How Do I Migrate from Wix to WordPress?
Wix to WordPress migration takes 10-14 days and adds $500-$1,500 to a Tampa redesign. Here’s the step-by-step, what’s hard, what’s easy, what to watch.
A Wix to WordPress migration takes 10-14 days and adds $500-$1,500 to a Tampa redesign because Wix doesn’t offer clean content export. The work is manual content recreation, image re-upload, and a careful 301 redirect map from Wix’s URL structure to standard WordPress URLs. Done right, you preserve 80%+ of SEO equity and unlock genuine ownership of your site.
Why Wix migrations are harder than they should be
Wix is a closed platform. They do not offer a real export tool — you can’t download your site as WordPress-ready files. Every piece of content has to be moved manually or via screen-scraping crawlers. This is a deliberate Wix design choice to discourage migration.
The migration work breaks into four buckets:
- Content extraction — pulling text and images out of Wix
- WordPress build — rebuilding pages on the new platform
- URL mapping — translating Wix’s URL structure (often /post/page-name or /service-1) to clean WordPress URLs
- Redirect implementation — DNS and 301 setup so old Wix URLs forward correctly
Each bucket takes 2-3 days. Skip any and you lose traffic.
The step-by-step migration
Day 1-2: Pre-migration audit
- Crawl the Wix site with Screaming Frog (works fine for read-only)
- Export every URL, page title, meta description
- Pull Wix analytics or GA4 to identify high-traffic pages
- Build the URL map spreadsheet: every Wix URL → planned WordPress URL
Day 3-4: Content extraction
- Copy text content from each Wix page into a structured Google Doc
- Download every image (Wix bulk image export tool exists but it’s clunky — usually faster manually)
- Note any custom forms, scheduling integrations, or third-party embeds
- Export blog posts if any (Wix offers limited RSS export)
Day 5-7: WordPress build
- Set up new WordPress site on managed hosting (we use Kinsta or WP Engine for Tampa clients)
- Install custom theme — not a Wix lookalike, an actual modern theme
- Build pages with the extracted content
- Apply schema markup (LocalBusiness, Service, FAQ)
- Re-upload images with proper alt text and file naming
Day 8-9: Pre-launch QA
- Mobile testing across iPhone, Android, iPad
- Page speed testing (Core Web Vitals)
- Form testing
- Internal link audit
- Schema validation
- Stage URL review with client
Day 10-12: DNS swap and launch
- Update DNS to point to new WordPress host
- Activate the 301 redirect map (via Redirection plugin or .htaccess)
- Update Google Search Console with new sitemap
- Update Google My Business URL if applicable
- Monitor crawl errors hourly for first 24 hours
Day 13-14: Post-launch monitoring
- Check Search Console daily for crawl errors
- Monitor organic traffic in GA4
- Fix any 404s or broken redirects
- Resubmit any pages that don’t index within 48 hours
What’s easy in a Wix migration
- Domain stays the same. You’re not changing your domain name, so 90% of authority transfers automatically once the 301s are in place.
- Most Wix sites are small (10-30 pages), which makes the manual rebuild manageable.
- Image counts are usually low. Wix sites tend to have under 100 images.
- Wix sites rarely have complex integrations. Most use Wix Bookings, Wix Stores, Wix Forms — all replaceable with WordPress equivalents.
What’s hard in a Wix migration
- No export. Manual content recreation eats time.
- Wix-specific URL patterns. /post-1, /service-2, /home-1 — useless for SEO, and need redirecting to clean URLs.
- Wix-specific features (Velo code, custom Wix apps) that don’t exist in WordPress.
- Wix Bookings or Wix Stores — replacing with WooCommerce or third-party booking adds 2-3 days of integration work.
- Subscription billing through Wix (Wix payments) doesn’t migrate — clients have to re-subscribe through the new payment processor.
The SEO risk and how we mitigate it
Wix sites tend to rank reasonably well in Tampa local search because Wix has decent default schema. Migration risk:
- Without redirects: 50-70% traffic loss for 90+ days, possibly permanent
- With incomplete redirects: 20-30% traffic loss for 60 days
- With complete redirects and content parity: 5-15% temporary dip, full recovery in 60-90 days
The redirect map is the entire game. See will I lose traffic when I redesign my website for the broader traffic-preservation framework.
What you keep, what you lose
You keep:
- Domain name and domain authority
- Backlinks (once redirects are in place)
- Most organic traffic (with 60-90 day stabilization)
- Google My Business profile, reviews, photos
- Email accounts (if you set them up separately from Wix)
You may lose temporarily:
- 5-15% of long-tail keyword traffic for 60-90 days
- Any Wix-specific analytics history (Wix dashboard data doesn’t transfer to GA4)
- Wix subscriber lists (if you used Wix email marketing — export before migration)
You permanently lose:
- Wix-hosted email subscribers if not exported
- Wix Bookings appointment history (export to CSV before cutting service)
- Velo custom code (rewrite in WordPress)
Cost breakdown
| Component | Cost | |—|—| | Base WordPress redesign | $2,000-$3,500 | | Wix migration add-on | $500-$1,500 | | WooCommerce setup (if needed) | $1,000-$3,000 | | New managed hosting (first year) | $300-$600 | | Total range | $2,800-$8,000 |
Compare to staying on Wix: $200-$500/year forever, with a permanent SEO and customization ceiling. The WordPress investment pays back in year 1-2 for most Tampa SMBs.
What this means for your Tampa business
If you’re on Wix and your site does more than $50K/year in influenced revenue, migration is overdue. Three diagnostic questions:
- Does Wix limit what you can do? Common signs: you can’t add a service page without restructuring navigation, you can’t change form fields without paying for the higher tier, you can’t add custom landing pages for ads.
- Can you find your site on Google? Wix Tampa sites often rank ok for branded queries but poorly for service queries. WordPress + proper SEO architecture usually doubles non-branded organic traffic within 6 months.
- What happens if Wix raises prices? They’ve done it before. With WordPress, hosting and platform are decoupled — you can move hosts for $50/year if needed.
The full platform comparison is in what CMS options do I have for a Tampa redesign.
How we run Wix migrations
Every Wix-to-WordPress migration we ship in Tampa includes:
- Day-1 redirect map preview (so you can see the URL plan before content work)
- Full content extraction with image re-upload
- Custom WordPress theme (not a template)
- Schema markup setup (LocalBusiness, Service, FAQ)
- 30-day post-launch monitoring with weekly Search Console reports
- Training session so your team can edit pages without us
Most Wix Tampa SMB migrations land in the $3,500-$5,500 total range and ship in 14 days. If you want to scope yours, the right starting questions are in what to ask a redesign vendor.
Got a more specific question about your project?
Send the details — we reply within one business day with a straight answer, no sales theater. Or book the 30-minute discovery call directly.