How do I move my website off Wix?

What you can and cannot take

The honest starting point, because it determines the whole plan.

Comes with you: your domain, your text, your images, your blog posts, and — with caveats and caps — product, customer and order data.

Does not: the site itself. Wix's own help documentation is explicit that a Wix site cannot be exported or hosted elsewhere, because the platform's architecture depends on Wix's own services to run.

So this is not a migration in the copy-the-files sense. It is a rebuild, with your content carried across. Knowing that up front is what stops people spending a week looking for an export button that does not exist.

The order that matters

1. Secure the domain first

Before anything else. If the domain was bought through Wix, check who the registrant is and make sure you can transfer it out. Domains bought through a platform sometimes have a lock period after purchase or renewal.

Do this first because everything else is worthless if the address does not come with you.

2. Take your content out, while the site is still live

Text: copy every page into a document. Tedious, quick, and it doubles as an audit of what you actually have.

Images: collect the originals if you have them. If not, download from the live site — you will get web-sized versions, which are usually adequate.

Blog posts: Wix can export blog content, and it is worth doing even if you are not sure you will keep them.

Store data: products, customers and orders can be exported, though caps apply.

The list of URLs: every page address on the current site. This is the one people skip and the one that costs rankings — see step 4.

3. Build the new site before cancelling anything

Build it, review it, get it right, and only then switch over. Nobody should ever be in the position of having cancelled the old site while the new one is unfinished.

4. Map the old URLs to the new ones

This is where sites lose their search rankings, and it is entirely avoidable.

Every page that has an address today needs either the same address on the new site, or a permanent redirect to its replacement. Done properly, rankings transfer within weeks. Skipped, they evaporate — along with every external link anyone ever made to those pages.

Make the list before you rebuild, not after. It also usefully shapes the new site: if a page is worth redirecting, it is worth existing.

5. Switch the domain, then check

Point the domain at the new site. Then, systematically:

• Request every old URL and confirm it lands somewhere sensible
• Check the contact and booking forms actually deliver, with a real test submission
• Confirm the SSL certificate is valid on the new host
• Check your email still works if it was tied to the domain
• Resubmit your sitemap in Search Console

6. Cancel Wix — last

Only once everything above is verified. And take a final copy of anything you have not already saved, because access ends when the subscription does.

The two mistakes that make this painful

Cancelling first. Usually to save a month's fee, and it removes your ability to check anything against the original. The saving is not worth it.

Skipping the redirects. The damage is invisible for weeks and then permanent. It is the difference between a move nobody notices and a move that costs you the traffic you spent years building.

Is it worth doing?

Honestly: not always.

If your site is fundamentally a template with your photos in it, and it works, the rebuild costs more than it returns. Leaving is worth it when the platform is genuinely limiting you — you need something it cannot do, the design matters to your brand, or the ongoing cost has grown past what the value justifies.

Where people move to

Everything above is about the leaving. The arriving is a separate decision, and the mistake is making it in a hurry because the export was frustrating.

The question worth putting to wherever you land next is the one that made leaving hard in the first place: if I want to move again in three years, what comes with me? A closed builder answers that the same way Wix does, which means the next migration will feel exactly like this one. WordPress answers it well and hands you the maintenance in exchange — see WordPress vs a managed platform.

Helm's answer is that the site is built as real code, hosted and run for you, and the code is yours to take — so a future move is a copy rather than a rebuild. That is the specific thing being fixed: not somewhere nicer to be, but somewhere this article does not need writing a second time.

Sources: Wix Help Center — Exporting or Embedding Your Wix Site Elsewhere