Yes, you can migrate Wix to WordPress, but there is no export button that does it for you. It is a manual rebuild: set up hosting and staging, pull in what Wix will let you export (mostly blog posts via RSS), rebuild every page and re-upload your media, then map every old URL to a new one with 301 redirects before you flip DNS. Skip the redirect step and you will lose rankings. Skip staging and your live site goes dark mid-move.
TL;DR:
- Migrating from Wix to WordPress requires a manual rebuild of pages, design elements, and media, as Wix offers limited exporting options beyond blog posts.
- Nearly all Wix-specific features, such as booking widgets and custom apps, need to be recreated in WordPress with plugins or custom development.
- Proper URL mapping and 301 redirects are essential to preserve search rankings, and it typically takes one to two weeks for small sites to complete the migration.
- A staging environment is crucial for testing functionality, responsiveness, and SEO before switching DNS to avoid prolonged downtime or ranking loss.
- Backing up all Wix content, media, DNS settings, and customer data beforehand prevents data loss and speeds up troubleshooting during the migration process.
Table of Contents
- Why Migrating From Wix to WordPress Means Rebuilding, Not Exporting
- Choose Hosting, Install WordPress, and Set Up a Staging Site
- What Can You Actually Export From Wix?
- Rebuilding Pages and Design in WordPress
- Fixing Media: Downloading, Re-hosting, and Relinking Images
- Mapping Old URLs and Setting Up 301 Redirects
- Testing on Staging and Switching Your Domain (DNS)
- Post-Launch SEO Checks You Cannot Skip
- How a Professional Migration Is Scoped (and When to Call EPD Websites)
- Backing Up Your Wix Site Before You Touch Anything
- Ensuring GDPR and Privacy Compliance During and After Migration
- Handling Wix Stores, Bookings, and Forms During the Move
- DIY or Hire It Out? An Editorial Take
- Get a Managed Wix to WordPress Migration From EPD Websites
- Sources
- FAQ
Why Migrating From Wix to WordPress Means Rebuilding, Not Exporting
Wix does not offer a native full-site export. Pages, design elements, navigation menus, and most dynamic features (booking widgets, membership areas, custom apps) have to be recreated by hand inside WordPress, because Wix's architecture simply doesn't hand that data over in a portable format.
That single fact reshapes how you should think about the whole project. A "Wix export to WordPress" tool that promises a one-click transfer is overselling what is technically possible. The realistic path is closer to a website redesign that happens to reuse your old content and domain. Blog posts are the one bright spot. Static pages, forms, stores, and booking systems are not.
This is also good news in disguise. A forced rebuild is a legitimate opportunity to fix things you have been avoiding: bloated navigation, thin service pages, outdated headshots, or a homepage that still talks about a service you dropped two years ago. Treat the migration as a content audit as much as a technical one.
Choose Hosting, Install WordPress, and Set Up a Staging Site
Your first real decision is hosting. Budget shared hosting is cheap and fine for a low-traffic brochure site, but managed WordPress hosting handles updates, security patches, and speed optimization for you, which matters more once your site carries client-facing forms or e-commerce.
Most hosts offer a one-click WordPress installer. Right after install, do three things before you touch content:
- Set your permalink structure (Settings → Permalinks) so URLs are clean from day one.
- Install a starter plugin kit: an SEO plugin, a backup plugin, a redirect manager, and a security plugin.
- Build everything on a staging subdomain or subdirectory, not your live domain.
A staging environment matters because your Wix site needs to stay live and indexed while you rebuild in private. Nobody should see a half-finished WordPress site while you are still uploading images.
For a small brochure site (5 to 15 pages), budget one to two weeks for hosting setup plus initial build time, which lines up with typical migration timelines for small sites.
Pro Tip: Lock in your permalink format before you import a single post. Changing it later breaks every internal link you just built.
What Can You Actually Export From Wix?
Wix gives you a few real export paths, and knowing exactly which ones work saves you hours of frustration.
- Blog posts via RSS. Find your feed at yoursite.com/feed.xml or yoursite.com/blog-feed.xml. In WordPress, go to Tools → Import → RSS and paste that feed URL. This pulls titles, body copy, and publish dates, but the RSS import typically needs manual cleanup of formatting and images afterward.
- Product and contact CSVs. If you run Wix Stores, you can export product and order data as CSV files from your Wix dashboard. Product images and some custom fields often need manual reassignment once you import that CSV into WooCommerce.
- Contacts. Wix lets you export your contact list separately, which you can then upload into whatever CRM or email tool you plan to use going forward.
What will not come across: page layouts, section designs, most third-party app data, and anything built with Wix-specific widgets. That includes custom forms, booking calendars, and membership logic. Those all need manual recreation or a WordPress plugin substitute.
One warning worth repeating: standard WordPress migration plugins (the kind built to move one WordPress site to another) do not import content from non-WordPress platforms at all. If a plugin claims otherwise for Wix specifically, be skeptical, and verify it actually connects to Wix's export files rather than a generic WordPress database.
Rebuilding Pages and Design in WordPress
This is where most of your time goes. Start with the theme decision: a lightweight Gutenberg block theme keeps plugin dependency low and loads fast, while a page builder (Elementor, Divi, Beaver Builder) gives you more visual flexibility if you are used to Wix's drag-and-drop feel. Either works. What matters is picking one and sticking with it, since switching builders mid-project doubles your rebuild time.
Rebuild in this order for efficiency:
- Homepage template first, since it sets your visual standard for everything else.
- Core service or product pages next, using the homepage's block patterns as a starting point.
- Blog template, after your RSS import lands.
- Landing pages and any campaign-specific pages last.
Once your RSS import is in, go through every post and clean up broken formatting, orphaned headings, and leftover Wix-specific shortcodes. Rewrite thin or outdated meta titles and descriptions while you are in there. Digital strategy practitioners frame migration as primarily a content-reconstruction project, not just a data transfer, and that framing pays off here. If a page has not driven a single lead in two years, this is the moment to cut it rather than rebuild it out of habit.
Watch for gaps between what Wix apps did and what WordPress needs a plugin for. Some Wix app functionality requires custom development or a different plugin entirely to replicate, so budget time (or a developer's hour) for anything beyond basic pages and posts.
Fixing Media: Downloading, Re-hosting, and Relinking Images
Even a clean RSS import leaves a trap: images from your Wix posts usually stay hosted on Wix's own CDN rather than moving to WordPress with the text. Leave that alone and every image on your new site quietly breaks the day you cancel your Wix plan.
- Go to your Wix Media Manager and bulk-download your files as a Site Files.zip archive.
- Upload those files into your WordPress media library, renaming generic filenames like "IMG_2841.jpg" into something descriptive for SEO, and add alt text to every image while you're in there.
- Run a find-and-replace across your imported posts to swap any lingering Wix CDN URLs for your new WordPress media links.
Check licensed stock images carefully. If a Wix template photo came bundled with your plan rather than a license you own outright, confirm you can actually reuse it before rebuilding a page around it.
Pro Tip: Do not cancel your Wix subscription the day you go live. Keep it active for at least two weeks and manually check that every image loads correctly on the new site first.
Mapping Old URLs and Setting Up 301 Redirects
This step decides whether your migration preserves your search rankings or tanks them. A complete redirect map from old Wix URLs to new WordPress URLs is the single most important technical step in the whole process, and it is also the one people rush.
Start by crawling your live Wix site with a tool like Screaming Frog to export every URL along with its title tag and meta description. That crawl-based export is the most reliable way to build an accurate redirect spreadsheet rather than guessing from memory which pages exist.
From that export, build a simple spreadsheet with two columns: old URL and new URL. Prioritize:
- Pages that show real traffic in your analytics.
- Pages with existing backlinks from other sites.
- Your homepage, top service pages, and highest-performing blog posts.
Implement the redirects with a plugin like Redirection, or through server-level rules if your host supports them. Server-side 301 redirects beat client-side JavaScript redirects every time. If you are working around legacy Wix hash-bang URLs and need a temporary fallback, switch to server-side 301s the moment you control DNS, because JS redirects add latency and can dilute the SEO signal you are trying to protect.
According to eSEOspace's timeline data, a small 5 to 15 page site typically takes 1 to 2 weeks to migrate, with e-commerce or larger sites running 3 to 6 weeks. Redirect mapping alone can eat a third of that time on a content-heavy site. Test every redirect manually before launch. A misconfigured 301 chain is one of the fastest ways to quietly lose the page rank you are trying to preserve.
Read more on how WordPress redirects affect small firm SEO if you want the mechanics explained in plain terms.
Testing on Staging and Switching Your Domain (DNS)
Before you touch DNS, run a full functional and SEO pass on staging.
- Test every form submission, checkout flow, and membership login end to end.
- Check mobile responsiveness on at least three screen sizes.
- Verify your XML sitemap generates correctly and robots.txt is not accidentally blocking crawlers.
- Confirm canonical tags and any structured data (reviews, business info, FAQ schema) render properly.
- Take a full backup of the staging build right before go-live.
Once staging passes, update your DNS records to point at the new WordPress host. Propagation is usually fast, often within a couple of hours, but can take up to 48 hours depending on your domain's TTL settings and registrar. Lower your DNS TTL a day or two ahead of the switch to speed this up.
Keep your rollback option ready. If something breaks badly after DNS updates, you want a documented path back to the old configuration while you fix it.
Pro Tip: Launch early in the week, not on a Friday. If something goes wrong, you want your host's support team fully staffed to help you fix it fast.
Post-Launch SEO Checks You Cannot Skip
The week after launch is when small mistakes turn into ranking drops if you are not watching.
- Submit your new XML sitemap in Google Search Console and confirm it gets crawled without errors.
- Run a full site crawl to catch 404s and redirect chains, then fix them within days, not weeks.
- Watch traffic and keyword rankings weekly for the next 4 to 12 weeks. Some fluctuation is normal; a steep, sustained drop usually points back to a missed redirect.
- Set up basic uptime and error monitoring so you find out about a broken page before a client does.
Keep a full backup taken right after launch, separate from any staging backups, so you have a clean restore point if a plugin update causes trouble down the line.
How a Professional Migration Is Scoped (and When to Call EPD Websites)
A professionally scoped migration typically runs through inventory, staging build, media re-hosting, redirect mapping, quality assurance, launch, and a support window afterward. Epdwebsites recommends bringing in help when you are running Wix Stores, booking systems, or a site that gets meaningful organic traffic you cannot afford to lose. For an accurate quote, come to a discovery call with your Wix login, a rough page count, and a list of any e-commerce or booking features currently in use.
Backing Up Your Wix Site Before You Touch Anything
Before you export a single file, back up everything on your current Wix site. This is your insurance policy if a step goes wrong midway through the rebuild.
Start with the content itself: copy every page's text into a document, page by page, since Wix has no bulk content export beyond RSS for blog posts. Screenshot every page as a visual reference for layout and design details you might otherwise forget while rebuilding in WordPress. Export your product catalog and order history as CSV files if you run Wix Stores, and export your contact list separately.
Download your entire Site Files.zip from the Wix Media Manager so every image, PDF, and uploaded document sits safely on your own hard drive, not just in Wix's cloud. If you run Wix Bookings, note down every service, staff schedule, and pricing tier manually since none of that transfers through any export tool.
Finally, write down your current DNS settings and domain registrar login details before you start, in case you need to revert quickly. A thorough backup takes a day, maybe two. Skipping it to save time is the single most common regret people report after a rushed migration goes sideways.
Ensuring GDPR and Privacy Compliance During and After Migration
Moving your site is also a legitimate moment to review how you handle visitor data, especially if you serve or have ever served European visitors covered by GDPR.
Audit your Wix contact forms, newsletter sign-ups, and any stored customer data before you export it. Make sure your new WordPress cookie consent setup, privacy policy, and data storage practices match or improve on what you had running on Wix. If you are exporting customer contact lists as CSV files, store that file securely and delete it once it is safely imported into your new CRM or email platform. Do not leave a spreadsheet of customer emails sitting in an unencrypted downloads folder.
Check that your new hosting provider stores data in a way consistent with your privacy policy claims, particularly if you advertise data handling practices to clients in regulated professions like law or medicine. Update your privacy policy page to reflect your new hosting provider and any new forms or plugins now collecting data. A plugin like a contact form builder or a booking system on WordPress often has its own data retention settings that need reviewing individually, since the defaults are not always compliant out of the box.
Handling Wix Stores, Bookings, and Forms During the Move
Wix's built-in apps are the trickiest part of any migration because none of them transfer directly into WordPress equivalents.
For Wix Stores, export your product and order CSVs, then import them into WooCommerce, expecting to manually reassign product images and some custom fields that do not map cleanly between platforms.
For Wix Bookings, there is no export at all. You will need to manually recreate your service list, staff availability, and pricing inside a WordPress booking plugin, and test the full booking flow before you consider the migration complete.
For Wix Forms, copy each form's field structure (not just the submitted data) so you can rebuild the same form using a WordPress form plugin. Also export any stored form submissions you need to keep, since those records typically do not carry over automatically.
In every case, budget extra time for these three items specifically. They tend to be the last pieces finished and the first thing that breaks if rushed.
DIY or Hire It Out? An Editorial Take
DIY works when your site is small, your content is mostly text and images, and you genuinely have a free week to focus on it. It stops working the moment you have a store, a booking system, or a site that actually generates leads you cannot afford to lose for even a few days.
The hidden cost of a rushed DIY migration is never the hosting bill. It's the three weeks of quietly declining traffic nobody notices until a client asks why they cannot find your firm on Google anymore. If you hire a migration partner, brief them with your exact page count, your traffic sources, and whether any page currently converts. Vague briefs produce vague migrations.
— Kate
Get a Managed Wix to WordPress Migration From EPD Websites
If the redirect spreadsheet, RSS cleanup, and DNS timing above sound like more than you want to manage solo, that is exactly the gap a managed migration closes. Some providers have experience building and hosting websites for attorneys, CPAs, real estate agents, and other professional-service businesses that cannot afford a week of broken forms or lost rankings, and a full-service migration typically follows the same inventory, staging, redirect, and QA sequence covered above, handled for you rather than by you.
A managed migration includes rebuilding your pages and design, re-hosting your media correctly the first time, building your complete redirect map, and running the same launch QA checklist detailed earlier, so nothing gets skipped under deadline pressure. To get started, book a discovery call and come with your current Wix login, an approximate page count, and a note on any store, booking, or form features currently in use. From there, Epdwebsites can scope realistic pricing and a timeline based on your site's actual complexity. Browse website design and hosting packages to see what's included, or check the FAQ for answers on pricing and process before you reach out.
Sources
Consult WordPress's own import documentation, your host's staging guide, and your redirect plugin's setup docs for step-by-step technical detail.
FAQ
How Does Wix Compare to WordPress?
Wix is an all-in-one hosted builder with limited portability, while WordPress gives you full ownership of your code, content, and hosting. Once you migrate, you gain more control and scalability but take on more setup responsibility yourself, or through a managed host like Epdwebsites.
What Is the Best Free Plugin for Migrating a WordPress Site?
For moving one WordPress site to another, plugins like Duplicator or All-in-One WP Migration work well. Neither imports content directly from Wix, since migration plugins are built for WordPress-to-WordPress moves, not non-WordPress platforms.
How Do I Migrate Off Wix?
Set up WordPress hosting and staging, import blog posts via RSS, manually rebuild your pages and design, re-upload your media, then map every old URL to a 301 redirect before switching DNS. Expect the whole process to take 1 to 2 weeks for a small site and up to 3 to 6 weeks for a larger or e-commerce site.
Is Wix as Good as WordPress for SEO?
WordPress generally offers more SEO control through plugins, custom schema, and flexible site architecture, but Wix has closed much of that gap for basic on-page SEO. The real advantage of WordPress shows up in scalability and long-term flexibility once your site grows past a handful of simple pages.