What Wix actually costs, once you add up what a business needs

The plan price is the smallest number in a Wix budget. Here is what the plans actually cost, what businesses end up adding on, and where a builder stops being enough.

The short answer

A business site needs a paid Wix plan. The free tier leaves you on a Wix address with Wix branding, and only the Core plan and above can take payments. In the US, the four paid plans cost $17, $29, $39 and $159 a month on annual billing — Light, Core, Business and Business Elite. Wix sets prices by country, so the UK figure at checkout is the one that counts, but the shape is the same: an entry plan at the bottom of that range and a serious commerce plan at the top.

US list prices checked September 2026 on annual billing; monthly billing costs more, and the UK price is shown at checkout.

What the plan price leaves out

• The domain after year one. Annual plans include a free domain for the first year; renewal is then billed separately.
• Professional email. A proper you@yourbusiness.co.uk mailbox is a separate subscription, per mailbox, per month.
• The plan you actually need. Light cannot take payments. The moment you sell anything, you are on Core or above.
• Apps. Bookings, forms, marketing and selling tools mostly live in Core and above, and the good ones carry their own fees.
• The build itself. The plan rents the platform. Someone still has to design and build the site, write the copy and set up the search foundations.

The real monthly number

For a small business selling products or services, the realistic platform cost is the Core or Business plan, plus domain renewal and email — the price on the advert, plus a few pounds. That is still the cheapest sensible way to be online. Compare it with the full annual cost of running a website, where the platform is one line among several.

Is Wix bad for SEO?

No — careless use is. A Wix site ranks perfectly well for local and small-business terms when structure, metadata, internal linking and image weight are handled properly. What it cannot do is structured content at scale: filters, member areas, or logic that decides what a visitor sees. That is where builders stop and custom WordPress or a fully custom build starts.

When Wix is the right call

• You need to be live and credible in weeks
• You want to edit copy and images yourself
• The site is a brochure with a contact form, not a product

When it is not

• The website is the business: accounts, bookings, listings, workflow
• Content is structured — a catalogue, a directory, a roster
• A previous builder site got slow from stacked apps and needs to move

We build on Wix when it is the right tool and say so when it is not — see cheaper website builders done properly, and what cheap builders really get you. If you want the honest bracket for your project, the guided brief gives you a price and a timeline in minutes, and this comparison covers how the builders differ.