Google’s John Mueller answered questions on Reddit about migrating SMB sites from Wix to a self-hosted WordPress environment. He expressed his opinion on this particular scenario and discussed the relative advantages and disadvantages of hosting and self-managed WordPress for SMB in this context.
Small and Medium Business (SMB)
SMB means small and medium-sized enterprises. The meaning of these scales is not static. There are many definitions.
Generally speaking, a small business refers to an enterprise with less than 100 employees. A medium-sized enterprise refers to an enterprise with between 100 and 500 employees. Some definitions classify the number of employees as a medium-sized enterprise, even as high as 1,000.
Managed and self-hosted WordPress hosting
Managed WordPress Hosting is a hosting environment in which the web host is responsible for all the technical maintenance related details of the hosted WordPress site.
Things like security, caching, content delivery network (CDN), security, updates, and backups are all handled by the hosting company.
This allows SMB to focus on its core business without having to hire in-house web developers to maintain the security and updates of the website.
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The cost of letting the web host handle the technical details is that the host restricts the plug-ins that can run in its environment to maintain the security of the host.
A self-hosted environment is an environment where a web host is responsible for backing up its site and keeping it up to date.
The trade-off here is that the self-hosted environment allows companies more freedom to use any necessary solutions, including the use of their own custom-developed plug-ins, which means that people within the company must be hired or trained to handle maintenance and safe housework.
Managed WordPress The cost of hosting is higher than self-hosting, but it is lower than the cost of hiring or training someone to deal with technical issues.
SMB is moving from Wix to self-hosted WordPress
The person who asked the question on Reddit explained that the neighbor is migrating from Wix to a self-hosted WordPress environment.
They explained that the current Wix website performs well in terms of page speed and ranking.
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Those who started the discussion pointed out:
“…His current website has an SEO score of 98 on the lighthouse, and customers keep telling him that he is the first local company to appear in the results.”
Assuming that the SEO building a self-hosted WordPress site for SMB is fixing something that does not need to be fixed, this may not be unreasonable.
It sounds like the business is doing well on Wix.
John Mueller says Wix is great for SEO
Google’s John Mueller first solved Wix and SEO issues, and then discussed self-hosted WordPress sites, which is what the business migrating from Wix to WordPress is doing.
Mueller said:
“Wix is very suitable for SEO. A few years ago, SEO was very bad in terms of SEO, but they have made amazing progress, and they are now a good platform for enterprises. The reputation of the year is still there, but don’t be shaken by it.
Everything they have done in recent years has been very good, including making it trivial to have a very fast website (as you can see in the Lighthouse score-admittedly, speed is only a small part of SEO).
If Wix is useful to them, and they don’t need more, there is no reason to switch. “
John Mueller discourages migration to self-hosting for SMB
Mueller next explained that for SMBs without a dedicated web support team, a self-hosted WordPress environment may not be an idea.
I think it’s important to realize that Mueller’s answer was given in the context of discussing a specific SMB that has limited network support and moved from a well-performing Wix site to an unmanaged WordPress environment.
Mueller responded:
“In particular, don’t turn to self-hosted things.
Hosting a website on your own will bring a million small troubles. Companies without a dedicated support team will find it difficult to do the right thing and will eventually be hacked + a lot of money must be invested to improve the infrastructure over time (speed , Security, functionality).
Some people like challenges, but if your neighbor likes to run a non-IT business, then they shouldn’t run their own servers (for example, host WordPress by themselves).
I know that running WP is still a bit popular, but for SMBs who have other ideas, this is definitely a bad thing.
There are hosted and managed WP settings, they cost money, but they will do these things for you.
Wix will also do all these tasks for you. Squarespace, etc.-similar. “
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Google’s John Mueller attends Reddit
Managed hosting or software as a service?
Companies such as Wix and Squarespace provide a software-as-a-service (SaaS) approach, the platform is fully optimized for enterprises, and its goal is to make it easy for enterprises to go online and conduct business, while the technical part is no longer needed, so that small businesses can focus In their business.
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For companies choosing a WordPress solution, managed WordPress hosting can almost accomplish the same thing, but with some limitations.
Due to highly optimized features for improving SEO and page speed, Wix may have advantages over managed WordPress hosting.
A managed WordPress host has a limited impact on SEO and page speed, because page speed and SEO may depend on the WordPress templates and plugins used.
As John Mueller observed, it is clear that if Wix works for a small business, then there is no reason to move to a different platform.
Citation
The original discussion is available here:
My old neighbor asked a company to build a new website for his business…
