Thank for following up and for sharing your thoughts - it’s genuinely appreciated.
I want to reassure you that I read nearly all the feedback and discussions that happen, whether it’s here in the forum, on the Studio Discord, or in other community spaces. While not every post or message receives an individual reply from me, that doesn’t mean it’s gone unnoticed.
Your feedback, has already been shared with the relevant teams. I understand how important these topics are to you, and I appreciate the time you’ve taken to raise them.
I agree with everyone here… groups are not forums! Plain and simple. What a gong show. Did you guys even test this? I honestly can’t imagine anyone giving their blessing to this idea. Anyone who is willing to give Wix the benefit of the doubt and take their word for it that the transfer of their data will goes as smoothly as they say, should take a look at my silly little history blog. The ‘UPDATES’ link at the top of page is the current forum, and the ‘NEW UPDATES’ is the Groups that we will be forced to migrate to. You will see how bad it truly is. Come on, Wix. I gave you a chance as the little guy in the hood years ago, you have to do better. Leave the forums alone! They’re fine the way they are.
Add: I really need to know if you guys will be keeping this forced migration to Groups before I spend all my time trying to customize it in my site (although Groups not very customizable). Time is valuable to me. If you guys change your mind later and decide to keep Forums available, then I will have wasted my time trying to deal with the crappy Groups. I also have links that point directly to forum posts which will have to be dealt with. This is a painful transition… you know that, right?
Add: The difference between Wix Groups and Forums have been discussed several times in the past. If we can please have a reasonable explanation as to why you are doing this, I’d really appreciate it. The Groups is so flawed that its hokey.
Just chipping in here as I’m currently migrating Forums (VERY useful for my purposes of a cross course collaboration within an art college of up to 2000 students on at least 20 different courses) into Groups as I only have a small window of opportunity to do this.
So far, although it’s massively frustrating to lose the functionality that Forums offered, it’s looking relatively simple and the Groups layout seems to offer a ‘similar’ functionality.
I’ve currently got over 180 members from the Forum (did a trial run last academic year) so I’m not 100% sure of how they will transfer but the framework of changing the 15 Forums I set up into Groups seems to have been automatic.
I’m going to read through this thread properly and update you as I go.
It’s been two months since I posted my first message and nothing has changed. Could we have an update on the progress of the various points raised here?
No kidding. I am personally not going to implement the Wix groups. There is no way that the code for this is more ‘in line’ with modern standards than the forums. It’s an absolute gong show… a real mess. It reminds me of code from the late '90s. It’s very sad how Wix is doing this AND raising the prices of its subscriptions. It’s almost as if they ‘want’ to lose customers.
WIX’s focus has changed from features to appearance over the years. They have jumped on the “enshittification” or “rent seeking” train too early. The features are not complete enough for us not to keep looking elsewhere.
I wish WIX would refocus on features for 1 year to level up their apps. One year is all it should take. All web site builders suffer from “enshittification” and “rent seeking”. But WIX being an All In One solution has a clear edge but the “All” must be All. “Some In One” is not a good look.
Don’t get rid of Forums. Duh. Have both and put a little resources on both for the next 6 months. Look at the features that all the other web site struggle with. Make sure WIX has them and are better. WIX does not make third part app support as big a thing as WordPress. And Wordpress lags because of it. But, yes WIX, you still need the “All” to be “All” not “Some”.
Hey Wix. It’s not too late to scrap your plans to retire the Wix Forum app. Seems a lot of us have already integrated it into our sites and it’s functioning well and relatively bug-free. Can’t same the same for the Wix Groups app, which has its uses, but is definitely not suited for managing an online forum.
So why not keep both apps? Continue to update and add features to the Groups app, while announcing that development & support is ending for the Forum app. Let users decide if they want to continue with it or make a switch.
I woke up yesterday morning to yet another thing ‘broken’ on my site. This is a perfect example of the direction Wix is going. I hope they can fix whatever code they changed overnight, but this has happened to me on more than one occasion… and all I have is a very simple little blog. This is another example of dishing out madness to sound cool… but there’s nothing cool about waking up to deal with unexpected issues for hours on end and there’s also nothing cool about taking away a significant function of some people’s sites (forums) without providing a suitable alternative (which Groups is not). I really feel that they should grandfather in some of their user forums.
I don’t understand. Why is Wix allowed to keep these ‘support’ forums and yet they are perfectly ok with discombobulating its paying customers, forcing them to migrate to something that doesn’t function as a forum (Groups)? I really want to know why? Is it because Wix realizes that to transfer their support forums to Groups would be a nightmare?
We made the decision around two years ago to build this community forum on a third-party platform, as it offered features and tools Wix Forums couldn’t provide at the time. That’s why this space is remaining.
I appreciate Groups may not be a like-for-like replacement for Forums, and your feedback on what’s missing has been shared with the product team. As shared previously shared, the extended timeline for this change was based upon discussions from the community, and to provide additional time to make changes that best fit your community spaces.
I am, and will continue to make sure the feedback raised in this discussion is shared with the team
There is no surprise that this forum was built on a 3rd party platform. Regardless, I would like to see you try to transfer all that you have here in this forum to Groups… and let us know how well you did. Or let’s have a full discussion in Groups about an issue and see how well it holds up.
We urgently request that Wix Forums remain available as a stable option alongside Groups. Please do not delete or forcefully migrate Forums.
Our organization serves a community of elderly members (70+ years old), and we’ve invested hundreds of hours training them to use Wix Forums. For many, this has become their primary digital community space. Sudden removal or forced migration has devastating consequences:
Accessibility: Groups’ nested categories do not function as effectively as Forums for our needs.
Permissions & Roles: Member permissions do not import correctly, disrupting long-standing structures.
Content Management: Posts moving between Groups is unmanageable at scale and creates a massive labor burden for organizers.
Stability: Our members need consistency, not constant disruption. The perception that “services may disappear anytime” undermines trust in Wix for long-term adoption.
We are preparing to expand this system to a user base of 50,000+ members across multiple chapters. This transition has already caused unnecessary confusion and risks jeopardizing adoption altogether.
We respectfully ask Wix to:
Keep Forums as a “Legacy” option alongside Groups, without deletion or forced migration.
Provide stability assurances so communities can confidently rely on Wix as a long-term platform.
This change is not simply a feature update — it threatens the very foundation of how elderly communities interact, connect, and stay engaged. Please reconsider and provide a stable path forward for those who rely on Wix every day.
Youre directly harming a non-profit orginization thats over 100 years old, with thousands of users in the local community and preventing 50,000+ members from using a system we optimized and perfected with groups.
We want forums to stay, and we’re mailing your CEO via registered mail because of this.
Forums has to stay, simple as that, groups doesnt import or transition correctly.
WIX GROUPS Inadequate: NO PRE-MODERATION
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I’ve run a Wix Forum for a client/brand for several years and it is well integrated into the site, looks like our site and our members are used to it.
I have seen the feedback over forced migration from Forum to Groups, the migration process, the lack of match on functionality, the initially short deadline, and then deadline extension to Mid October 2025, followed by read-only till spring 2026.
I have therefore simply sat on my hands and waited for things to get sorted. But they have not been sorted and I now need to add my voice. Essentially, I see two ‘Fatal Exceptions’, even accepting all the other changes
A) This new forum does not look like part of the website - it is not fully integrated and looks ‘outside the brand’.
B) I have 100% pre-moderation on our forums - this is a client requirement to ensure the forums are family-friendly and not swamped by spam/scam/adult content - this requirement is common across ALL the various social media presences my client has. Post-moderation is not acceptable. Pre-moderation is currently a ‘feature request’ for Groups and is not (yet) implemented.
Therefore, I cannot migrate to GROUPS as it is - it doesn’t look like us, and it is not under effective control. It would be better to point members to an alternative social media site that does support full pre-moderation. And I suspect I am not alone - many other webadmins will be - quietly - in the same position.
PLEASE, politely but with significant concern, are you going to fix these issues? Provide a grandfathered service? Or provide workarounds? Hoping you can respond / help - with thanks.
Wix forum user for years. The first email message I ever received from Wix on forums being retired was September 4, 2025. Nothing prior. Sure, it was posted on various websites (that I do not monitor), but in terms of formal customer communication - it was September 4th.
What bothers me the most, is while it sounds nice to say there is extended notice, you are eliminating the ability to Post. Hello? A forum without new posts? That is essentially killing the product the day you can’t post.
In my eyes, this is a product deprecation with 5 weeks notice. Horrendous customer experience. Wix can, and should do better.
We first began communicating this in April via email, along with banners in the dashboard and updates in the Help Center. Based on community feedback, we adjusted communication, including the timeline, in-product messaging, and more recently emails sharing this change.
Good luck with that. I can confirm that having had Forums on my site for years (our site actually began and as a Forum template) I did not receive an email back in April and only learned of this silly decision by chance quite recently. The Forum app was the only Wix-built App that I didn’t have to remove and code a workaround, so I’m struggling to understand why Wix can’t just keep the working Forum app and let users decide whether they want to stick with it (with no new support or development), or migrate to the vastly inferior Wix Groups App and all its shortcomings.
I’m just building my website now and was thinking about adding a forum, so just noticed about this Forum→Groups thing right now. I’ll have to work with Groups, I guess, but I do see room for improvement.
If they serve two different purposes and the Forum has so many users, why not simply keep both? Maintenance costs?
I reached out to the team for clarity. Based on feedback from the community, the timeline was adjusted to allow more space for the transition (as previously mentioned). Following that, in-product communication was updated, and additional email communication was recently sent. I’ve updated my earlier comment to reflect, as it missed some transparency on when communication was sent.
I understand the concerns raised here and have shared them with the team. At this stage, the plan remains to close the Wix Forum app as announced
