How to Migrate From Wix: Domain Transfer, Email and SEO Steps

What does it mean to migrate from Wix, and can you export the whole site?

To migrate from Wix means moving your content, URLs, domain and email to another platform. Wix Help Center says you cannot move a Wix site to another platform because of its proprietary technology. So you rebuild the site by hand and carry the data over in pieces.

That is why a migration is not one button. It is a set of small jobs that depend on each other, and the order matters. If you mix up the order, you usually lose email, form submissions or rankings.

1. First, take inventory: list your domain, email, plan and connected apps.
2. Next, download everything Wix lets you export and write down what it does not.
3. Then build the new site on a separate address and test it.
4. Also build a 301 redirect map from old URLs to new ones.
5. Decide how to handle the domain and DNS, and touch the MX record last.
6. On launch day, follow a fixed order, then watch Google Search Console.
7. Finally, cancel your Wix plan once everything is stable.

DNS is the set of records that tells the internet where your website and your email live. The MX record points email to a mail server. A 301 is the status code for a permanent redirect from one address to another.

Below we walk through each step with facts we checked in the Wix Help Center and with what we see in the field. However, no migration guarantees that your rankings stay the same. You reduce the risk with the right order and careful testing.

Should you migrate from Wix or stay, and who is Wix good enough for?

Wix bundles the editor, the hosting and the platform upkeep in one account. For a small brochure site, a portfolio or a simple store, that is often enough. Also, if you update the content yourself, you carry very little technical work.

A migration is a separate project, though, and it brings cost, time and a temporary ranking risk. So first check whether the problem comes from the platform or from your own settings, such as heavy images, too many apps or weak headings. Otherwise a move will not fix it.

These signs suggest a move makes sense:

• Your needs go beyond what Wix apps and settings cover, for example a custom integration or a custom data model.
• You want to own the code, the data and the hosting, so ownership and portability matter to you.
• You need deeper control over multilingual structure, URL patterns or performance.
• Your team or agency works on another platform, so running two systems gets hard.
• When you add up the long term costs, a new build looks more sensible.

These signs suggest staying makes sense:

• Your site is small, you update it yourself and your pages rank where you expect.
• Wix apps or its developer platform, Velo, already cover your needs.
• You cannot put the gain from a move into numbers next to the time and ranking risk.

If you decide to move, designing and building the new site is its own job. You can do it with your own team, or you can run it with us through our web design services.

What should you list before you migrate from Wix?

An inventory is your insurance against forgetting something, because pages are only the visible part of the job. The real risk hides in the domain, the email and the connected services.

Write the date, the account owner and the login email next to each row. That way the question of who owns an account does not surface on launch day.

If an old agency or employee still holds the domain, solve that first. Our guide to taking back your website and domain from an agency walks you through it.

How do you find out where your domain and email live?

Check this first, because it decides your path: did you buy the domain through Wix or at another registrar? If you bought it through Wix, you see it on the Domains page in your Wix account. Otherwise you make DNS changes in your registrar's panel.

1. First, open the Domains page in your Wix account and check whether the domain appears there.
2. Next, use our WHOIS lookup tool to see the registrar, the expiry date and the DNS records in one report.
3. Then read the MX records to note which provider holds your mailboxes.
4. Finally, run our website technology checker to confirm the site runs on Wix and to see which tracking codes it carries.

The third step matters for email, because a site and its email can share a domain but sit with different providers. If you bought a mailbox through Wix, its billing stays in your Wix account.

Permissions matter too. According to Wix, only the site owner can export the contact list. A site owner can transfer a domain away, and so can a collaborator with the Admin (Co-Owner) role who owns the payment method for the domain subscription.

However, the technology checker reads the first HTML response of a page. It does not show tags that Google Tag Manager loads later, so check your tracking codes in the Wix settings as well.

Which Wix content can you export, and what stays behind?

The table below reflects the Wix Help Center pages as we read them. However, Wix can change them, so reread the relevant page before you act. CSV here means a plain table file that opens in Excel or Google Sheets.

The answer to the question of moving a site as it stands sits on the Wix Help Center page About Templates. The status of blog exports sits on the blog export feature request page.

Some third party tools crawl the live pages and extract content. They are not an official Wix export, so check every result by hand.

How do you pull store, blog, form and media data out of Wix?

Every data type has its own route, so download all of it on the same day and keep it in a dated folder. These Wix Help Center pages cover the details:

• Products: according to 'Wix Stores: Exporting Your Product List', you export products with all their data to a CSV file.
• Collections: 'CMS: Exporting Content from Your Collection' explains the CSV export and notes that time fields appear in UTC, the universal time standard.
• Contacts: 'Wix Contacts: Exporting Your Contacts' says only the site owner can export the list to CSV.
• Form entries: 'Wix Forms: Viewing and Managing a Submissions Table' explains how to export the table as CSV.
• Media: 'Wix Media: Downloading Files from the Media Manager' says you can download only the images and videos you uploaded.

However, note one detail on media: according to the same page, you cannot download all media at once. You can select several files inside a folder, but you still walk through the folders one by one.

Contact lists and form entries hold personal data. Therefore keep these files out of email threads, share them only with authorized people and delete them when you finish. Also carry your consent records over when you move marketing permissions to a new tool. This article is not legal advice, so ask your lawyer about your data protection duties.

Once you have the images, plan how you will use them on the new site. Our website image sizes guide helps you decide for sliders, banners and cover images.

How do you build the content and URL inventory of your Wix site?

Do not guess old URLs; read them from your own site. According to the Wix Help Center, every Wix site has a sitemap index that you open by adding sitemap.xml to your domain. That index links to separate sitemaps for pages, blog posts and store products.

Still, do not treat the sitemap as your only source. Wix notes that if you change a page's default canonical tag (the tag that names the preferred address), the page URL may disappear from the sitemap.

1. First, open the sitemap index and its linked sitemaps, then copy every URL into a spreadsheet.
2. Next, export clicks and impressions per page from the Search Console performance report, because old URLs that earn traffic come first in your redirect plan.
3. Then check the landing pages in Analytics and add the URLs that your ads and email links use.
4. Also review links from other sites in the Search Console links report.
5. Finally, add the page title, the main heading and the meta description as columns.

This sheet becomes the base of your content plan and your redirect map. For the content side, read our website content migration guide; here we only cover what is specific to Wix.

Which platform should you pick: Wix, WordPress or custom code?

Platform choice deserves its own article, so we keep it short here. Migrating from Wix to WordPress is the most searched route, but it is not the only one. Read our WordPress vs custom website comparison for the details.

WordPress is open source software, so hosting, updates and security stay your job or your agency's job. Custom code gives the most flexibility and also the highest maintenance load. We do not call any of them the best; the right choice depends on the project.

Should you redesign the site while you migrate from Wix?

Often yes, because you rebuild the site anyway. However, changing the platform, the design and the URL structure at the same time raises the risk. If rankings move, you can no longer tell why.

Our rule of thumb: keep the URLs and the main headings, and leave design improvements for a second phase. If you cannot keep the old URLs, a redirect map becomes mandatory. Also mark in your sheet whether each new page has a match on the old site, and add pages without a match on purpose.

If you want to do both together, our website redesign solution page explains what has to move from the old site to the new one and what we check on launch day. That way you can put the redesign scope and the migration plan into the same sheet.

How do you build the 301 redirect map for your old Wix URLs?

A redirect map is a table that shows where each old URL should go; in other words, it is the most critical document of the move. The Google site move documentation recommends mapping old URLs to new ones and using permanent server side redirects.

• Send each old URL to the closest matching new page, and do not send many URLs to the home page.
• Also avoid chains, so each old URL goes straight to its final address.
• Finally, keep the redirects for as long as possible; Google says generally at least one year.

Therefore do not guess the URL structure of Wix. Build the map only from addresses that really exist on your own site. Example scenario: if the old site has example.com/our-services and the new equivalent is example.com/services/, one 301 rule is enough.

Give our redirect mapping tool the old URL list and the sitemap of the new site. For each URL, it suggests the three best candidates with a confidence score. Then you copy the rules as .htaccess or nginx syntax, which are server configuration formats, or as CSV. Review low confidence rows by hand and test the rules on a staging site first.

For general migration details, also use our website migration SEO checklist.

Should you transfer the domain away from Wix or only change DNS records?

Both routes work, but they have different consequences. Wix recommends keeping your domain with Wix if possible, because if you transfer it away, your Wix site disconnects and Wix can no longer help you manage the domain. The 60 day lock rules of ICANN, the body that oversees the domain name system, also apply to a transfer.

Our field order: launch the site with a DNS change first, and then do the transfer on a separate day if you want one. Otherwise, when something breaks, you cannot tell which change caused it.

How do you transfer a domain away from Wix, step by step?

The Wix Help Center page Transferring Your Wix Domain Away from Wix covers only domains you bought through Wix. If you bought yours at another registrar, you do not need a transfer from Wix. Menu names can change, so check the page for current names and time limits.

1. First, make sure the domain is unlocked, because the current Wix page lists that as a requirement.
2. Confirm that you can read the registrant contact email, since Wix sends the authorization code to that address.
3. Also check that you did not register or transfer the domain in the last 60 days, and that you did not change the registrant contact information.
4. Wix recommends turning off Private Registration before the transfer so that you do not miss transfer emails.
5. Next, open Domains in your Wix account, click the Domain Actions icon next to the domain and choose Transfer away from Wix.
6. After you review the information, click Transfer Domain and then I Still Want to Transfer; Wix emails the authorization code (EPP code) to the registrant contact email.
7. Give the code to your new registrar, which starts the transfer. Then check that the WHOIS status reads pending transfer.
8. Finally, when the transfer ends, verify that your DNS records exist at the new place and add the MX records again.

According to Wix, a transfer usually takes up to 7 days, and Wix cannot track it once it starts. Also, future renewals follow the price of your new registrar.

How do you point your domain to a new host without transferring it?

In this route the domain stays with Wix, and your site runs on the new server. The Wix page Connecting a Wix Domain to an External Site via Pointing explains it through DNS records.

1. First, ask your new host for the A record (an IP address) for your root domain and the CNAME record (a record that points one name to another) for www.
2. Next, open Domains in your Wix account, click the Domain Actions icon and select Manage DNS Records.
3. Then add the new record in the A (Host) section and update the www record in the CNAME (Aliases) section.
4. Also delete the old A and CNAME records to avoid a conflict.
5. Finally, wait for the change to spread and test both versions of the domain.

Wix says DNS changes can take up to 48 hours to spread fully, and some visitors may see the old version meanwhile.

Be careful if your host demands a nameserver change. The Wix help pages differ by language here: the English page mentions custom nameservers, while the German and Turkish versions say you cannot change the nameservers of a Wix domain. Check the option in your account; otherwise a transfer is the remaining route.

How do you keep business email running when you migrate from Wix?

Moving your site does not break email by itself; the real problem is losing DNS records or changing them in the wrong order. For example, Wix states that after you transfer a domain away, you must add the MX records again for business email to work.

• First, write down all DNS records (A, CNAME, MX, TXT) before you start. The DNS tab of a WHOIS lookup shows them.
• Next, recreate the MX, SPF and DKIM records (sender verification records) one to one in the new DNS.
• Do not switch the mail provider on the same day as the site launch; plan a provider change as a separate job.
• Touch the MX record last, then test sending and receiving.

If you also change the mail provider, our business email migration guide covers the order, the TTL setting (how long DNS answers stay cached) and when to close the old mailboxes.

If you bought mailboxes through Wix, billing stays in your Wix account. Wix states that cancelling the site plan does not cancel mailbox subscriptions. So do not close the old subscription before the mailboxes work at the new provider.

Where do you build and test the new site before launch?

Build the new site on a separate address while the Wix site stays live; that way the old site keeps working and you do not need to rush. Block search engines on that temporary address, otherwise the same content can end up in the index twice.

• First, add password protection or a no index rule, and remove it at launch.
• Next, open every page on a phone and on a desktop, and check images, menus and forms.
• Then test the redirect rules on staging and read the results with a redirect checker.
• Also run technical checks such as speed and accessibility before launch.
• Finally, add the legal pages, the cookie consent and the contact details.

Above all, confirm at launch that you removed the no index block. Forgetting it is a common mistake that keeps a new site out of search results.

In what order should you run launch day?

Launch day is the shortest and riskiest part of a migration. Google recommends moving all URLs of a small or medium site at once, and picking a time of low traffic if you can. Follow this order:

1. First, start a content freeze, so nobody publishes new content on Wix.
2. Next, export the final data from Wix again: contacts, form entries and products.
3. Then verify the redirect rules, the SSL certificate (the certificate behind https) and the forms on staging.
4. Also save the current DNS records and lower the TTL value ahead of time.
5. At this point, point the A and CNAME records to the new server and delete the old ones.
6. After that, run our redirect checker to confirm each old URL reaches its target in one step.
7. Above all, test forms, the payment flow and email notifications with real data.
8. Also submit the new sitemap in Search Console.
9. Confirm live that your analytics and ad tags fire.
10. Finally, watch Search Console and the server logs for errors during the first 48 hours.

How do you track SEO losses after you migrate from Wix?

Google says to expect a temporary fluctuation in rankings during a site move. For a medium sized site, new URLs can take a few weeks or more to settle in the results. Therefore look at data instead of panicking during the first weeks.

• First, watch whether Search Console reads the new sitemap, how many pages it indexes and which crawl errors appear.
• Next, confirm that old URLs redirect with a 301 and that the 404 and redirect chain reports show no new problems.
• Compare clicks and impressions of your key pages with the period before the move.
• Track organic sessions and conversions such as forms, searches and calls in Analytics.
• Finally, check the server logs to see that Googlebot, Google's crawler, requests the new URLs without unexpected error codes.

Also, if your domain stays the same, you do not need the Change of Address tool in Search Console. Google needs that tool only when you move from one domain or subdomain to another.

When should you cancel your Wix plan?

Cancel once the new site is live, the domain and email work, the transfer is done if you chose one, and your backups are safe; not earlier. The Wix Help Center page Canceling a Wix Premium or Studio Plan spells out several consequences:

• The site plan, the domain, business email and app subscriptions are separate services, and cancelling the plan does not cancel the others.
• Even after you cancel the plan, your site can stay online; its address reverts to the free Wix URL and Wix ads appear.
• Wix does not delete your content, but if you do not want the site online, you must unpublish it or hide it from search results.

So the order is this: first point DNS to the new site, then unpublish the old Wix site so the same content does not live at two addresses. For example, if you keep the domain at Wix, leave its renewal on and close only the site plan. On the other hand, if you transfer the domain, do not switch off its renewal before the transfer ends.

Refund terms and time limits can change, so read the current text on that page before you cancel.

What goes wrong most often when you migrate from Wix, and what do you check first?

When something breaks, read this table from top to bottom instead of guessing. The order runs from the cause we see most in the field to the rarest.

However, do not treat any single row as a final diagnosis, because one symptom can have several causes. If you are unsure, undo your last change and move forward one step at a time.

Is the move finished, and what belongs on the final checklist?

Do not cut your ties with Wix before you complete this list.

• The domain shows the new site, and the www and non www versions reach one address.
• Above all, every old URL, or at least every URL with traffic, reaches a fitting page in one step.
• The SSL certificate is valid and the browser shows no warning.
• Business email sends and receives, and the MX, SPF and DKIM records sit in place.
• You tested forms, bookings and payment flows with real data.
• You carried over the legal pages and required business details; our guide to website legal requirements and business information lists them.
• Analytics, tag manager and ad tags work.
• You submitted the new sitemap in Search Console.
• A dated backup of everything you downloaded from Wix sits in a safe place.
• You deleted the contact lists and form entries you no longer need.
• The domain transfer, if you chose one, is complete, and the renewal date sits in your calendar.
• Finally, you decided what to cancel: the Wix plan, email and app subscriptions.

How can we help you migrate from Wix?

We are not a hosting or email provider; we design, build, migrate and manage your website. When we migrate a Wix site, we first plan the inventory and the build of the new site. Then we set the redirect map, the order of the domain and email switch, and the monitoring after launch.

First we review your current site, your domain and your email setup; after that, we present the scope and the order in writing. However, we do not give ranking or timeline guarantees. Moreover, if we see that staying on Wix is better for you, we say so openly.

To start, request a quote: describe your site briefly on our business website design page, and we prepare an offer for your project.