So, what was my beef with Wix and what did I do about it?
In my previous post I briefly described an incident that I recently had with Wix, so now I want to expand on it. If you find it interesting, please like and share :)
Let’s start with some background.
More than 5 years ago, when I built a new app for stand-up comedians called Bits, I needed to have a website. I knew that I wanted to focus on my app and not the peripherals, so I decided that even if it cost me money, it was still worth it for the sake of “deploy and forget.” It was just a landing page after all.
I chose Wix since it was a very straightforward builder and I saw that it was saving me time and effort to deal with things such as SEO, SSL, size optimization, and other things you need to deal with when building a website.
It really did the job and even gave me an easy way to push articles that helped me improve my SEO and a way for my customers to reach out to me. This is important, because I really enjoyed the idea that I could “chat” with my customers and give them great support that does not look like a poor mailto experience. It felt like I was one of the cool guys in the startup landscape.
I remember that every year, when I got the renewal notice from Wix, it tickled me to move away to my own service. But then again, after calculating the cost and effort, it was just not worth it. And so I kept going. For around 5 years.
And then, last September, 30 days before my renewal, I got a notice saying that the price was about to be increased by 64%. I went nuts.
You see, 2025 is not 2019. We have AI and tools like Cursor that can help us ship products in a matter of hours if not minutes. How the heck do they allow themselves not only to ask for more money but also to give me only 30 days to decide if I will pay or lose my site? After 5 years of being loyal!
One hour later, I had a full copy of my site. All ready to be shipped. One. Hour.
From there I started to fine tune it. Made it sleeker. Built an easier way to add articles, and in all I ended up with a faster and nicer website which I then pushed to a DigitalOcean droplet, hooked my domain and bam. I was done.
I let it run for a few days just to make sure everything was well, and with huge satisfaction, I went to Wix admin and hit the “Cancel” button. Oh lord, that felt great. 10/10.
Last, the only part that I was still missing was a good way to connect with my customers. I tried to find a nice tool to give me a simple experience that I could proudly give to my users but everything out there was either too expensive, too simple, or too complex. I wanted something I could proudly use in my products, so I built it.
And as I was building SupportRetriever I decided that I wanted to give it for free to all solopreneurs out there who are just like me, love to build, but still want to engage nicely with their customers in an easy and sleek way.
So there you have it, that is my story of how I released myself from the cables of the giants and hopefully the result of this story will help you find your own growth that will feel fair and smooth.
Keep on building,
Amitay :)
