How to move your website off Wix without losing your SEO

What actually moves, and what gets rebuilt

A Wix site is not a folder of files you can pick up and drop on another host. Some things travel, some travel with effort, and some do not travel at all. Set your expectations here first, because every decision later follows from this table.

The practical consequence: budget most of your time for rebuilding pages and writing redirects, not for importing. If anyone promises a one click import from Wix, ask them exactly which of the rows above they mean.

Step 1: get the domain under your own control

Your domain is the single thing that carries your rankings. Everything else is replaceable. Check its status early, because the rules can block you at the worst moment.

Wix requires the domain's transfer lock to be switched off before a transfer can start, and you cannot transfer at all within 60 days of registering it, within 60 days of changing the registrant contact details, or within 60 days of a previous transfer. When you start the transfer, Wix emails an authorisation code (an EPP code) to the registrant contact address, which is not always the same as your Wix login email. If you have private registration switched on, turn it off first so the emails reach you. Once started, the transfer usually takes up to seven days, and Wix cannot speed it up.

Two important consequences. First, when the transfer completes, your Wix site is disconnected from the domain. Second, business email on that domain stops working until you add the MX records again at the new provider. Write down every DNS record you currently have, especially MX and any TXT verification records, before you touch anything.

There is a gentler route that most small businesses should prefer. You do not have to transfer the registration to move the site. A Wix registered domain can point at a site hosted anywhere else: you edit the A record for the root domain and the www CNAME under Manage DNS Records, and delete the old A records so they do not conflict. Nameservers cannot be changed on a Wix domain, so the DNS stays with Wix, but the traffic goes to your new site. Repoint on launch day, confirm everything works, then transfer the registration a few weeks later when nothing is on fire. If you want the domain and hosting in one account afterwards, that is a calm, separate job.

Step 2: make a list of every URL you have

This is the step people skip, and it is the step that decides whether the move costs you traffic. You cannot redirect what you have not written down.

• Your Wix sitemap. Visit yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml. Wix generates it automatically and splits pages, blog posts and products into separate files. That is your raw list.
• Search Console. The Pages report shows what Google has actually indexed. The Performance report, set to the last 12 months and grouped by page, shows which URLs earn clicks. Export both.
• Analytics. Your top landing pages over 12 months, which often includes pages you forgot existed.
• A desktop crawler. The free version of Screaming Frog's SEO Spider crawls up to 500 URLs, which covers most small business sites and catches orphan pages the sitemap missed.

Put it all in one spreadsheet with these columns: old URL, clicks in the last 12 months, current title tag, current meta description, new URL, rebuilt (yes or no), redirect live (yes or no). Sort by clicks, highest first. On a typical small business site the top 20 pages carry most of the organic traffic. Those get your attention first, and nothing goes live until all of them are ticked.

Step 3: get your content out before you cancel anything

Once a Wix plan lapses, the site comes down and your convenient copy of everything goes with it. Do this while the plan is still paid.

1. Copy the text of every page into documents, one file per page, including the bits buried in accordion sections and footers.
2. Download images at full size from the media manager. Screenshots of a live page are not good enough for a rebuild.
3. Export products to CSV. Remember the 5,000 row limit per file and that digital products are not included, so list those manually.
4. Export contacts to CSV. Use the regular CSV format rather than the Google format if you want your labels to come across.
5. Save your blog posts. There is no tidy bulk export, so copy them out or use the blog RSS feed, which Wix publishes for you.
6. Export orders, invoices and any booking history you are legally required to keep.

Also record your current title tags and meta descriptions while you are in there. Step 6 depends on having them.

Step 4: rebuild the pages, and let AI do the first draft

Rebuilding is the part that used to take weeks of a designer's time. It is now the part AI genuinely helps with, because you are not inventing content, you are re-presenting content you already have.

The approach that works: describe the business in plain language, let the builder draft the structure and layout, then paste your real copy over the AI's placeholder copy page by page. Your old text contains the facts, the prices, the service names and the phrases customers actually search for. The AI draft gives you a sensible layout in minutes instead of a blank canvas.

On WebNewBiz that means describing your business and letting the AI draft the pages, then changing anything by chatting with the Copilot: move a section, rewrite a paragraph, swap a colour. Be realistic about what you get. The first draft still needs your own edits, your own photos and your own facts, and the new site will not look like the old one. If your Wix layout was something you were proud of, allow time to get close to it rather than assuming an AI will match it.

Two rules while rebuilding. Keep the same page slug wherever the old one was sensible, because a URL that does not change needs no redirect and loses nothing. And resist the urge to redesign the content at the same time: move first, improve later, so that if traffic wobbles you know which change caused it. If you are still choosing a destination, our guides to Wix alternatives and WebNewBiz compared with Wix set out the trade offs, and AI builders against WordPress covers the self hosted route if you want full file ownership.

Step 5: map every old Wix URL to a new one

Wix adds its own prefixes to app driven pages. Blog posts live at /post/ followed by the slug. Store products live at /product-page/ followed by the slug. Bookings and events pages have their own patterns, so read them off your sitemap rather than guessing. You will also find pages named /blog-1, /about-1 or /copy-of-services, left over from duplicated pages in the editor. All of these need mapping.

The rules that keep this safe:

• One hop, every time. Point the old URL straight at the final new URL. Chains of redirects leak value and slow pages down.
• Match the content, not the homepage. Sending a hundred old pages to the homepage is the classic mistake. Google can treat that as a soft 404, and the visitor who clicked a specific result gets nothing useful.
• Use permanent redirects. A 301 (or 308) tells Google the move is permanent. Temporary redirects keep the old URL in the index.
• Pick one canonical form. Decide on www or no www, and https always, then redirect the other versions to it.
• If a page truly has no replacement, let it return a 404 rather than faking a match. A handful of honest 404s is healthier than a hundred misleading redirects.

The redirects live on your new platform, not on Wix. Wix's URL Redirect Manager, under SEO and GEO in the dashboard, only matters while you are still on Wix. It is worth knowing about for one reason: Wix creates redirects automatically when you change most page slugs, but not for blog pages, so if you tidied blog URLs during your time on Wix you may already have broken links to clean up.

Step 6: carry over the titles, descriptions and schema

A page that keeps its URL but loses its title tag can still drop. Treat the on-page details as content worth migrating.

• Title tags and meta descriptions: copy them across exactly for any page that currently ranks. Rewriting them during the move makes it impossible to tell whether a drop came from the platform change or from your new wording.
• Headings: one H1 per page, carrying the same main phrase as before.
• Image alt text: rewrite it on the new site. It is usually lost in a rebuild and it feeds both image search and accessibility.
• Structured data: if your Wix site produced product, local business, article, FAQ or review markup, check the new site produces the same types. Run a few URLs through a rich results test before launch.
• Canonical tags: each page should point at itself, not at an old Wix address.
• Indexability: confirm the new site is not still set to noindex from the staging build. This is the single most common way a migration goes badly wrong, and it is invisible to visitors.

While you are at it, update the links in your on-site housekeeping: internal links should point at the new URLs directly, and your Google Business Profile, social profiles, email signature and directory listings should point at pages that exist.

Step 7: launch day, in order

1. New site finished, proofread and tested on a temporary address, including forms and checkout.
2. Redirect map complete, with every row of the spreadsheet filled in.
3. Lower your DNS TTL a day in advance if your provider allows it, so the switch propagates faster.
4. Screenshot your current DNS records, especially MX, SPF and any verification TXT records.
5. Repoint the domain: A record and www CNAME at Wix, or nameservers at your new registrar if the domain has already moved.
6. Send yourself a test email to confirm mail on the domain still arrives.
7. Check the SSL certificate has issued and the site loads over https with no mixed content warnings.
8. Test at least 20 redirects by hand, starting with the highest traffic URLs from your spreadsheet.
9. Submit the new sitemap in Search Console. The old sitemap can be removed. If the old one shows redirect warnings while Google catches up, that is normal and can be ignored.
10. Use URL Inspection to request indexing for your ten most important pages.
11. Leave the Wix plan running for a few more weeks as insurance.

You do not need Search Console's Change of Address tool. That is for moving to a different domain name. If your domain stays the same, redirects and an updated sitemap are the correct tools.

Step 8: the four to eight weeks after launch

Google recrawls gradually. Google's own guidance is that new URLs can take a few weeks or more to replace old ones for a medium sized site, and that rankings settle down over time. A short dip in the first fortnight is common and not, on its own, evidence that something is broken.

Check these weekly rather than daily:

• Pages report: indexed pages should rise on the new URLs. Watch for anything unexpected under not found or excluded.
• Sitemaps report: the new sitemap should be read successfully and show a sensible number of discovered URLs.
• Performance report: compare clicks and impressions with the same period before the move, not with last week.
• 404 log: every 404 with real traffic behind it is a missing redirect. Add it and move on.

Resist the urge to keep changing things. Fix broken links and genuinely missing content, then leave titles and copy alone for the first month so you can read the trend. If, after eight weeks, your important pages are still not indexed or traffic is clearly below where it was, go back to the spreadsheet: in nearly every case the cause is a redirect that was never set, a page that was never rebuilt, or a noindex left switched on. Keep the redirects for at least a year, which is Google's advice, and in practice keep them for good.

What usually goes wrong

• Cancelling the Wix plan before copying the content out.
• Starting the domain transfer halfway through the build, so the live site disappears for a week.
• Forgetting MX records, so company email dies on launch day.
• Redirecting everything to the homepage because it was quicker.
• Going live with noindex still enabled from staging.
• Changing every URL at once because the new structure looked tidier.
• Discovering the 60 day transfer lock in the week of the planned launch.
• Losing access to the registrant contact email address, where the authorisation code is sent.

Where WebNewBiz fits, and where it does not

Being straight about it: we cannot import a Wix site either. Nobody can, in the sense people mean when they ask. What changes is how long the rebuild takes. You describe the business, the AI drafts the pages and layout, and you paste your existing copy in and edit by chat. For a ten page brochure site that is an evening or two rather than a fortnight, and the hosting, SSL, mobile layout and templates are included on every plan.

Prices at the time of writing (October 2026), US list prices on annual billing:

Those columns are not like for like. Wix is cheaper at the business tier and has a far larger app market behind it. WebNewBiz bundles the CRM, funnels and automations that you would otherwise buy separately, which is why the middle tiers cost more.

The honest weaknesses, so you can weigh them before you commit: WebNewBiz is a much younger platform than Wix, with a smaller app ecosystem and a smaller community to search when you get stuck. There is no free plan, though the first month is $1 on any plan. The CRM only starts at Growth, at $79 a month. There is no built-in IDX or MLS feed if you are an estate agent. And the same caveat that applies to Wix applies to us: if you leave later, your content and your domain come with you, but the layout gets rebuilt again.

Stay on Wix if specific Wix apps, Wix Bookings workflows or Velo code are doing real work for you, or if your only complaint is the monthly price and the saving is small. Moving costs time and carries some ranking risk, so there needs to be a reason beyond restlessness.

If you just want to see what an AI draft of your site would look like before committing to anything, the free AI Website Preview designs a homepage from one sentence about your business.

Quick answers

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

Not if you keep the same domain and set a 301 redirect from every old URL to its closest new equivalent. Expect a short dip while Google recrawls. Google says new URLs can take a few weeks or more to replace the old ones in its index, and that rankings settle down over time. What you should not expect is a permanent loss, unless pages go missing or redirects point to the wrong places.

Can I export my Wix website?

Not as a working site. Wix Stores exports physical products to CSV, up to 5,000 rows per file, and digital products are not supported. Contacts export to CSV, up to 50,000 at a time, and only the site owner can do it. Blog posts and page text have to be copied out by hand or pulled from the blog RSS feed. The design, layout and any custom code do not export at all.

How long does it take to transfer a Wix domain to another registrar?

Usually up to seven days once started. The transfer lock has to be switched off first, and you cannot transfer within 60 days of registering the domain, of changing the registrant contact details, or of a previous transfer. Wix emails the authorisation code to the registrant contact address, so make sure you can read that inbox before you begin.

Do I have to move my domain away from Wix at all?

No. A domain registered at Wix can point at a site hosted somewhere else: you edit the A record and the www CNAME in Manage DNS Records. You cannot change the nameservers on a Wix domain, so the records stay with Wix. Many people repoint first and transfer the registration later, once the new site is settled.

How long should I keep the redirects in place?

Google recommends keeping redirects for as long as possible, and at least a year, so the old URLs' signals transfer. In practice keep them permanently, because old links in emails, directories and other people's blog posts never fully disappear. Also update your own internal links to point straight at the new URLs rather than relying on redirects.

When should I cancel my Wix plan?

After the new site is live, checked and indexed, not before. Keep Wix running for a few weeks as a fallback in case you missed a page or an image. Wix's 14 day money back guarantee applies to new site plans, not to renewals or upgrades, so cancelling mid term usually means no refund. If your renewal is months away, use that time for the rebuild.

A sensible next step

The hard parts of leaving Wix are the rebuild and the redirect map, not the software you land on. If you want to see how quickly the rebuild can go, our AI website builder drafts a complete site from a plain description of your business, and the first month is $1 on any plan, so you can build and check the new site properly before you point the domain at it. Keep your Wix plan running until you are happy with what you see. There is no minimum contract and you can cancel any time.