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Same Website - Wix vs Coded

Picture of Erin LaVaux Quarles (right) and brother Chris LaVaux (back)

If you're new to our blog, TNW Creations has been in web development since 1995. 

 

My Brother Chris (back) and I (right) were just teenagers when we first began building websites with code together back in 1994. Both of us were computer whizzes and eventually studied IT in college. He went on to be this amazing Cyber Security Expert in the Navy. And I founded TNW Creations, was in the Army National Guards and had a family.

Since then, TNW Creations has built websites on virtually (haha) every platform, or nearly every platform. 

 

Wix was one of those platforms, we began using their cloud based web builder for various clients in 2011. The price was very affordable, the builder was comfortable. All in all, it was a great web solution, like many other platforms we used. 

 

A few years ago, I was recruited to become a Wix Expert. I thought, "why not, this could be a great avenue for us." So we joined the Wix Arena. 

TNW Creations #1 Wix Partner in Austin

In one year, we worked on 79 Wix projects, not counting our other client's sites with other platforms and hosts like GoDaddy and a few others.  

 

We were regularly Number 1 on the Wix Arena for the Austin Area. And that was a pretty nice little pat on the back. 

But Wix changed a lot, at first slowly.

For example, hosting was $5. a month in 2017, by May 2019, their prices were $17 and they were nearly unrecognizable as far as included features.

 

Constantly evolving plans EVERY MONTH to the point designers could not keep track. Pricing would mostly stay the same, but features were being quietly ripped out of the listings. No warning. Just suddenly, you can't do the same thing this month that you did last month. 

Star Trek - Captain Kirk asks, What?

Think you can have a simple contact form with that website price? THINK AGAIN BUDDY! 

So while GoDaddy was still charging $9.99 a month for a basic website (with expected features like a contact form), Wix was charging a minimum $17. barebones and everything else was becoming extra.

 

By Winter 2019, that base price inflated to $23. a month with even fewer features. 

Pay more for forms

pay more for email

pay more for calendar

pay more for booking

 

Dude!

Psych Gus and Shawn Wait for iiiit

PAY more if you want to have a video on your site.

 

A VIDEO!?!

Psych Gus and Shawn gasp!

Before all of that happened, I had already seen the writing on the wall and knew I needed to move my clients. I was pretty uncomfortable offering Wix as a web solution by June 2019 so I made the decision to start moving clients at my own cost and my own time.      Wix Doubled Prices for My Advanced Clients

Psych Gus and Shawn Proud of you

Yep, me, the penny pinching frugal person, absorbing the cost to transport my clients and work overtime too - why?

Star Wars Solo It's true, all of it.

I knew if my clients stayed with Wix, they would drop in search engine ranking... which would result in lost business. 

 

If I didn't help them, they would lose and so would I.

Moving was a smart decision. 

 

By August 2019, the Wix Server performance TANKED so bad and so hard that websites were SOOoooOoOOoo SLOW... frequently returning a 503 server errors, 502 bad gateways, 404 missing pages or just showing us a blank page that said, "frog.wix.com"

  • wix-oops (1).png
  • wix-oops (2).png
  • wix-oops (5).png

     

    At least Support

    can help us!

     

    Well, darn.

  • wix-oops (4).png

What do those errors mean? 

Star Trek, Dr McCoy, he's dead Jim.

Wix Partners were complaining daily because their clients were pissed.

 

Google Lighthouse ratings were blowing up everywhere, showing Wix websites as having terrible server performance. 

  • 2020-07-28 (36).png
  • 2020-07-28 (38).png
  • 2020-07-14 (23).png
  • before-after-server-webb (1).png

But Wix kept cheerfully announcing on their Partner Forums and Facebook Groups, "Wait for what we're unveiling next!" And we all made inwardly collective groans... because it was never good news (not for us).

Psych Gus and Shawn Come on, son.

So working overtime and paying the extra costs, we moved most of our Wix clients over the course of the next 9 months and began turning down Wix projects to focus on Coded websites and our own servers. Wix websites were a nightmare for us. If we took on a site, we expected it would take 3 times longer to build due to the constant dashboard errors. 


Those of our clients who chose to stay with Wix saw their site performance drop to the red zone on Google's website performance ratings. Often topping at 11 through 17 out of 100, at the most. Their bouncerates were high due to the slow loading Wix websites overloaded with shared hosting (nearly 300,000 websites per server) and abundance of background scripts clogging the site....


25 years as web developers, we stay on top of the trends and technology. We are not harnessed to one platform. We evolve, because that is the essence of being in IT... technology is always improving, always advancing. In other words, we are not married to any particular platform or host. 

Wix vs Coded Google Rating

Our latest Wix client transferred this week and we tested both sites. The newly coded site on our server and the same website on the Wix server. Keep in mind, they were completely identical. Same layouts, same photos, same text, same SEO. But our Coded website gave incredible ratings compared to the Wix hosted duplicate. Even the SEO improved, simply from the luxury of having a coded website with all SEO capabilities.


If that's not all she wrote right there, then I didn't watch Angela Lansbury correctly with my Grandmother when I was little. 

Does this mean Wix is a terrible choice and you should stay far away? Many WordPress developers feel that way. 

Wix seems to feel pretty similar towards WordPress. 

Wix shows no mercy to WordPress during a major cyber attack

But it's up to you. Just like we tell our clients. 

 

Wix could make a miraculous recovery at any point. Increase their servers per user ratio, drop their prices and begin including basic features again. Until then, we're personally focusing elsewhere and we're pretty happy with that choice.

TNW Creations™️and Brand Tawaci Media™️is a Web Development & Media Publishing Agency headquartered in Austin, Texas. Web Development, cybersecurity, design, clean energy web host, digital marketing.

I am a software engineer, artist and voice actress. As a child, I became part of the grassroots development for teaching my Lakhota language online. When I'm not developing and creating, you'll find me motivating a community of Indie Game Developers, play testing new games on Twitch and YouTube, developing video content, voice acting for games, acting as cultural consultant for Native vibe games, investigating and initating hostile website takedowns, and enjoying time with my family.