TYPO3 vs Wix

When building a website, there are a lot of efficient website builders available in the market to choose from. Wix and TYPO3 are two of the leading platforms that individuals and businesses across the world use for building amazing usable websites without the need for complex technical procedures. 

The main difference between Wix and TYPO3 is that while Wix is a dedicated website builder, TYPO3 is an open-source content management system. However, there are several other differences between the two platforms in terms of use, pricing, features and more. But first, let us dive into the basics. 

What is a Website Builder?

A website builder is a platform or software program that allows you to put together a website using your specific brand elements, design and content aligned to your business objectives. The best website builders come with drag-and-drop features to help customize constituent elements on pages based on a chosen layout. 

Website builders like Wix and TYPO3 often come with an assortment of templates for building web pages. Most online builders also come with complimentary hosting services that take away the hassle of any technicalities.

For small businesses and entrepreneurs, a ready-to-make website builder helps build an optimized digital presence in no time at all. Without the need of taking care of long pages of coding for web development, a website builder like Wix or TYPO3 allows you to concoct a fully functional website that is search engine optimized, low maintenance and effective in terms of speed and outcomes. 

Before coming down to a particular website builder, it is important to list down what functions your website would cater to. For instance, if you are creating a website that will act as a publication for your blogs, your focus would be on blog sections, photo galleries, contact forms, SEO features and so on. On the other hand, a website that acts as an online store would need to have additional features of eCommerce, such as sign-ins, product displays, checkouts and so on.

One way of understanding the demands of your website is by looking at your top competitors. Starting from design elements to layouts, unique features to SEO, browsing your top competitors for inspiration certainly helps.

You also need to carefully consider the scope of scalability and growth, especially if you are starting a commercial website. This is because you might want to expand later; therefore, your website builder must allow you to explore updates and additional elements in the future, as your business grows.

Wix and TYPO3 prove to be two of the best website builders in the market. While the first is known for being a professional website builder, the second is the most widely used Enterprise Content Management System, providing the basis for websites, intranets and mobile applications. However, the two are fundamentally different in many respects.  

TYPO3 beats Wix fair and square in this segment, being an open-source, completely free content management software. Wix, on the other hand, is a premium and closed source cloud-based website builder. While you can access a few features for free, most of the more helpful tools will come at a price.

Thankfully, this is not the case with TYPO3. Being an open-source platform, it is continuously updated by developers from around the world, with endless features to use. You need to pay separately for the hosting and domain, and also in case you want to use premium templates. Despite this, the overall costs are less than half of what you have to pay on Wix.

When looking from a macro-scale, Wix leads the CMS market share with 2.6% of the total websites across the web. On the other hand, 0.5% of the world’s websites are created using TYPO3.

However, TYPO3 serves a very specific base – enterprises that need heavier, more complex websites. This is the reason its market share is not as wide, though it is very niche-specific.

Wix does not require any advanced technical skills for managing the platform or creating websites out of it. The platform is extremely user-friendly right from the start and lets you build the best websites using visual tools.

TYPO3 can get slightly difficult to get the hang of in the beginning, for it requires one to grasp the basics of TypoScript to use the platform fully for the best outcomes. Therefore, using TYPO3 does call for some professional development skills after all. Despite taking slightly longer to master this Content Management System, TYPO3 is a smooth run once you have dealt with its internal language.

Wix comes with more than 500 designer-built templates for you to use and build your website from. These templates come pre-built with all elements of a website – from the header to banners, blog layouts to widgets and so on. However, you need to keep in mind that once a template has been selected, it cannot be changed later. Also, the individual design elements in a template cannot be modified much beyond their original design.

On the contrary, TYPO3 is more flexible when it comes to design and layouts. The platform comes with both free and premium TYPO3 templates. Templates can be customised more easily and to a greater extent compared to Wix.

Wix, being a closed-source platform, does not provide much room for customization compared to TYPO3. Only private members have access to advanced customization options and, therefore, it is not as frequent.

TYPO3, on the other hand, comes with over 1000 CMS features. The open-source platform offers plenty of room for customization for anyone who wants to. This makes it easy to access new updates, features and their versions on the platform from time to time, most of which are targeted towards improved experiences and advanced technology.

Wix offers basic SEO features including slug, alt text, 301 redirects, metadata, headers and titles. At the same time, the platform creates and maintains your XML sitemap, frequently updating all your site info, pages and relationships between them. Image compression is also automatically taken care of, and they are converted to WebP for faster page loading.

However, TYPO3 beats Wix in this segment as well. TYPO3 was designed to keep large-scale enterprise solutions in mind and meets your SEO needs out of the box. Its core multilingual support means you can expand your content across geographical boundaries and language barriers. TYPO3 also automatically creates URLs for the different language versions of the same page, thereby reducing any chance of errors and supporting it through a robust backend UI.

Unlike other content management systems where SEO tools chiefly operate as 3rd party extensions, TYPO3 allows you to stay close to your content as you build pages, and add SEO-relevant information in that very interface side by side. Apart from the basic SEO features that Wix provides, TYPO3 also provides room for customising canonical tags, OG tags, sitemap.xml for pages, robots.txt and so on.

Wix is considered a very supportive and easy-to-use website builder, especially when it comes to blogging. It provides users access to all basic features and elements for setting up a regular blog. However, one major drawback with Wix is that it does not provide a native commenting system.

At the same time, Wix lacks features such as backdating posts or creating private posts. The plain text editor of the platform offers very limited formatting options, which affects the writing as well as reading interface eventually.

Comparatively, TYPO3 fares much better. All your blogging functions and needs can be met on TYPO3 without any hassles. The TYPO3 Blog Extension can be used to take care of core concepts and elements in the creation of a full-grown blog that is incredibly easy to use right from the start. 

Websites created on Wix are considered more secure than those created on WordPress CMS. However, this generally happens only when you have opted for premium plans. With a basic plan, you can still expect a relevant security approach, but would be missing out on several key features.

When it comes to TYPO3, however, it is the most secure CMS across the world. The platform brings high levels of security to the table, with regular updates and extensions upgrading the security to new levels each time. This is particularly useful for global organizations with complex content management and security needs.

Wix is better suited for small businesses, freelancers and individual sellers because it does not come with extensive eCommerce options. The website builder has always been in the limelight due to its focus on ease and speed. Therefore, creating a basic eCommerce store is quite easy on the platform, you must not expect a wide range of options or functions for a more complex store. You also need to upgrade to a Premium plan for creating an eCommerce website with Wix in the first place.

TYPO3, on the other hand, provides multiple eCommerce extensions for free, enabling you to successfully run an eCommerce store on the platform. Since it was created to support enterprises, you can rely on TYPO3 to handle even complex eCommerce websites without affecting speed or performance. 

Plugins are like third-party extensions that widen the functions and services of your platform and provide additional features to make your website building experience smooth. On Wix, these are called apps, while on TYPO3 they are referred to as extensions.

Wix comes with more than 200 apps that you can add to your Wix site for enjoying an array of features – contact forms, image galleries, social media sharing buttons, email marketing, analytics, Google Ads, and so on. Most of the apps are free. Many often come with a lite version. However, their functions are usually limited until you upgrade them to a paid premium version.

On TYPO3, the thousands of extensions usually work towards expanding the functionality of the existing website you have created. Most of these extensions are entirely free to use, as they are constantly upgraded by worldwide developers in the open-source TYPO3 community. TYPO3’s custom extension development is the reason why you can expect greater quality, standards and best practices from TYPO3 extensions.

In terms of export functionality, Wix falls behind TYPO3 yet again. The platform offers little freedom if you wish to move your content to another platform. You are forced to export your blog posts in XML format, which means you have to bear all the pain of manually downloading pages and images, along with working on design and layout from scratch.

On the contrary, TYPO3 comes with sound export functionality, offering database access if needed. The CMS comes with built-in solutions for content migration from one website to another. All your content gets uploaded on a buffer server. You can also export the same website multiple times with the flexibility of choosing templates as you want.

Wix offers both free and paid hosting services; Its starter tier offers a free hosting space with a Wix-branded URL until you purchase a domain. Therefore, you can easily launch a website right away. Its paid hosting services come in different plan choices. However, the biggest downside is that Wix hosting is suitable only for small businesses and less complex sites. Heavy websites will find it difficult to meet their hosting requirements with Wix.

TYPO3 fares much better with its multi-site support and heavy website hosting ease. The self-hosted CMS gives users the freedom to choose their server. There are no legal constraints or binding to any third-party hosting services. At the same time, since TYPO3 was developed to offer large-scale enterprise solutions on the web, complex and hierarchical websites can be hosted favourably with TYPO3.

Both Wix and TYPO3 offer extensive community support to developers and users of the respective platform. Wix has a resourceful forum and a 24/7 customer support portal. The dedicated Wix Help Centre is an interesting feature where you can type in your Wix-related queries and receive help instantly.

Similarly, the TYPO3 community is the hub of any platform-related tips, hacks, queries and solutions that you are looking for. Even though the TYPO3 community is limited in size, it boasts of developers from all over the world catering to the niche of enterprise content management

Choosing the right website builder ultimately comes down to the kind of website you want to make – features and content, the scope of growth and complexity, and so on. When comparing Wix and TYPO3, it is difficult to ignore the many benefits that TYPO3 offers, being a Content Management System and not just a website builder.

From numerous free features to a wider scope of customisation, better export functionality, SEO, hosting and blogging support and unmatched security provisions – TYPO3 wins over Wix in all these areas. This is the reason this CMS has assumed great significance in recent times, expanding from its traditional geography of Europe to large-scale enterprise solutions all over the world.

TYPO3: Flexible and powerful

We are convinced that TYPO3 is the right choice and offer our customers a wide range of services related to the CMS. You can also count on our TYPO3 support and trainings so that you too can become a TYPO3 professional. We have even developed a solution on the basis of TYPO3 with which websites can be implemented particularly quickly, efficiently, cost-effectively and with a top design: Our sgalinski Website-Base is available as a website for a fixed price or as a subscription in the service model, with which you don't have to worry about anything other than the content of your website. For the TYPO3 Website-Base, we have also created extensive documentation for the response of a website, which can be used at any time and completely free of charge.