How to migrate from Wix to WordPress

You can move a site from Wix to WordPress, but not with an export button. Wix's help center says a Wix site is built with Wix's own technology and has to be hosted on Wix's servers, and that blog posts cannot be exported to other platforms. What does leave Wix as a file is data: products, contacts, orders, a list of bookings and form submissions, each as CSV, along with the images you uploaded. Pages, most blog posts and the design are built again in WordPress, and then every old address is redirected to its new one.

This guide is for WordPress installed at a hosting company you choose.

What moves and what does not

WordPress.com, the hosted service, has an importer of its own that takes a Wix site by its address. Its documentation says it brings static pages, images, the site title and menus, and does not bring blog posts, the template, or the site's fonts and colors. It runs on WordPress.com sites.

If you would rather hand the move over, our Wix to WordPress migration service rebuilds your pages in WordPress, carries the content across and redirects every old Wix address.

Before you start

• Keep Wix running. You need the live site to copy from. Wix says that when a plan ends, the site's address reverts to the free Wix one. Keep the plan until the new site is on your domain.
• Export everything Wix will give you. Products, contacts, orders, the bookings list and form submissions. Download your images and video from the Media Manager. Wix has no single download for all of it, so select the files folder by folder. These files are your backup of the Wix site.
• Write down every address. Add /sitemap.xml to the end of your domain. Wix keeps that file up to date itself, with separate lists for pages, blog posts, blog categories, store products and booking services. Copy every address into a spreadsheet and leave a column beside it for the new address.
• Write down what the site does. Each form and where its mail goes, each app you added, bookings, a members area, how you take payment. Each one needs a WordPress plugin or a decision to drop it.
• Decide where the new site lives. Pick hosting for WordPress and a theme whose layout is close to what you have. A store needs WooCommerce.

Move the site

Redirect your old addresses

Links on other sites, bookmarks and search results all point at your Wix addresses. After the switch, an old address with no redirect shows a "not found" page to visitors and to search engines.

Wix lets you rename the post and product-page prefixes, so go by your own list and not by the defaults.

The redirects have to live on the WordPress site. Once your domain points at the new host, Wix no longer answers for those addresses.

Redirection is a free plugin in the WordPress.org directory. Its screen is under Tools, then Redirection. Add one redirect for each line of your list, with the old path as the source and the new one as the target. Its listing says it supports regular expressions, so one rule can cover a whole pattern such as every address under /post/, and that it imports and exports CSV.

While the site is on its temporary address, put an old path on the end of that address and see where it lands. After the domain is switched, run each old address through the redirect checker, which follows a redirect and shows each hop. Every old address should reach its new page in one hop, with a 301.

Check before you switch the domain

• Every line of your address list has a new page or a redirect.
• Each page has been read beside its Wix original: text, images, links, and the title and description it gives search engines.
• No image still loads from static.wixstatic.com.
• Every form sends, and its mail arrives.
• A store takes an order from cart to confirmation, with the payment method in its test mode.
• You know where the domain is managed. For a domain bought from Wix, Wix says the name servers cannot be changed. You point it at the new host by editing its DNS records in your Wix account, or you transfer it to another registrar.

Then make the switch. Point the domain at the new host, change the site's address to the real domain as how to change a WordPress URL describes, and untick the search engine box under Settings, then Reading. Wix says a DNS change can take up to 48 hours to reach everyone.

Where it goes wrong

• More than 20 posts. The feed stops at 20 and nothing else exports posts. Count yours before you plan the work.
• Images still served by Wix. They look fine while the Wix site exists, so nobody notices. Search the new site's content for wixstatic before you cancel anything.
• Product variants and pictures. Wix's product file has PRODUCT, VARIANT and MEDIA rows. WooCommerce wants a variable parent row and a variation row for each choice, each naming its parent, so rearrange the file in a spreadsheet first. Wix's file can also list media by Wix's own media ID. WooCommerce imports pictures from addresses it can reach directly, so a row with an ID in place of an address arrives without its picture.
• Passwords. No export holds them. Tell members and customers before the switch that they will set a new one.
• Redirects that were missed. Renamed prefixes, blog categories and product pages are the usual ones.
• Forms and email. A rebuilt form that sends nowhere fails silently. If you transfer a domain away from Wix, Wix says the mail records have to be added again afterwards for business email to work. It also says a domain cannot be transferred within 60 days of purchase.