Wix is not as cheap as “from a few pounds a month” once you add it up. A realistic UK small business pays for a mid-tier Classic plan, often a domain renewal after year one, usually separate email, sometimes apps, and always the hours spent in the editor. As of 2026, on annual billing, Classic plans sit around Light £9 a month, Core £16, Business £25 and Business Elite £119. Monthly billing costs more. Check Wix’s own pricing before you buy, because they change it.
The plan fee is the easy number. The real cost is the plan, the extras, and your time. Here is that total, set against a managed site at £99 setup and £29 a month (or £299 a year).
What do Wix’s UK plans actually cost in 2026?
Wix still sells a free plan. It is a brochure for Wix. You get their ads on your pages and you cannot connect a proper custom domain. That is fine for a school project. It is not a business website.
Paid Classic plans, annual billing, approximate UK prices in 2026:
- Light, about £9 a month. Removes ads, connects a domain, limited storage and features. Tight for a real business.
- Core, about £16 a month. The tier most small sites actually need to look like a site, not a trial.
- Business, about £25 a month. More commerce and booking features, higher limits.
- Business Elite, about £119 a month. The heavy plan for larger shops and higher traffic.
Pay month to month and each of those numbers goes up. Wix, like most builders, uses the annual price in the advert and the monthly price in the checkout if you do not notice.
These figures are the subscription only. They are not hosting-plus-everything in the way people mean when they say “all in”. Wix includes hosting in the plan. It does not include a lot of the things a small business assumes are “the website”.
Always confirm on Wix’s site. I would rather you catch a price change than treat this post as a live tariff.
Why is the advertised price lower than the bill?
Three habits keep the headline small.
Introductory rates. The first term is often cheaper than the renewal. Year one feels like a bargain. Year two is the real price. It is printed somewhere. It is also easy to miss when you are trying to get a site live before Monday.
The cheap plan is the hook. Light looks friendly. Then you want a booking calendar, enough storage for photos of jobs, or to drop the Wix branding in a place that still shows it. You upgrade. The number you compared to a designer’s quote was never the number you pay.
The free plan is a funnel. No custom domain, Wix ads on every visit. Customers notice. You pay to look legitimate, which is the point of the free plan from Wix’s side.
None of this is a secret scam. Budget for the plan you will actually live on, at the renewal rate, on the billing cycle you will actually use.
What extras sit on top of the Wix plan?
Domain. Paid plans often include a custom domain for the first year. After that you renew it, through Wix or through a registrar. A .co.uk is not expensive. Forgetting it is. Budget a renewal in years two and three.
Email. sam@yourbusiness.co.uk is usually a separate product. Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace is a monthly bill per mailbox. A free Gmail address on a paid Wix site still looks like a free Gmail address.
Apps. The Wix App Market is where the real drip feed lives. Bookings, stockists, pop-ups, advanced forms, reviews widgets, extra galleries. Some are free. The useful ones often want £5 to £20 a month each. Two apps and your Core plan is no longer £16.
Transaction and commerce extras. If you sell, card processing is a given. Higher Wix commerce features live on higher plans. A Light plan plus a shop is how people accidentally arrive at Business or Elite.
Time. I am giving it its own section below because it dwarfs the apps.
Add a Core plan, a domain from year two, one mailbox, and one paid app, and a “£16 a month” site is already something else. Still not ruinous. Just not the advert.
How much is the time in the Wix editor worth?
Wix is a do-it-yourself builder. That is the deal. You are the designer, the developer, the publisher and the support desk.
A first site that looks acceptable on a phone is not an hour of dragging. Most owners I talk to have burned a weekend on the template, then another on mobile layout, then an evening on a form that goes nowhere. Ten to thirty hours to launch is common. Some never launch. The site stays at 80 percent finished because Friday nights are for invoices, not padding.
After launch, every change has a cost: a new price, a seasonal range, an app that moved a button, a page that breaks on a phone, extra sections because the editor makes adding things too easy. Two hours a month is a conservative average. Over three years that is 72 hours, plus the original build. Call it 90 hours. At £40 an hour you have spent £3,600 of labour. Many Sussex trades charge more than that on the tools. The editor does not care.
I have moved businesses off this treadmill. Ruby’s Bakery in Burgess Hill was stuck on a slow Wix site that fought them every time the range changed. Oilfire Heating in Uckfield had wasted hours in Wix (and Squarespace) when he needed to be on boilers. Sindall Building Contractors in Haywards Heath had a single sluggish Wix page that could not carry the work they actually do. The monthly plan was never the part they complained about first. The time and the result were.
If the site has also become slow, that is a separate, common Wix problem. We wrote why Wix sites feel slow for that. Speed is not only comfort. Google uses it, and assistants such as ChatGPT prefer fast, factual pages they can quote.
How does Wix compare to Page Forge over three years?
Same window, round numbers, annual Wix billing. Check Wix if you are buying tomorrow.
Wix Light: £9 × 36 = £324 in plan fees.
Wix Core: £16 × 36 = £576.
Wix Business: £25 × 36 = £900.
Wix Business Elite: £119 × 36 = £4,284.
On top of each: domain renewals after year one, email, apps, and your hours. Monthly billing would raise every plan total.
Page Forge one-page site: £99 setup + £29 × 36 = £1,143. Or £99 + £299 × 3 = £996. Domain, UK hosting, SSL, six content updates a year and support are inside that. We build it. You do not sit in an editor. SEO and GEO start at £99 one-off if you want that work. Multi-page sites and shops are quoted, because they are not the £99 product.
Put Core Wix at £576 next to Page Forge at £996 and Wix still “wins” on the subscription line. Add one £10 app (£360 over three years), two domain renewals, a mailbox, and 90 hours at £40. Wix is now the expensive option by a distance, and you are still the webmaster.
Put Business Wix at £900 next to our annual path at £996, extras aside, and the money is already similar before time. Elite Wix is in a different league and only makes sense for a serious shop.
The comparison on our Wix alternative page is the product version of this maths: a hand-built page instead of a builder, with the same job (get the enquiry) and none of the editor.
What do you lose by leaving Wix, and what do you keep?
You keep your words, your photos, your domain if you control it, and any Google ranking that belongs to URLs you redirect properly. You lose the template, the apps, and the habit of “just changing it myself at midnight”.
A rebuild is not an export button. It is a new site that says the same true things, faster. We do that as a planned move, including the redirects, on move from Wix. The ranking risk is in sloppy address changes, not in leaving the platform. Do the redirects. Keep Search Console. Do not delete the old site before the new one is answering the same URLs or their replacements.
Ruby’s, Oilfire and Sindall all came from Wix. I am not going to invent a traffic percentage for any of them. What I will say is the pattern: they wanted something faster, clearer, and not built in their spare time.
Is Wix ever the right spend?
Yes. Wix is a fair choice if you enjoy this kind of work, you have real hours to give it, and you will still enjoy it in year two. It is also a fair holding page if you need “some URL” this week and you are honest that it is temporary.
It is a poor choice if the site is how customers decide to trust you, you are already tired of the editor, or you are about to pay for Business Elite to solve problems that are really about time and structure.
A managed one-pager at £99 and £29 a month is for the second group. A quoted multi-page site is for the Sindall-shaped jobs. Neither is “Wix but we click it for you”. Google still wants speed. ChatGPT still wants facts. A lean page with your trade, your towns and a phone number does that job.
If you would rather one figure and no editor, see pricing and decide if you need a one-pager or a quoted rebuild.
Frequently asked questions
Is Wix actually cheap for a small business?
The entry price is low. A realistic business pays for Core or Business, then domain renewals, email, often apps, and a lot of unpaid time. Cheap in pounds, often not cheap in total cost. Elite at about £119 a month is not cheap in either sense.
Does Wix put the price up after the first year?
Often the first term is an introductory rate and the renewal is higher. Read the renewal price before you treat year one as the ongoing cost. Confirm the current offer on Wix’s site.
Does the Wix free plan work for a business?
Not really. You cannot use your own domain, and Wix adverts show on the site. Customers can tell. Pay for a plan or use a different route.
Is a managed website cheaper than Wix?
On plan fees alone, a mid Wix plan can be cheaper than £29 a month. Once you add apps, email, renewals and the hours in the editor, a managed site at £99 plus £29 a month (or £299 a year) is often the lower real cost, and you are not the one building it.
Can I move off Wix without losing Google ranking?
Yes, if the new site is set up carefully and old addresses redirect. The danger is changing URLs and hoping Google guesses. We handle that as part of a planned move.
Why do Wix sites end up slow?
The editor makes it easy to add weight: large images, apps, animations, extra sections. Each one is small. Together they drag on a phone. Google notices. Visitors leave. A hand-built page has less to download because it only has what the job needs.