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Well, not dummies plural, just this dummy.
My name’s Thurman and I don’t understand how websites ‘work’ and never have. I’ve no interest in it all. Leaves me cold. However, when I was made redundant 3.5 years ago and started my own business, I needed a website.
Didn’t have a clue what to do, or who to go to for help, so I built my own with Wix. Their website builder seemed straightforward enough, my tired little brain seemed to manage handling something new, and I’m quietly proud of the resulting website. It works well and looks good.
However.
Can some techno-head tell me (in words a five-year old can understand) if I can transfer the website to another host? Or am I tied to Wix forever because I built it with them?
If so, who do you recommend?
Annual renewal for hosting at Wix is £72 +VAT. Is that a lot? It seems a lot. What’s to stop them charging what they want and increasing the cost every year? My email package is handled by someone else, as is the domain, so that cost is just for hosting.
Wix (and similar tools) are not very easy/impossible to export from, especially if you are not particularly tech savvy. £72/year is very cheap.
I'm sure someone will come along and tell you how you could export the site using some open source tool and host it on a server in your bedroom, but given you have already said you are not massively tech savvy I'd say you have a pretty good deal already and should just stick with it, especially if you are happy with how it looks and works.
looking round you could get hosting/domain/mail inclusive for below £40/year but this does then need some tech knowledge for setup and edits so a lot depends if you like the convenience of wix
being a business you should at least be able to put it through the books....
What’s to stop them charging what they want and increasing the cost every year?
Nothing, and it's a reasonable concern. Wix make it easy to build a site, but the flip side is you're locked into their proprietary platform.
The standard answer is get a hosting account and install WordPress. WordPress is open source and so if you get fed up with your hosting provider you can move.
For reference, my company sells suitable hosting accounts for £25+VAT/year (this will do your email too) and UK domains for £6+VAT, BUT you will probably find getting your site up and running quite a steep learning curve compared to Wix.
So if you're interested in learning a bit more about how things work then maybe look at moving, but if not it's probably a lot of work to save not a lot of money.
This will be me in 6 months - I'd like to go wordpress (or Dreamweaver as I have access to it) but am fearful when it comes to it I don't have the time/inclination to learn what I'd need to do the do.
Question - can wix/squarespace host email too?
Nothing, and it’s a reasonable concern.
Except there's little evidence to suggest it's a reasonable concern, both Wix and Squarespace have been around for over 15 years+ yet this has never happened. There's enough competition in this space to keep prices competitive.
There's definitely legitimate reasons to go down the Wordpress/Hosting route, but I don't think the chances of a massive Wix price hike is one of them.
This will be me in 6 months – I’d like to go wordpress (or Dreamweaver as I have access to it) but am fearful when it comes to it I don’t have the time/inclination to learn what I’d need to do the do.
Question – can wix/squarespace host email too?
Wordpress is the software platform, Dreamweaver is a tool to write/test software. Two different things.
I normally recommend Ionos for small hosting ( https://www.ionos.com/). Their email hosting it pretty good. I believe they have one click installers for Wordpress, and they also handle other things like SSL certificates and domains.
If anyone gets stuck setting up this kind of thing, feel free to drop me a DM. Happy to point in the right direction.
I think it's always reasonable to be conscious of where you're locked in to something proprietary. For as long as it's a simple website that can be easily recreated elsewhere, it's probably not a significant risk.
Thanks, team, interesting* stuff.
For ease and convenience it seems like I'm better off where I am, then. Wix is pretty-much idiot-proof to use and I'd waste a world o' time learning new skillz with other platforms/tools/software.
(*It's not really).
If you are not technical and are worrying about £72 don’t even think of transferring / moving or doing anything if it already works. The pain, bill and time spent that you could spend on your actual business will end up much bigger.
Wix are not going to increase their prices at any crazy rate because they have competition from Squarespace / Weebly / Webflow, Wordpress and many more.
Focus on your actual business rather than your website. So many people out there making £10k a month with nothing more than an Insta and FB page. Conversely many making nothing spending £10k on a website before they make £1. Once you’re doing decent MRR you can move focus back to website.
To actually answer your question directly. If you are not technical, have little budget and your website is not Netflix level complex the most efficient way to move platform would be to setup with one of the competitors. You can then just cut / paste your content into a new template.
So your website works and it costs £72 + VAT a year for hosting? And you are considering moving to save money/protect yourself from price increases? What is going to stop the place you move to from increasing their prices? And how long (ie, how many of your billable hours) will it take you to move?
And £72 a year is nothing. Our cheapest plan (which is about to be retired) is £15.99 a month.
Just to tangent slightly,
You say you "needed" a website. What for? If it's a key part of drumming up business, basically an advert / sales pitch for you, I'd stop worrying about ten quid a month in hosting and budget for a professional web designer. This is my "CV" argument from the other day; if you've knocked up a My First Website which looks like it's just fallen out of Geocities as your business presence, what does that say about the standard of the rest of your work?
For context, I was a web developer for a couple of years albeit a long time ago, and if I needed a professional site for my business tomorrow I'd pay someone (handsomely) to do it.