Wix Pricing 2026: Free Gets You Started, But Here's What Actually Costs Money

Key Takeaway

Wix Free is a real product that lets you build and publish a website for $0. But the moment you need a custom domain, no Wix branding, or the ability to sell anything, you’re paying. The Light plan starts at $17/month (annual), and most small businesses land on Core at $29/month or higher. Factor in email, apps, and domain renewal, and the true monthly cost of running a business on Wix sits between $35 and $45.

Wix is one of the most recognizable names in website building, and its pricing page does a good job of making the free plan look like a viable starting point. For personal projects and placeholder pages, it is. For anything with your business name attached to it, you’ll be pulling out a credit card.

The pricing itself is reasonable compared to competitors. What catches people off guard are the costs that live outside the plan grid: email hosting, domain renewals, marketplace apps, and payment processing fees. Here’s the full picture.

What Wix doesn’t tell you upfront

Four costs sit outside the pricing table and account for a significant chunk of what you’ll actually pay.

1. Your custom domain isn’t free after year one. Light, Core, and Business plans include a free custom domain for the first year. After that, renewal costs $13-21/year depending on your TLD (.com, .net, .org). Private domain registration is another $9.90/year. This isn’t unique to Wix, but the “free domain” marketing implies the cost is covered permanently. It isn’t.

2. Email isn’t included. At all. No Wix plan includes business email. If you want yourname@yourdomain.com, Wix routes you to Google Workspace at $6/user/month. For a 3-person team, that’s $18/month, which is almost the cost of the Light plan itself. This is one of the more frustrating gaps compared to competitors like Squarespace, which includes a Google Workspace trial in its pricing.

3. The app marketplace is a second subscription layer. Wix’s marketplace has thousands of apps, and many of the useful ones are paid. Pricing ranges from $2.50 to $499/month per app. Need a booking system, advanced forms, or a CRM integration? Budget for at least one or two paid apps on top of your plan. The marketplace is a strength of the platform, but it also means core functionality often costs extra.

4. Payment processing fees on every sale. E-commerce plans (Core and Business) include Wix Payments with standard processing at 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction. Wix doesn’t charge its own transaction fee on top of this, which is genuinely better than Squarespace’s comparable tier (which adds a 3% Squarespace fee on its Business plan). But payment processing is still a real cost that isn’t reflected in the plan price.

Plan-by-plan breakdown

Free: $0

Includes: 500MB storage, Wix subdomain (yourname.wixsite.com/sitename), 2,000+ templates, drag-and-drop editor, free SSL, basic site analytics.

The free plan is functional. You can build a multi-page site, publish it, and share the link. Wix’s editor is one of the best drag-and-drop builders available, and you get full access to it on Free.

The catches: Wix ads display on your site. You’re stuck with a Wix subdomain. 500MB of storage fills up fast if you add images or video. You can’t accept online payments, connect a custom domain, or access Google Analytics. There’s no e-commerce, no booking, and no collaborator access.

Best for: Personal hobby pages, student projects, or testing whether Wix’s editor works for you before committing to a paid plan.

Light: $24/month ($17/month annual)

Includes: Everything in Free, plus: custom domain (first year free), remove Wix branding, 2GB storage, Google Analytics integration, 100 pages, basic customer support.

Light is the entry-level “real” plan. The Wix branding comes off, you get a custom domain, and you can connect Google Analytics. At $17/month on annual billing, it’s competitive with other website builders in this tier.

What it still doesn’t include: E-commerce, online payments, booking features, or collaborator seats. This is a single-user, content-only plan.

Best for: Personal brands, portfolios, simple business landing pages, or blogs where you need a professional URL but don’t need to sell anything or accept payments.

Core: $36/month ($29/month annual)

Includes: Everything in Light, plus: 50GB storage, 5 collaborators, online payments via Wix Payments, e-commerce basics (product listings, shopping cart, order management), events calendar, member areas.

Core is the plan most small businesses actually need. The jump from 2GB to 50GB of storage is significant, collaborator seats open up team management, and e-commerce unlocks the ability to sell products and accept payments.

At $29/month on annual billing, Core competes well with Squarespace Business ($33/month annual) and has the advantage of no platform transaction fee. See our Wix vs. Squarespace comparison for the detailed breakdown.

Best for: Small businesses that need a website with payment processing, service providers who want booking or membership features, and anyone who needs team collaboration on their site.

Business: $43/month ($39/month annual)

Includes: Everything in Core, plus: 100GB storage, 15 collaborators, dropshipping integrations, automated sales tax collection, loyalty programs, advanced e-commerce analytics, subscriptions and recurring payments.

Business is the ceiling of Wix’s standard pricing. The dropshipping support, loyalty programs, and automated tax collection make it the right choice for e-commerce businesses with more complex needs.

The gap between Core ($29) and Business ($39) is $10/month. For what you get, specifically automated sales tax and loyalty features that would cost $20-40/month as separate apps, it’s a reasonable upgrade if you need those capabilities.

Best for: E-commerce stores doing real volume, businesses that need dropshipping, and anyone who wants automated sales tax collection without a third-party app.

The app marketplace cost trap

Wix’s app marketplace is simultaneously one of its best features and one of its biggest hidden cost drivers. The platform’s core is a website builder, and anything beyond basic pages and e-commerce typically requires an app.

Here’s what common functionality costs on top of your plan:

Functionality	Example app	Monthly cost
Advanced booking/scheduling	Wix Bookings (built-in on Core+)	Included
Email marketing	Wix Email Marketing	$10-$45/mo
Advanced forms	123 Form Builder	$4-$25/mo
CRM / contact management	HubSpot for Wix	Free-$50/mo
Live chat	Tidio	Free-$29/mo
Social media feeds	Social Media Stream	$3-$15/mo
Advanced SEO tools	Site Booster	$5-$12/mo
Restaurants/ordering	Wix Restaurants (built-in)	Included

A typical small business site adds 2-4 marketplace apps. Even at the lower end, that’s $10-30/month on top of your plan. At the higher end, premium apps can push your total well past what you’d pay for an all-in-one platform.

The strategy here: before committing to Wix, list every feature you need and check whether it’s built in, available as a free app, or requires a paid app. The plan price is your floor, not your ceiling.

E-commerce true cost analysis

Wix’s e-commerce pricing deserves a separate look because the plan cost is only one component. Here’s what selling on Wix actually costs.

Plan cost: Core at $29/month or Business at $39/month (annual billing).

Payment processing: 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction through Wix Payments. On a $50 order, that’s $1.75 in processing fees. On $5,000/month in sales, you’re paying roughly $175/month in processing alone.

No platform transaction fee. This is a genuine advantage. Squarespace charges a 3% platform fee on its Business plan (their cheapest e-commerce-capable tier). On $5,000/month in sales, that’s an extra $150 Squarespace charges that Wix doesn’t. This matters.

Shipping apps: Wix includes basic shipping label printing, but advanced shipping features (calculated rates, multi-carrier comparisons) often require apps like ShipStation or Shippo, adding $10-25/month.

Accounting/tax: The Business plan includes automated sales tax. On Core, you’ll either handle it manually or use a third-party integration.

Monthly sales volume	Plan	Processing fees	Total monthly cost
$1,000/mo	Core ($29)	~$39	~$68/mo
$5,000/mo	Core ($29)	~$175	~$204/mo
$5,000/mo	Business ($39)	~$175	~$214/mo
$10,000/mo	Business ($39)	~$320	~$359/mo

Processing fees estimated at average order value of $50.

At high volume, payment processing dwarfs the plan cost. This isn’t a Wix problem; it’s a reality of online selling. But it’s worth modeling before you forecast margins.

Real cost scenarios

Scenario	Plan	Email	Apps	Domain renewal	Total monthly cost
Personal blog	Free	None	None	None	$0
Portfolio / personal brand	Light ($17)	None	None	~$1.50	~$19
Small business website	Core ($29)	$6 (1 user)	~$10	~$1.50	~$47
Business with e-commerce	Business ($39)	$12 (2 users)	~$15	~$1.50	~$68
E-commerce store ($5K/mo sales)	Business ($39)	$18 (3 users)	~$20	~$1.50	~$253

Domain renewal amortized monthly. E-commerce scenario includes estimated payment processing fees.

The jump from “personal blog” to “small business website” is the largest. You go from $0 to roughly $47/month once you need a custom domain, business email, and a few apps. That’s the real starting price for a professional Wix site.

Who should (and shouldn’t) use Wix

Use Wix if:

• You want the most flexible drag-and-drop editor available (Wix’s editor is genuinely best-in-class for design freedom)
• You’re building a content site, portfolio, or small e-commerce store
• You value the massive template and app ecosystem
• You don’t mind assembling functionality from apps rather than having everything built in
• You want to start free and upgrade incrementally

Skip Wix if:

• You need business email included in your website plan (no Wix plan includes it)
• You’re scaling a large e-commerce operation (dedicated platforms like Shopify offer deeper e-commerce tooling)
• You want predictable all-in pricing with no app marketplace add-ons
• You need more than 15 collaborators (Wix caps at 15 on Business)
• You’re on a strict budget and need a full business site under $20/month, as check our best website builders under $20 for alternatives

The verdict

Wix is a strong website builder with genuinely competitive pricing at each tier. The free plan works for personal use. Light at $17/month is fair for a branded content site. Core at $29/month is a solid small business plan. Business at $39/month covers advanced e-commerce needs without platform transaction fees.

The catch isn’t any single plan being overpriced. It’s that the plan price doesn’t include email, premium apps, domain renewal after year one, or payment processing. These are standard industry costs, but Wix’s marketing emphasizes the plan price in isolation.

Go in with a realistic budget. Take the plan price, add $6/user/month for email, add $10-20/month for marketplace apps you’ll likely need, and you have your actual monthly commitment. For most small businesses, that’s $35-50/month, not the $17-29 the pricing page suggests.

That’s still competitive for what you get. Just make sure you’re comparing the real number, not the headline number.

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Pricing sourced from Wix’s official pricing page. Last checked March 2026.