I concur, many of my clients are 'rescues' from Wix and Wordpress and the only thing more hated than Wordpress is Wix.

More often than not it comes down to the horrifyingly confusing documentation, inconsistent UX, hilarious over-promising the world + dog on landing pages, etc.

Also, exfiltrating a website from Wix (changing the nameservers, which should take two seconds, like it does with any other hoster) is a huge ordeal. They make it very difficult.

To be fair, I referred to it as "similarly disliked." From a technical sense I'm less afraid of malicious plugins destroying my business like I might be with WP.

My stance is if I'm doing X, my preference is to find software or a platform that does X but not X, Y and Z.

landing on a Wix page is noticeably worse for someone who tries to limit ads and scripting. Everything has to pretty much be off for a Wix page to work, it is very heavy.

I can see how the lack of plugins may make it more secure though. I haven’t tried Wix, but squarespace is pretty good for getting something out the door quickly. It’s quite limited otherwise and the customization of wordpress makes it a very appealing CMS for most.

If WP provides security screens for add-ons and integrates it into their hosting business it would protect their ecosystem moat.