Editor X website builder review

Editor X is a website-building platform that combines drag-and-drop simplicity with advanced tools for designers and developers. Created by Wix, the well-known and highly regarded website building platform, Editor X provides a lot more flexibility and customization options than its parent platform. 

If you’re trying to choose from the best website builders around, Editor X is certainly worthy of consideration.

Editor X review: Snapshot

Editor X is a new addition to the website builder market, and comes with features we’ve not seen before in this space. High levels of customization and design flexibility are the order of the day, making it a powerful tool, if not one that may be right for everyone.

With Editor X, you can collaborate in real-time with other designers and developers, and the developer tools enable you to dive deep into the website code. Since this functionality offers tons of flexibility, experienced web designers or creative teams will love what they can do with it. But anyone looking for a more simple web design experience with plenty of template options might want to look towards providers such as Wix or Squarespace.  

Score: 4.5/5

Read on for our full and detailed review.

Editor X’s competitors

Editor X: Key features

Editor X offers some functionalities that you simply won’t find with other website builders. These make it an ideal choice for experienced website designers, teams that regularly collaborate over website creation, or anyone who simply isn’t getting the design flexibility they need from other providers.

The most notable of these features is the multi-user collaboration capabilities. Editor X allows multiple people to edit the website in real-time. For agency teams, this is a huge win. Managers can assign custom roles with different permissions, and team members can comment on different elements in real-time.

Another notable feature of Editor X in comparison with competitors is the custom code functionality. This could be seen as a major benefit or significant drawback depending on the user. While experienced designers will love the ability to use custom JavaScript and connect APIs, this feature could easily intimidate someone who is completely new to website design. 

Editor X: Key features and highlights

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Editor X makes it very easy to save, re-use, and edit sections of your website. By using their “Content Collections” you can use what are essentially databases in the back end of your site to display data and media in responsive and repeated layouts. Content Collections make it easy to change text, add new media, and update uniform design elements on your site.

An example of this would be updating product lists or a photo gallery. Without the need to make design adjustments to an element or page, new data can be added to responsive layouts on your website. You can even update a content collection by uploading a CSV file, and instantly see the fully designed result on your website.

Editor X’s parent platform, Wix, is known for its extensive collection of free and paid apps to expand the functionality of your websites. Luckily, you have access to the Wix app marketplace through Editor X. The only downside is that not all Wix apps are compatible with Editor X just yet.

Editor X: What’s new in 2022?

When it comes to Editor X, almost everything is new because the platform was only released in February 2021. That being said, the Editor X team has already made leaps and bounds in the year since it was brought to market. The number of templates available has increased from eight to 28, and recently-added functionality includes the ability to create test sites and enhanced form design.

Academy X has also been created, a resource library and knowledge base where users can access articles, video tutorials, and webinars to enhance their usage of Editor X. The team behind the platform are receptive to feedback, and regularly seek input from users on their community forum, Community X.

Editor X: Pricing

Editor X is a subscription-based platform, and offers two separate pricing categories. General websites fall under the Website Plans category, while any website that requires payment processing/ecommerce functionality falls into the Business and eCommerce Plans category. 

Each category has three pricing tiers, which offer different levels of functionality and storage capabilities. While there is a “free forever” option, functionality is limited, and you won’t be able to customize your domain name. For large teams, you can also contact Editor X to learn more about their enterprise pricing. 

While the pricing is displayed as an amount per month on the Editor X website, subscriptions are annual, so you’ll pay in full for one year when you purchase any of the premium plans.

Testing Editor X

With Editor X, it’s very simple to create an account and get started with building a website. It took us all of three clicks through sign-up pages to get straight into editing a pre-designed template.

Like with many cloud-based providers these days, you can sign up with an existing Gmail account. Once we had signed up, Editor X asked us to either select a template or start from scratch. Using a template is a great way to get familiar with everything Editor X can do.

For example, the platform makes it very simple to layer elements over each other without any complex padding or margin settings. Similarly, resizing elements can be done with easy click-and-drag functionality.

Every template and element on Editor X is fully mobile responsive. However, once you start making edits to a template, you might notice that the sizing and spacing of elements aren’t quite what you’d want. This means taking the time to manually edit the mobile versions of your site, which is time-consuming.

Since Editor X is essentially the Wix editing platform with advanced functionality, help queries are submitted through the same customer care center for both offerings. The Wix team promises 24/7 availability through email and phone callbacks. You can even schedule a specific time for your callback if needed. 

Phone callbacks are only available from 3am to 7pm (PST) Monday to Friday. So, we first submitted a request for a callback and waited around 30 minutes to receive the call. The representative was very helpful and knowledgeable, even when it came to questions about the more complex developer tools.

After that, we submitted another ticket via email. For this request, we received a reply just after the one-hour mark. While support for Editor X from the Wix team is very helpful by both phone and email when you receive it, the wait times are a little longer than we would like.

Alternatives to Editor X

Editor X is entering a fairly competitive market when it comes to website builders. However, it does seek to fulfill different needs to those of providers such as Wix and Squarespace. Between these three services, it really comes down to what type of website you want to build, how quickly you need to build it, and how much customization you require.

If you want to get a highly attractive site up and running fast, Squarespace is the superior option. The platform is renowned for its large range of over 100 beautiful, ready-to-use templates. In comparison, Editor X only has 28 templates to choose from. 

The templates on Editor X are diverse in design and layout, but they don’t quite reach the same elegance or simplicity of design as Squarespace. While Wix outdoes Squarespace in the number of templates available with over 800 options, the Squarespace templates are generally considered to appear more sophisticated.

On the other hand, Squarespace is not the most intuitive website editor to use. Making updates to your site or attempting extensive editing of a template can require a significant time investment. Both Wix and Editor X offer a far more intuitive user interface.

For large web design teams or web design agencies, Editor X is the easy winner. Features such as real-time editing by multiple users are unique to Editor X, and you can’t beat the level of flexibility and customization provided through the developer tools.

Editor X: Final verdict

There’s a lot to be excited about when it comes to Editor X, especially if you’re part of a creative team. It offers functionalities that are simply not available in comparable website builders. This includes the ability to speed up collaboration through real-time editing among multiple users. Web design also becomes far more efficient with the use of features such as Content Collections. 

But one of the most advantageous parts of Editor X is the level of customization available. The developer tools allow users to get deep into the code of their website, unlike parent platform Wix or competitor Squarespace. 

Editor X is slightly more expensive than other platforms, especially in the upper pricing tiers of its ecommerce packages. With more expensive packages, it’s a little disappointing that the customer support wait times are so long.

With all of its flexibility and custom code features, Editor X is not for the beginner website creator. If you’re looking for an affordable and simple way to create a great looking website for your personal blog or small business, Wix is the preferable option. 

Overall, Editor X is an exciting new entrant to the website builder market for web designers and creative teams. It’s got powerful functionality combined with the simplicity of drag-and-drop website building.

Further reading on website builders and web hosting

If you’re still on the fence about Editor X, you’d do well to get more advice. If cost is a concern, or you're looking for something more business-focused, you might like to check out the best cheap website builders or the best small business website builders. You might be evaluating what to use for building an ecommerce website: take a look at the best ecommerce website builders.

Another option for increased customization and flexibility is WordPress, via the best website builders for WordPress. If you opt for this, you'll also need to sign up to the best WordPress hosting: make sure to sign up with one of the best web hosting services offering WordPress hosting.