Wix 2025 review: easy to like, impossible to love

Wix has been one of the most famous website builders on the market for several years now, and we previously reviewed it in full in 2021. But with the relentless march of AI, the latest version has seen some big changes. We've taken it for a test to see what all the new introductions are all about, and how well they work.

Note: there is an important distinction between the Wix 'Classic' website builder and Wix Studio, which is the company's solution for enterprises and clients with more complex requirements than artists, photographers or most other self-employed creative pros, who would use this version of Wix.

Generative AI features

Unlike website builders that build websites based on an AI prompt, Wix takes a chatbot approach. You’ll start off by describing the website or business, then Wix will ask you some questions to gather more information and confirm facts. By the end of this process, Wix will understand what functionalities the website needs as well as the brand’s goals and target audience.

The first thing that I noticed was that Wix had generated an entire menu for my coffee shop, including prices and images. The content wasn’t correct (obviously), but it’s useful to have some content while customizing the design. That being said, if you have a digital menu, Wix can use AI to create an online menu and a rather decent-looking digital menu (that you can print) based on it.

The website’s design is where things turn sour. Despite a promising ‘here’s what we think you need’-type introduction, the output is unsatisfactory. Expect elements in weird places and orientations (a telltale sign of outdated GenAI tech), a general feeling of emptiness, and far too many unprofessional-looking elements such as oval-shaped buttons. You’ll see the same components in regenerations, so with no light at the end of the tunnel you’ll probably opt for a template instead.

The design editor provides some AI features too. The Theme Assistant isn’t generative, so it’s essentially just a bot that provides tips. The Section Generator will occasionally misbehave but produce at least two viable options. Oddly, Wix produced the best results I’ve ever seen from an AI logo designer.

Website templates

Wix’s website templates are relatively better based on the AI website builder setting the bar so low, but in intrinsic terms they mostly range from bad to not great. Expect mismatched art styles, cut-off sections, misaligned elements, random spaces, spelling mistakes, and unprofessional design choices that make you wonder if the templates are community-made. Some components look familiar, suggesting that the AI’s output would be better if it wasn’t (presumably) using these templates as input.

The more you explore in order of relevance, the better the templates look. However, they also become less and less suitable for the project functionally.

Design tools

Unfortunately, the design tools aren’t much better. The interface is slow and confusing, so you’ll spend quite a bit of time trying to customize the design. Positioning elements is especially tricky as many of them seem to just exist on the page with fixed dimensions and fixed positions rather than with fluidity and grid-like organization. To avoid frustration, the best approach is to start with a blank template.

There’s a convenient hub for choosing the theme's colors, text styles, and page transitions, but no way to programatically maintain visual consistency with other elements such as buttons.

There’ll be moments of delight, such as when you’re using the attractive section dividers, followed by moments of frustration, such as when you learn that the navigation icons can’t be changed.

Other features

The majority of today’s website builders facilitate building marketing websites and ecommerce stores with a fair amount of bells and whistles, but Wix somehow manages to go beyond that.

If you’re selling you’ll have the features for coupons, automatic discounts, and abandoned cart recoveries as well as the ability to sell subscriptions and packages, but if you want to sell event tickets or monetize online communities, you can totally do that as well.

Throw in Wix’s awesome CMS presets and you can manage recipes, job listings, property listings, and hotel listings right out of the box. While building a website for a coffee shop, I was able to manage restaurant menus, deliveries, pickups, loyalty points, table reservations, and contactless dine-in orders via QR codes (managing all of this is much easier with the Wix mobile apps by the way).

Marketing includes email, SEO, social media, and there’s integrations for tools like Google Analytics and Facebook Pixel as well. To elevate the customer experience you can turn on live chat or create an FAQ/knowledge base.

Other features include:

• Analytics
• Online bookings
• A mobile app builder
• Dev mode
• Automations
• Third-party apps

Pricing

Learn more about Wix’s plans.

Who is it for?

Unless you’re building a SaaS-like tool, Wix can provide your website with the features that it needs to do almost anything, which is a step (or two) above the industry-standard offering of marketing website + eCommerce features. However, you must be ready to start from scratch because the GenAI and website templates provided by Wix are frustrating and a huge hindrance to productivity. In fact, if you have a developer on your side, you’d be better off building a headless Wix site that only makes use of Wix’s back-end, as the design tools aren’t great either. This is to say that Wix actually works better as a platform for developers.

Otherwise, if you need a fairly run-of-the-mill marketing website or eCommerce store, I urge you to consider something else.

Buy it if...

• Your functional requirements are somewhat niche
• You’re willing to build a headless Wix site

Don't buy it if...

• You heavily prefer a fast and intuitive interface
• You need good design solutions that get you up and running quickly