What is Wix membership?
Wix is one of the most popular website builders online with over 7 million active websites worldwide! (only 2nd to WordPress).
The platform has convinced a large part of the online community with how easy it makes it to create a website.
And to appeal to the online education industry, Wix has made it possible to create a membership site.
This comes with a few caveats (that we’ll explore later) and is only a substitute for a specialist tool such as the online course platforms we review.
But it might be enough for some people already using Wix for their website, and wanting to keep everything in one place if possible.
What Can You Do With Wix Membership?
As we’ve mentioned, Wix isn’t at its core an online course platform.
It does allow however, similarly to WordPress, a way to add plugins (Applications) for added features.
And that’s how you would be able to create a membership site or online course with Wix!
You would first install the Member’s area app, which will allow you to create a private part of your website people have to login to access.
This includes their member’s profile and the ability to see and manage them in the back-end.
From there you can create pages that only certain members can access: your paid membership site.
On these pages, you can add all of the content you’d like your members to access!
Whether that’s a series of videos, articles, audio, or resources to download.
The big upside of these pages being fully customizable is that you’re not restricted to a specific layout or theme.
Note that on Wix, there is a limit of storage and therefore how many videos you’ll be able to host there.
This depends on your plan (it ranges from 10GB - 20GB - 35GB - Unlimited).
The last part to make this all work together will be to use Wix’s checkout to sell your membership and give proper access to your members.
You also have the ability to message your members directly from Wix.
As you can see, building a membership in Wix is possible but takes a bit of patching up to do.
Let’s compare this to how a dedicated online course platform looks and if that would be a better solution for you or not.
How Does Wix Compare To Online Course Platforms?
There are a few things a dedicated online course platform can do that may make your life easier than Wix.
First of all, a lot of the popular platforms offer unlimited storage for your programs.
This includes videos and other files you may deliver in your course.
You also have a real back-end content management system of your online course rather than a front-end page editing (like in Wix):
This allows you among other things to easily create a curriculum and edit it quickly.
Most online course platforms also allow for progress tracking, which means that you can see exactly how much each student completes.
On top of this, a lot of the popular online course platforms are all-in-ones, catering to the specific needs of course creators.
This usually includes tools such as funnel builders, an integrated email marketing system and CRM (not available in Wix) and native learning tools (quizzes, assessment, calendar,etc.).
It also includes community building capabilities in order to make your membership more interactive and engaging for members.
Again, that’s the upside of using a specialist tool versus a generalist one like Wix.
Lastly, online course platforms are always keeping up with new needs creators have and make improvements faster than Wix will.
For instance, Kajabi acquired Vibely, a community platform, to fill the needs of its users to provide an outstanding community experience.
Pros of Wix for course creators
Cons of Wix for course creators
Wix membership FAQ
You’ll probably want to get a Business Wix account for your membership site which starts from about $20 a month.
This will give you 35 GB of storage and 10 hours of video hosting.
You can also go for the Business Unlimited plan and get unlimited video hosting!
Perfect if you have a lot of content to share in your membership
Yes, by using one of Wix’s checkout apps, you’ll be able to take payment through a range of payment gateways: Stripe, Paypal, Square, Braintree,etc.
You can create recurring subscriptions, trials or one-off payment.
You can also use Wix Payment to reduce your fees!
Most people wanting to build a membership site with Wix, do it because they’re already using the platform for their website and want to keep things convenient.
But sometimes, using a specialist platform is necessary.
If you’re in need of a fully integrated system for online courses and want more than the basic setup Wix can offer, that’s when using an online platform can be best.
You could still use Wix for the website part of your business and leave the rest up to your new platform.
If that’s your case, the best place to start might be to look at the top online course platforms and see how this can fit into your current tech stack.
