Table of contents

Why move your Wix site1. Set up hosting2. Choose a theme3. Import blog posts4. Copy and paste pages5. Set up plugins6. Redirect Wix site 7. Optimize SEO8. Test everythingBonus tipFAQsNext stepsAdditional resources

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WordPress Guide → Build → Wix To WordPress

How to migrate from Wix to WordPress

Wix makes it easy to start a website—but WordPress gives you room to grow. Whether you’re ready for more customization or better SEO control, switching platforms doesn’t have to be hard.

Let’s walk through everything you need to do to move your site, content, and traffic over to WordPress.

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Why move your Wix site to WordPress?

Wix is beginner-friendly, but it comes with limitations that can hold you back as your site grows. WordPress offers more freedom and flexibility. Here’s why many users make the switch.

You fully own your content: With WordPress, your files, database, and design are yours—not locked into a proprietary builder.
Design control is limitless: You’re not stuck with a single editor. Choose from thousands of free and premium themes or build your own.
Plugin power: WordPress has 60,000+ plugins for SEO, ecommerce, memberships, forums, and more.
Better performance options: You can optimize speed, use powerful caching tools, and even move to faster hosting without rebuilding.
Advanced SEO control: Get full access to meta descriptions, schema, redirects, and analytics tools.
Scalability: Whether you’re launching a blog or growing an online business, WordPress can handle it.

1. Set up hosting and install WordPress

You’ll need a working WordPress site before you can import anything from Wix.

Choose a WordPress hosting provider—Shared hosting works for small sites that are going to stay small, but VPS or managed WordPress hosting offers better performance, security, and room to grow.
Register a domain or update your DNS—If your domain is with Wix, you’ll point it to your new host after migration.
Install WordPress—Use a one-click installer in your hosting dashboard or install it manually.
Log into your WordPress admin—You’ll use this to manage your new site from now on.

2. Choose a WordPress theme

Wix designs can’t be imported, so now’s the time to match your brand with a new look.

Go to Appearance → Themes and browse free themes. Or you can upload a premium theme from sites like ThemeForest or StudioPress
Customize the header, colors, fonts, and menus to match your old design
Use a page builder like Elementor or Beaver Builder if you want drag-and-drop control

3. Import your Wix blog posts

Wix doesn’t support exporting posts directly, but you can use its RSS feed as a workaround.

Visit your Wix RSS feed, typically at https://yourwixsite.com/feed.xml
Right-click and save the page as an .xml file
In WordPress, go to Tools → Import, then click Install Now under “RSS”
Upload your XML file and assign posts to a WordPress author

Double-check imported content for formatting issues. Images may not always transfer, so you might need to re-add them.

4. Manually copy and paste Wix pages

Static pages like About, Contact, or Services can’t be imported and need to be recreated manually.

Open each Wix page and copy the text, images, and layout sections
In WordPress, go to Pages → Add New and paste in the content
Use the Gutenberg block editor or a page builder plugin for better control
Don’t forget to recreate buttons, forms, and links

5. Set up essential WordPress plugins

Wix includes a lot of built-in functionality that you’ll now replace with plugins.

SEO: Yoast SEO or All in One SEO are good options. See our complete list of SEO plugins for more.
Contact forms: WPForms or Contact Form 7 are popular. Check out our list of contact form plugins for our top five.
Image galleries: Envira Gallery or NextGEN Gallery are fan favorites, but you can see our top five gallery plugins here.
Analytics: Site Kit by Google helps with GA4 and Search Console integration. Check out our top seven analytics plugins for more options.
Caching/performance: LiteSpeed Cache or W3 Total Cache are good tools. Our list of favorite caching plugins is available here.

6. Redirect your Wix site to WordPress

Pointing your domain name to your new WordPress site only gets you part of the way there. To preserve your search rankings and avoid 404 errors for existing visitors or backlinks, you’ll also need to redirect the specific page URLs from Wix to their new locations in WordPress.

Even if you updated your DNS settings so that example.com now leads to WordPress, search engines and users may still try to access full URLs like example.com/about or example.com/blog/my-post-title.

If the URL structure on your new WordPress site doesn’t match what you had on Wix, then:

Search engines will see broken links, which can hurt your SEO
Users may land on 404 pages instead of the content they expected
Any backlinks you’ve built (from social media, partners, or press) won’t resolve correctly

To solve this, you’ll use 301 redirects to tell browsers and search engines: “This page has permanently moved to a new location.”

Step 1: Compare your old and new URL structures

On Wix, page URLs might look like:
https://www.example.com/about-us
https://www.example.com/blog/my-first-post
On WordPress, they might default to:
https://www.example.com/about
https://www.example.com/2025/06/05/my-first-post

Step 2: Install a redirect plugin

The easiest way to manage redirects in WordPress is with a redirect plugin. After installing and activating the plugin:

Go to Tools → Redirection or Settings → 301 Redirects
For each old Wix URL, enter the exact path (e.g., /about-us)
For the target URL, enter the WordPress path (e.g., /about)

Repeat this for all your important pages and blog posts.

Step 3: Keep a URL mapping spreadsheet

To stay organized during migration, create a spreadsheet with three columns:

Old URL (from Wix)
New URL (in WordPress)
Redirect status (e.g., done, needs review)

This helps ensure nothing is missed, especially if you have dozens of pages or posts.

Step 4: Test your redirects

Once everything is in place:

Use your browser to visit several old URLs and confirm they now load the correct WordPress page
Use an SEO tool like Screaming Frog or Ahrefs to crawl your site and confirm that no old links return a 404
Use Google Search Console to monitor crawl errors and index coverage

Redirects can take a few days to fully register in Google’s index, so keep checking for 2–3 weeks after launch.

7. Optimize your new site for SEO

Wix handles some SEO basics for you, but in WordPress you have full control.

Go to Settings → Permalinks and set your structure to Post name.
Use your SEO plugin to set page titles and meta descriptions.
Create and submit a new sitemap.xml to Google Search Console.
Use an image optimizer plugin to compress media
Monitor rankings, traffic, and crawl errors for 30–60 days after switching

8. Test everything before going live

Before redirecting your domain or canceling Wix, do a final check.

Make sure all blog posts and pages are accounted for.
Test internal links and contact forms.
Verify that menus, widgets, and footers work as expected.
Load your site on mobile and different browsers.

Use tools like BrowserStack, Google PageSpeed Insights, and GTmetrix for deeper testing.

Bonus tip: Use a staging site for safe testing

If your Wix site is large, complex, or business-critical, it’s a good idea to use a staging site before launching your WordPress version live. A staging site is a private copy of your WordPress site where you can test the migration process, redesign, plugins, and redirects without impacting real users.

Many hosting providers offer built-in staging environments, especially if you’re using a managed WordPress plan. Alternatively, you can create one using a plugin like WP Staging, which clones your site into a separate folder or subdomain. Once everything looks and works the way you want, you can push the staging version live with just a few clicks.

Using a staging site helps you catch layout issues, broken links, or plugin conflicts early, so you can launch with confidence. It’s especially useful for ecommerce sites, sites with user logins, or anything involving custom code or functionality.

Wix to WordPress FAQs

Yes, but it’s not automatic. You can move blog posts using an RSS feed and recreate pages manually. A full migration requires planning, but it’s absolutely possible.

You can move the content (text, images, posts), but not the exact design or backend system. You’ll rebuild your layout in WordPress using themes and plugins.

Not directly. Wix and WordPress are separate platforms. You can’t embed one into the other or sync their content, though you could link between them or embed simple widgets.

Wix is easier for beginners, but WordPress offers more power, flexibility, and ownership. If you want custom features, advanced SEO, or long-term scalability, WordPress is usually better.

For a full comparison see: Comparing Wix vs. WordPress: 10 differences to know

Next steps for migrating from Wix to WordPress

Moving from Wix to WordPress takes time, but it’s worth it for the long-term freedom, performance, and customizability you gain.

The next step is to choose a hosting solution that fits your needs, and that’s where Liquid Web comes in. We offer the industry’s fastest and most secure VPS and dedicated servers—for Windows or Linux, unmanaged or fully managed.

Don’t want to deal with server management and maintenance? Our fully managed hosting for WordPress is the best in the industry. Our team are not only server IT experts, but WordPress hosting experts as well. Your server couldn’t be in better hands.

Click through below to explore all of our hosting for WordPress options, or chat with a WordPress expert right now to get answers and advice.