Wix is the easy-to-use drag-and-drop builder aimed at owners building their own site. Webflow is the design-first platform aimed at designers building sites for clients. Both can produce a site. Only one survives the next three years.
The maths at month 1, 12 and 36
Wix's "Business Elite" plan is $59 a month in 2026, including hosting. Add a template ($120 once-off), a domain ($30 a year), basic apps ($240 a year). Year one: about $1,100. Three-year total: around $2,500.
Webflow's CMS plan is $29 a month. Add design and build (a one-off, $5,000 to $12,000 depending on scope), domain ($30 a year). Year one: $5,400 at the lower end. Three-year total: around $6,000.
On paper Wix wins by $3,500. The catch — that comparison assumes the site does the same job. Most of the time, it doesn't.
Performance — the Core Web Vitals truth
We pulled Core Web Vitals from 20 sites we audited in 2025 (10 Wix, 10 Webflow), same business size, same niche.
- Wix LCP (mobile) : average 4.2 seconds.
- Webflow LCP (mobile) : average 1.9 seconds.
- Wix passing rate : 30% of pages green.
- Webflow passing rate : 80%.
That 2.3-second gap matters. Slow pages convert worse and rank worse. Compounded across a year of paid traffic, it costs more than the upfront difference between the two platforms.
Ownership — who has your data when you leave
Wix doesn't let you export your site. No code export, no template export, no content export beyond a basic CSV of blog posts. If you fire your designer, you keep Wix. If you fire Wix, you lose everything.
Webflow exports to clean HTML, CSS and JavaScript. Any developer can pick it up. The CMS content exports to CSV. The site can move to any host. That's how it should be.
Wix is right for…
One-product shops, side hustles, hobbyists. Anything where the site is a brochure that doesn't have to do real lifting. If you're spending under $200 a month on traffic, Wix is fine. The performance gap won't dent your conversions because you don't have enough conversions to dent.
Webflow is right for…
Service businesses running paid ads. Sites with a content velocity (regular blog posts, case studies). Anyone who plans to keep iterating the site over years. The kind of build documented in the day-one checklist needs the underlying platform to keep up.
What we build clients on
Webflow, mostly. Squarespace for the lowest tier where speed-to-launch matters more than ceiling. We won't build on Wix — not for design reasons, for the export problem. We'd rather lose the brief than hand a client a future hostage situation. More on the broader platform call in the websites service and the pricing breakdown.
The takeaway
Wix wins on month-one cost. Webflow wins on year-three cost. Pick the platform that matches how long you plan to keep the site, not how fast you can launch it. For most established Australian SMBs we work with, the answer is Webflow — and the extra build cost pays back inside the first year of paid traffic.