Most WordPress sites we are asked to look at work fine on the day someone checks. The trouble is what it takes to keep them that way. There is a badge in the admin with nine plugin updates waiting, a theme whose maker stopped releasing fixes, a page builder that adds a second or two to every page on a phone, and a hosting account, a domain account, a backup plugin and a security plugin that each send their own renewal emails. Nobody on staff owns all of that, so updates wait, and waiting is how small sites get broken into.
Leaving WordPress is a reasonable answer to that, but only if the move keeps what the old site earned: the pages people find in search, the posts other sites link to, and the forms that bring in work.
Why owners decide to leave
- Updates that never stop. WordPress itself, the theme and every plugin release on their own schedules. Updating one can break another, so many owners stop updating at all.
- Security patches you have to apply. Many WordPress break-ins come through an outdated plugin or theme rather than WordPress itself. A site with thirty plugins has thirty things to watch.
- Page builders that slow pages down. Visual builders make editing easy, but many load their own styles and scripts on every page, whether that page uses them or not.
- Hosting juggling. The host, the domain registrar, the backup service and the caching plugin are often four different companies, and when the site goes down it is not clear whose problem it is.
- No one left who knows how it was built. The developer who set it up moved on, and the site depends on custom code nobody has opened in years.
What moves, and how
- Pages and posts, with their text, headings, images and internal links, rebuilt as clean pages on a custom Wix Headless front end built with Astro. Posts go into Wix’s blog with their categories and tags, keeping original dates wherever Wix’s blog allows it.
- Images from the media library, resized and compressed so they load quickly, with alt text carried over or written where it was missing.
- Forms, rebuilt in Wix Forms with the same fields and sent to the same people. Each one gets a real test message that has to reach your inbox.
- SEO titles and descriptions from Yoast, Rank Math or whichever SEO plugin you used, matched page by page so what shows in search results does not change by accident.
- Page builder content, cleaned up. Shortcodes and builder layouts do not survive an export intact. We rebuild those sections by hand, which is usually where most of the speed gain comes from.
- Plugins, replaced by what the site needs. We list every active plugin and agree on each one: Wix already does it (forms, blog, members, bookings), we build it into the site’s code, or it is no longer needed. Caching, backup, image and security plugins usually fall in the last group, because the new setup handles those jobs another way.
Blog editing moves to the Wix dashboard. Writers give up the WordPress block editor and get one login for posts, form messages and the rest of the business tools.
Running a WooCommerce store? Products, customers and orders need more planning, covered on our Shopify and WooCommerce migration page.
Keeping the addresses search engines know
WordPress sites collect addresses over the years: date-based post paths, category and tag archives, author pages, attachment pages for single images, and old ?p=123 links. We crawl the live site, pull more addresses from its sitemap and Search Console, and map every one. Many pages can keep the exact address they have now. Anything that changes gets a 301 redirect to its closest new page, and thin archive pages point to the section they belonged to.
After the switch we submit the new sitemap to Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools and watch both for addresses that return errors. Bots will keep requesting /wp-admin and /wp-login.php for months; those return “not found”, which is correct. Ongoing search work sits under our SEO and AI visibility service.
When staying on WordPress makes more sense
- Your site is fast, current and looked after by someone you trust.
- You rely on a plugin with no real equivalent elsewhere, such as a large online course platform or a complex directory.
- Your writers depend on WordPress’s editorial tools, such as many authors with review steps.
- You rearrange page layouts yourself every week. On a custom front end, layout changes go through a developer, a trade our Wix Headless vs Wix editor guide explains.
If that is you, keep WordPress and keep it updated.
How a migration runs
We start with a call and a look at the live site, its plugins and its hosting, without changing anything. A written proposal follows, with one-time and monthly costs listed separately. The new site is built on a preview address while WordPress keeps running, every page is checked at nine screen sizes, and every link and form is tested. On switch day the domain points to the new site, with only the web records changed and your email records left alone. Then hosting and upkeep takes over the jobs your plugins used to do.
We need an admin login for WordPress, access to your hosting or a full backup, access to your domain settings, and the names of the people who should receive form messages. If the move is part of a larger rethink, see our website redesign page. Read the website cost guide for what drives the price, or send us your site’s address.
