Before you start — realistic timeline and costs
A typical Wix-to-WordPress migration takes 8-20 hours for a small business site (10-30 pages), 30-60 hours for a content-heavy site (100+ posts). DIY costs: $50-150 (hosting setup + theme). With an agency: $1,500-5,000+. The expensive part isn't the migration itself; it's rebuilding the design, since Wix's drag-and-drop layouts don't translate to WordPress. Plan for the new site to look 'similar but not identical' to the old one. If exact pixel-perfect replication matters, budget for a custom-built theme by a WordPress developer.
Step 1: Set up WordPress hosting on a temporary URL
Sign up for WordPress hosting (Hostinger for budget, SiteGround for support, Kinsta if it's a real business). Install WordPress on a temporary subdomain or staging URL — NOT your main domain yet. This staging URL is where you'll build the new site while the old Wix site stays live. Most hosts provide a temporary URL like https://yourdomain.hostinger.tempurl. Install your chosen theme (Astra and Kadence are good universal starting points) and any required plugins (Yoast or Rank Math for SEO, Redirection for redirect management later).
Step 2: Export content from Wix
Wix deliberately makes content export difficult — it's part of their retention strategy. The official method is via Wix's RSS feed (yourdomain.com/blog-feed.xml or /feed.xml for sites with a blog). Use the Wix RSS Feed → WordPress Importer plugin to bring posts in. For non-blog content (about, services, contact pages), you'll manually copy-paste page content. Wix's images need to be re-uploaded; their URLs change after migration. For sites with hundreds of pages, third-party services like CMS2CMS automate more of this for $50-200.
Step 3: Migrate images carefully
Wix hosts images on static.wixstatic.com. You need to re-upload every image to your WordPress media library, then update post content to reference the new URLs. The 'Auto Upload Images' plugin can fetch external images referenced in your posts and re-host them on WordPress automatically — saves hours of manual work. Optimize during this step: use our Image Compressor or install ShortPixel to convert to WebP. Sites often see 30-50% page weight reduction just from re-optimizing images during migration.
Step 4: Rebuild design in WordPress
Wix layouts don't translate. You have three approaches: (1) Pick a WordPress theme that visually resembles your Wix design (Astra Starter Templates or Kadence Starter Templates have 200+ pre-designed sites). Closest match plus minor customization. (2) Build pages with a visual page builder (Elementor or Gutenberg). Lets you replicate complex layouts but adds bundle weight. (3) Hire a developer to custom-build a theme. Most expensive, best pixel-fidelity. For most sites, option 1 + minor Customizer tweaks gets you 80% of the way for 20% of the effort.
Step 5: Map redirects from old URLs to new URLs
This is the most important SEO step. Every Wix URL that ranked for a search query needs to 301-redirect to the equivalent WordPress URL. Without redirects, Google sees the old URL return 404 and drops it from the index. Process: (1) Export Wix sitemap (yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml). (2) For each URL, identify its WordPress equivalent. (3) Install the Redirection plugin on WordPress. (4) For each Wix URL → WordPress URL pair, add a 301 redirect. The redirects will activate once you point your domain to WordPress (next step).
Step 6: Point your domain from Wix to WordPress
DNS cutover. The actual switch takes 2-48 hours due to DNS propagation. Do this during a low-traffic window. Steps: (1) In your domain registrar (where you bought the domain — not Wix), change the nameservers to your new WordPress host's. (2) Wait for propagation (use whatsmydns.net to check). (3) In WordPress Settings, update Site URL and Home to your real domain. (4) Cancel Wix subscription — but only after verifying WordPress is fully serving your domain (give it a week to be safe).
Step 7: Verify nothing broke (the SEO checks)
Run these checks within 48 hours of cutover: (1) Submit your new sitemap to Google Search Console. (2) Check Crawl Errors in Search Console — fix any 404s with additional redirects. (3) Verify your Open Graph and Twitter Card images render correctly (use our Twitter Card Validator). (4) Run a Lighthouse audit — confirm Core Web Vitals are at least as good as the Wix version was. (5) Manually test 10-20 high-traffic pages — confirm they load, look right, and the redirects work. (6) Monitor Search Console weekly for the first month — minor ranking fluctuations are normal; major drops indicate redirect or content issues.