Profiling Notes
Wix vs WordPress — Anyone can measure a closed platform; only one of these lets you fix it
Lighthouse has told you what is wrong with your site, and on a closed builder there is no setting anywhere that lets you do anything about it.
The short answer
Diagnosis without access is just a scoreboard: Lighthouse will audit a closed builder perfectly happily, but you cannot change its theme output, its PHP version, its cache behaviour or its script loading — so every finding is somebody else's roadmap.
Put anything you intend to keep on managed WordPress, where the same findings are things you can act on. The monthly figure lands in the same range, the capability has no ceiling, and there is a real exit whenever you want one.
By the HostingFast team · Reviewed 24 August 2026
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Closed platforms are not slow by design, and plenty of sites on them perform respectably. The problem is what happens when one does not: you have a report full of specific, actionable recommendations and no way to action any of them.
There is also an architectural fact worth stating plainly. Wix offers no site export, which is a decision rather than a missing feature, and every year of pages published there adds another year of manual rebuilding to the eventual cost of leaving.
The audit is the easy half
Run Lighthouse against any site on any platform and it will name the problems: render-blocking resources, unused JavaScript, images in the wrong format, layout shift from unsized elements. The audit is genuinely useful and it is available to everybody.
The question that matters is the next one. Can you remove the render-blocking stylesheet? Change the image format? Add width and height attributes? On a self-hosted site the answer is yes to all three. On a closed platform the answer is whatever the vendor decides to ship next.
So treat a Lighthouse report on a closed builder as information about your supplier rather than about your site. It tells you what they have chosen to do, and how much of your speed is out of your hands.
What owning the stack actually gives you
The theme, which decides what HTML and CSS go to the browser. The PHP version, switchable per site from the control panel. The cache layers — LiteSpeed at server level, Redis for objects, OPcache for compiled code. And a shell, so WP-CLI and a profiler are both available when something needs diagnosing.
That list is the difference. Every recommendation in a performance audit maps to one of those levers, and having them is what converts a report into an afternoon's work rather than a support request.
Sprint WordPress is specified for one site on 10 GB with one core and 2 GB of RAM at 100k monthly visits, with 10 staging copies, WordPress Toolkit Deluxe and WP-CLI over SSH. Turbo WordPress and Nitro WordPress step up from there in place.
The export problem, stated as an engineering job
There is no export, so a move is a manual rebuild: text and images copied page by page into the new site, the structure re-created, then the domain repointed once it is ready. Tedious, but strictly bounded — and the boundary is your current page count.
That is the argument for moving sooner rather than later. The job grows with every page published, and it never shrinks. A twelve-page site is an afternoon; a two-hundred-page site is a project with a budget attached.
We handle the hosting side of it: free migration applies to anything that can be migrated, the account activates minutes after checkout, and the domain can be pointed when you are ready rather than when a countdown says so.
Re-baseline after the move, properly
Record the Lighthouse and field numbers for the old site before you switch, on the same pages, at the same throttling profile. Without a before, an after is just a number and you will spend months arguing about whether the move helped.
Map the old URLs to the new ones and put permanent redirects in place at cutover. Rankings are attached to paths, and a rebuild that silently changes them throws away whatever the old site had earned — which then gets blamed on the migration rather than on the missing redirect map.
Then wait for the Chrome User Experience Report to refresh and compare the 75th-percentile field data. Lab numbers move immediately; field data takes weeks, and it is the version that reflects what visitors actually got.
A score is not a fix
Anyone can hand you a performance score. What decides whether it improves is whether you can reach the theme, the PHP version and the cache — which is the whole argument for owning the stack.
NVMe storage and LiteSpeed caching sit under every tier, so the origin is not the thing standing between your fixes and the result.
- Audits are universal; access is not
- Theme, PHP and cache all reachable
- No export means a manual rebuild
- Record the before, or lose the argument
Why HostingFast
Standard on every plan
The theme is yours to change
What goes to the browser is decided by code you control, which is where most performance findings actually live.
PHP version per site
Switch versions and extensions from the control panel rather than waiting for a platform roadmap.
Three cache layers to work with
LiteSpeed page cache, Redis object cache and OPcache, each addressing a different kind of slowness.
WP-CLI over SSH
A shell and a real command line, so diagnosis and bulk work do not have to happen in wp-admin.
Ten staging copies
Enough environments to reproduce a problem and test a fix without touching the live site.
A genuine exit whenever you want
Files, database and backups are yours to download and take elsewhere, which is what portability means.
Prices Side by Side
Our numbers next to the big names
Typical intro and renewal pricing across the market, lined up against ours — including the renewal figure most comparison charts skip.
| Feature | HostingFastMost popular | Typical household-name host | Typical bargain host | Typical loss-leader deal |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Starting price / mo* | $2.42/mo | $4–$6 | $2–$4 | $1–$3 |
| Renewal price / mo | $2.42/mo | $10–$15 | $8–$12 | $4–$6 |
| Cheapest plan renews at its sign-up price | ||||
| SSL as standard | ||||
| Migration done for you | ||||
| NVMe drives on the cheapest tier | ||||
| Daily backups from the first tier | ||||
| Real humans on support, 24/7 |
*Our number is the lowest-priced plan we sell on an annual term, pulled live from the same catalogue that powers our pricing page — it physically cannot fall out of date. The other three columns show the ranges shared hosts in each bracket typically advertise: introductory offers that mostly demand a one-to-four-year commitment, then jump once it expires. We no longer name rivals or print their prices, because a figure we cannot verify on the day you read it has no business on this page. Line us up against whichever host you are really weighing — and give the renewal row the hardest look.
Quick Start
From order to online
- 1
Record the before, on the same pages
Run Lighthouse and note the field data for your current site at the same throttling profile you intend to use afterwards. Without a baseline you cannot demonstrate an improvement and you will end up arguing about it.
- 2
Rebuild with the URL map in hand
Copy the content across and keep a list mapping every old path to its new one. Put permanent redirects in place at cutover, because rankings are attached to paths rather than to pages.
- 3
Fix what the audit named, then re-measure
Work through the findings you can now actually reach — theme output, image formats, script loading — then repeat the same measurement. This time the recommendations are yours to act on.
Built In
Loaded onto every plan
- Managed WordPress on NVMe with LiteSpeed caching in front
- Per-site PHP version switching from the control panel
- Redis object caching alongside AccelerateWP on the WordPress plans
- Up to 10 staging copies for reproducing and fixing safely
- WP-CLI over SSH, with Git and Composer available too
- WordPress Toolkit Deluxe included at no added cost
- Free SSL on every plan, renewed automatically before expiry
- Daily backups you can download and restore yourself
- Free migration for anything that can be migrated, run by our engineers
- A renewal price identical to the price you ordered at
Frequently Asked
What people ask us most often
Can I act on a Lighthouse finding on a closed builder platform?
Rarely. The audit names render-blocking resources, unused JavaScript, image formats and unsized elements — all of which live in output you do not control. On a self-hosted site each of those maps to a theme change, a plugin setting or a server configuration you can reach yourself.
What actually makes a self-hosted WordPress site fast?
Three things in order: a server-level page cache so anonymous visitors never wake PHP, a theme that ships little, and images in modern formats with dimensions set. Object caching matters after that, for logged-in and session-carrying requests where the page cache cannot help.
How do I move a Wix site without losing the URLs?
By hand, with a map. There is no export, so content is copied page by page — and while you do that, record every old path against its new one. Put permanent redirects in place at cutover. Skipping the map is the single most reliable way to lose traffic and blame the platform for it.
How do I re-baseline Core Web Vitals after a migration?
Take lab measurements immediately, on the same pages and the same throttling profile as your before. Then wait for the Chrome User Experience Report to refresh and compare the 75th-percentile field data. Lab moves at once; field takes weeks and is the version visitors actually experienced.
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Get the levers, not just the score.
Managed WordPress with the theme, the PHP version and three cache layers in your hands — plus staging copies to test every fix.
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