SEO/GEO Websites

Wix vs. WordPress vs. Custom Build: Which Gets Found by AI?

By 翁睿承|September 27, 2026|6 min read

If your website needs to be found by both traditional Google search and AI engines like ChatGPT and Perplexity, your platform choice directly determines which SEO/GEO moves are even possible — especially custom robots.txt rules, structured data, and hreflang. Wix, WordPress, SHOPLINE, 91APP, and custom development (e.g., Next.js) differ significantly on these capabilities. Below is a side-by-side comparison with every capability and price traced to an official source; where 91APP has no official documentation, we say so plainly rather than guessing.

Capability Comparison

CapabilityWixWordPress (self-hosted)SHOPLINE (Taiwan)91APPCustom Next.js
Per-page title/meta/canonicalYesYes (via Yoast SEO or similar)Not checked item by itemNot officially documentedYes (native)
Custom JSON-LDYesYes (via Yoast SEO)Help-center article on product structured data (body not readable in our check)Not officially documentedYes (native)
Edit robots.txtYes, but unsupported by Wix's own care teamYesYes (documented feature)Not officially documentedYes (native file convention)
Serve /llms.txtNot documented by vendorPossible via manual upload or plugin, not an official featureNot documentedNot officially documentedYes (developer-controlled)
Server-side renderingYes (Wix states its SEO infrastructure is SSR-based)Yes (native PHP rendering)Presumed yes for a SaaS storefront, not explicitly documentedNot officially documentedYes (native — Next.js is SSR/SSG by design)
Multilingual hreflangYes, automatic via Wix MultilingualYes, via plugins (Polylang, WPML)Not documented in sources foundNot officially documentedYes (native alternates.languages in the Metadata API)

(Verified September 2026.)

Platform Details

Wix: Official documentation confirms you can customize per-page title and meta description from the SEO panel (Wix support, verified September 2026), and Wix auto-adds a self-referential canonical tag that can be overridden in the Advanced SEO tab (Wix support, verified September 2026). Wix also supports writing custom JSON-LD structured data, site-wide or per-page (Wix features page, verified September 2026 ; this is a product marketing page). Wix states site owners can edit robots.txt from the Marketing & SEO tab, but its own support team does not provide technical help for custom robots.txt or robots-meta changes (Wix support, verified September 2026) — so fine-tuning crawler rules, like allowing specific AI-crawler user-agents individually, is on you. Multilingual sites get automatic hreflang and x-default tags via Wix Multilingual (Wix support, verified September 2026). On pricing, Wix Premium's listed tiers are Free; Light at $17.77/mo; Core at $29.77/mo; Business at $39.77/mo; and Business Elite at $159.77/mo (annual billing, reference USD) (Wix pricing, verified September 2026) — the page states "prices and currency vary by location," so actual Taiwan billing wasn't confirmed and should be checked directly on wix.com from a Taiwan account.

WordPress (self-hosted): WordPress.org itself is free open-source software; the real cost is hosting plus plugins/theme. SEO capability depends heavily on plugins, most commonly Yoast SEO, whose own documentation describes itself as "the easiest way to create or edit the robots.txt file... through Yoast SEO in the WordPress Dashboard" (Yoast's own help page, verified September 2026 — a plugin vendor's own documentation). Yoast injects title, meta description, canonical, Open Graph, and JSON-LD into the page head. Overall, with the right plugins configured, WordPress gets remarkably close to custom-development-level SEO control; the real difference is who maintains plugin updates, security patches, and performance tuning over time. If you go with hosted WordPress.com instead (not the same as free, self-hosted WordPress.org), its official tiers are Free; Personal from $9/mo ($2.75/mo on a 3-year plan); Premium from $18/mo; Business from $40/mo; Commerce from $70/mo; Enterprise custom (WordPress.com pricing, verified September 2026) — but that's the hosted plan's price; self-hosted WordPress.org software itself remains free, with cost limited to hosting and plugins.

SHOPLINE (Taiwan): SHOPLINE's help center has an article titled "Managing robots.txt for Advanced SEO" (SHOPLINE Help Center) and another titled "Structured Data for Products" (SHOPLINE Help Center). Both pages refused automated access when we checked in September 2026, so we confirmed only their titles — ask SHOPLINE directly about plan-specific details. SHOPLINE Taiwan's official pricing is annual-only: 網店探索者 NT$40,000/year, 電商戰略家 NT$55,000/year, OMO 大師 NT$68,000/year and 全通路領航員 NT$88,000/year; all plans carry a one-time NT$5,000 setup fee, and a monthly fee of 1.5-2% of GMV applies depending on tier (SHOPLINE Taiwan pricing page, verified September 2026).

91APP: 91APP has no published pricing page — its official channel is a consultation request page rather than a price list (91APP consultation page, verified September 2026). More importantly, we could not find any official technical documentation covering 91APP's per-page SEO control, custom JSON-LD, robots.txt editability, SSR, or hreflang support — only general third-party SEO-agency blog posts, none of which is an official 91APP product-capability document. If you're evaluating 91APP, confirm these capabilities directly with sales or technical support rather than relying on third-party write-ups.

Custom Next.js: The Next.js App Router Metadata API natively supports static or per-route dynamic title, description, alternates.canonical, and alternates.languages (hreflang), plus file-based conventions for robots.txt and sitemap.xml (Next.js documentation, Metadata API reference, verified September 2026). Next.js itself is free, open-source software licensed with no cost; "pricing" in practice means hosting (Vercel or self-hosted), a separate line item from the framework itself (Next.js documentation, verified September 2026). Whether to ship an /llms.txt file or Markdown content negotiation for AI crawlers is entirely a development decision, not something a platform gates — this is the biggest GEO-specific flexibility gap between custom development and any SaaS platform.

Which Fits Your Situation

  • Need to launch fast, don't need fine-grained SEO control: Wix's built-in SEO panel already covers most basics — a reasonable fit for a small brand or personal site on a tight budget and timeline that doesn't need custom robots.txt rules.
  • Want a mature content-marketing ecosystem and plugin flexibility: WordPress with Yoast SEO (or similar) gets close to custom-level SEO control — a good fit if you have a content team willing to maintain plugins and security patches.
  • Pure e-commerce needing one-stop payments and logistics: SHOPLINE publishes its annual pricing and has help-center articles on robots.txt and product structured data — a fit if operational efficiency is priority one. 91APP's lack of official technical documentation means you should confirm SEO/GEO capability directly with sales before committing, rather than relying on quoted price or verbal assurance.
  • Need full SEO/GEO control, planning for the long haul: Custom development (e.g., Next.js) gives developers native control over canonical, hreflang, robots.txt, and llms.txt without depending on what a platform chooses to expose — a fit for companies treating the website as a long-term brand and traffic asset.

Worth noting: Google itself states that "You don't need to create new machine readable files, AI text files, or markup to appear in these features" and that "There are no additional technical requirements" — in other words, whichever platform you pick, whether AI engines cite you ultimately comes down to standard SEO indexing eligibility and content quality, not whether a platform slaps on a "GEO-friendly" label (Google documentation, verified September 2026). That's exactly why the table above is worth checking capability by capability, rather than taking a vendor's marketing copy at face value.

Next Steps

There's no universal right answer here — the key is figuring out which SEO/GEO controls you actually need, then deciding whether that's worth the added development cost against the table above. For a sense of what custom development actually costs, see Website Development Cost in Taiwan (2026). To check whether your current site is missing any basics regardless of platform, see our Pre-Launch SEO/GEO Checklist. To talk through which approach fits your project, see our website services, or reach out via contact.

References

FAQ

Can a Wix site handle SEO basics?+

Yes, to a basic level. Wix supports per-page title/meta description edits, an auto-added canonical tag, custom JSON-LD, and Wix states its infrastructure is server-side rendered. But Wix's own documentation also states its support staff won't help with custom robots.txt changes — a real limitation if you need fine-grained crawler control.

How does WordPress compare to custom development for SEO?+

WordPress itself is free open-source software, and a plugin like Yoast SEO handles per-page titles, descriptions, canonicals and JSON-LD — close to custom development on capability. The real difference is who maintains plugin updates, security patches, and performance tuning over time.

Is 91APP's SEO capability documented anywhere?+

We could not find any official documentation. 91APP has no public pricing page — its only official channel is a consultation request, not a published price list — and per-page SEO control, JSON-LD, robots.txt editability, SSR, and hreflang support are all unconfirmed by any official 91APP product documentation. Only third-party agency blog posts discuss it in general terms, which shouldn't be treated as confirmed capability.

What does SHOPLINE Taiwan actually cost?+

SHOPLINE Taiwan publishes annual-only pricing for four tiers (網店探索者, 電商戰略家, OMO 大師, 全通路領航員) at NT$40,000, 55,000, 68,000 and 88,000 a year, plus a one-time NT$5,000 setup fee and a monthly fee of 1.5-2% of GMV depending on tier (checked September 2026).

When does custom development make more sense than Wix or WordPress?+

When you need full developer-level control over robots.txt, hreflang, and llms.txt, or when the site is a long-term brand and traffic asset that needs to keep performing and scaling — those are all natively supported in a custom build like Next.js, with no dependence on plugin availability or what a platform chooses to expose.

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