Wix.com

Wix offers four premium plans and one free plan.

You get a lot with Wix's Free plan. You get access to beautiful templates, blogging and a great selection of apps. If all you need is a simple static site, the free version is a good plan, although there are a lot of ads to contend with and e-commerce is very limited. If you are using Wix's free website builder, it includes ad logos on the side and at the bottom of your website. All free website builders come with ads on your website, but Wix's is really prominent. To remove the ads, you will need to upgrade to one of their premium plans. There is no time limit for their free plan but you will need to consider upgrading to get more features. If you subscribe to their premium plans, Wix offers a 14-day risk-free trial period.

If you want to setup an online store, you will need to upgrade to a premium plan. Wix offers four levels of premium plans.

The first level is the Combo Plan. This plan is designed for personal websites and come with a 1-yr free domain. It offers 3GB of storage and 2GB of monthly bandwidth. It also removes the Wix ads on your website. This plan is offered at $9.25/month, billed yearly. If you don't want to commit to a 12-month billing term, there is a month-to-month option available for $12.95/month.

The next level is the Unlimited Plan. This plan is designed for entrepreneurs and freelancers and it offers unlimited monthly bandwidth. It also gives you the Site Booster app and the Form Builder app, as well as $300 worth of ad credits. This plan is offered at $12.42/month, billed yearly. If you don't want to commit to a 12-month billing term, there is a month-to-month option available for $15.95/month.

If you need eCommerce capabilities, you will need to look into the eCommerce Plan. With the exception of unlimited bandwidth, this plan comes with all the features of the Unlimited Plan plus the Online Store app. Feature of the Online Store app includes payment options, shipping and tax settings, inventory tracking, newsletter/marketing tools and more. This plan is offered at $16.17/month, billed yearly. If you don't want to commit to a 12-month billing term, there is a month-to-month option available for $19.90/month.

The top tier premium plan is the VIP Plan and it builds upon the Unlimited and the eCommerce plans. It come with unlimited bandwidth, 20GB of storage, the Site Booster and the Form Builder apps, as well as the Online Store app. It also gives you priority phone support and a professional site review. This plan is offered at $24.92/month, billed yearly. If you don't want to commit to a 12-month billing term, there is a month-to-month option available for $29.90/month.

Wix's collection of templates is unparalleled. They offer a huge selection of stunning templates for every imaginable business. Their templates are modern, mobile-optimized, user-friendly, and look gorgeous.

Wix's templates are customizable. Although you won't have access to the template's HTML or CSS codes, you can customize the template color scheme, background, layout and font styles. Wix offers pre-selected color palettes and font styles so you don't have to worry about mismatched colors or fonts on your website.

When choosing a template, Wix lets you see a full preview of it – you can play around with the functionality of the template, clock on pages and products, navigate all over the preview site – all without commitment to start editing. This gives users more confidence about a template before using it, which is very important as you can't switch to another template midway through the editing process. This is one of the common Wix complaints. So, pick your template carefully before committing.

Wix's site builder is not the most minimalist. It can look over-whelming at first because it gives you a ton of different functions and tools, each with their own set of options and settings available to configure. Furthermore, literally anywhere you click brings up the help menu. While this is helpful on complex tools that need the extra information, it can get frustrating and annoying fast.

In addition, Wix is a blank canvas editor and it gives you a lot of control as well as creative flexibility and freedom. For example, allowing you to drag and drop elements anywhere on their website. If you are a designer, this is a good thing. But unrestrained customization may often result in less attractive site designs. If you are new to website building, your website may end up looking messy and unstructured.

Wix's editor comes with the Wix App Market that allows you to extend your website with tools like forums, guestbooks, membership pages, online booking and many more. There is no doubt the App Market is what puts Wix ahead of its competitors. Wix's App Market offers the ultimate site customization potential by offering a huge selection (over 200) of apps and widgets for you to integrate into your Wix website. The apps are fully-integrated so that they are easily installed in a few single clicks.

There are free and paid apps developed either by Wix or third-party providers, including Adsense, MailChimp, Shopify, Instagram, DropBox, OpenTable, iTunes, Etsy, PayPal and more. Need a shopping cart? Live Chat or powerful marketing tools (ie. newsletters and coupons)? There are also reservation and scheduling tools, contact form builders and more.

There's probably a Wix app for any function you need and if there isn't you can always add your own widget or app using the Custom HTML function.

If you are an artist or photographer, you will love the range of photo galleries, image editing and animation options Wix has to offer.

Wix offers a ton of different photo gallery options: grid galleries (including masonry, collage, animated, honeycomb), full width galleries (including slideshow, image strip), slider galleries, and 3D galleries.

You will also find third-party gallery apps in the Wix App Market, including the Galerie Social Gallery and Revolution Slider apps. While having the different options is great, it can get frustrating for users who simply want a simple gallery and don't have time to sift through all the different gallery types.

In addition to uploading your own images, Wix lets you add images directly from Facebook, Flickr, Instagram and Picasa accounts. You also have access to their free stock library and if you need, purchase images from their Bigstock collection.

After uploading an image, you can edit it using the powerful image editor, located within the Wix site builder. Wix offers an integrated Aviary image editor. With the image editor, you can customize the image's brightness, contrast, saturation, focus and sharpness. It also lets you reduce red eyes on photos, cover up blemish or anything that needs to be covered up. You can even add text and stickers to your images using the image editor.

Then again, if you need more photo editing functions, you will always find third-party applications for that in the Wix Apps Market.

All Wix premium plans come with a free domain name. Note that this offer is for a 1-year term, after which the domain can be renewed at the then-current rate, normally between $14.95 to $15.95/year.

If you already have a domain name, you can transfer it to Wix as well. Doing so not only lets you keep your existing registration period (so that no term is lost), plus Wix will extend your domain registration by one year for free.

Once you have purchased your domain, Wix lets you set up custom domain email addresses, such as [email protected]. Wix has partnered with Google so you can use Google Apps (Gmail) for your domain emails.

Your Wix/Gmail service includes 1 personalized email address, 25GB inbox size, access to Google Calendar and Google Docs, and more.

Wix offers support through phone, email, knowledgebase and a community forum. Wix also offers hundreds of video tutorials and walkthroughs.

You can also get tips and updates on the Wix Blog.

In terms of phone support, you can call Wix directly on Mondays to Fridays, from 6am to 5pm PST. Wix also offers a call backs service so you can schedule a call with Wix. Wix offers phone support in English, Spanish and Portuguese.

Wix also gives its VIP plan uses a direct number to the VIP support team.

If you are in the creative field, there is no question – Wix is the builder to use. Wix is very good for impressive presentations – ideal for artists, bands, photographers, restaurants and hospitality. Wix offers a lot of different functions and design flexibility in their site builder, which could take some time to learn. Stunning, customizable templates and powerful applications, together with visually impressive images will help you make a professional impression and set your website apart from others. There is, however, one drawback: you must decide at the start which template you wish to use because thereafter, you cannot switch to a different template. Also keep in mind, unrestrained customization can easily result in less attractive site designs. But do keep in mind that all the unrestrained customizability and third-party integrations may lead to less attractive or less-elegant looking site designs.

Also, unlike Weebly and other site builders, Wix doesn't include any of its own in-site statistics tools. Instead, you need to set up Google Analytics, which requires a premium plan and a custom domain.