Does Wix Own My Website? What You Keep and What You Rebuild

Does Wix own my website? Plenty of owners ask it after paying Wix for years, finding no "download my site" button and starting to wonder if leaving means losing everything. Search results for this question disagree with each other. So I opened Wix's own pages on 28 October 2026 and I quote them below, with where I found each one.

Short answer: no, Wix does not own your domain, and its Terms of Use say you own the content you put on your site. What does not move is the built site itself. Wix's help pages say Wix websites cannot be transferred to other platforms, so a move means rebuilding the design and carrying over your text, images and domain. I'm not a lawyer, and this isn't legal advice.

What does "my website" actually mean on Wix?

It is three things with three different answers. The domain is your web address. The content is what you made: your text, images, blog posts and customer data. The site as built is the design, the layout and the Wix system that runs it. Most of the confusion comes from treating all three as one thing.

The table below is what I could and could not confirm for each, from Wix's own pages. Wix's Terms of Use say "Last Revised: October 22, 2026". The help pages I opened show no date at all, so they may be older than they look. Where I did not find a Wix page that answers it, the cell says so.

I covered the domain row in more detail in who holds a domain and how to check, so here I only use what Wix itself says.

Does Wix own my domain and my content?

On the domain, Wix is plain. Its blog post says "Wix does not own your domain", that it is "registered under your name", and that you stay in control "for as long as you renew it". It adds that a domain bought through Wix can be moved to another provider, and that cancelling a site plan doesn't automatically erase a domain you registered. The page shows "Updated: Oct 18" with no year. Your job is to check that your own name is the registrant, and to keep paying the renewal.

On content, I read section 3.1 of the Terms of Use. It says you own all intellectual property pertaining to your content, including designs, images, text and code, and that "Wix does not claim ownership rights on your User Content". You do give Wix a licence to copy and use that content to run and improve the service, and the Terms list training its software tools, including AI models, as one of those uses. So you own what you made, and Wix may use it to keep the site running.

The part I would check first is section 1.5. Wix treats as the owner of a site the person whose email address is listed on the Wix account, and it reserves the right to decide ownership as it chooses if there is a dispute. If a friend or an old designer set your account up with their email, that matters. The Terms are where the answer is, so read them rather than a summary of them.

Can I take my Wix site with me if I leave?

Not as a working site. Wix's help says "Since Wix is a SaaS solution, your site must run on Wix's servers" and that the architecture "does not support external hosting". It also says "it is not possible to back up your site externally". What can leave is smaller: a CMS collection exports as CSV. Blog posts do not export to other platforms, per Wix's own page, though that page has no date and Wix may have changed it. I could not confirm that contact or form data can be exported.

Owning your content and being able to export it are different things. The Terms say that if an account is cancelled it "may cause or result in the loss of certain content", that "Data cannot be recovered once your User Account or User Platform is terminated", and that you agree to "regularly and independently save and backup" your content. So the copy of your text and photos has to be yours, kept somewhere you control.

In plain words: the design and layout are rebuilt on the new site, the text and images you saved come across, and the old page addresses should be redirected so Google and customers still land somewhere. Google's site moves guide recommends permanent redirects from old addresses to new ones, so ask whoever does the move to handle that. Wix suits some businesses well, and I would not tell anyone to leave it just because it can't be exported. If you are weighing where else to go, I compared the best website builders in 2026, with Wix among the ones I like less and why. If you wonder why I build custom-coded sites anyway, I explain it in why I build custom-coded sites. Here is how I would decide:

• Stay if the site works and you only fear lock-in. Keep your domain in your own name and a copy of your text, images and customer details.
• Keep Wix and add a custom site if one part is the problem, such as a booking tool or a service area page.
• Rebuild if the design, the speed or your search results are the problem, and patching them is not enough.

Where do I fit, and what should I ask before a redesign?

I'm a small studio in Toronto and I build every site myself. If you are on Wix and thinking about a move, I look at the site first and tell you what carries over and what I would rebuild. That is the work behind my website redesign service. The one ownership fact I can state about my own sites is that my clients own their domain, bought in their own name. Hosting is free with SSL, and you pay only for your domain, about $15 to $25 a year. See what each package includes and costs. What a redesign quote should include is in my post on redesign costs.

You may not need me. If you are happy on Wix and your only worry is being locked in, keep the domain in your name and a copy of your text and photos, and you can move later. If you just want a second opinion on whether the site is losing you enquiries, ask me for a free website review. I record a short video on what is putting customers off and what I would fix. It is free, with no obligation.

What to do this week:

• Look up who is the registrant on your domain (my post on who owns a domain shows how).
• Save your text, photos and any customer or form data somewhere you control.
• Open Wix's Terms of Use and read sections 3.1 and 7.3 yourself. They can change, and I read them on 28 October 2026.
• Before any redesign, ask the designer what carries over, what gets rebuilt and who sets up the redirects. My post on green flags and red flags when hiring a web designer has more to ask.

Related posts

• Who owns my website domain, me or my web designer?
• Website redesign cost: what a quote should include
• Hiring a web designer: green flags and red flags
• How long does it take to build a website?

Sources

• Wix: Does Wix own your domain? (updated 18 October, no year shown, read 28 October 2026)
• Wix: Terms of Use (last revised 22 October 2026, read 28 October 2026)
• Wix Help Center: About Templates (no date on the page, read 28 October 2026)
• Wix Help Center: Exporting or Embedding Your Wix Site Elsewhere (no date on the page, read 28 October 2026)
• Wix Help Center: Wix Editor Request, Storing a Backup of Your Site Outside of Wix (no date on the page, read 28 October 2026)
• Wix Help Center: Wix Blog Request, Exporting Blog Posts to Other Platforms (no date on the page, read 28 October 2026)
• Wix Help Center: CMS, Exporting Content from Your Collection (no date on the page, read 28 October 2026)
• Wix Help Center: Changing Your Free Wix URL (no date on the page, read 28 October 2026)
• Google Search Central: Site moves with URL changes (updated 20 August 2026)

Questions people ask