Straight answers for local service businesses
You can't literally move a website from Wix or GoDaddy. Those builders lock the design in, so the new site gets rebuilt, and you carry over your domain, your text, your photos, and your page URLs. Build the new site first, point the domain at it only when it's finished, set up redirects for any URLs that changed, and leave your email alone until you've confirmed where it actually lives. Done in that order, there's no downtime and no ranking drop.
This comes up every week. A plumber built a site on Wix four years ago, it looks dated, the phone number is wrong on two pages, and nobody can figure out how to fix it. Or a landscaper is paying GoDaddy for a builder plan, a domain, a security add-on, and an SEO tool, and has no idea what any of it does.
The good news: getting out is easier than people think. The bad news: it doesn't work the way you'd expect.
No. There is no export button, and there is no file you can hand to someone else.
Wix and GoDaddy's website builder are closed systems. The design, the layout, the drag-and-drop blocks, all of that only exists inside their platform. When people say they want to move a website from Wix, what actually happens is a rebuild: someone builds a new site somewhere else and carries your content across.
That sounds worse than it is. Most trade websites are five to eight pages. The rebuild is not the hard part. The hard part is everything around it, and that's what this post is about.
Three things move with you:
What doesn't move: the design, the forms, any Wix apps or GoDaddy add-ons, your booking widget, and any analytics history tied to their built-in dashboard.
Two things people forget every single time: your review widget (if reviews are pulled in from a Wix app, they're not really yours, they live on Google) and your form submissions. Export your past leads from the builder's inbox before you cancel. Old quote requests are a decent follow-up list.
You have two options, and either one works.
Option one is simpler and it's what I'd do first. You can always transfer later. One catch: if you registered or renewed the domain in the last 60 days, ICANN blocks a registrar transfer. DNS repointing has no such limit, which is another reason to start there.
Whatever you do, do not let the domain lapse. A domain that expires during a move can get scooped up, and buying it back gets expensive fast.
Not if you handle URLs correctly. That's the whole game.
Google ranks pages, not sites. If your Wix water heater page lives at yoursite.com/water-heater-repair and the new site puts that content at yoursite.com/services/water-heaters, Google sees the old page as gone and the new one as brand new. Rankings reset.
So do this:
If your old site was three pages and got almost no traffic, honestly, skip the redirect fuss and just build something better. Redirects matter when you've got pages that already rank.
Check this before you cancel anything. Email and hosting are separate systems that happen to share a domain.
A lot of GoDaddy customers have Microsoft 365 email through GoDaddy. A lot of Wix users have Google Workspace purchased through Wix. If you cancel the wrong plan or change the wrong DNS record, your inbox goes dark and you don't find out until a customer says they emailed you last Tuesday.
The rule: when you repoint DNS, change the A record and leave the MX records alone. A records control the website. MX records control email. Touch one, not the other.
This sequence has zero downtime.
Step ten is the one people rush. Wait a week. It costs you twenty bucks to keep the old plan alive a little longer, and it's cheap insurance if something looks off.
The rebuild is usually a week or two depending on who's doing it. The technical switchover is an afternoon. DNS changes typically take effect within a few hours, though some providers quote up to 48.
The part that drags is you: finding the photos, approving the copy, deciding what your service list should actually say. Set aside an hour to pull your content together and the rest moves quickly.
One last thought. If you're leaving because you can't edit your own site, make sure that's fixed on the way out. Ask whoever builds the new one how you'd change a phone number or add a service. If the answer is complicated, you'll be having this same conversation in three years.
Not really. There are plugins and services that claim to import Wix content, but they typically grab text and images and leave the design behind. You still end up rebuilding the layout, so treat any importer as a copy-paste shortcut, not a migration.
No, as long as the domain registration itself is still active and paid. Website hosting and domain registration are billed separately, even when they appear on the same invoice. Check that your domain shows an active renewal date before you cancel any plan.
It shouldn't. Build the new site on a temporary address first, then repoint the domain only when it's finished. The changeover usually takes effect within a few hours and visitors just start seeing the new site.
In your account's domain settings, unlock the domain and request the authorization code, sometimes labeled an EPP or transfer code. It gets emailed to the address on file for the domain, so make sure you can access that inbox first.
Yes, if you keep the same page URLs or set up 301 redirects. Rankings follow the page, not the platform. A faster, clearer site with the same URLs usually holds its position and converts better.
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