Our research shows that against almost every metric, Wix is a better choice of web builder than Zyro. According to our latest testing, Wix is the best all-round website builder for small businesses, owed to its high overall ranking and extensive list of website features.
However, we think Zyro is the more affordable website builder for startups and budget-conscious SMEs, thanks to its many deals and discounts.
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Overall Score
Based on our in-depth research and user testing
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Price
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Free trial
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Visit
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BEST OVERALL FOR SMALL BUSINESS
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Zyro |
Wix |
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3.8
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4.8
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£2-£11 72% off with code STARTUPS |
£6.50-£22 per month |
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Based on our expert scoring alone, we’d have to say Wix is the better choice for SMEs with a little more flexibility in their budget. The platform ranks top of our list with a first-class score of 4.8 out of 5. That’s an entire mark above Zyro’s still-admirable 3.8 out of 5.
But break down those scores, and you’ll begin to see the benefits and drawbacks to each platform. For example, Zyro is considerably more affordable than Wix. It offers a basic version of the latter’s extensive, but complex, features list. But will Zyro still give you enough tools to design your dream company website? Which is the better solution based on your specific business needs?
Using our more than 20 years’ experience of working with small businesses, we’ve pulled together the below guide to answer these questions and more. We’ll give you an overview of the pros, cons, and costs of both Zyro and Wix.
We’ll pit old blood against new as we help you in your search to find the best small business website builder for UK SMEs.
Want to save time? We’ve come up with a snapshot view of our top picks for small business website builders. It’s completely free and based on our own expert research – which is why you won’t find Zyro there, because it's our fifth best. Read on to find out more about Zyro vs Wix.
This article will cover:
Zyro vs. Wix: head to head
The main differences between Zyro and Wix are:
- Zyro is considerably more affordable than Wix
- Wix has a free plan; Zyro offers a money-back guarantee
- Wix has better ecommerce functions than Zyro
- Wix has over 900 templates; Zyro has just over 125
Overall, Wix outscored Zyro in every web builder category we researched. Zyro is more affordable than Wix, and it’s definitely one to keep an eye on, but the latter is the clear winner in terms of quality of features versus price.
Zyro for small businesses
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Free plan Yes
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Price from £6.60 per month Use code STARTUPS to get up to 72% off Zyro's premium plans
- Affordable first term deals
- Easy to use for beginners
- Free domain
First launched in 2020, Zyro is a relatively new kid on the block in the website builder market. However, according to the company’s website, over 100,000 sites have already been built using its software. This modern builder has tonnes going for it, including a recently revamped drag-and-drop interface.
As a user-friendly, no-code software (we ranked it as our third-best website builder for ease of use), Zyro allows you to build a basic professional website, online store, or even just a portfolio quickly and cheaply. Costing £6.10 for its lowest-priced business tier, Zyro clearly appeals to SME and startup wallets by charging much lower rates than most of its rivals. Plus, it has tonnes of deals and offers available – it recently offered 87% off during Cyber Week 2021.
However, the platform’s more affordable pricing plans do limit the number of features you can use to design your business website. We think Zyro is definitely best suited to budget-conscious small business owners, or those that are looking to establish themselves online for the first time.
Wix for small businesses
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Free trial 14-day
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Price from £9.50 per month
- Flexible pricing plans
- Good balance of easy usability and complex features
- Customisable, 'drag-and-drop' templates
Industry leader Wix is our top website builder for SMEs, and we think it is the best all-round option for small business users. In 2020 alone Wix added 31 million users, and there’s a reason it keeps drawing in new customers: it came out on top in half of the performance categories we looked at in our research.
Small business owners need a lot of different features when building a website, as you’re likely to be doing all of the work yourself and gaining experience along the way. Wix does have a steeper learning curve than Zyro, as it is a comparatively more complex platform. However, its thorough knowledge centre and powerful customer support tools mean it can provide expert guidance to steer you through the process.
Costing £9.50 per month for its lowest-priced business tier (Wix Unlimited), Wix is also competitively priced. However, this is still a higher upfront cost than Zyro. On average Wix’s four pricing plans cost £17.59, whereas Zyro’s cost £8.23.
We would recommend Wix for any small business, but particularly for small online stores or digital firms conducting their business entirely online.
Read our full review of Wix to learn more about the benefits and drawbacks it offers small businesses.
- Website Features
4.9
- Design Flexibility
4.4
- Value for money
4
- Help and support
4.3
- Customer Score
4.6
- Ease of Use
4.4
- Website features
2.4
- Design flexibility
3.1
- Value for money
3.8
- Help and support
3.3
- Customer score
4.1
- Ease of use
4
Zyro pricing vs. Wix pricing: which is better value for money?
We compared Zyro Unleashed (£6.10 per month) and Wix Unlimited (£9.50 per month) to see how many features they each offer, and how high-quality the features are.
Our research found that Wix just pips Zyro in terms of better value for customers, thanks to its higher overall score in all of our six main research categories. Zyro might have the lower price, but users need to invest in a premium tier to gain access to the features that Wix offers at a lower level.
Zyro’s pricing plans have a huge range of deals available, meaning you can find yourself an absolute steal if you wait for well-known seasonal offers such as Cyber Monday or the New Year sales. But, while Wix has a generous five plans to choose from, Zyro only offers two for SMEs, which means there’s little opportunity to scale. Wix also provides a completely free plan, while Zyro does not (although you’ll have to accept a ‘.wix’ subdomain in your URL if you choose the free option).
Winner: It’s close, but Wix just takes it
The website builder market has tonnes of software options for you to choose from. Find the best for your business with our guide to the top web builders for small businesses.
Zyro pricing
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Price
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Free trial?
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Basic |
Unleashed |
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£6.70 per month 72% discount with code STARTUPS |
£9.20 per month 72% off with code STARTUPS |
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Zyro Basic
Yearly: £4.50
Monthly: £4.50
We recommend this plan if you’re freelancing or running a side hustle. As with most lower-tiered payment plans, it only gives limited allowances for certain important website features like storage (1 GB) and bandwidth (3 GB).
Zyro Unleashed
Yearly: £6.10 per month
Monthly: £6.10 per month
This is the best Zyro plan for small businesses. It offers many advanced marketing tools to help you grow your website, such as Google Analytics. Also included in the plan is unlimited bandwidth and storage, which means you’ll be able to host thousands of website visitors without breaking a sweat.
Users also get blogging tools, 125+ templates, a newly-added ecommerce tool with Stripe payment integration, and a messenger live chat.
Another benefit of Zyro Unleashed is that it comes with a free domain. While Zyro’s basic plan doesn't come with one, all of its other plans permit you a free domain for the first year.
Are there discounts available?
Zyro offers plenty of discounts, and it’s unlikely you’ll ever pay full price for a plan.
Wix pricing
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Price
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Free trial?
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Combo |
Unlimited |
VIP |
Business Basic |
Business Unlimited |
Business VIP |
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£13 per month |
£17 per month |
£22 per month |
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Wix Free
Yearly: Free
Monthly: Free
If you choose to download Wix’s freemium version then you really will be spending £0 on a free-forever platform. But you’ll also be lumbered with Wix advertisements and banners on your site, so it’s not something we’d recommend if you need a professional-looking business page.
As a free trial, and a way to get better acquainted with the platform before you make a decision on purchasing, it’s a great way to get started.
Wix Connect Domain
Yearly: £3.50 per month
Monthly: £5 per month
Costing just £3.50 per month when billed annually, this plan is the cheapest of Wix’s paid-for tiers. But again, you’ll be stuck with Wix ads and will have similar storage limitations to Zyro Basic. You will have 24/7 customer support, but there’s little else to brag about here.
Wix Combo
Yearly: £6.50 per month
Monthly: £8.50 per month
Wix Combo is for small businesses that are just beginning their journey. It offers 10 GB of storage and 2 GB of bandwidth (enough for around 300 visitors a day).
This plan is a solid solution if you’re just looking to gain experience in early-stage website building, or to market your business to online consumers. But there are still some useful website features missing, such as visitor analytics.
Wix Unlimited
Yearly: £9.50 per month
Monthly: £12 per month
Most commonly used by entrepreneurs and small businesses, Wix Unlimited is both competitively priced and comes with a generous list of elements that allows you to design both a stunning and functional website.
Three of the biggest benefits from Wix Unlimited are unlimited bandwidth, the site booster app (for search engine optimisation so you’ll rank higher in web searches) and the visitor analytics app, which you can use to measure who is visiting your site. All of these will enable you to improve your site’s performance, which is why we think it’s the best choice for growing small businesses.
You’ll also get:
- Your own domain
- An SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) certificate for secure data transfers
- No Wix Ads
- 10 GB of storage and unlimited bandwidth
- One hour of video
- Wix vouchers and access to Premium Apps (yearly plans only)
Wix VIP
Yearly: £19 per month
Monthly: £23 per month
At £19 per month, Wix VIP is the most complex Wix plan that can help to build the ultimate business website from scratch. You definitely don’t need the extra tools it provides, but they do have some handy benefits.
For example, you’ll be given VIP, skip-the-queue customer support, 35 GB of storage space, and five video hours. We’d recommend this plan only for SMEs who’ll be hosting large amounts of data or videos, such as training providers.
Although we’re looking at Wix the website builder in this review, the platform is also an excellent ecommerce option for those looking to set up an online store or host ads. Visit Wix to find out more about what it can help you sell online.
Are there discounts available?
Wix’s promo codes aren’t as generous as those offered by Zyro. You’ll still be able to find frequent deals and discounts if you keep an eye out for them on the Wix website, but they won’t make Wix as cheap as Zyro.
Read more in our dedicated Wix pricing guide.
Did you know?
According to Web FX, third-party website designers can cost anything between £9,000 to £112,000. This is why website builders are such a good alternative for small businesses, which typically have less resources than large-scale companies or enterprises.
Read our full guide to learn more about website costs for small businesses.
Best for website features: Wix
There are similarities between Zyro and Wix when it comes to website features. Both platforms have thorough SEO tools and integrate well with social media. As for additional functionalities, they have nearly identical lists, with both platforms offering special features like logo makers and name generators.
These two software products are also both excellent at website hosting for mobile users – a key consideration in today’s smartphone-first world. In November 2021, over 54% of websites were visited on a mobile device.
Both Zyro and Wix also performed well in our site speed test, receiving a shared 87 out of 100 in our results to place joint third.
But despite these fairly equal scores, a clear leader emerged in other ways. While we gave Zyro just 20% for quality of features, Wix’s extensive app market and impressive marketing tools contributed to a huge overall score of 100%.
There’s almost no tool missing from Wix’s arsenal, and unlike other complex website builders, it’s still fully customisable without code. Plus, thanks to recent improvements to its website features – including blogging tool updates and more international options – our most recent research has seen its feature score jump up by 18%.
In contrast, Zyro’s feature list reads more like a list of things you can’t do. Its lower price point means that unlike Wix, you can’t have a customer login, or password protected pages. You can’t archive or schedule posts, or have comments on blog pages. There’s also no app market, which means you won’t be able to get any of these tools through third-party plugins or extensions.
According to our research, the only features area where Zyro significantly outperforms Wix is storage capacity – you’ll need to pay almost £10 more for unlimited storage with the latter.
Winner: Wix, by a long mile
Best for design flexibility: Wix
Brand, UX and design
Thanks to its recent updates, Wix has skyrocketed up our rankings, increasing its design score by 10%. Zyro scored similarly well.
In terms of typography and colours, our user feedback showed that every element across both website builders was clear and consistent. This is valuable from a branding perspective.
Did you know?
38% of respondents in a 2021 survey by GoodFirms said that outdated design was their top reason for leaving a website.
Design flexibility
Because it’s the more complex platform, Wix outperforms Zyro when it comes to design flexibility. You can do pretty much anything you want to your pages, including changing colours and image sizes, swapping out images, and adding new social posts. Unlike with Zyro, you can also make use of clipart and stock imagery.
Zyro offers very little in terms of customisation. As its templates are aesthetically pleasing and well designed, this shouldn’t matter too much – but it could be frustrating in future if you want to rebrand or drastically alter your site. Still, Zyro does allow you to swap out templates, unlike Wix.
We have to score Zyro slightly lower than Wix in this category due to these limitations, and also due to the number of templates available (over 100 versus over 500, respectively), but both platforms do well to make attractive options.
Mobile editor
It’s rare to see one website builder that’s advanced enough to let you edit your website from your mobile – but both Wix and Zyro support this function. Both platforms will let you host your website from either desktop or mobile, and you can also edit from the comfort of your own phone.
Still, if you’re editing with either Wix or Zyro, any changes you make on your mobile will automatically be updated on the desktop, meaning you won't get to preview the desktop view before approving changes – a minor drawback in this otherwise high-scoring round.
Overall winner: Wix
Best for help and support
Wix and Zyro offer similar levels of help and support. If you have an issue or question to raise you can contact both platforms’ sales teams via live chat and over social media. Zyro doesn’t have a phone support function, but it does allow you to contact its sales team via email, whereas Wix offers the reverse.
For help online, there is a community forum and a knowledge centre available with each platform. Wix’s knowledge centre is slightly easier to navigate than Zyro’s, but it also has fewer pages, so you’re more likely to require a specialist to talk you through any problems you encounter.
It’s a tough one to call, but we think Wix’s restore tools mean it pips Zyro over the line. Depending on your payment plan, you’ll be able to access both an autosave feature and a restore option (unlike with Zyro) which means you won’t face the risk of crashing your website if you do run into trouble.
Winner: Wix
Best for customer score: Wix
Understandably, in terms of brand recognition, Wix came out on top as the industry leader for the website builder market. However, on popular customer comparison websites such as Trustpilot, it was Zyro that received the higher praise with an impressive 4.3 out of 5.
However, this is likely down to Wix’s much larger customer base (over 4.5 million downloads compared to Zyro’s 11,000). 84% of our testers said they would recommend Wix to a friend, compared to 82% for Zyro.
Winner: Wix by a small margin
Best for ease of use: Wix
For getting your website up and running quickly, Zyro wins. Its simple drag-and-drop interface means even complete website builder novices will be able to get stuck in and start adding elements within minutes.
Wix’s interface is a little more intuitive than Zyro’s. You can add content blocks to the former, while the latter requires you to add pages, which makes for a difficult layout to navigate.
At first glance, Wix’s longer list of features can be overwhelming for newcomers. However, once you’ve gotten past the early learning stages, its smarter interface makes it easier to grasp than Zyro. As a result, 88% of our testers said they found Wix easy to use, compared to 82% of Zyro testers.
Winner: Another tight round that's narrowly won by Wix
What are some good alternatives to Zyro and Wix?
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Overall Score
Based on our in-depth research and user testing
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Free plan
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Free trial
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Cheapest paid plan
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Visit
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Wix |
Zyro |
Squarespace |
Weebly |
GoDaddy |
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4.8
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3.8
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4.8
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4.0
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4.4
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Connect Domain – £3.50 per month |
£6.70 per month |
Personal – £10 per month 10% off with code STARTUPS10 |
Connect – £4 per month |
Basic – £5.59 per month |
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As you can see from the table above, Zyro is the most affordable website builder amongst the top software solutions we surveyed, with all of its pricing plans costing less than any other competitors.
Wix costs more than Zyro but it is still priced competitively, comparing well to rival Squarespace.
Final verdict
We’ll put it simply: if you’re an established business based largely online, and have experience using web builder software, choose Wix. Its admirable app market and stunning design features make it a winning choice for SMEs that want the flexibility to design their perfect online presence. Plus, it has a generous free plan for you to try the platform out before you buy.
But if you’re a small business owner who’s new to the online world, or looking to save on both time and money, then Zyro is your best choice. It’s beginner friendly, affordable, and comes with great help and support tools to get you up and running quickly. Ecommerce SMEs, or those that have a lot of online visitors, might struggle with Zyro. But for those whose business has a physical base, such as a coffee shop, it’s a great platform to launch a low-maintenance website from.
Zyro vs. Wix FAQs
Is Zyro a good website builder?
Overall, Zyro is an easy-to-use, simple drag-and-drop website builder. It has fewer design features than most of its rivals, but this can be a positive or a negative depending on what you’re looking for.
Through this platform, setting up your own website becomes less time consuming and more affordable – meaning it’s a good website builder for beginners or budget-conscious SMEs. Plus, as it’s relatively new to the market, we expect exciting things from Zyro in the future.
Is Zyro better than Wix?
Wix outscored Zyro in every web builder category we marked it on. Zyro is more affordable than Wix, and its age means it’s definitely one to keep an eye on, but the latter is the clear winner in terms of quality of features versus price.
Is Wix’s free version good?
Wix’s free plan is generous in the context of the web builder market, as most platforms tend not to offer a freemium version. In terms of what it gives users, it’s definitely not suitable for small businesses as it has significant drawbacks in storage limits and unavoidable Wix advertisements.
We’d recommend it for users wanting to test out the platform before coming to a decision on purchasing.
Is Zyro better for small businesses?
Zyro’s simplified user experience and lower payment tiers mean it is aimed at SMEs, both digitally or physically based, that are just starting out and need an online presence quickly and cheaply.
In terms of value for money, we think Wix offers more, and it’s a good idea to upgrade to the latter as soon as your business is able. But specifically for early-stage growth, or those small business owners who are working with stricter budgets, we would recommend Zyro over Wix.
via https://www.AiUpNow.com
December 10, 2021 at 05:42AM by Helena Young, Khareem Sudlow
