Can I export my whole Wix site to WordPress?

No. Wix lets you export blog posts, and that is roughly it. Pages, galleries, product listings and form entries have to be copied out by hand or crawled. Budget for that time; it is most of the work in a small migration.

Will I lose my Google rankings when I move off Wix?

Not if the old URLs redirect to the new ones and the titles, descriptions and headings carry over. Rankings drop when pages disappear or change address without a redirect. A proper redirect map is the single most important item on the list.

Do I have to move my domain away from Wix?

Only if you bought it through Wix and want it somewhere you control. If the domain is registered elsewhere and only pointed at Wix, you change the DNS records and leave the registration where it is. Email is separate from both and should not be touched unless it was also bought through Wix.

How long does a Wix to WordPress migration take?

In our experience two to four weeks for a business site of 5 to 15 pages, most of it rebuilding pages and checking redirects. The switch itself, changing DNS, happens in one afternoon and is reversible for a month if Wix stays paid up.

Wix to WordPress: a 12-point migration checklist

Wix is a fine place to start. It is a worse place to be stuck. When a business in Bhutan outgrows it, usually because the site has become slow, the plan has become expensive in US dollars, or someone needs a feature the editor cannot do, the move to WordPress is the common next step.

The move is not hard. It is fiddly, and the fiddly parts are the ones that cost you rankings, leads and images if they are skipped. This is the long version of our website migration checklist, which you can tick off as you go. If you would rather we did it, the migration service covers all twelve.

Inventory every page and URL

Before anything is copied, write down everything that exists. Crawl the live site with a tool such as Screaming Frog, or at minimum open the Wix sitemap at yoursite.com/sitemap.xml and paste every URL into a spreadsheet. Add the blog posts, the product pages, the hidden pages that are only linked from a footer, and the PDF you uploaded in 2022 and forgot.

This list is the spine of the whole migration. Every later step refers back to it.

Export what Wix will export

Wix exports blog posts as a file you can import into WordPress. That is the only structured export it offers. Everything else, page text, galleries, testimonials, service descriptions, has to be copied out by hand or pulled from the crawl.

Do the blog export first, because it is the one part that can be automated, and check the result for broken formatting and missing images before moving on.

Download images at their original size

Wix serves images resized and recompressed. If you download them from the live site you get the small versions. Go into the Wix media manager and download originals, or find them on whichever laptop they were uploaded from. Name the files sensibly before uploading to WordPress; IMG_4471.jpg tells search engines nothing, hotel-paro-room-deluxe.webp tells them something.

Rebuild the pages, not the layout

The temptation is to copy the Wix layout block for block. Resist it. A migration is the cheapest moment you will ever have to fix a page that never worked, cut the four pages nobody visited, and merge the two pages that say the same thing.

Rebuild on a theme that is fast on the phones your customers own. We test on mid-range Android over a 4G connection because that is what most visitors in Bhutan are holding. See designing for the phones people in Bhutan actually use for the specifics.

Rebuild every form, and check where it sends

Wix forms deliver to the Wix inbox and to an email address. WordPress forms deliver wherever you tell them, and by default that is nowhere reliable. For each form on the inventory: rebuild it, set the destination address, send a test, and confirm the test arrived. Then check the spam folder and confirm it did not arrive there instead.

If leads came in through WhatsApp click-to-chat buttons, carry those over with the same number. They are often the form that actually works.

Carry over titles, descriptions and alt text

Every page on Wix has a title tag, a meta description and, if someone was diligent, alt text on the images. These are what search engines show and match. Copy them into the new pages, one by one, using the inventory as the checklist. A page that drops from “Bakery in Thimphu — fresh bread daily” to “Home” has thrown away its search history.

Map the old URLs to the new ones

Wix URLs look like /blog/post-title or /copy-of-services. WordPress URLs will look different unless you make them match. For each old URL on the inventory, write the new URL next to it.

Old Wix URL	New WordPress URL	Action
`/copy-of-services`	`/services`	301 redirect
`/blog/opening-hours-update`	`/blog/opening-hours-update`	Keep identical
`/team-2`	`/about`	301 redirect
`/old-promo-2023`	(none)	410 gone, remove from sitemap

Where you can keep the URL identical, do. Where you cannot, the redirect does the work.

Set up 301 redirects and test them

A 301 redirect tells browsers and search engines that a page has moved permanently and where to. It is how rankings follow the content to the new address. Add every row from the map as a redirect on the new host, then test each one by visiting the old URL and confirming it lands on the right new page, not the homepage.

A migration is finished when nobody notices it happened.

Redirects to the homepage are the most common mistake we see when we inherit a migrated site. Search engines treat them as soft 404s, and the page’s history is lost.

Sort out the domain and leave email alone

Two cases. If the domain was registered somewhere else and only pointed at Wix, you change the A record or CNAME to the new host and the registration stays where it is. If the domain was bought through Wix, you either keep it there and change the DNS, or transfer it to a registrar you control, which Wix allows after 60 days and which takes about a week.

Email is separate. If mailboxes came through Wix, the MX records need to be recreated on the new DNS before the switch. If email is on Google Workspace or another provider, do not touch the MX records at all. In our experience, broken email is the migration failure that gets the angriest phone call, and it is entirely avoidable by writing down the current DNS records before changing anything.

Reconnect analytics and Search Console

Add the analytics tag to the new site, verify the new site in Google Search Console, and send it the new sitemap. If the domain is the same, the existing Search Console property keeps working and you can use its coverage report to catch any URL that 404s after launch.

Test on real phones before launch

Open the staging site on an actual mid-range Android and an iPhone, on mobile data, not office Wi-Fi. Tap every menu item. Fill every form. Load the heaviest gallery. Check that the WhatsApp button opens WhatsApp. Ask someone who did not build the site to find the phone number.

Launch at a quiet hour, and keep Wix alive for 30 days

DNS changes take minutes to hours to reach everyone. Switch in the evening or early morning Bhutan Time, when traffic is lowest, and have the old site still running so anyone who lands on it during the change sees something sensible.

Do not cancel the Wix plan on launch day. Keep it for a month so you can go back for a forgotten image or a form entry, and so you can roll back DNS in minutes if something is badly wrong. After 30 days of clean Search Console reports, cancel and stop paying in dollars.

What we charge for this

Our migration service does the twelve steps above and hands you a WordPress site your team can edit, tested on the phones your customers own. Quotes are in Nu., in writing, within 3 working days. If you want to do it yourself, print the checklist and start with the inventory.