TL;DR: Wix hosting is built into every Wix site, free plan included, and Wix’s help center says your site “needs to be hosted and operated on Wix’s servers,” so you can’t export it to another host (Wix Help, checked November 2, 2026). The free plan gives you a wixsite.com address, 500MB of storage, 1GB of bandwidth and a Wix ad bar on every page. Paid plans remove the ads and lift those limits. If you’d rather skip the building part, WebZum builds a finished multi-page site in about five minutes, hosting included. You see it free first, then it’s $19/mo (Basic) or $34/mo (Professional, with your own domain), month to month.
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Disclosure: WebZum publishes this blog and makes a competing AI website builder. Wix facts come from Wix’s own help center, product pages and plans page, linked inline. Uptime and traffic numbers are Wix’s own claims.
Verified November 2, 2026. Prices are US list prices before tax and can change.
What is Wix hosting?
It’s the servers and delivery network every Wix site runs on, bundled into the builder. You don’t buy it or set it up. Wix’s help center says hosting “is automatically set up once you’ve published your website” and Wix handles software updates for you (Wix Help).
Here’s what Wix says sits behind it, all company claims:
- Multi-cloud. Data centers “powered by Google Cloud, AWS, Fastly and Wix” (Wix Web Hosting).
- A global CDN. “200+ nodes distributed globally” (same source).
- Scale. “More than 4.5 billion requests a day” across the platform (Wix Site Reliability).
- Security. Automatic SSL and HTTPS, DDoS protection and 24/7 monitoring (Wix Web Hosting).
One number doesn’t line up. The hosting page advertises “99.99% uptime,” the help article lists “99.9% Uptime,” and the reliability page says “in 2021, Wix maintained 99.98% uptime across all its sites” (sources above). Any of those is fine for a local shop; just treat 99.99% as a headline, not a guarantee.
Is Wix hosting free?
Yes, hosting comes with every Wix site, including free ones. The catch is what the free plan looks like. Wix’s comparison of free and upgraded sites lists (Wix Help):
- Address: “siteprefix.wixsite.com/siteaddress.” You can’t connect your own domain on a free site (Wix Help).
- Ads: “Wix ads appear on every page & favicon in URL.”
- Storage: up to 500MB. Bandwidth: up to 1GB.
- No online payments and no Google Analytics.
Fine for testing an idea. For a business people find on Google and call, the wixsite.com address and the ad bar are what customers notice. For what each paid plan costs, see our Wix pricing breakdown.
What do free Wix sites look like right now?
Every one we checked had a Wix ad bar across the top of the page. On November 2, 2026 (around noon PT) we opened nine free Wix sites belonging to real US handyman and home-service businesses, found through a public web search, in a headless Chrome browser on a laptop-size and a phone-size screen. We’re not naming the businesses. We also opened three of our own WebZum demo sites (fictional businesses we built, not customers) the same way.
| What we checked | 9 free Wix sites | 3 WebZum demo sites |
|---|---|---|
| Address | All on name.wixsite.com/path | All on name.webzum.com |
| Ad bar | 9 of 9, top of the page: “This website was built on Wix. Create yours today. Get Started” (one said “created by Vista x Wix”) | None. A small “Made with WebZum AI Website Builder” line in the footer |
| Ad bar height | 50px on a laptop, 38px on a phone screen | n/a |
| Files the home page loaded | 89 to 342 (median 179) | 25 each |
| Data transferred | 0.9 to 4.7 MB (median 2.1 MB) | 1.5 to 1.7 MB, mostly photos and a short hero video |
| JavaScript transferred | 0.6 to 2.3 MB (median 1.1 MB) | About 0.2 MB |
| Different web addresses the page pulled from | 6 to 16, including Wix’s parastorage.com and wixstatic.com | 3 |
| Served by | Wix (each page response carried Wix’s x-wix-request-id header) | Static files from Amazon S3 through CloudFront |
A tenth search result was already gone: it returned Wix’s own “Page Not Found” page. We left it out.
To be fair, bytes aren’t speed, and the lightest Wix pages moved less data than our demos, which carry big hero photos. What stands out is how many pieces a Wix page is assembled from across Wix’s own servers. That’s the practical reason the next answer is no.
Can you host a Wix site somewhere else?
No. Wix is direct about it: “Since Wix is a SaaS solution, your site must run on Wix’s servers,” and its architecture “does not support external hosting since it uses Wix’s proprietary technology” (Wix Help). The same article says “the content you build on Wix belongs to you,” and that embedding a Wix site inside another site isn’t supported, adding that “Google Analytics and search engines may not work properly with embedded sites.”
What you can move is the domain. You can buy a domain elsewhere and connect it to a Wix site, though connecting one needs a paid plan (same source). Going the other way, a Wix domain can point at a site hosted somewhere else. Our Wix domain guide covers renewals, transfers and pointing it to another builder.
So leaving Wix means rebuilding the site somewhere new and moving or pointing the domain.
Wix does host files in the other direction. Its newer Wix Headless upload takes a static site’s HTML, CSS and JavaScript and puts it live on a Wix URL, up to 20MB total and 5,000 files, static only, with no server code (Wix Help; Wix Developers). That’s for sites built elsewhere, not a way to take a Wix Editor site out.
How much storage and bandwidth does Wix hosting include?
Free sites get 500MB of storage and 1GB of bandwidth. Every paid plan has unlimited bandwidth, with storage by plan (Wix Help):
| Wix plan | Storage | Bandwidth |
|---|---|---|
| Free | 500MB | 1GB |
| Light | 2GB | Unlimited |
| Core | 50GB | Unlimited |
| Business | 100GB | Unlimited |
| Business Elite | Unlimited | Unlimited |
The plans page shows “Multi-cloud hosting” on all four paid plans and prices them at $17, $29, $39 and $159 a month, “for yearly subscriptions, paid in full at the time of purchase” (Wix Plans, checked November 2, 2026). Wix says it will “let you know if your free site comes close to exceeding its data transfer limits” (Wix Help).
For most local service sites, 2GB is plenty unless you upload a lot of video. Running out doesn’t break the live site. You just can’t upload more until you delete files or upgrade, and deleting from storage “permanently deletes files… along with anywhere they display on your live site” (Wix Help).
What happens to your Wix site if you stop paying?
It stays online, but as a free site again. Wix says that when a plan expires, “your site will revert to a free Wix URL, and any custom domain connected will be disconnected. Your website will remain live but will display Wix ads” (Wix Help).
A few details from Wix’s cancellation article (Wix Help):
- Your content stays. “Canceling your plan does not delete your site content.”
- Other bills keep going. “Canceling your site plan does not cancel any domain, business email, or app subscriptions.” You cancel those separately.
- It runs to the end of the term. Past the refund window, the plan stays active until the end of the billing cycle.
The storage drop matters too. A site over 500MB “will continue to run as normal,” but you can’t add media until you trim it or upgrade again (Wix Help).
On refunds, Wix offers a 14-day money-back guarantee on new plans, but not on renewals or upgrades of an existing plan, and refunds can take “up to 45 business days” (Wix Help).
How does Wix hosting compare with WebZum’s?
Both include hosting and SSL with nothing to install. The difference is who builds the site and how you pay. Wix prices from its plans page and help center, checked November 2, 2026:
| Wix Free | Wix Light | WebZum Basic | WebZum Professional | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Price | $0 | $17/mo, billed yearly up front | $19/mo, month to month | $34/mo, month to month |
| Address | wixsite.com | Your own domain (free first year) | WebZum subdomain | Your own domain (we register it, or connect yours) |
| Branding | Wix ad bar on every page | No Wix ads | Small WebZum footer badge | No badge |
| Storage / bandwidth | 500MB / 1GB | 2GB / unlimited | Not sold in tiers | Not sold in tiers |
| SSL | Included | Included | Included, renewed automatically | Included, renewed automatically |
| Who builds it | You, in the Wix editor | You, in the Wix editor | WebZum, in about 5 minutes; you edit by chat | Same |
| Money back | n/a | 14 days, new plans only | 30 days | 30 days |
On the WebZum side, sites are prebuilt static pages served from Amazon’s CloudFront network, so there are no plugins to update and no server code running per visit. In our check, the demo home pages answered in about 140 to 180 milliseconds from the box we tested on. There’s no email bundled with either WebZum plan; see cheap website hosting for what regular hosts charge at checkout, and how much website hosting costs for typical first-year and renewal prices.
When is Wix hosting the better pick?
When you want to design every detail yourself, or you need Wix’s store, bookings or App Market. Core and up add online payments and scheduling (Wix Plans). On a $0 budget, and fine with an ad bar for now, the free plan is a real place to start. Our Wix AI website builder review covers how its AI setup works, and WebZum vs Wix goes feature by feature.
Pick WebZum if you’d rather describe your business and get a finished site back, see it before paying, and pay month to month without a yearly charge up front.
How to try WebZum instead
- Sign up at webzum.com/free-website and describe your business or paste your Google Maps link.
- Answer about four short questions and press Build.
- Ask for changes in plain words, like “add a page for gutter cleaning.”
- Publish on Basic ($19/mo), or Professional ($34/mo) for your own domain and no badge.
FAQs
What is Wix hosting?
It’s the built-in hosting every Wix site runs on, free plan included. Wix says it runs on Google Cloud, AWS, Fastly and its own data centers with a 200+ node CDN (Wix). It isn’t sold separately.
Is Wix hosting really free?
The hosting is, on every plan. The free plan comes with a wixsite.com address, Wix ads on every page, 500MB of storage and 1GB of bandwidth (Wix Help).
Can I move my Wix site to another host?
No. Wix says your site “must run on Wix’s servers” (Wix Help). You can keep your content and your domain, but the site itself has to be rebuilt elsewhere.
Can I use Wix hosting with a domain from GoDaddy or another registrar?
Yes. You can buy and manage the domain with another provider and connect it to your Wix site, but connecting a domain requires a paid plan (same source).
What happens to my Wix site if I cancel my plan?
It goes back to a free wixsite.com address with Wix ads, your custom domain is disconnected, and your content stays. Domains, email and apps bill separately until you cancel them (Wix Help).
Get a site that’s already built
Wix hosting is solid, and it only works for sites built on Wix. If what you really want is a finished website for your business with the hosting handled, WebZum builds one in about five minutes, and you can look at it free before you pay anything.