Earlier this week, the Lebanese Government blocked off all access to the online website building platform, Wix.

Wix is an online company that provides web hosting and website design services. Users can design and build their websites in HTML5, as well as mobile websites, using drag and drop utilities. Two popular aspects of Wix are that developers can create their own web applications to market to other users, and that users do not need to know any coding to create a website.

Without any prior warning from the Lebanese Government, the block has resulted in thousands of Lebanese websites being inaccessible from within Lebanon. According to Datanyze, there are just under 10,000 Lebanese based websites powered by Wix. This block will impact everyone from individuals running a small personal website, to big corporations who use their website as a sales channel or marketing platform.

Attempting to access the Wix website from within Lebanon will lead to the following page:

The message seen on the website roughly translates to “site blocked based on the order of the Lebanese judiciary”.

On the wide spectrum of website building solutions, Wix lives on the website builder end that’s all-inclusive. You build your website on their software with their tools. Your website lives on their servers. You can only access your website via the Wix admin panel. It’s in contrast to solutions where you buy, install, and manage all the “pieces” of your website separately.

This block will open a market for Wix competitors such as Weebly and Squarespace.

Here’s a bar chart for Wix and their top competitors in Lebanon:

So what are you supposed to do if you have a Wix-based website? The best thing you can do at the moment is access it through a VPN service. It’s not currently possible to migrate to another platform as all of Wix’s templates and themes are strictly made for Wix, so the idea of simply exporting from Wix and heading over to another website builder platform isn’t at all feasible.

Do you run or manage a Wix-based website? How have you been impacted by this block? What are your thoughts on this block? Let us know in the comments below!