Moving from WordPress to Wix What Moves, What Breaks, and How It's Done
WordPress isn't the problem for most people who leave it. The maintenance is. Plugins needing updates, a theme that broke after one, a hosting bill, a security plugin, and a developer you have to call for a change that should take two minutes.
What transfers
Your blog posts
Wix has a proper importer for WordPress posts, and it works with both WordPress.com and self-hosted WordPress.org sites. It brings across post text, images, videos, original publication dates and times, and the alt text on your images. Your WordPress site isn't touched by the import.
Your images and video
As part of the post import. Images inside your pages need re-uploading and usually re-cropping to fit the new layouts properly.
Your domain and email
Your domain is yours. Email addresses on it keep working, and I handle the settings so nothing stops arriving during the move.
Your search rankings
Provided the redirects are handled. That's the next section, and it's the one that matters.
What the importer doesn't bring
- Drafts and scheduled posts — only published posts come across
- Posts behind a password or restricted to certain users
- Code you pasted into a post by hand, like an embed or a snippet
- Some formatting, so the posts are worth reading through afterwards
What has to be rebuilt
Your design
WordPress themes and page builders don't exist on Wix, so the site is recreated. Usually the good news — most sites I move were built on a theme years ago and the owner has been working around its limits ever since.
Your pages
Wix's importer handles blog posts, not pages. Home, services, about and contact get rebuilt. On a normal small business site that's a handful of pages and it isn't the slow part.
Your forms
Contact Form 7, Gravity Forms, WPForms — all replaced with Wix forms. A good moment to check where your enquiries have actually been going. I've found more than one site quietly emailing a developer who left years ago.
Anything a plugin was doing
Booking, membership, e-commerce, calculators, directories. Some have a direct Wix equivalent, some need building, and some are the reason I'd suggest a custom app instead. This is the part that decides whether your migration is simple, so it's the first thing I look at.
The part that protects your rankings
When a page changes address, you have to tell Google where it went. That signpost is called a 301 redirect, and it passes the ranking value from the old address to the new one. No signpost, and Google treats the old page as gone and the new one as a stranger.
Wix does not create these automatically
Its own documentation says so. Imported posts land on new addresses with nothing pointing the old ones at them. Import your blog and stop there, and you've moved your content while leaving your rankings behind.
Redirects are uploaded in a spreadsheet
Two columns, old address and new, with a limit of 500 per file — so a large archive goes up in batches. Anything past 500 in one file is quietly ignored, which is a good way to lose a chunk of a blog without noticing.
And one people forget
If your site was verified in Google Search Console with a code embedded in the old site, that code has to be added to the new one — or you lose access to your own search data at exactly the moment you need to watch it.
I build the redirect map from the inventory of your existing addresses, upload it in batches, then check the ones that mattered most by hand rather than trusting the upload report.
How a WordPress to Wix move works, step by step
This is the order I follow on every migration. Your WordPress site keeps running until the very end.
List every address your site has
Before anything moves, I pull every page and post address from your WordPress sitemap and from Google Search Console, so I know which pages people actually find you through.
Check what your plugins are doing
Forms, bookings, a shop, a membership area, a calculator. Each one needs a Wix equivalent or a rebuild, and this is what decides how simple the move is.
Build the Wix site out of sight
The new site is built and tested on a temporary Wix address. Your WordPress site stays live the whole time, so nobody sees a half-finished site.
Import your blog posts
Wix's WordPress importer brings the published posts across. I read through them afterwards to fix formatting and anything the importer skipped.
Rebuild the pages and forms
Home, services, about and contact are recreated in the new design, and every form is tested so enquiries reach the right inbox.
Map old addresses to new ones
Every old address that's changing gets a 301 redirect to its new home, uploaded in batches of up to 500, with the important ones checked by hand.
Switch the domain over
Your domain is pointed at Wix at a quiet time, with your email settings kept exactly as they were so no mail goes missing.
Reconnect Google and watch
Search Console is verified on the new site and the new sitemap is submitted. I watch it for the first few weeks, and only then is it safe to cancel your old hosting.
What decides the cost
Every site is different, so I quote after I've looked at yours. These are the things that move the price:
- How many pages and posts you have, and how many of them bring in visitors
- What your plugins do, especially bookings, a shop or a members' area
- Whether you want the design kept close to what you have or redone
- How many old addresses need redirects
Should you actually move?
Wix is a good fit if
You run a small or mid-sized business, you want to make your own edits, you never want to think about updates or hosting again, and your site is essentially pages, a blog, forms, and maybe bookings or a small shop.
Stay on WordPress if
You have a large, complex site with heavy custom development, you need something Wix genuinely can't do, or you have a developer already handling it well.
Consider an app instead if
Half of what you keep describing is logins, dashboards, records or workflows. That's software, and building it as a website is the expensive route.
Custom apps and toolsCommon questions
How long does moving from WordPress to Wix take?
For a typical small business site with a handful of pages and a blog, it's usually a matter of weeks, not months. Sites with a shop, bookings or a large archive take longer. I give you a timeline before I start.
How long will my site be down?
It isn't down. Your WordPress site stays live while the Wix site is built and tested. The switch takes minutes and I do it at a quiet time for your business.
Will I lose traffic?
Expect some movement for a few weeks while Google re-reads everything. That settles. Lasting losses come from missing redirects, which is the part I take seriously — I check Search Console for the first few weeks afterwards as part of the job.
Can I keep my domain name?
Yes. Your domain isn't tied to WordPress. It stays yours and simply points somewhere new.
Do I have to cancel my hosting?
Not immediately, and you shouldn't. Keep it running until the new site is confirmed working and the redirects are live. Then cancel it and stop paying for it.
What if I want to leave Wix later?
You'd face the same kind of project in reverse — your content comes with you, the design doesn't. That's true of every platform move, and it's worth knowing before you commit rather than after.
Is Wix bad for SEO?
That reputation is a decade out of date. Wix gives you control over page titles, descriptions, addresses and redirects. What decides whether you rank is your content and your redirects, not the logo on the platform.