The stall is rented. What's in the van is yours.
Do You Own Your Wix Website? Wix vs. WordPress Ownership
If you build a site on Wix, you own what you put into it: your text, photos, logo and other content. You don’t own the site as a working whole. The templates, code and design are Wix’s, licensed to you for use on Wix only, and the site can’t run anywhere else. On a self-hosted WordPress site, you hold a copy of everything: the software, the theme, the plugins and a database of your content, which you can move to any host.
That doesn’t make one platform the right choice for everyone. Wix’s hosted model takes security, updates and uptime off your hands, and self-hosting puts them back on you or someone you pay. This guide sets out what each platform’s terms and documentation say about ownership, what happens when you stop paying, and what you can take with you, so you can compare them side by side.
The sources are Wix’s Terms of Use, Help Center and developer documentation on one side, and WordPress.org, its developer handbooks and WordPress.com’s support guides on the other, all checked on October 8, 2026. One note on Wix’s terms: the current Terms of Use page says it was last revised on July 9, 2026, but on October 8, 2026 it showed only the opening sections. The full text is on the page Wix links as the previous version, and the quotes from Wix’s terms below come from there. The current version may differ, so check the current page before relying on any one clause.
Wix website ownership: key facts
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| Do you own the content on your Wix site? | Yes. Wix’s terms say you own the intellectual property in your content and that “Wix does not claim ownership rights” on it. |
| Does Wix own anything on your site? | Yes. Templates, widgets, code and the “look and feel” of Wix’s services belong to Wix. You can use them only on Wix. |
| Can Wix use your content? | Yes, under a license you grant when you sign up. It covers running and improving Wix’s services, including training its AI tools, and using your site in Wix’s marketing indefinitely. |
| Who owns content made with Wix’s AI tools? | You, once you use it, unless it contains intellectual property Wix already owned. |
| What happens if you cancel your Wix plan? | The site stays online on a free wixsite.com address with Wix ads. Your content isn’t deleted. |
| What happens if you delete a Wix site? | It goes offline and sits in the trash for 90 days, then is permanently deleted. |
| Can you move a Wix site to another host? | No. Wix sites run only on Wix. You can export some data, such as products, orders, contacts and CMS collections, as CSV files. |
| Do you own your domain name? | The domain is separate from your site plan, and you can transfer it away from Wix. |
| What do you own on self-hosted WordPress? | Your content plus copies of the site’s files and database. WordPress itself is licensed under the GPL, which lets you run, study, change and share it. |
| Is WordPress.com the same as self-hosted WordPress? | It runs the same software with hosting included. You own your content on both, but WordPress.com’s plan decides which export and backup tools you get. |
What do Wix’s Terms of Use say about ownership?
Wix’s terms answer the ownership question in a few separate clauses: one for your content, one for Wix’s own technology, one for AI output and one for the license you give Wix.
Do you own your content on Wix?
Section 3.1 of the terms says that, as between Wix and you, “you shall own all intellectual property pertaining to your User Content and to any other materials created, developed, or connected to Wix Services by you.” The list that follows covers designs, images, videos, fonts, logos, code, databases and text. The terms add: “Wix does not claim ownership rights on your User Content or the content you connected to the Wix Services.”
Wix’s Help Center page on site and content ownership puts it in practical terms: “The owner of any sites or content is the owner of the Wix account under which the content was created.”
What license does Wix get to your content?
Owning your content doesn’t stop Wix from using it. The same section says Wix will need to access and copy your content to run and improve its services, including “to train our software tools (e.g. artificial intelligence and machine learning models).” The license you grant for that purpose is “non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, and worldwide.”
A separate clause in section 2 asks you to “allow Wix to use in perpetuity, worldwide and free of charge, any version of your User Platform (or any part thereof) for any of Wix’s marketing and promotional activities.” Your User Platform is Wix’s term for the site you build.
Wix isn’t alone in this. WordPress.com’s terms, covered below, also include a license to use your content for its services and to promote your site. What matters is reading the scope before you sign up, especially the AI training and marketing clauses if your content is confidential or commercially sensitive.
Wix’s templates, code and design stay on Wix
Section 3.2 covers what Wix owns: the Wix services and everything in them, including “website templates and widgets,” “source and object code” and the “look and feel” of the services. You get a “non-exclusive, non-transferable, non-sublicensable, fully revocable, limited license” to use them to build and display your site, “solely within the Wix Services.”
Wix’s Help Center says the same thing more directly on its copyright page: “All Wix copyrighted content can be used by Wix users within the Wix platform only. Users are not authorized to migrate Wix content outside of Wix.”
So the photos and words are yours to take, but a site built from a Wix template can’t be recreated elsewhere by copying the template. A new site needs a new design.
Who owns content made with Wix’s AI tools?
Section 5.4 of the terms says that once you use, publish or display AI output, “it shall be considered your User Content.” Wix also says it “does not claim any ownership rights in the Output to the extent that the Output does not contain any pre-existing intellectual property owned by Wix.” Section 5.5 gives Wix a license to your prompts and AI output, including to train its software tools.
In short, text and images Wix’s AI writes for you are treated like content you wrote, but anything in the output that already belonged to Wix stays Wix’s.
Who counts as the owner of a Wix account?
Wix’s ownership page says: “Typically, the owner of a Wix account is identified by the email address listed in Wix’s records.” With a Premium or Studio plan, “ownership is typically tied to the billing details of the person or entity used to make the payment.” In a dispute, Wix says it reserves “the right to determine and/or grant ownership to an account or site based on our reasonable judgment.”
This is the ownership question to settle first. If a designer, an agency or a former employee created the account with their own email and card, the account, and the site, may count as theirs. Make sure the account uses a business email address and business payment details, and add other people as collaborators instead of sharing the owner’s login.
What happens if you cancel Wix or delete your site?
Canceling a plan, deleting a site and closing an account are different actions with different results.
| Action | What happens | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Cancel your Premium or Studio plan | The plan runs to the end of the period you’ve paid for. Then “your site address reverts to the free Wix URL (siteprefix.wixsite.com/siteaddress) and Wix ads appear on your site.” Wix says canceling “does not delete your site content.” | Canceling a Wix Premium or Studio Plan |
| Move a site to the trash | “Deleting a site unpublishes it, making it inaccessible to visitors online.” You have 90 days to restore it before it is permanently deleted. A site with a Premium plan can’t be trashed until the plan is canceled or moved to another site. | Moving a Site to Trash |
| Permanently delete your Wix account | Wix waits 7 days, then removes the account and its data. After that, Wix “will not be able to restore your account or retrieve your data in the future.” | Permanently Deleting Your Wix Account |
| Wix cancels your account | Wix can suspend or cancel an account for breaking its terms or not paying. The terms say “Data cannot be recovered once your User Account or User Platform is terminated.” | Terms of Use, sections 7.2 and 7.3 |
Canceling a site plan doesn’t cancel anything else. Wix’s cancellation page says it “does not cancel any domain, business email, or app subscriptions,” which you have to cancel separately.
The terms also put backups on you. Section 2 asks users to “regularly and independently save and backup” their content, and section 7.3 says Wix “shall not be liable in any way” for content, data or domains lost when services are canceled, “or for saving a backup.” Wix keeps the site running while you pay, but if you want a copy of your content outside Wix, you have to make and keep it yourself.
Do you own your domain name on Wix?
Your domain name is a separate purchase from your site plan, with its own renewal. If you bought it through Wix, Wix is your domain host, and you can transfer it away: Wix sends a transfer authorization code, also called an EPP code, to the domain’s registrant contact email. A few details to know:
- You can’t transfer a domain within 60 days of buying it, and changing the registrant contact details locks transfers for 60 days.
- If you use business email on the domain, you have to add its MX records again after the transfer.
- If you delete your Wix account without transferring the domain first, Wix says it “will remain parked at Wix until it expires, and you will not be able to access it.”
You can also keep the domain at another registrar and connect it to Wix. In that case, Wix says, “Your domain remains hosted at your current domain host, not at Wix,” and billing and contact details stay there too. Wix’s ownership page notes that it may treat the domain registrant listed in public registration databases as the domain’s owner, so whichever route you choose, make sure the registrant is the business.
Can you take your Wix site with you?
No. Wix’s Help Center says its “SaaS architecture does not support external hosting since it uses Wix’s proprietary technology and relies on Wix’s services to operate.” What you can take is data: products, orders, contacts and CMS collections export as CSV files, and you can export your redirect list. Pages and blog posts have no export, media can’t be downloaded all at once, and members have to sign up again on a new site. Outgrown Squarespace or Wix? Signs and What Moving Involves lists every export and walks through a move from start to finish.
The editor matters too. A site built in Wix Harmony, the AI editor Wix released in January 2026, can’t be moved to the Wix Editor or Wix Studio later, and it doesn’t support site code. Wix Harmony and Custom Code: What a Developer Can Add Later covers what that means for future features.
What does owning a self-hosted WordPress site mean?
Self-hosted WordPress means you download the free WordPress software and run it on a hosting account you choose. You still own your content, as you do on Wix. The difference is that you also have a full working copy of the site.
The software license: GPLv2 or later
WordPress’s philosophy page says it “is licensed under the General Public License (GPLv2 or later) which provides four core freedoms.” In plain terms, you may use the software for whatever you like, look inside it and modify it, share copies, and share your modified versions. The license page adds that “Derivatives of WordPress code inherit the GPL license,” and that the WordPress project considers plugins and themes to be derivative works.
For a business owner, the practical effect is that you can run WordPress for any purpose, on any server, without permission from a vendor, so you aren’t tied to the company that built your site or the host that runs it. The GPL covers the software. Your content is yours regardless.
You choose the host, and you can move
A self-hosted WordPress site is a set of files (WordPress, your theme, your plugins and uploaded media) plus a database that holds your content and settings. WordPress’s guide to migrating a site says that if the database and URL stay the same, “you can move by just copying your files and database.” Changing domains takes more steps, but everything needed for the move is already in your possession.
That also means you can keep complete backups outside your host. On Wix, a backup is something you assemble from separate exports; on self-hosted WordPress, a copy of the files and database is the whole site.
Exporting content to another WordPress site
WordPress also has a built-in content export. The Export screen creates a WordPress eXtended RSS (WXR) file containing “your posts, pages, custom post types, comments, custom fields, categories, tags, custom taxonomies, and users,” which another WordPress site can import.
Keep custom content in a plugin
How the site is built affects how portable it stays. WordPress’s plugin handbook recommends registering custom post types, such as listings, events or case studies, in a plugin, not the theme: “This ensures that user content remains portable even if the theme is changed.” Plugin, Theme or functions.php? Where WordPress Code Belongs explains how that works in practice.
What self-hosting costs you
Holding the whole site also means looking after it. You, your developer or your host are responsible for the server, WordPress updates, plugin and theme updates, security and backups. On Wix, those jobs are part of the service: its Help Center names security monitoring, automatic updates and “99.9% Uptime” as advantages of the hosted setup, and they are real advantages. With self-hosted WordPress, they depend on the host you choose and the maintenance you arrange. For a deeper look at self-hosting and data control from a developer’s side, see WordPress as a Backend for Modern Web Apps: More Versatile Than You Think.
WordPress.com vs. self-hosted WordPress: what you can take with you
WordPress.com is a hosted service run by Automattic, which was founded by one of WordPress’s original developers. WordPress.com’s own comparison guide says both “run on the same WordPress software” and that “the main difference is hosting”: WordPress.com runs the hosting for you, and with self-hosted WordPress you pick a host and look after it yourself.
On ownership, WordPress.com’s Terms of Service say: “We don’t own your content, and you retain all ownership rights you have in the content you post to your website.” Like Wix, they include a license, in this case to use your content “for the purpose of providing and improving our products and Services and promoting your website Content.”
What you can take with you depends on the plan:
- Content export, any plan. WordPress.com’s export guide produces the same WXR file as self-hosted WordPress. The file holds your posts and pages, their comments, categories and tags, and links to your media rather than the files themselves, so the old site must stay public until the new one has copied the images. Themes, design changes and plugins are left out.
- Plugins, paid plans. WordPress.com lets you install plugins on every paid plan (Personal, Premium, Business and Commerce), but not on a free site.
- Whole-site moves, plugin-enabled plans. To move the theme and plugins as well as content, WordPress.com’s guide to exporting an entire website uses the All-in-One WP Migration plugin, which needs a plugin-enabled plan.
- Full backups, Business and Commerce. Downloading a full backup, including the themes, plugins and database, is limited to Business and Commerce sites.
If you stop paying, WordPress.com’s cancellation guide says the site keeps working as a free site, with ads and a .wordpress.com address, and “Your posts, pages, and media files stay on your site.” Plugins don’t survive the downgrade: the site “returns to how it looked before installing the first plugin, theme, or custom code,” content created with plugins is removed, and the site is made private until you review it and publish it again. WordPress.com suggests downloading a backup or exporting your content before canceling.
WordPress.com sits between Wix and self-hosting: hosting is handled for you, and the content and, on the right plan, the whole site can move to any WordPress host.
Wix vs. WordPress ownership compared
| Wix | WordPress.com | Self-hosted WordPress | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Who owns your content | You | You | You |
| License you give the platform | Broad, including AI training and indefinite marketing use | Broad, including promoting your content | None to a platform; your host’s terms apply to hosting |
| Templates and design | Wix’s, usable only on Wix | Move with the site using a migration plugin on a plugin-enabled plan | Yours to keep and move |
| Software | Proprietary | WordPress, GPLv2 or later | WordPress, GPLv2 or later |
| Choice of host | Wix only | WordPress.com, until you move | Any host that runs WordPress |
| Move the whole site | Not possible; rebuild | With a migration plugin on a plugin-enabled plan | Copy the files and database |
| Content export | CSV data exports; no pages or blog posts | WXR file on any plan | WXR file, or the full database |
| If you stop paying | Site stays live on a wixsite.com address with Wix ads; content stays | Reverts to a free site with ads; posts, pages and media stay. Plugins and their content are removed, and a site that used them is made private until you review it | Depends on your host; keep your own backups |
| Who maintains it | Wix | WordPress.com | You, a developer or a managed host |
Wix’s data exports are summarized here; Outgrown Squarespace or Wix? has the details. For scale, W3Techs reports that WordPress runs 40.1% of all websites and Wix 4.2%.
Wix or WordPress: which should you choose?
Wix is a reasonable choice when the site is simple, you’d rather not manage hosting at all, and you accept that leaving later means rebuilding the design and moving content by hand. Its terms protect your ownership of your content, and you can keep your domain portable.
Self-hosted WordPress fits when you want the whole site to be portable, expect to add custom features, or need control over where your data lives, and you have someone to handle updates and backups. WordPress.com is a middle ground if you want WordPress’s portability without running a server.
If you’re still weighing first-site options and budgets, How to Build a Website for Your Small Business: Free and Low-Cost Options covers the starting points, and Website Platforms You Can Start Without Code and Extend Later compares how each platform can grow.
Checklist: ownership questions to ask before choosing a website platform
- Whose account is it? Use a business email address and business payment details for the platform account, and invite designers and staff as collaborators.
- Who is the domain registrant? Register the domain in the business’s name, know where it’s registered, and know how to transfer it.
- What can you export, and in what format? Find the platform’s export page before you build. If you can, run a test export.
- What license are you granting? Read the content license in the terms, including any AI training and marketing clauses.
- Where will custom features live? On WordPress, in a plugin you control. On a hosted builder, in its app or code system, which stays on that platform.
- What happens if you stop paying? Check what stays online, what gets deleted, and how long you have to export.
- Where are your backups? Keep a copy of your content and media somewhere other than the platform itself.
Next step: getting help with a portable site
If you’re on Wix and want a portable site, or choosing a platform for a business that will need custom features, a developer can review your current setup, sort what exports from what needs rebuilding, and set up a WordPress site with custom features in plugins you own.
If you’d like help, see custom WordPress plugins and themes. The process and pricing are published, and you can get in touch to talk through where your site should live.
