The Best 5 Wix Alternatives in South Africa

Are you looking for Wix alternatives in South Africa?

In this article, you will learn more about some of the best website builders in South Africa you can use now to create a professional website from scratch without coding.

Are you ready?

Not so fast.

Why is Wix what it is today in South Africa?

First, let’s look at a quick overview of Wix to get you up for speed.

What is Wix?

Well, you may have the answer, but you’d be surprised to know there some people who don’t know what wix in South Africa is.

It doesn’t matter now because you will learn something new today.

So, wix is a website builder. It is a tool that helps you build a website without touching code.

This means that anyone, whether you know how to code or not, can use wix in South Africa.

In terms of numbers, you will be surprised to know that wix hosts over 160 million websites to date. Yes, it is such good!

Also, there is a high chance you have seen some of the flashy advertising campaigns featuring movie stars like Heidi Klum, Jason Statham, and Gal Gadot, (you know her as Wonder Woman).

Who should use Wix?

Well, as much as wix is the best all-round website builder today, not everyone can get to use it.

Why?

Turns out, needs for webmasters like you tend to differ. As such, people get to look for tools offering resources and tools you’d need to start and scale your business.

This explains why we decided to put together this article; to give you a glimpse of wix alternatives in South Africa and prove that there are other page builders to explore.

Business websites

If you are a real estate company, advertising, and marketing, law, or finance, Wix has you covered.

With their hundreds of templates, it is pretty easy to get started, thanks to several tools at your disposal (we will look at them later).

Blogging 

Whether you are looking to build the next big blog in South Africa, WIX can help. But if you are into building an exclusive blog, there are better options out there like WordPress.

Also, a blog comes in handy after you have created a business website. Wix makes it easy to add the blog section to an existing website. All you have to is create a new page and call it ‘blog.’

From there, you can create categories, add a comments section, and even build a search bar into your blog.

E-commerce

Online shopping took off in 2020, thanks to the pandemic that forced people into staying indoors. E-commerce websites registered one of the highest traffic numbers in history.

If this made you consider your next business, you are in for a pleasant surprise. You don’t need thousands of rand to get a perfect and professional e-commerce website.

With Wix, you can easily create an online shop, upload your products’ images, and start selling in under 24 hours.

Again, if you don’t find what you are looking for, there are other online store builders you can use. Lucky for you, we will explore then further in this Wix alternatives in South Africa guide.

Personal website

You may be looking for a website to showcase your photography skills, event planning, or a resume. Wix has you covered.

This website builder in South Africa makes it easy to build simple websites, add content (images, text, and other media) without touching code.

Now, if you fall under any of the aforementioned categories, Wix can be of help.

But, why Wix?

What’s in for you?

What does Wix offer you?

• SEO – this is a must-have thing when building a website today. You will need to get organic traffic instead of spending money all the time. You’ll be glad to know that Wix websites are all SEO optimized, which means they rank easily.
• WIX ADI – this is an AI-powered editor. All you have to do is answer a few questions and you get a personal website recommendation within a few minutes.
• App market – if you feel like your website can benefit from additional functionalities, you have Wix App Market. It brings together a variety of apps. Think of them as ‘plugins’ that if you have used WordPress before.
• Wix Ascend – as you can guess, this is an initiative by Wix to help you take the business to the next level. It is an initiative developed to help you connect with your customers, automate your workflow, and generally promote your business.
• Security – all Wix websites come with in-built SSL. This is a Security Socket Layer aimed at encrypting the communications between your website and the server. This comes as a double blessing. How? Well, recently, Google has intensified crackdown on ‘insecure’ websites (without SSL) and demoting them from the search engine results pages (SERPs).
• Drag and drop feature – this is the tool responsible for making non-techies build amazing websites in minutes without touching code. With it, all you have to do is drag and element and drop it anywhere you want on the screen.

Make no mistake, there are more goodies you can get.

With that said, let’s look at Wix’s cons.

Wix cons

• It is impossible to switch templates once your site is live.
• You may be forced to spend money on third-party apps to gain extra functionality within the tool.
• No in-built analytics tool
• No responsive designs 

Let’s look at Wix alternatives in South Africa.

Wix Alternatives in South Africa

If you find Wix isn’t offering what you are looking for, here are some of the best alternatives to try now.

Squarespace

If you are a creative, you are better off using Squarespace than Wix in South Africa.

This website builder works exactly like Wix. You can buy a domain name and connect it to the site.

Also, customizing templates is easy.

But what sets Squarespace apart from other website builders is that they give you full access to the developer more. This means that you can edit your site’s code using Git and gain full control of your new website in South Africa.

But there is a catch.

This developer mode is only available in the Business plan. And as you can guess, that is a premium Squarespace plan. The personal plan users have access to a basic builder tool.

Squarespace features

Here are some of the best Squarespace features;

• You get a free domain name when you buy the annual plan
• Un-metered Bandwidth and storage space
• You have access to hundreds of mobile-friendly website templates
• Unlike Wix, Squarespace comes with in-built analytics tools
• Alternatively, you can easily connect with Google Analytics
• SSL certificate for security
• 24/7 customer support

Pricing

So you have an option to pay monthly or annually.

For example:

The personal plan goes for $12/month when billed annually, and $16 if you decide to go with the month-to-month basis. The business plan is either $26 per month and if you want a yearly basis, you have to part with billed $18.

Basically, you save 30% if you opt for annual plans.

Weebly

Weebly is another best Wix alternative in South Africa. It is a flexible website builder, ideal for creating any type of website.

Who can use it?

Both small businesses and startups can benefit from using this page builder, thanks to its collection of amazing website templates. With it, you can easily build a professional website without touching code.

While Weebly may be offering a robust drag-and-drop editor, its functionality is quite limited.

For example;

You cannot use this tool to change the column width or the background look of your chosen template.

The only way to do that is through Weebly’s CSS editor.

Either way, Weebly is quickly rising the ranks to be the best Wix alternative in South Africa.

GoDaddy 

Yes, I know this may come as a surprise; GoDaddy has a website builder. At first, they used to call it GoCentral.

But in recent years (2019), the company revamped the editor, and now goes by the name Website + Marketing.

Just like Wix, GoDaddy’s website builder is beginner-friendly, thanks to its Artificial Design Intelligence (ADI) editor. This system works almost similar to Wix’s ADI tool in that all you have to do is answer a few questions and you are done.

This way, this tool makes it easier and fast to create a free website in South Africa, without touching code.

What makes it worth is its focus on uplifting small and medium businesses. Besides giving them free and simple websites, GoDaddy has made it easy to market your website, thanks to a ton of promotional channels.

For example:

• You can easily integrate your new site with Instagram and Facebook and create posts instantly.
• Send email newsletter directly from your GoDaddy dashboard
• Handle Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
• In the case of an eCommerce, you can track orders and get automatic checkout reminders
• There is the GoDaddy InSight™ Score. It is a score helping you gauge how your website is doing against other websites like yours.
• Online booking capabilities

GoDaddy Pricing

How will all this cost you?

Well, you are in luck because GoDaddy offers a free plan. 

Other premium plans start from $9.99 per month and give you access to premium features.

For example:

You can only integrate the eCommerce tool if you are on paid plans.

Weebly features

• A free domain name for a year with premium plans
• SSL certificate
• 500MB storage
• Site search feature
• You can integrate third-party applications
• SEO tools to boost your rankings on search engines

Weebly pricing

Weebly have tow options;

Free and paid plans.

You can host your website for free but you get a Weebly branded domain. Alternatively, you can get a custom domain for $5 per month, but still, there will some Weebly ads onsite.

The Pro plan is going for $12 per month and the Business plan at $25 per month. Then there is the Pro Business plan going for $38/month for the Pro Business plan. 

You must be aware that all these prices are billed annually.

OLITT

OLITT is one of the fastest-growing website builders in South Africa.

With the ability to use integrate any platform onto the OLITT site using custom JavaScript, this is the best tool you need to build amazing websites in South Africa.

For example:

You can easily connect your new OLITT website with tools like Help Desk, Live Chat, or Facebook Pixel. 

Such additional integrations improve the functionality of your new website.

If you want faster loading websites in South Africa, this is your tool. Olitt comes with a Global CDN Network with over 42 PoPs. 

This means that your site will be served from the reader’s nearest server. 

Moreover, OLITT has over 200 premium template designs that are all SEO and mobile optimized. This means that you can easily get the perfect theme for your website.

With its drag-and-drop tool, the website creation process is reduced to a few mouse clicks, and you are done.

OLITT features

• Free DNS management
• Cheapest domain names in South Africa
• Get free SSL certificates
• Easily collect payments on your landing pages using popular gateways like PayPal and Stripe
• Connect to popular Google webtools such as Tag Manager, and Google Analytics
• Easily add custom JavaScript

OLITT pricing

OLITT comes with three web hosting plans;

There is a free plan where you can connect a custom domain. The professional plan going for $5.00 per month. Here, you get OLITT branding removed, able to connect up to 2 websites, and 1 GB of web hosting space.

Then there is the Business plan. Costs $10 per month and gives you access to unlimited storage space, connect up to 5 sites, and get priority support.

Wait, there is more.

All OLITT plans, come with free SSL certificates, access to hundreds of premium website templates, and access to SEO tools among other goodies.

Moving on with the best Wix alternatives in South Africa.

WordPress

WordPress is one of the most popular website builders, powering over 35% of the world’s websites, making a no-brainer Wix alternative in South Africa.

So, there are two types of WordPress;

• WordPress.com – this is a hosted builder and is free. Hosted means that all you have to worry about is creating content for your new website. Unfortunately, it comes with a wordpress.com extension and if you wish to connect a custom domain, you have to upgrade plans
• WordPress.org – self-hosted website builder. It is free and easy to use. Comes with a ton of functionalities, thanks to thousands of plugins. 

The latter is what we are looking at in this article.

As mentioned, WordPress.org has a lot of fans out there, and there is a high chance you are already using a WordPress powered website.

With it, you can build virtually any type of website, without the need to touch code (even though there is that option if you choose to).

How?

We mentioned themes and plugins, these are apps that you can add to your website to improve its functionality.

For example:

If you want to build an online shop, all you have to do is buy a domain, choose a theme tailored specifically for e-commerce websites, and start editing. 

Now, to use WordPress website builder in South Africa, you will a web hosting platform and a domain name.

• Get a domain name 
• Buy a hosting package
• Install WordPress on your new site
• Start editing.

It is that simple.

Shopify

If you are looking for a Wix eCommerce alternative, Shopify is your best bet. Shopify is a website builder dedicated to creating online stores.

Just like the others on this list, you don’t need any previous technical knowledge to use it. Although, you will need to buy a domain to link it to the store.

Once you have the domain, your next step is to choose the Shopify plan. They have several plans, including a free one (giving you 14 days free trial).

From there, you can pick a template from pre-made sites. Start editing the theme using the Shopify drag-and-drop tool.

What makes Shopify unique, is its dashboard dedicated to helping you manage your inventory. Additionally, you have access to Shopify apps, which adds functionality to your store.

Shopify features

• 70+ professional themes created by renowned designers
• You are given full access to the HTML and CSS of your store, giving you control of every aspect of your online business
• Ability to add a blog section to your store. This gives you an edge when it comes to thriving on search engines and generating organic traffic
• Every Shopify store comes with a free 256-bit SSL certificate. Gives you security and a chance to rank on search engines.
• Easily recover lost sales (cart-abandonment) with simple tools
• Over 100 payment gateways
• Support multiple languages

Shopify Pricing

You get a 14-day free trial, no credit card required.

From there, you have three premium plans to choose from. Starting from $29 per month.

Wrapping up Wix alternatives in South Africa

There you have it, best web designers in South Africa. Go ahead and try Olitt now for free.