If you're paying $23/month for Wix Business, you're paying for the privilege of not owning your website. That $276/year buys you a subdomain, limited control, and the constant fear that Wix will raise prices or change their terms of service.
Self-hosted websites — deployed on your own server — are better in every measurable way. Here's why:
With Wix or Squarespace, the code lives on their servers. When you leave, your site is gone. With a self-hosted site, you have the HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files. They're yours forever.
Wix sites are notoriously slow. Google's PageSpeed Insights regularly gives Wix sites scores below 50. A simple HTML website served from a fast server easily scores 90+. Speed matters — both for user experience and Google rankings.
A DigitalOcean droplet costs $6/month. Compare that to Wix Business at $23/month, Squarespace Business at $33/month, or Shopify Basic at $39/month. For a single server, you can host dozens of websites.
Want to add a custom feature? On Wix, you're limited to their app market. On your own server, you can add anything — a custom booking system, a membership area, an e-commerce store — because you control the server.
Wix's free plan shows Wix ads on your site. Their paid plans still use wix.com in your URL unless you pay extra. A self-hosted site has your domain, full stop.
ShiftStackApp makes self-hosting as easy as Wix. You describe your website, AI builds it, and we deploy it to your server automatically. You get all the control of self-hosting with none of the technical complexity.
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