Wix: A history of price rises and locking you into their system

Wix has a giant advertising budget and, to be fair, is probably easier to use than some of the other bring-brand website builders that it competes against. But are a free demo and an easy on-ramp really the most important features in a tool that you’ll have to rely on for years and years to come?

Wix’s ease of entry does come with downsides. None more noteworthy than Wix’s habit of raising subscription prices almost every year.

A history of price rises

Lots of Web Hosting and website building companies are intentionally vague about their pricing. These providers make it difficult to get straight answers from the website, hiding ongoing prices behind short-term specials, or bundling features together in a way that obscures the value of what you’re really getting.

In Wix’s case, they frequently raise their pricing but you wouldn’t know by looking at their website. It’s not in their interest for you to know that their prices increase every year or two. But we keep track of that data, so you don’t have to.

Wix offers four plans, and every single one of them costs more than our Website Builder. We checked in on monthly prices (in April 2026) here's what we saw:

• "Light", US$24
• "Core", US$36
• "Business", US$46
• "Business Elite", US$172

Of Wix’s four tiers, the only one whose price hasn't moved since they first emerged in 2023 is Business Elite (the most expensive option). But Business Elite is overkill for most people, and if your business genuinely needs everything that it offers then you'd probably be better off with the flexibility of an open-source or bespoke solution. But that's a story for another time.

Every other tier has gone up in price since 2023, some multiple times. Multiple price rises in four years.

If you’d signed up for Wix’s Business Plan in 2023 when they first rolled out their currency plan structure, you’d have been paying $38 USD per month. Now, just 3 years later, it's gone up 20% to $46 per month. That’s an extra NZ$160 in your annual budget. And if you weren’t open to moving platforms, you wouldn’t be able to do anything about it.

Upgrade, or you’re out of luck

Websites and businesses expand and change over time. It’s human nature to iterate, grow, improve and adapt.

Wix doesn’t really accommodate for that. They would instead likely suggest that you upgrade to a higher tier plan to increase your feature capabilities.

If your website’s been up and running for a year and in that time you’ve developed a product that you want to sell, you can’t just click “enable ecommerce”, add your products and hit go. Wix paywalls its ecommerce features behind its Core plan ($36 USD/mo). That upgrade will cost you $12/USD a month, 50% more than you were paying for the Light plan.

Sound limiting? If you want to work with multiple currencies, you’d need to upgrade to their Business plan (that’s the $46 USD/mo plan). That's another $10 on your monthly bill, and now you've joined the tier that’s seen the most price hikes in the last couple of years.

Did you plan on paying that price?

Imagine you’d initially signed up for the cheapest Wix plan in 2024 and made a website. Then shortly after making the site you realised the ecommerce features you need are only available in the Business plan. You’ve already spent a good amount of time designing a website you like, so you upgrade your plan not just once, but twice, to get the ecommerce features you need.

After you’ve upgraded plans, Wix increases their prices for that plan twice in the next two years. You’d have gone from paying US$23 to US$46 a month (in NZD that's a jump from $39 to $78), doubling your monthly bill just to get ecommerce features.

With Wix there’s no other option but to upgrade to their higher plans if you want anything more than bare bones functionality. It doesn’t just apply to ecommerce. Wix’s ‘premium applications’ like Wix Booking and Wix Events are the same—only available with the Core plan upwards. If you’re on the Light plan and decide you need any of those features, you’ll need to upgrade, which could double your subscription costs.

This isn’t universal, it’s a Wix thing

MyHost’s Website Builder costs NZ$15 a month, the same price it was the day we launched it in 2021. For that price you can build and host two websites.

And, we’re not gating fundamental features behind higher tier plans. If you want to run an ecommerce site, our Website Builder makes it really simple for you to build ecommerce sites that have all your needs covered. We’re talking about different currencies, discount management, tax management and more. All those features are included in the same $15 plan. We won’t punish you for being more ambitious with your site if and when your plans change.

If you want a super easy to use Website Builder plan you can rely on long-term, with consistent pricing, then it might be time to consider a solution other than Wix.

If you use Wix, you don’t own your website

You may have never considered it before, but websites built on Wix aren’t really yours to keep. All the website’s structure, design, and content that lives on Wix, exists only on Wix, under Wix’s terms.

With Wix’s repeated price rises, we wouldn’t be surprised if some long standing Wix customers have begun looking for a new web host.

But Wix, like all drag-and-drop website builder tools, has no export button. You can’t just move your site to WordPress one day—you’d have to fully recreate it from scratch. If you change platform, you leave Wix empty-handed.

The most frustrating part is that the longer you stay on Wix, the harder this is to change. Every new page you design, every new blog you post is more work you’ll have to spend recreating later.

This is why paying attention to their price rises is worthwhile. If a move away from Wix is something you think you’ll want to do in the future, sooner is easier than later (and probably cheaper too).

You have other options

If you’re reasonably confident behind a computer, there’s another option that gives you the freedom to move your site and files freely. And that’s WordPress.

If you build a site on WordPress and host it on one of MyHost’s Web Hosting plans, you’ll have the freedom to make and design your own website, and keep the freedom of owning your files.

And even if you decide you want to host your site elsewhere, websites built on WordPress give you the flexibility to freely take your files with you.

We’re not trying to lock you in, and we’re not trying to raise the prices you pay each year.

Sneaky hidden costs waiting to get you

Constant price rises and “lock-in by design” are two of the biggest problems with long-term development on Wix.

But their packages are also missing core functionality that you’d expect from any good Web Hosting plan.

For one, Wix doesn’t come with email hosting. Every MyHost Web Hosting plan, not just Website Builder, comes with free email hosting. Wix makes you pay for Google Workspace plans to get custom email addresses. That’s another US$10.50/mo. Just another small thing to keep your eye on with Wix’s plans.

If you have any MyHost Web Hosting plan and want to set up your email account with a custom email address, you can check out our guide to setting up new email addresses in our Knowledgebase.

Making websites without unexpected costs

If you’ve decided that Wix’s tendency to raise prices of all their plans is too much, MyHost’s Website Builder is ready to step in to cover all your website building and hosting needs.

All the functionality you want is available from the same plan—a plan that’s been $15 since the day we launched our Website Builder.

Websites don’t have to be tricky and technical to make anymore. You can get started with Website Builder today and see how easy it is to set up a new website.