Wix.com Websites?

<p>I was just wondering if anyone has used Wix.com to create a photography website and if you were happy with it? I have very limited funds right now and I am getting alot of people who want to see my work online so someone mentioned Wix.com because the sites are FREE to make. I will be doing my real website at the beginning of 2010 but didnt know if this was a decent fix for the next 5 months or so...<br>

Any help is much appreciated. Thank you!<br>

Miller</p>

<p>How much is it and do they include hosting and email boxes too?</p>

<p>Aimee,<br>

It is absolutely free to build and use, they do not host but they do offer mail boxes. I already own a domain name and a hosting site that I can plug in this Free website so I just wanted to make sure it was worth my time to build this site.<br>

Thanks<br>

Miller</p>

<p>I used wix.com for a few months and loved the price and freedom of being able to customize the entire site... BUT its TOO SLOW! I ended up switching to Photobiz.com. They have excellent support and great templates. Its 125 one time fee then $15 a month for up to 200 photos. To me it was well worth it. For someone on a limited budget I would recommend building a wix site for free, but dont get too complicated. Use it to display some of your best work and make it clear that its just a temporary website. The more pictures you put up the slower it gets, and believe me you will get more complaints about the speed then compliments on your pictures. Good luck to ya!<br>

Adam Despres<br />Despres Photography<br />www.despresphoto.com </p>

<p>I used wix.com for a few months and loved the price and freedom of being able to customize the entire site... BUT its TOO SLOW! I ended up switching to Photobiz.com. They have excellent support and great templates. Its 125 one time fee then $15 a month for up to 200 photos. To me it was well worth it. For someone on a limited budget I would recommend building a wix site for free, but dont get too complicated. Use it to display some of your best work and make it clear that its just a temporary website. The more pictures you put up the slower it gets, and believe me you will get more complaints about the speed then compliments on your pictures. Good luck to ya!<br>

Adam Despres<br /></p>

<p>Adam,<br>

Thanks alot for the information. I had a feeling it was really slow and I only uploaded a few photos plus they seem very low resolution and that is not how I want my work to come across since it's not. I will look into Photobiz and check it out today. I love the templates at Blu Domain and was planning to go that route in a few months just saw this the other day and wondered if it was worth it.<br>

Thanks again for the information.<br>

Miller</p>

<p>I have a WIX website and yes it is free but limited, the great thing is that it is a flash site. My comercial cite is a <a href="http://www.clikpic.com/">clikpic</a> site and it offers you an easily updatable site including shopping trolley for a tiny sum of £35.00 or $55.00 per annum. You can have your own domain name for another $15.00 p.a . You have a free 7 day trial so you can't go wrong.</p>

<p>I used this service for a short time. Did not care for it or the customer service. There were people on there forum also that were openly rude to some users. Would not suggest this service to any one really.</p>

<p>HI there :)<br>

I'm Ron and i work in wix.com <br>

I'm sorry you weren't satisfied with our service. We have a dedicated customer support team and our average response time is within 24 hours (although many times members receive replies sooner).<br>

Performance wise, most photographers report quick loading times but if you feel your website was in any way compromised, please post your problem <a href="http://forum.wix.com/support/15867-experiencing-slowness.html" target="_blank">here</a> and we'll be happy to troubleshoot with you.Generally, we recommend downscaling your media items before uploading them and spreading the content on several pages. (This will speed up loading times and improve overall load).<br>

If you need any help our advice please visit our <a href="http://www.support.wix.com/" target="_blank">Help Center</a> or join the conversation on our <a href="http://forum.wix.com/support/" target="_blank">support forum</a>.</p>

<p>Ugh, Wix is horrible, don't do it. I made the mistake of upgrading to their premium service, and it is horrible. I've also had the same bad experience with their customer service. I asked a question and they advised me to do something that didn't work. You can create some cool designs, but it takes FOREVER to view the photos. I scaled down my media several times (to the point where the quality of the photo was compromised) and it still loaded slowly. In addition, you are extremely limited in what you can modify using their templates. It is definitely not a site to use for displaying your photos in a gallery. Save your money.</p>

<p>Ron Ron,<br>

Sorry pal, but I'm finding out the hard way that Wix.com makes a lot of promises it has no intention of keeping. Your Help Center answers the most simple questions, but when a real problem pops up, there's nothing in the forum and the support center sends meaningless automated messages.<br>

At this moment, one of the titles grew 10 times its size and started flashing irratically and I can't get into the title or the page. I'm still waiting for an answer and I've wasted a half day waiting. I'd plan to spend the day putting together my photo website. Now, I'm a week behind because your system has a glitch and wix.com won't lift a finger to fix it, even though wix promised 24/7 support.<br>

Meanwhile, I just found out that neither wix.com nor my site, HJphotog.com will come up on the Mozilla web browser. Surprise. And I have three computers, two of them new and that's the case on all of them.<br>

The price is great. The ease of putting together a site is good. But one snag and I might as well have nothing online. And you have my money, now that I upgraded to a premium site, so I guess my meager problems might as well not exist.<br>

I'm very disappointed with the service and from what I'm reading here and elsewhere, I should have checked on your service before dropping $99, even if it was a special deal. I guess mistakes are expensive.</p>

 

<p>Hi Miller, I would not recommend Wix to build a website with. It's overly complicated, hard to get help and not as free as it makes itself out to be. Plus its solely a Flash builder and seen as Apple doesnt like Flash, its not compatible with devices like the iPad and the iPhone. Dont get this outdated product. I switched to Cubender when I found out about the Flash issue. Cubender is a Flash website builder too, but its also HTML compatible. So yeah, it solves the iPad problem. Plus you can make galleries for your work! Although Im happy I switched, Cubender isnt perfect. It does have less templates (though I do admit the ones they have are very nice) and they seem pretty new. <br>

Steph</p>

<p><br>

Wix Review</p>

 

<p > </p>

<p >An impressive post, I just gave this to a colleague who is doing a little analysis on this topic. And he is very happy and thanking me for finding it. But all thanks to you for writing s=in such simple words. Big thumb up for this blog post!<br>

</p>

<p>I have to disagree.<br>

I use Wix's premium service for both my small business, my hobbyist photography portfolio, and my MBA Class course page mainly because I can simultaneously maintain a facebook fan page, a website, and a mobile site (Wix's new "Apple Friendly" mobile platform) at minimum costs. I think there is a small learning curve in learning how to develop/ maintain a website using Wix's platform, but ultimately it is the most comprehensive low cost solution out there that's easy to use. I believe their platform also keeps up with the pace of technology. I think up until now I was a little bit at a disadvantage to my competitors who had more dedicated funds to create facebook/web/mobile sites.<br>

Just my 2 cents.</p>

<p> </p>

<p>Mike,</p>

 

<p> Wix is pretty bad. They attract you with sweet looking designs and low prices, but their websites aren't functional. They load slow, SEO is tough, and you can't view them on iPads or iPhones because they're Flash based. That's a huge issue considering how many people look at websites on their mobile devices. Customer service sucks and they want all your monthly payments up front.</p>

<p> If you're looking for an affordable solution, I'd suggest Homestead.com or SetMySite.com.</p>

<p> Homestead is only $10 a month, and they allow you to build your own website with templates. It's html-based, so you can view their websites easily on mobile devices. They're running a special right now where it's only $5 a month for the first 3 months. I think they also require all the monthly payments up front, but I'm not sure.</p>

<p> If you don't like the idea of templates or building the site yourself, setmysite will build your site from scratch for $30 a month. It's a little more expensive than Homestead, but they build it for you, update it for you every month, and host it as well. They do not require monthly payments to be made upfront. They're payments are month to month with no contract.</p>

<p> Hope that helps. Good luck with your photography site!</p>

<p> -- Jeff Cordini</p>

<p>"Go Packers Go!" </p>

<p>Hello to all Wix users,<br /><br />Our support staff is committed to our users and as we continue to expand, it is important for us to make sure that anyone who uses Wix feels that they are being heard and addressed.<br /><br />After all, our main goal is to keep our users satisfied with our product and our service. We are here to serve you, our users, and we are eager to address the issues you have stated above/below.<br /><br />Please post a comment in the following link and we will do everything we can to resolve any technical or billing issue you may have:<br /><br /><a href="http://www.wix.com/support/forum/flash/other/other/wix-unresolved-issues" target="_blank">http://www.wix.com/support/forum/flash/other/other/wix-unresolved-issues</a><br /><br />Thanks,<br />Jordan Wix Team</p>

<p>hey,<br>

I'm just starting my photography business and for the start I didn't want anything too fancy, just a gallery to show my works and have a space for contact info, so wix was fine for me. I found it really easy to use as well. here's a link www.justekaupaite.wix.com/photography let me know what you think.</p>

<p>WIX loads slowly on older computers because it is flash based. Flash is bad for seo. If you want people to find you go a different route. I personally like zenfolio. Keep it simple. Make the images the main focus. Keeping your blog on your website rather than using something like blogger really helps your seo too. Another problem with WIX that I ran into was that I could not edit the free WIX site that I made just to see what it was all about (even though I hated the WIX sites I had seen others create) on my old macs. Also it depends on the client but a lot of people stay away from any business with a WIX site because they see it as unprofessional to not pay for your website.<br>

For anyone interested in zenfolio here is my website: sarahashleyphotos.com<br>

They provide a nice online ordering system with many print products. You can see how the ordering works here: sarahashleyphotos.com/artistic.</p>