editor suits you — before paying a year up front.

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Frequently asked questions

Can you sell online on the Light plan?

No, and this is the most misunderstood point in the Wix grid. The help center states explicitly that with the Light plan you will not be able to accept payments through your site. No store, no paid appointment booking. To take money, you have to move up to Core at minimum, at $29/month.

Can you keep a free Wix site indefinitely?

Yes, there is no time-limited trial and no credit card to hand over. In exchange, the site lives at an address in the siteprefix.wixsite.com/siteaddress format, displays a Wix ad banner, and is limited to 500 MB of storage and 1 GB of bandwidth. Wix specifies that free sites give access to most of its products, but not all of them.

Is the domain name really free?

For one year, and under conditions. The voucher is only included on a first purchase of an annual plan, must be used within 60 days, and serves exclusively to buy a new domain at Wix. It cannot renew or extend a domain you already own. From year two, the domain renews at the standard rate.

Does one subscription cover several sites?

No: a site plan is valid for a single site. Every additional site requires its own subscription, which makes the model a poor fit for a freelancer delivering sites to clients.

Can you get a refund?

Wix advertises a 14-day guarantee, but it only applies to new subscriptions to Premium or Studio plans. Renewals, upgrades and domain purchases are excluded. Allow up to 45 business days for processing.

How much do payments cost on top of the subscription?

On the US Wix Payments grid: 2.9% + $0.30 for cards other than American Express, Apple Pay and Google Pay; 3.7% + $0.30 for American Express; 3.49% + $0.49 for PayPal and Venmo; 4.99% + $0.49 for PayPal Pay Later; 6% + $0.30 for Afterpay, Affirm and Klarna. A 1.5% surcharge applies to cross-border transactions. These rates apply to the United States.

Keep reading

• Framer vs Webflow: which one should you pick?
• Framer review: pricing, limits and what it really does
• Webflow review: pricing, limits and the CMS trap