what’s the actual difference between wire transfer vs money transfer

Need to regularly send some money overseas to family and trying to figure out the best way. I keep hearing "wire transfer" and "money transfer" used like they're the same thing but pretty sure they're not.

From what I've read so far, wire transfers go through banks using the SWIFT system and cost like $25-50 with maybe some intermediary fees. Money transfer services (Wise, Remitly, Xoom etc.) seem cheaper and use their own networks. But is that really the only difference? And which one would be the best for my use case?