Back in the day, building a website required a team of code-slinging wizards and a mountain of technical know-how. But in the age of GoDaddy and Wix, the playing field has been leveled, inspiring even the most tech-averse among us to create professional online masterpieces.
Founded in 1997 as a domain registrar, GoDaddy ventured into website building the following year. While GoDaddy has almost 2.3 million live websites globally, Wix—which has been around since 2006—boasts a staggering 8.4 million live sites globally.
In this head-to-head comparison, we'll explore the features of these two industry giants, uncovering their strengths and weaknesses to help you choose the perfect canvas for your digital vision.
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Wix vs. GoDaddy: key features
Before we get into the nitty-gritty, here's a quick overview of Wix and GoDaddy's website builder offerings.
Wix and GoDaddy both aim to make website creation accessible for non-technical users. However, they take fairly different approaches in terms of design flexibility, eCommerce capabilities and overall ease of use.
Here we’ll dive into how they stack up across these core areas.
Drag-and-drop editing
Wix boasts an ever-growing library of over 900 website templates across all industries and styles. GoDaddy also caters to multiple industries but offers fewer templates with approximately 200 templates.
You can use Wix’s intuitive drag-and-drop editor to precisely position elements anywhere on the page or to customize other aspects of your site pixel by pixel. GoDaddy's website builder lacks this free-form dragging capability. All content is confined to grid-based layouts and sections, limiting how much you can tweak the design. GoDaddy’s structured-grid editor limits the level of customization but makes it simpler for those who need to work fast or aren’t comfortable with web design.
Bottom line: Wix’s drag-and-drop freedom allows for far more customization possibilities. However, those who need a barebones website may prefer GoDaddy's simple editor.
Web design (and AI)
As mentioned above, both Wix and GoDaddy offer all-inclusive website templates to give you a head start on design. Of the two, GoDaddy's website builder takes more of a template-based approach. You can customize content sections and layouts, but won’t be able to move elements wherever you want on the page (they are confined to certain grid positions) or create truly custom designs.
When it comes to AI, GoDaddy offers an AI website builder via Airo™, an AI-powered experience that’s included with the purchase of a domain. The builder will ask you a few simple questions about your website goals before designing a site for you. GoDaddy will suggest the right layout, pages, images and copy. While it doesn’t give you multiple options to choose from, you can edit the AI-generated site from the classic site builder.
Within the builder, you can click on certain sections or elements and ask for AI suggestions. GoDaddy users with Airo™ can tap AI for help creating marketing materials like logos, email campaigns and more. However, when it comes to design, it seems to lack the depth of AI design tools and creative freedom that Wix offers.
On Wix, you get the added power of the AI website builder where you can quite literally chat with AI to get a personalized website design in a matter of minutes. Once your site’s foundation has been created, you can continue chatting with AI to change the theme, layout and design elements. Further tweaks can then be made in the Wix Editor, where you can use built-in AI tools to create images, content and video trailers (among other things).
Wix additionally offers Wix Studio, a separate solution for agencies, freelancers and enterprises with more complex design needs. Wix Studio supports even more intricate designs and responsive behaviors, alongside multi-site management. (Read more about the differences between Wix vs. Wix Studio.)
Bottom line: Thanks to its broad range of templates, depth of design tools and its unique chat-based AI site builder, Wix is ahead of the game when it comes to web design.
App Market
Building a powerful, feature-rich website often requires tapping into third-party apps and integrations. Wix offers a large app ecosystem through its App Market with more than 750 apps from pre-vetted partners. This gives Wix users incredible flexibility to pick and choose software to enhance their site in any way needed.
Some highlights of the Wix App Market include:
Marketing/SEO apps
Store management tools for inventory, shipping, accounting and operations
Communication/engagement apps for live chat, appointment bookings, etc.
Powerful analytics and data tracking integrations
Multimedia apps for audio, video, animation effects and more
Industry-specific apps tailored to businesses like restaurants, hotels, etc.
As well as the App Market, Wix has a host of native solutions for all sorts of businesses—think a booking system, customer messaging, email marketing, eCommerce, payments and much more. Wix makes an effort to keep all of your business solutions under one roof, so you don’t have to switch between platforms or subscribe to third-party apps.
On the flip side, GoDaddy’s app market is much more limited with around 70 apps and integrations available for their website builder. This includes integrations for payments, email marketing, Google tools and select WooCommerce extensions.
Bottom line: Wix has far more apps that cover more ground than GoDaddy.
Security and reliability
For any business operating online, having a secure and reliable website is critical for protecting your data and maintaining a strong web presence. This is especially important if you collect customer data—be it their credit card details, email addresses or other personal info.
On the security front, both Wix and GoDaddy check the essential boxes:
SSL encryption to secure data transmissions
Website security scans (GoDaddy also guarantees daily malware scans) and monitoring
PCI compliance for eCommerce
DDoS mitigation against attacks
Despite being a closed system, GoDaddy has various hosting plans and some of those, such as its WordPress hosting are in fact open sourced. While being open source has its advantages, it can potentially open the door to more security vulnerabilities than a closed system like Wix’s. In other words, Wix sites are hosted on Wix's proprietary hosting infrastructure, ensuring very high security (though there are a few features on Wix that support custom coding). This means you benefit from having a dedicated infrastructure and fully managed, around-the-clock website security.
Learn more about website security on Wix.
In terms of reliability and hosting, Wix and GoDaddy both use cloud-based hosting with solid uptimes.
Bottom line: Overall, you can rest assured that both platforms take website security seriously.
Blog
These days, a robust blogging platform is crucial for standing out and connecting with your audience. A comprehensive blogging platform gives you full creative control and flexibility, ensuring your content not only looks professional but also reaches the right audience at the right time.
Wix gives you an intuitive blog maker right out of the box. With it, you get:
Blog post editor where you can text, images, videos, dividers, photo galleries, gifs, HTML code, polls, tables and more
AI tools for outlining, writing, editing and designing images for your blog
Ability to organize posts by custom categories and tags
Scheduling to publish posts at future dates
Social sharing options for posts, allowing visitors to easily share blogs on Facebook, Pinterest, X or other channels
Commenting system for reader engagement
Automatic SEO features like sitemaps and metadata
Page-level SEO settings and AI meta tag creator
By contrast, GoDaddy provides basic blogging functionality, including:
Blog post editor where you can add text, images, videos and dividers
Ability to add custom categories
Scheduling to publish posts at future dates
Social sharing options for posts, allowing visitors to easily share blogs on Facebook or X
SEO setup wizard for optimizing your blog homepage and posts
The GoDaddy blogging experience is fairly stripped down compared to Wix’s. You'll be more limited in design flexibility, UI customization and integrations.
On top of that, GoDaddy is limited in key blogging capabilities like RSS feeds, author profiles, commenting systems and SEO tools.
Bottom line: If blogging is a core part of your content marketing strategy, Wix offers a more integrated, full-featured blogging solution. GoDaddy's blogging tools will, however, cover the basics if you’re just looking for a simple solution.
Ecommerce
If you sell products or services online, you’ll find that both builders offer relatively robust eCommerce toolkits. From order management and online payment processing to shipping and tax calculations, the essentials are all covered—and you don’t need to be a tech wiz to figure them out.
Both include the following capabilities:
Expansive product catalog capabilities to sell unlimited products, both physical and digital
Secure payment processing through top gateways like PayPal, Stripe, Square and more
No transaction fees charged by the website builder itself
Mobile apps for convenient on-the-go store management
Flexible shipping configurations and accountancy integrations
Tools for creating discount codes, coupons and promotional sales
Inventory tracking and order management
Abandoned cart recovery features
Ability to sell offline with a POS system
The key difference lies in the fact that Wix tends to offer more advanced customization and integration options. For instance, GoDaddy is more limited in the number of product options and choices you can include in your store. You can offer up to three product options (color, material and/or size) for each product and 100 choices for your whole store. Meanwhile, on Wix, you can have up to six product options for each product, 100 choices for each product option and up to 1,000 variants per product.
Bottom line: Both platforms offer plenty of options and make it relatively simple to sell products and services online. Wix comes out ahead for having a higher level of customization and a larger number of eCommerce app integrations.
Learn more about building an eCommerce site with Wix.
Marketing and SEO
Both Wix and GoDaddy provide built-in marketing, advertising and SEO capabilities to help drive traffic to your website, though they take somewhat different approaches.
GoDaddy's marketing toolkit includes basics like:
Ability to create social media graphics and videos using templates (available for Facebook, Instagram and Google My Business)
Ability to design and schedule email campaigns, as well as create email automation
AI-powered SEO assistance (via Airo™) with keyword recommendations and optimization tips
AI assistance (via Airo™) for social media marketing, email marketing and branding
Its SEO capabilities are decent but more basic than Wix’s. You can’t manage canonical tags as easily (it involves some technical coding on GoDaddy, whereas on Wix, you can change canonical tags for any page via your Advanced SEO settings). You can only add breadcrumbs with a widget and they cannot be used in fixed headers.
If you’re a business that means business, you’re going to need social posts to engage and attract your audience. GoDaddy Studio is a useful arena, allowing you to create branded content, ads and graphics for social media marketing right within the builder. It has a nifty marketing calendar that helps you come up with campaign ideas. GoDaddy fills your calendar with post ideas (e.g., “product benefit,” “audience story,” “national days,” etc.).
Most of GoDaddy’s AI features—such as AI-powered text creation and logo creation—are available through Airo™, which is included with a new domain purchase.
Wix provides similar capabilities, but most are baked into its core platform and are paired with other in-depth capabilities. Experienced marketers will likely get more mileage from Wix's expanded feature set, which includes:
Ability to create social media graphics and videos using templates, plus add trackable links or AI-generated content (available for Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube and X)
Ability to design and schedule email marketing campaigns using templates or AI
Access to premium marketing/SEO app integrations like Google Merchant Center and Semrush
AI meta tag creator
AI blogging tools for creating outlines, writing entire posts or editing existing content
Ability to automate emails, tasks and more
Ability to create and manage referral programs
Built-in reports for tracking website sales, website performance and more
Bottom line: Both builders have marketing fundamentals, but Wix is better equipped to support large-scale, full-funnel marketing and SEO strategies. GoDaddy keeps things simple for those just getting started.
Customer support
Both Wix and GoDaddy offer 24/7 assistance through multiple channels like phone, chat and email. Response times for customer queries are usually handled within 24 hours. Wix does not provide direct phone support but offers a comparable call-back service.
The Wix Help Center offers an extensive knowledge base where you can troubleshoot just about anything. It also offers other resources like the Wix Blog, SEO Learning Hub, Wix Learn and a web design inspiration page. GoDaddy also has a help center, though it’s not as comprehensive, alongside a blog and community.
GoDaddy is unique in that it offers 24/7 phone support, something that few website platforms can boast.
Wix customer support offers:
24/7 callback support for English speakers and specific callback hours for other languages
Live chat (EN live chat available Monday through Friday, 2 a.m. to 6 p.m. ET; also available in other languages)
Ticket submission
Help center
GoDaddy customer support offers:
24/7 phone support for multiple languages (including English) and specific call hours for other languages in most countries
24/7 text support
24/7 chat support
Email
A help center
Bottom line: GoDaddy's 24/7 support lines are hard to match, but Wix’s Help Center with info on just about anything Wix-related comes close.
Pricing
GoDaddy positions itself as the slightly more affordable option compared to Wix's premium plans. GoDaddy’s website builder plans start at $10.99/month for basic websites and go up to $20.99/month for eCommerce sites. It’s worth mentioning though that you’ll need to purchase separate hosting, domain and security plans on top; only users with an annual WordPress plan, an annual Hosting plan or a Website Design services plan are eligible for a free domain.
Wix's pricing begins at $17/month for the Light plan, which includes a free domain. Ecommerce plans start at $29/month and the advanced developer platform “Business Elite” is $159/mo. Wix also has enterprise solutions for large corporations. These prices are case-dependent (as it depends on your unique needs). Keep in mind that all of Wix’s plans include hosting and security.
Both builders offer free plans with limited functionality.
Bottom line: GoDaddy has lower pricing tiers but they don’t include web hosting; you’ll need to purchase hosting at an extra cost. Though Wix is a bit more expensive, it includes hosting and is more feature-rich overall.
The verdict: Wix or GoDaddy, which builder should you choose?
At the end of the day, both Wix and GoDaddy are great for producing professional-looking websites. The real question is: Which aligns better with your specific needs?
Choose Wix if:
You want an intuitive, drag-and-drop editor that offers maximum design flexibility
You need robust eCommerce capabilities like dropshipping, multiple sales channels, etc.
You require more advanced marketing, blogging and SEO tools
You don't mind paying a premium for a more full-feature solution
Ready to get started? Create your website on Wix for free.
Go with GoDaddy if:
You want an easy, no-frills website-building experience
You're on a tight budget for a basic website
You prefer using open-source software that's portable to different hosts
Your website and business needs are relatively simple
Read also: Wix vs. Squarespace
How to migrate from GoDaddy to Wix
If you already have a GoDaddy website but want to switch to Wix, here's a quick overview of migrating your site:
Export content from GoDaddy: Consult GoDaddy's support on exporting your website files, text content, images and media.
Build your new Wix site: Sign up for a Wix plan and recreate your website using the exported content.
Connect your domain (optional): If you're keeping your existing domain, update the domain name servers to point to Wix.
Editor’s note: All pricing and information are current as of August 22, 2024.