Wix does not make it easy to leave. There is no “export to WordPress” button, no file-level access to your site, and no automated migration tool that works reliably. A Wix-to-WordPress migration is a manual process — content export, URL mapping, redirect setup, and SEO verification. Done carefully, your traffic and rankings survive the move. Done carelessly, you lose months of SEO work.
This guide covers the complete migration process, in the order you should execute it.
Before You Start: The Three Things That Protect Your SEO
A website migration is an SEO event. Google is watching which URLs work and which return 404 errors. Moving your site without protecting your URLs is the single most common mistake in Wix-to-WordPress migrations.
Before touching either site, do three things:
1. Crawl and document every indexed URL. Use Screaming Frog (free up to 500 URLs), Google Search Console’s URL Inspection, or a sitemap export to build a complete list of your currently indexed pages. This list becomes your redirect map.
2. Record your Google Search Console data. Note your current top-performing pages (by clicks and impressions), your average position for key terms, and which URLs are driving traffic. This is your baseline for post-migration comparison.
3. Export your content while Wix is still active. Do this before you do anything else. Your Wix subscription must remain active and paid through the entire migration process. The redirects you set up after launch depend on your old URLs being functional.
Step 1: Export Your Content from Wix
Wix provides limited export options.
Blog posts: In your Wix dashboard, go to Blog → click the three-dot menu → Export Posts. This generates an RSS/XML file with your post content, titles, and basic metadata. The images referenced in posts are external URLs pointing to Wix’s CDN — not downloaded files.
Images: Download images manually from your Wix Media Manager (Files → Site Files). Wix does not automatically package and export your full image library. For a site with dozens or hundreds of images, this is time-consuming.
Pages: Wix page content does not export in any portable format. You will need to manually copy text content from your Wix pages and paste it into your new WordPress pages.
Product data: If you have a Wix eCommerce store, export your product catalog from the Wix dashboard as a CSV. This gives you product names, prices, descriptions, and SKUs — enough to import into WooCommerce.
Form submissions: Export form data from your Wix Inbox or form settings while you still have access. Once the subscription lapses, this data may be inaccessible.
Step 2: Set Up Your WordPress Environment
Before migrating content, build your WordPress environment:
Choose hosting. Quality managed WordPress hosts (Kinsta, WP Engine, SiteGround) give you staging environments, easy backups, and performance infrastructure. Avoid cheap shared hosting — the performance improvement over Wix diminishes significantly on an underpowered server.
Install WordPress. Most hosts offer one-click WordPress installation. Complete the basic setup: site title, permalink structure, time zone, and initial user configuration.
Set your permalink structure. Go to Settings → Permalinks and choose Post name (/%postname%/). This gives you clean, SEO-friendly URLs. Do this before you create any content — changing the permalink structure after the fact can break existing internal links.
Install core plugins. At minimum: Yoast SEO or Rank Math (SEO management), a caching plugin (WP Rocket or W3 Total Cache), a security plugin (Wordfence), and a backup plugin (UpdraftPlus). Add WooCommerce if you are migrating a store.
Build or install your theme. A custom-coded WordPress theme gives you the best performance baseline. A quality pre-built theme (Astra, GeneratePress) is a reasonable alternative. Avoid page builders — you are moving away from Wix’s performance limitations, not trading them for Elementor’s.
Step 3: Migrate Your Content
Blog posts: Import your Wix RSS export using Tools → Import → RSS in WordPress. Review each post after import — formatting often requires cleanup, and image URLs still point to Wix’s CDN. Download the images and re-upload them to your WordPress Media Library, then update the post content to reference the new image URLs.
Pages: Rebuild your pages in WordPress. Copy the content from your Wix pages, paste it into the WordPress editor, and rebuild the layout. For a site with 5–15 pages, this takes 2–4 hours. For larger sites, plan accordingly.
Product catalog: Import your Wix product CSV using the WooCommerce Product CSV Import plugin (WooCommerce → Products → Import). Map the column headers from the Wix export format to WooCommerce’s expected fields. Image URLs from the Wix export still point to Wix’s CDN — download and re-upload images to your WordPress media library and update product gallery fields.
Images: Upload all exported images to Media → Add New in WordPress. Organize them as you go — WordPress’s media library does not have folder structure, but the Media Library Organizer plugin helps if you have a large image catalog.
Step 4: Build Your Redirect Map
This is the most critical SEO step in the migration. Every Wix URL that has search traffic needs a 301 redirect pointing to its WordPress equivalent.
Wix URL structure typically looks like:
yoursite.com/about→ stays as/abouton WordPressyoursite.com/blog/post-title→ maps to/blog/post-title(if you kept the same slug) or the new equivalentyoursite.com/store/p/product-name→ maps to/shop/product-nameon WooCommerce
Create a spreadsheet with two columns: Old URL (Wix) and New URL (WordPress). Work through every URL in your crawl from Step 1. For URLs that no longer exist in your new site architecture, redirect them to the most relevant current page — not to the homepage.
Implement the redirects in WordPress using the Redirection plugin or Yoast SEO Premium’s redirect manager. For large redirect sets (100+ URLs), importing a CSV is more reliable than entering each redirect manually.
Step 5: Point Your Domain to WordPress
Do this before launching, but on a staging domain — migrate everything to staging.yourdomain.com first. Verify all content is in place and all redirects are configured before changing DNS.
When ready to launch:
- Lower your domain’s TTL to 300 seconds (5 minutes) 24 hours before cutover — this reduces DNS propagation time
- Update your domain’s nameservers or A record to point to your new hosting provider
- Verify SSL is active on the new host before the domain change (Let’s Encrypt or your host’s certificate)
- After DNS propagates (typically 2–48 hours), verify your site loads on the new host
Step 6: Post-Migration SEO Verification
After launch, verify the migration worked correctly before canceling your Wix subscription:
Check redirects. Crawl your old URL list using Screaming Frog against the new site — every old URL should return a 301 redirect to the correct new URL. Any 404 errors need immediate attention.
Update Google Search Console. Add your WordPress site as a new property, submit your new sitemap (yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml), and verify ownership. Check the Coverage report for crawl errors.
Run a Lighthouse audit. Verify your WordPress site is hitting its performance targets before traffic fully transitions. A free speed audit at honest.designodin.com gives you a Lighthouse score and Core Web Vitals breakdown.
Monitor rankings for 30 days. Some fluctuation in the first 2–4 weeks is normal as Google recrawls and reindexes under the new architecture. Significant, sustained drops indicate redirect problems or content issues that need investigation.
Keep Wix active for 60 days post-launch. Do not cancel the Wix subscription immediately. Keep it running so your old URLs remain accessible and your redirects function correctly. After 60 days of clean traffic transition, the cancellation risk is low.
Common Migration Mistakes
Canceling Wix before completing redirects. Once Wix is offline, your old URLs return errors instead of redirects. Any SEO equity on those URLs begins to dissipate.
Changing URL slugs without redirects. If your Wix blog post was at /blog/10-tips-for-x and your WordPress post is at /10-tips-for-x, that is a different URL. Without a redirect, all incoming links to the old URL hit a 404.
Importing images without re-hosting them. Images still pointing to Wix’s CDN after migration will break when you cancel your Wix subscription. Every image needs to be hosted on your WordPress server.
Not testing the staging site before launch. Discovering redirect problems or missing content after DNS change means they are live problems, not staging problems.
After the Migration: What You Have Now
A successful Wix-to-WordPress migration gives you a site you own. Your content lives on your server. Your files are portable. Your domain is in your control. If you stop paying your hosting bill, your site goes offline — but your files are still there, recoverable, transferable.
That is structurally different from the Wix model, where the platform holds your content and your access is gated behind a subscription. What you lose when a Wix subscription lapses is the clearest illustration of why ownership matters.
Our custom WordPress development includes migration support for clients moving from Wix. Fixed pricing, hand-coded theme, 90+ Lighthouse score at launch, and full code handoff. If you want us to run the migration — content transfer, redirect setup, SEO verification — get in touch with your project details.
FAQ
How long does a Wix-to-WordPress migration take? A straightforward migration for a 10–20 page site with a small blog takes 1–3 weeks. Larger content libraries (100+ posts, 200+ products) take longer, primarily because of content cleanup after import and the image re-hosting process.
Will my Google rankings drop after migrating from Wix to WordPress? Expect some fluctuation in the first 2–4 weeks. A well-executed migration with proper 301 redirects preserves most ranking equity. Long-term, a WordPress site with better performance and more SEO control tends to outperform a comparable Wix site.
Do I need a developer to migrate from Wix to WordPress? For a simple site (5–10 pages, small blog), a technically capable person can follow this process without a developer. For e-commerce, large content libraries, or any custom functionality, a developer is worth the investment — redirect errors and content migration mistakes are expensive to fix after the fact.
Can I use an automated Wix-to-WordPress migration tool? Tools like CMS2CMS and Xara Web Designer claim to automate this migration. They handle basic content transfer but do not manage redirects, image re-hosting, or SEO configuration correctly in most cases. For a site where SEO matters, manual migration with a developer is more reliable.
What do I do with email addresses that used Wix email hosting? If you used Wix’s email service, set up email independently through Google Workspace or Zoho Mail before canceling Wix. Your email service is separate from your website subscription — but Wix Email Marketing data does not transfer to other providers.
What should my new WordPress permalink structure match?
Match your Wix URL structure as closely as possible. If Wix used /blog/post-slug, use the same in WordPress. Every URL you change requires an additional redirect. Fewer URL changes mean fewer redirect dependencies and a simpler post-migration verification.
Ready to move off Wix for good? See our WordPress migration and development packages or tell us about your project and we will give you a realistic plan and fixed price.