Wix website builder is really easy to use. Everything begins with the selection of the appropriate theme for your future website. Once this is done, every single element you see in front of you can be clicked and edited. You can adjust size and colour, move things around, delete items and add new ones through simple drag-and-drop.

Entire sections of the page can be dragged around, freeing up space for new elements or just making the design slicker. And even if you mess things up accidentally, you can undo actions and even load a previously saved version of the site.

The creative freedom is staggering. Admittedly, this could be a bit overwhelming at first but after you spend an hour or two fooling around with the design choices you would appreciate the limitless possibilities. There are helpful videos to speed up the learning process.

To make things even easier, your design ideas are optimized automatically for cell phones. However, if you so desire, you can edit manually the mobile version of the site as well.

As I said, choosing the best theme is the first step of the Wix website creation. What I didn’t mention previously is that this might take a while due to the simple fact that there are over 400 templates at your disposal.

They might be separated in 16 categories to streamline the process, but still, take your time and choose carefully. Each theme is highly customizable but you cannot switch between them due to the drag-and-drop freedom of the website builder.

You can insert elements absolutely anywhere, but this makes the eventual change of themes nigh impossible, technically speaking. Wix are working on it but for the time being there is no specific information when this feature will become available.

I haven’t browsed through all the themes, but the 20-odd I have seen left a memorable impression. Their good looks aside, it is the functionality that really shines.

For instance, I made a site for a burger joint. The respective theme came with an already built-in menu, the possibility for online order, a section with the location of my restaurant and a page about the way the food is prepared. Phone for orders was displayed prominently, together with the physical address.

This theme had all ground covered right off the bat and this is valid for virtually all Wix themes.

Another really awesome feature is ADI (Artificial Design Intelligence). A creative bot with growing possibilities, ADI can help you flesh out your site in no time.

Loading speed is a weak point for practically all website builders. There are technical reasons behind it, which determine slower average loading times when compared to custom-built and optimized web pages.

It is worth mentioning that optimizing the performance of any website takes some effort and planning. Improving speed and performance is time-consuming, but it is well worth the effort.

Wix support centre provides insight on a handful of good optimization practices. Study them and apply them as the average grade of speed tests with the Google Speed Testing tool was the average 66/100 for desktop and the poor 49/100 for mobile sites. These numbers were derived from testing four different sites. All of them were image-heavy, but this is not a good excuse for poor performance.

The results suggest that the Wix backend could use some optimization, but they were also indicative that the site owners could put more effort in speeding up their sites. One of the tested pages scored 87/100, clearly demonstrating the power of proper on-page and image compression.

Wix App Market is the place where you can get really lost. There are hundreds of apps, both free and paid. Many apps improve the functionality of the web page, integrating a lot of cool stuff and making it more attractive. After spending a few minutes there you will start wondering how a site can do without them.

A word of advice, do not go overboard with the apps, as they can slow down your site.

SEO is the most controversial subject not only in various Wix website builder reviews, but in the hosting world as a whole. How to do it best and what benefits it brings are hotly debated topics. In my opinion, SEO is absolutely necessary. The question is how much effort to put into it.

Wix provides the tools to make your site discoverable even in its free plan. Setting up all the necessary information to help search engine bots crawl and rank your site higher is very easy and simple. There is a wizard in place to take you through the process.

If you desire to learn more about SEO in general and SEO for Wix in particular, the support centre covers the basics. Also, the tools you’d have at your disposal with the premium plans would allow you to hold the ranking destiny of your page firmly in your hands.

You can have tremendous help on the way up as Google Analytics can be integrated in all Wix websites easily, helping with traffic analysis and further optimization.

When paid for a whole year, Wix hosting plans start at $4.50/mo and reach $24.50/mo. The smallest plan, same as the free plan, displays Wix ads on your website and does not include a domain name.

All plans have limited hosting space and only the Unlimited and VIP plans come with unlimited bandwidth.

eCommerce and VIP plans provide an advanced online shopping cart as well. While you can integrate shopping platform in all plans, including the free one, the advanced Wix solution comes with greater functionality and better looks.

With the 3 most expensive plans you would get SEO booster package as well.

All paid plans include support over phone (via callback) and email, whereas the free one relies mostly on the help centre, which has pretty much everything covered and the Wix community, which is huge.