How to Migrate Wix to WordPress

If you currently have a website built on Wix and are considering switching to another platform, you’re not alone. Many business owners start out using the former for its beginner-friendly drag-and-drop builder, only to outgrow its limitations over time. The goal of this process is to launch a new WordPress website that better suits your growing needs.

The good news is that we at ProCoders have had experience with such transitions. And we’re ready to help you prepare for it by:

• Evaluating if migrating is the right approach for you
• Preparing your current site for the move
• Using plugins and services to assist with the transition. In particular, a migration plugin is an essential tool for automating the transfer of website content from Wix to WordPress, streamlining the process and reducing manual work.
• Completing pre- and post-migration steps

and more! Follow along as we detail how to convert Wix to WordPress!

What Are the Reasons to Convert to WordPress?

Before diving into the actual migration process, let’s discuss the top reasons businesses typically move from Wix to WordPress:

Design Freedom and Customization

Wix is a website builder that offers a user-friendly drag-and-drop interface, making it easy for beginners to create websites without coding. However, Wix uses a restrictive template-based approach, where users select from pre-designed Wix templates to establish their site’s visual appearance. These Wix templates are easy to use but can limit customization and flexibility.

In contrast, WordPress offers a vast array of free and premium themes, allowing for greater design freedom and advanced customization options. While you cannot directly transfer a Wix template to WordPress, you can find WordPress themes inspired by or similar to your original Wix templates, ensuring a consistent look and feel.

Scalability and Growth

As your business grows, you may need more advanced features, integrations, or customizations. WordPress is highly scalable and supports a wide range of plugins and custom development, making it suitable for businesses of all sizes.

Cost Efficiency

Wix operates on a subscription model, which can become expensive as you add more features or require higher-tier plans. WordPress itself is free and open-source, and you only pay for hosting and any premium themes or plugins you choose.

SEO Capabilities

WordPress is renowned for its robust SEO tools and plugins, giving you more control over your site’s search engine optimization compared to Wix.

Advanced Functionality

WordPress supports a vast ecosystem of plugins, allowing you to add complex features and integrations that may not be available or easily implemented on Wix.

Content Management

WordPress offers a more powerful and flexible content management system, making it easier to organize, schedule, and manage large volumes of content.

Hosting and Ownership

Wix services include web hosting as part of their all-in-one package, which means hosting is managed for you but also limits your control over server settings and configurations. With WordPress, you have full ownership and control over your website and can choose your own hosting provider, giving you greater flexibility and scalability.

More Design Freedom and Customization

One of the biggest gripes people have with Wix is its restrictive template-based approach. Wix templates are pre-designed website layouts that users can select and customize to quickly establish their site’s visual appearance. As a website builder, Wix offers a drag-and-drop interface that is easy for beginners, but it is less flexible than WordPress.

The options are decent but limit your ability to deeply customize the design and layout. Unlike Wix templates, which cannot be directly transferred to WordPress, you can choose WordPress themes inspired by your original Wix template to achieve a similar look.

WP offers far more design freedom with the ability to modify templates or create a fully custom site architecture. Thousands of themes let you tailor the look and feel while still accelerating development.

Greater Scalability and Performance

As your business and site grow, the initial platform can begin to buckle under increased traffic. Bottlenecks are more likely on shared hosting. WP scales smoothly from small business platforms to enterprise-level sites. You have full control over hosting, caching, CDNs, and other optimizations to support growth.

Lower Long-Term Costs

Wix is affordable initially but charges you more as your site expands. Premium tiers for add-ons, extra storage, and bandwidth can all add up. You can get full control over your WordPress site cost with a self-hosted WP platform. Optimize hosting and resources purely based on your site needs.

More SEO Control and Options

Customizing SEO on Wix is limited compared to having full access in WP. Plus, page builders can bloat code. WordPress makes SEO easy with editable metadata, URLs, XML sitemaps, and built-in best practices. During a migration from Wix to WordPress, proper migration steps and implementing redirects are crucial for maintaining or improving search engine rankings. Great WordPress SEO services is vital for organic search growth.

Access to Advanced Functionality and Plugins

Expanding functionality in Wix often means paying more. Even then, options are limited compared to WordPress. Its plugin ecosystem offers endless free and paid extensions for nearly any feature. No restraints on customizing to your needs.

Easier Content Management

Wix’s built-in CMS is usable but lacks the depth and flexibility of WP. Managing dynamic content can be cumbersome. With WP, editing all site content is intuitive with custom post types, reusable parts, workflows, and even a mobile app.

The WordPress admin panel allows users to efficiently manage and edit all site content, making content management more intuitive compared to Wix.

Pick Your Hosting Provider

On Wix, you’re forced to use their hosting. If issues arise, you have little recourse or control. With WordPress, you can choose any web host or web hosting plan that fits your needs, giving you the flexibility to select a provider optimized for your site’s performance and budget. Mix and match plans for cost and performance optimization.

Overall, Wix transfer to WordPress provides a powerful yet cost-effective foundation for long-term growth. The flexibility and scalability lead many site owners to eventually shift away from limited solutions.optimization.

Overall, Wix transfer to WordPress provides a powerful yet cost-effective foundation for long-term growth. The flexibility and scalability lead many site owners to eventually shift away from limited solutions.

How to Prepare Your Site For Migration From Wix to WordPress

To make sure your Wix to WordPress migration goes smoothly, your site needs proper preparation. We’ve asked our senior WP developers about the key steps to complete in the pre-migration stage:

Before you begin, it’s important to purchase web hosting and select a web hosting plan that fits your WordPress site’s needs. Setting up your hosting account or web hosting account is a crucial step, as this is where your website files will be stored and managed.

Some hosting providers also offer a free domain for the first year, which can be a valuable bonus. Be sure to configure a custom domain for your new site to establish your brand identity and ensure proper redirects.

You may also want to use a temporary domain or subdomain to build and test your new WordPress site before making it live, which helps avoid disruptions to your current website.

Clean Up Your Content

Delete any unused, outdated, or duplicate blog content as well as other site content from your site. This reduces what needs to be migrated and eliminates future cruft.

Create a Sitemap

Generate a sitemap of all pages/sections on your site. This helps match up content when migrating to WP.

Review Site Analytics

Look at traffic sources, popular pages, conversions, and other analytics to align your WordPress site with what worked on the initial one.

Select a WordPress Theme

Browse free and premium themes in the official WordPress directory to find a design that matches your needs. Browse themes that aesthetically match your current site and have the functionality you need going forward.

Find New Hosting

Research and select a new hosting provider that is optimized for WordPress to ensure your site runs smoothly. Assess your needs, compare web host options, and pick a plan that fits your requirements.

Determine Plugins Needed

Make a list of critical WordPress plugins, like forms, eCommerce, etc., that will recreate functionality from the original platform.

Back Up Your Site

Use Wix’s backup tool to download a full XML file containing your site data for the migration process.

With prep work done, you’re ready to undertake the migration itself next.

Step by Step Guide on How to Convert a Wix Site to WordPress

Once you’ve aligned on switching from Wix to WordPress and completed pre-migration housekeeping, it’s go time! Let’s walk through the step-by-step WordPress migration process, covering before, during, and after the migration:

We recommend setting up a test site to verify your new WordPress site’s functionality and integrity before launching it live.

Pre-migration Process

Find a Trustworthy Software Development Partner

Ideally, your first step would be to find a software development company that would provide a coder or even a team to prepare your platform and export Wix to WordPress. Before making the final choice, consider their portfolio, WordPress developer salary cost, cultural fit, scalability options, and communication skills.

Install WordPress on New Hosting

Complete the WordPress installation on your new managed hosting provider so you have an installed WordPress environment ready for migration. For security, use a blank database with no existing site.

Activate Your Chosen Theme

Log into the WordPress dashboard and activate the theme you selected that aligns with your site aesthetic.

Install Essential Plugins

Installing a migration plugin can automate much of the content transfer process from Wix to WordPress, making your migration more efficient. Adding any must-have plugins like WooCommerce, membership, forms, etc., based on how you use the site currently is essential, and so is thoroughly testing them.

Import Media Library

Use a plugin like Wix to WP to import your images, videos, and documents directly into the WordPress media library for easy management, and copy a Wix page to WordPress.

Wix to WordPress Conversion (3 approaches)

Manual Migration

Manual migration involves recreating each Wix page as a new WordPress page. Going page by page to copy over content is an option but extremely tedious. Only recommended for very small sites.

Use a Plugin or Service

Using a migration plugin or a dedicated WordPress plugin can automate the transfer of page content, products, posts, and more from Wix to WordPress, making the process much easier!

Using RSS to Import Wix to WordPress

This approach ONLY refers to transferring content. To use RSS feeds, you have to enable them in your dashboard, under Site Settings. Switch it on for both pages and blog posts. Next, locate your Wix site’s RSS feed and download the Wix RSS file, which is an XML file containing your blog post data.

You’ll also need the WP RSS Importer plugin to access Wix RSS feeds on your new site. In WordPress, use the plugin to upload the RSS file (the XML file you downloaded) by selecting the upload file option. This will import your blog posts and other content into WordPress.

Point the plugin to your original site’s RSS feeds for importing pages, blog posts, etc. Then, run the WP RSS Importer to pull in content to relevant areas of your WordPress site. The plugin can import pages, posts, comments, categories, and tags from a Wix RSS feed into WP. Just keep in mind that the XML file may require manual editing to ensure all blog posts and images are imported correctly, as formatting and images won’t always transfer over, just raw content.

Post-migration Process

After migrating your content, it’s essential to set up redirects from your old Wix site (old site) to your new WP site. This involves editing the Wix URL structure to ensure that each page on your old site properly redirects to the corresponding page on your new WP site. Setting up a redirect on Wix is crucial, especially if you are transferring your custom domain name, as it helps maintain your SEO rankings and ensures a smooth user experience.

Make sure to inform both your visitors and search engines about the move from your old Wix site to your new WP site. Properly configuring these redirects will help preserve your traffic and search engine rankings during the transition.

Review Transferred Content

Scrutinize everything that came over from the original site – pages, blog posts, products, etc. Make sure nothing is missing or duplicated.

Update Links and Settings

Double-check that all settings, such as menu links, images, text links, etc., work properly in WP after being copied over. Use the WordPress admin area and WordPress admin dashboard to review and update all links, menus, and settings to ensure everything functions correctly after migration.

Redirect URLs

To redirect Wix URLs from your old Wix website to your new WordPress site, and ensure both Wix users and search engines are properly redirected, use a plugin like Safe Redirect Manager to forward all URLs to relevant WordPress pages to retain SEO value. This approach helps you effectively redirect Wix traffic and maintain your site’s rankings during the migration.

Submit New Sitemap

Generate a WP sitemap and submit it to search engines like Google to index the migrated site.

And as you move away from Wix, the new WordPress site is ready to go live!

All this may sound doable alone due to additional plugins and services, but you have to realize the importance of data on your website and the platform itself. Would you trust a migration to an inexperienced person?

We don’t think so. It’s much better to hire WordPress developers who have transferred numerous websites to and from WP and who will choose the approach suitable for your particular case.

Plugins to Migrate from Wix to WordPress

There’s a lot of buzz around plugins. Some people think they are a waste of time, and if it’s not done manually, it’s not done right. Others rely too much on plugins, thinking they don’t need professional help with anything, even a process as serious as a website migration.

We at ProCoders are in-between. We know for a fact that a migration plugin can automate much of the migration process, making it much more convenient and faster.

Some services even offer a free demo migration, allowing you to preview the migrated content and identify potential errors before committing to the full migration. However, we’re all in for a professional approach.

You may need changes in the site structure or design. And the data can get lost during the process if you blindly use plugins. So, mixing the best of the two worlds by hiring seasoned pros that use the most secure and effective migration plugins is the way to go.

And while you know that you can always find expert WP developers to switch Wix to WordPress at ProCoders, we’ve prepared a list of plugins that may be useful!

Wix to WP Plugin

This free plugin lets you pull page content, images, videos, etc. into WP with reliable results. Easy to use and automates much of the heavy lifting.

WP Pusher

A paid migration service that copies over all Wix content into WordPress, including site structure. Provides 1-click deployment.

CMS2CMS

A paid automated migration service for transferring sites into WP while maintaining images, styling, etc.

All in One WP Migration

A premium plugin great for migrating WP sites but also supports importing from other platforms.

BlogVault

A paid migration tool that clones websites, including pages, posts, themes, and plugins, with high accuracy.

The key advantage of these tools is they eliminate most of the tedious work of manually recreating vast amounts of content. While considering the options, keep your budget in mind since some of the plugins are paid.

How ProCoders Can Help in Converting Your Wix Website to WordPress

It’s no small task to export Wix blog to WordPress. Moving an existing site while minimizing disruption takes experience – something the experts at ProCoders have in spades.

Going the DIY route may seem not only daunting but time and effort-consuming, not to mention it may be dangerous for the data stored on the platform. So, why not trust professionals who have experience in the task you need to be done?

We actually had to transfer Wix blog to WordPress, along with the whole website, recently for one of our partners. This is one of our latest cases, and we’ve decided to seize the opportunity and talk to Alex, our Head of WP Development, about it.

Maybe this short yet informative interview with one of ProCoders’ most experienced engineers will answer some of your migration-related questions.

Q: Why did our partner want to migrate their website?

A: There were certain difficulties supporting the site and integrating new functionality. The company outgrew Wix and needed a platform that would accommodate the scalability needs of the project.

Q: Were there any difficulties during the migration?

A: We built a new website structure for the partner, so there were no problems except for transferring the booking widgets crucial for the service.

Q: And how did you solve the issue?

A: I wouldn’t say it was an issue but rather a more labor-intensive process. We’ve collaborated with the company’s manager to transfer all the needed information meticulously.

Q: How many people worked on the project from ProCoders?

A: One manager and two developers.

Q: And how long did it take to complete the migration?

A: We’re still making the finishing touches, but such a transition usually takes 1,5-2 months.

Q: What recommendations do you have as a specialist for those considering moving their website?

A: Make absolutely sure to preserve all metrics and links to existing pages. Also, after migration, update your site title and tagline in WordPress (Settings → General) for better branding and SEO. Don’t forget to set up Google Analytics on your new WordPress site to monitor performance and traffic. Managing your domain transfer may require accessing your Wix account to update domain settings.

We’re ready to take up new migrations! From planning to execution, our WP specialists will:

• Audit your existing site and prepare a migration checklist
• Determine the ideal WP theme, plugins, and hosting
• Configure the WP environment for the transition
• Assist in transferring content using the best plugins/tools
• Test converted site and optimize for performance
• Develop custom functionality needed in WP
• Update DNS and implement 301 redirects for sound SEO

With 9+ years perfecting WordPress migrations, ProCoders provides an opportunity to hire programmers for startup or enterprise in any industry, from eCommerce to Healthcare. Our technical experts will collaborate closely to build, migrate and launch your new optimized WP website.

Conclusion

Migrating an old Wix platform to WP requires thoughtful preparation, the right tools, and attention to detail. But with this guide, you now understand:

• Key reasons businesses outgrow Wix and switch to WP
• How to get your current website ready for migration
• Necessary steps both before and after site content conversion
• Powerful plugins that automate and simplify the transition
• How our ProCoders team can support the seamless execution of your transition

The effort to convert to a new website pays off with more design freedom, scalability, functionality, SEO control, and savings. Now armed with a game plan, it’s possible to migrate while minimizing disruption. Just take it step by step.