Jimmy ParkerWeebly is among the most user-friendly and reliable website builders out there. Anyone can use it to create an online store, blog, or personal site without writing any code. Weebly provides you with a customized name and an email, safe and affordable hosting, completely customizable, and contemporary themes and templates, as well as premium support through phone, chat, and email videos, webcasts, tutorials, and much more. Also, you get a 30-day money-back guarantee and a host of other features. Let’s have a deeper look at Weebly in this article.
By the way, if ever you’re looking for Weebly alternatives right off the bat, check out our best website builders in Canada and best website builders in Australia articles!
Table of Contents
Pros of Weebly
- Free Tier
- Excellent uptime
- Unlimited data transfer with all plans
- Switch themes without having to rebuild your site
- Site statistics include
- Complete commerce options, which include the possibility of selling digital items
- Themes that are attractive, responsive, and user-friendly
Cons of Weebly
- Photo storage is not reusable
- Customization of themes is limited to a certain extent
About Weebly
In 2006, three of their college buddies David Rusenko, Chris Fanini as well as Dan Veltri co-founded and launched an online platform that allows users to design professional websites in a matter of minutes. The platform was dubbed Weebly and has completely altered the design of websites. Today, Weebly gets more than 250 million unique visitors each month and boasts a customer database of more than 30 million websites. It’s among the most user-friendly, durable, and reliable web builders that anyone can utilize it to create an online store, blog, or personal website without having to write one line of code.
Weebly’s Free and Paid Plans
Weebly lets anyone join a no-cost Weebly plan. You will have full accessibility to Weebly Website Builder, which includes The Weebly Editor Weebly app Center, Weebly’s themes Weebly support, as well as the basic eCommerce options.
The most important limitations are:
- You are limited to 500MB of storage
- You are restricted to a Weebly subdomain that takes the form of username.weebly.com
- you have to display a Weebly advertisement on your Weebly website
Personal Plan
The Weebly Personal Plan is their cheapest premium plan. It doesn’t eliminate the Weebly advertisement from your website, however, it allows you to create an individual domain. It offers all the advantages that come with the Weebly platform, with 500MB of storage. It also includes eCommerce features that allow you to create your own eCommerce site for an affordable monthly cost.
Performance Plan
The Weebly Performance Plan increases the eCommerce options available, including PayPal checkout and review of items. It also removes restrictions on members when you’re building professional websites with paid memberships.
Professional Plan
The Weebly Professional Plan increases storage space in comparison with its Personal Plan and removes the Weebly Ad as well. Additionally, it comes with an unpaid custom domain, and more options for customization such as membership options, and video backgrounds.
Page Management
Pages for your site can be added via the sidebar which appears when you click Pages from the menu bar at the top. We love this feature because it won’t take you off the site’s preview page. The builder offers the standard web page or blog shop page or an external page. We are also impressed by the way that clicking on the navigation elements within the builder of Weebly takes you to the desired location. Wix allows you to navigate using the sidebar. However, Wix also lets you create cool features that aren’t part of Weebly like animating your title text and using images-carousel backgrounds.
However, Weebly lacks an Undo feature for changes to the site including adding elements or altering the theme, and certainly not a full history feature similar to that of Wix that lets you restore your entire website to its previous state. It is worth noting that Weebly has Undo along with Redo buttons for text entry, but not for complete. With Wix, you can press Ctrl-Z to stop a box that is resizing as well as Duda offer permanent redo and undo buttons for every action you perform within the builder.
We appreciate the fact that Weebly (like Wix) lets users type in your text on the webpage, rather than as a sidebar which is something Squarespace and other platforms are still requiring. However, Wix is also one step ahead by providing a context menu that you can right-click to access options to replace images as well as edit text. Wix also offers animation of the objects on your website!
Web Design Tools
The editor of Weebly is simple and easy to read with a gray bar at the top to manage pages and change settings, including the name of your website or its category. The left-hand side of the editor houses a dark gray bar containing elements from the site; you can drag and drop the elements from the panel onto your site’s editor window. The panel’s function mode changes depending on the options you select–Build Pages, Theme, Store apps, Settings, and Help from a menu at the top. The large orange button entices users to upgrade from an existing account that’s free to a premium account, while a blue button lets you publish the site that you’ve built.
You can include all the standard elements on your website’s pages, such as text boxes as well as images, maps spacers, and media. This includes audio, video documents, as well as a video however only Professional, Performance, and Premium levels can add audio and HD videos. Additionally, there are elements that allow feeds, forums surveys, RSVP questionnaires, forms, and others. If the feature you’re seeking isn’t found, you could locate this in our Apps section. Read more about this later.
Similar to Squarespace (but in contrast to Wix), Weebly doesn’t permit you to drag things wherever you’d like on the webpage. When we tested the site, the object we tried to drag to a location often ended up off to a different spot on the page in a way that wasn’t exactly the way we wanted it to. If you move your mouse cursor to the left of the toolbar it disappears to reveal more of the page that you’re creating. The buttons for premium objects have a lightning-colored lightning icon in orange If you drag them onto your site, you’ll get an email informing you for you to update.
The Section element is an opportunity to create an area of content into which you can place additional objects. The Section is a rectangle that is free-form or uses any of five layout types: Gallery Contact Menu, Featured, and Team. The Team page is the usual employee profile page that you can find on corporate websites, and the other types are straightforward. It is possible to move the top or bottom of the Section either up or down to alter its size. It’s something you can’t do with a variety of elements, even though you can utilize space. Space element to adjust the size of sections.
The customization options available to theme owners are restricted. You can alter the text in certain sections. You can also alter the font size, color, spacing, and size, and generally pick between a few color choices. Many site builders, such as Squarespace allow you to alter the color scheme of the template for web design. the palette as well. However, the flip side of these restrictions is that you can alter the theme at any time, without having to build the website from the ground up.
Blogging and Publishing
The Weebly blogging interface is identical to that of its website builder and comes with the New Post button appearing on the bottom of each page that is of the type Blog. It is possible to drag any element from the sidebar to the blog, however, Weebly isn’t the most user-friendly with this feature. There aren’t any standard templates for blogs, which means you must drag images, text, or galleries every time you’d like to make use of these elements. You have the option of controlling the social sharing feature and even commenting, however, the comments are threaded and may be deleted easily.
Weebly allows you to tag your blog posts. You are able to save your drafts prior to publishing. It is possible to set your posts to go live via Your Facebook as well as Twitter feeds in real-time also. Wix also offers blog-related widgets, such as Tag clouds, feature post widgets, and more. However, Weebly is capable of showing categories and archives and also providing Flickr as well as LinkedIn badges. Both of these services automatically generate RSS feeds for your blog.
A click on Publish will make your Weebly website online. There’s no need to click the Save button as changes are automatically saved. This is different from Wix which requires you to hit save every time you wish to make changes to your site stay. The choice you make is contingent on your style of work. Fortunately, Weebly contrasts with some web builders, like 1&1 MyWebsite which are published every time you make changes and give you no chance to alter your decision. Another advantage of Weebly is the fact that just similar to Wix it allows several editors to work on your website. To get it set up to do this, simply send an email and indicate which editor should have the full Author, Admin, or only Dashboard rights.
SEO
Let’s get this out first: If you’re an expert in SEO and are required to rank first in search results for a highly competitive keyword You could have an issue working with Weebly. It’s not an impossible task but there are some limitations:
- Your headings can only be H2. There’s an app for free that allows you to include headings from h1 to H6, but it may cause some issues with the formatting. We have a question as to why Weebly isn’t integrating this into the system.
- A few pages (categories and pages for products) require a string in your website’s URL. You get things like www.yoursite.com/store/p1/my-product/yellow. It’s not a big issue if your website isn’t in English. Similar to blog entries, they’ll be tagged with “/blog/” in their URL structure, which cannot be altered.
- The addition of structured data ( Rich Snippets) is accomplished via the source code. However, you’re completely on your own, as Weebly does not help.
The good thing is that Weebly is a great choice in regards to:
- Title tags, URLs, and meta-descriptions. You can modify them, and also alt text for images. This is crucial for ranking your images.
- 301 redirects. You can manage them to ensure that broken links are not broken when the URL of a page has been altered. Google deeply dislikes 404 pages.
- Image optimization. Weebly is great for compressing the images uploaded. This increases speed, which is beneficial for SEO.
Apps and Images
By clicking on the menu’s Apps button, you’ll be able to navigate into the App Center, which offers a selection of more than 350 widgets that you can add to your site. Some are free, and others that require costs. They can enhance the capabilities of your website and are similar to WordPress plug-ins. In order to add an FAQ application to the Weebly website, you need to authorize access to your Weebly account. This is the same as the authorization of a web-based app using Facebook. Once your app is added, it will appear on the list of Installed Apps. As with WordPress,tThe quality of these apps is different; some apps we tested included tutorials, whereas others didn’t.
Other applications available include Facebook Chat, Printful, and Privy, which have categories for Marketing, eCommerce, or Social apps. In terms of sheer number, Weebly has a respectable widget collection, which is comparable to Wix. But Wix’s applications are more integrated and easier to use.
One of Weebly’s main disadvantages is that it does not offer an online space for the storage of your site’s photos and videos so that they can be reused. Instead, you have to store the images locally before you can upload them each time you’d like to make them available elsewhere. Backgrounds, which can be found on multiple websites are a rare exception. Wix, Duda, and Squarespace provide an online archive for all your photos.
Weebly has a variety of fine image editing shops. You can change the brightness, contrast, and color saturation. You can also apply more than two dozen customizable Instagram-style filters. There’s also the option to add text and circular or linear focus effect. The only issue with this feature is the fact that it’s just circular, which makes it difficult to put on the face. Squarespace and Wix provide a wider range of editing tools for photos and the integration of Aviary online tools for editing images.
It is possible to upload multiple images at once using Weebly’s gallery widget which is attractive. It’s also very easy to add an external or internal URL to an uploaded image. Wix allows you to access your images from other online sources like Flickr and Facebook and also provides photographs that are stock (as Squarespace also does). Weebly’s image search allows you to search for images that are available on Flickr and Facebook, but you have to determine the appropriate licensing and attribution for the images. You can add them to your preferred images, however, you aren’t able to make that happen for images you upload yourself.
Making Money With Your Site
Weebly lets users with paid accounts create Product and Store pages with a full range of tools for business. You can also import items that you have purchased from Etsy, Shopify, or the CSV file. It is possible to accept payments through Square and Stripe, as also PayPal beginning with the Performance Tier. The builder also has inventory tracking and notifications about abandoned carts and the latter require an account with a high-level Performance. Weebly, unlike Simvoly, Squarespace, and Wix–has a 2.9 percent fee for transactions (plus $0.30 every transaction) plus the amount charged by the processor that processes payments.
The Store builder comes with all the features you’d expect such as shopping carts, prices, invoices, sale price sizes, coupons, and colors. The page editor has e-commerce elements. Similar to Squarespace, Weebly lets you sell digital downloads, however, it requires a personal account. Weebly allows you to bulk edit and delete items and modify categories. Also, your customers can leave reviews on your products.
You can add AdSense advertisements on Your Weebly pages to generate an additional (albeit generally sluggish) source of income. A simple-to-use feature for setting up allows you to authorize Weebly to you to use your AdSense accounts (or make a brand new account).
Weebly has an integrated newsletter feature for users with paid accounts are known as Promote. It is an element through which users can sign up for the newsletter. Once a subscriber is signed up, Weebly sends an email to your admin email informing that the subscriber has signed up. The tool for email marketing is simple to use and allows you to use a variety of methods to promote your brand including mail blasts in the event of a product for sale.
Ecommerce
One of the benefits of Weebly has to be the eCommerce capability. You can sell items from the Weebly website without changing platforms or making any additional changes. It is seamless and is functional.
The price is reasonable. For lower levels, Weebly charges transaction fees however, it offers the complete eCommerce package in business plans.
Ecommerce is a great piece in terms of function, however, bear in mind that it isn’t a full-time eCommerce as online store platforms like Shopify or BigCommerce are equipped with. Weebly includes the ability to shop and basic inventory management and accepts payment. Here’s how we can put Weebly on the online commerce “spectrum” –
It’s ideal for sites that are predominantly lead-generation or informational but also intend to sell some products. It’s also a great option for those who are testing products prior to making the move to a permanent platform. It’s not a good fit for websites that focus on eCommerce. If you’re one of them sites, an online store you manage that uses WordPress and WooCommerce or a specific eCommerce platform such as Shopify or BigCommerce could be more appropriate.
Mobile Site Design and App
Weebly offers a mobile-friendly strategy for creating websites like Squarespace’s. It creates an attractive mobile website that is responsive to the template you have chosen for your site. Similar to Duda as well as Wix, Weebly offers a button that lets you access the mobile website editing. The responsive designs of Weebly look fantastic on mobile devices and they can even cover the entire background with images, however, all this is at the expense of customization.
Weebly is ahead of its competitors in offering users a user-friendly interface, allowing drag-and-drop support for Android and iOS applications for building websites. The app also comes with an Apple Watch application that informs users of site traffic or transactions with commerce. Jimdo offers an app as well, however, it’s limited in terms of the number of pages it’s able to include. The Wix application lets you modify eCommerce features and blogs using it, but it’s not able to create websites or design editing like Weebly does. However, editing an existing site’s design using the iPad isn’t the best option. For instance, iOS has its own concepts of what happens when you press long-press on an image, which makes it challenging to do some editing.
Site Statistics and Mobility
Free users also have access to statistics about site activity for their Weebly websites. This is not the case for Wix as well as Virb. Free users can view the number of page views and unique visitors every weekday, however, upgraded accounts, beginning at the Professional level are able to see the keywords used to bring visitors onto the page, referrers’ websites, and the most visited pages.
One of the major advantages of Weebly and one that sets it apart from other web-based site builders is the possibility of taking the site you built with Weebly and hosting it elsewhere. In the editor’s Settings Page, Weebly lets you download your website in a ZIP archive that includes all of your HTML and then sends it to an email. This allows you to move the website to an ordinary web hosting service. This does not include the interactive features such as your storefront, comments, and more however, this isn’t feasible using Squarespace as well as Wix. This is a major difference and is worth considering if you wish to have your website tied to one provider.
Top-Tier Uptime
The uptime of your website is among the most important factors of the hosting service. If your website is not up clients or customers are unable to locate you, or use your services or products.
We employed a monitoring tool for websites to monitor our test website’s uptime over a period of 14 days. Each 15-minute interval, the program sends a ping to our site and then fires an email if it’s not able to connect with the website for more than one minute. The test results show that Weebly is extremely stable; it did not drop a single time during the two-week period of testing. You can therefore trust Weebly to serve as an essential element for your site.
Security
Weebly provides hosting to all websites developed on the platform. It could be beneficial or not However, in the case of Weebly, it’s an advantage. They’re able to load their websites quickly. Their websites are optimized for their hosting. They ensure security against spammers and hackers. If you have a business plan they can even install and keep SSL throughout your site.
There are security and speed issues, but in the end, it’s a benefit for many webmasters to let someone else handle backups, speed, security, and backups. The price is included with the free and premium accounts, making it an effective worth-for-money.
Customer Service
Weebly has a complete knowledge base, with hundreds of articles that can aid you. However, for those who require more, it also offers 24/7 chat support and email assistance. By default, you’re referred to an online robot that will attempt to guide you to a specific article. Customers can contact the Customers Success Team is available every day via chat or email between 9 a.m. and 9 p.m. EDT. It took us an hour for the representative to reply to our question. At that point, we were actually working in a different tab, and we missed the reply. We know why they want you to utilize the bot.
Weebly Against Competitors
Weebly vs. Wix
Wix as well as Weebly are both similar and extremely popular and have lots of overlap. If you are a small-sized company owner, which website-building choice is the best for you?
First of all, Both Weebly and Wix provide templates that you can choose to use for your site, so you don’t have to start with a blank slate. Wix offers more than 500 designs, as well as Weebly, has just over 100 designs.
Although it may seem an advantage that Wix has so many themes, we believe that it’s quite possible to fall victim to the aforementioned decision fatigue while sifting through the plethora of themes in order to find the right solution for you. We don’t think you could pick a better option than either in light of these criteria -You’ll likely discover something that is suitable regardless of the choice you make.
Each Wix as well as Weebly are drag-and-drop site builders. However, one of the major differences between them is that Weebly allows you to modify the templates you use.
Each of the templates on Weebly shares an architecture, and you can choose to alter your theme as it was created. Wix however, doesn’t permit users to alter only the design — such change is most likely to need a full redesign of your website.
Weebly is more user-friendly (it offers fewer features and more simplicity than Wix) However, Wix has greater support options and better documentation.
If you’re looking to start your website quickly and with the least hassle possible, you can’t be wrong using Weebly. If you’re looking for an upscale website that provides users to have more control over the layout, you’ll likely be better off using Wix.
Weebly Vs. WordPress
Although both can be used for separating your website from your site’s group. Weebly offers a complete website builder, whereas WordPress is primarily the CMS. (CMS).
WordPress offers a hosted version (available on WordPress.com) However, there’s an alternative that is self-hosted (available on WordPress.org) which is absolutely free for use.
Self-hosted WordPress requires the purchase of web hosting, however, Weebly isn’t a stand-alone option that can work as Weebly hosts only sites built on its platform.
Additionally, it is true that the two alternatives are basically incompatible. Websites built on WordPress are not able to be exported and transferred to Weebly or Weebly. Weebly sites aren’t able to be moved to WordPress. There are methods for moving content, but moving designs is a difficult task (if it is not impossible).
Hosted WordPress is a similar product to Weebly However, it’s still not an option that is interchangeable. With hosted WordPress, you’ll have everything you need to create your website. However, the primary focus of the service is on blogging, and not general website-building.
Conclusion
Weebly is a top choice because of its user-friendly interface as well as the powerful eCommerce store, and responsive templates. It’s also wonderful that other apps can be incorporated into Weebly websites. But, they need to enhance their design choices and release new features more often in order to stay ahead of other website builders that are more rapid in their development.
Weebly was once one of our top websites and has its benefits. It’s clean, simple, and simple to use and is precisely what those with less technical expertise require when they’re trying to create their own web presence. We also love their simple-to-use and versatile blogging function.
While the positives outweigh any negatives Weebly is definitely a bit sluggish in its slow release of new features and updates. If you’re looking to build an unrelated eCommerce website we’re not certain it’s up to par against more advanced website builders like Wix as well as Squarespace. The templates aren’t elegant and the editor doesn’t seem as adaptable. Other features like members’ areas, SEO customer accounts, and reports are also in need of improvement.
A domain-specific email address that is linked to your domain may be expensive since they suggest Google Workspace, which costs $6 per month per user. (Although there are alternatives that you can find within the help section below).
Since they are now part of Square and are part of the Square family, it is clear that they’re devoting the bulk of their time and effort to their eCommerce product. With the release of the brand new Square Online editor for online stores, as well as recent updates focused almost entirely on this particular product, Weebly is certainly worth considering if the primary goal of your website has to be selling.
All in all, Weebly is still one of the best web builders we’ve tested. Their user-friendly interface combined with amazing tools such as an iOS or Android application that lets you edit your website on the go and the many extensions available within the app store is what makes it robust and enjoyable to utilize.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Is Weebly User-Friendly?
Weebly is a drag-and-drop site builder, making it user-friendly. However, the lack of options for customization could be a major drawback for certain users.
Is Weebly Legitimate?
Weebly has been deemed to be “legit” – i.e. it is a well-established reliable, secure, and safe business that offers secure, safe authentic website building tools. Like all companies, it has strengths as well as weaknesses and tradeoffs. However, they’re good to do business with.
Does Weebly Provide SEO Tools?
Weebly provides SEO-related features that are basic including the capability to include pages’ titles, descriptions, and keywords, and also modify your website’s URL structure. It also lets you connect your site directly to Google Analytics.
Does Weebly Provide a Money-Back Assurance?
Weebly provides a 30-day money-back guarantee, with an exception. It is only offered on annual plans and does not include monthly plans.
Why Should I Choose Weebly?
Apart from being strong and robust, Weebly is among the most user-friendly point-and-click website-building platforms currently available. Its drag-and-drop tools make the creation of websites incredibly simple for people with limited technical experience in web design. Weebly offers features-rich plans that are priced at a reasonable price.
Who Is the Owner of Weebly?
Weebly is a wholly-owned subsidiary owned by Square which is an investment-backed, privately-owned payment processing firm.
What Kind Of Website Can I Build With Weebly?
Weebly allows personal as well as E-commerce features. This means that you can create virtually any kind of business or personal website using this site builder.
Are There Any Weebly Themes?
Absolutely, Weebly provides a library of themes that includes a range of themes that are divided into various categories such as strong corporate, corporate, events stylish, fun and more. The company also lets users purchase premium themes elsewhere and then upload these themes into the web builder. This lets you create an amazing website that is completely yours.
Does Weebly Allow For The Creation Of Mobile Friendly Websites?
Yes, all Weebly template designs are mobile-friendly. The website builder itself has an editor for mobile devices that is just as user-friendly as the desktop-based interface. Weebly also offers mobile apps which you can use to manage your website using your Apple as well as an Android smartphone.
What Payment Options Can I Give My Customers With A Weebly Website?
With the help of a Weebly store, you’ll be able to provide your customers with the option of making payments for their purchases via login to their PayPal account or by using their credit card, or both.
Can I Use A Domain I Purchased Elsewhere With Weebly?
You can only buy domains from a third-party site registrar to host your Weebly website if you’re paid subscriber of plans such as the Pro, Business, or Business Plus plan.
Can I Change The Source Code On My Website?
Weebly does not just provide users with responsive mobile-friendly templates but also provides access to HTML/CSS codes of the templates. This lets you modify your template significantly by changing its source code.
How Many Sites Can I Have With My Weebly Plan?
You can create as many as 10 websites in your account.
How Many Languages Does Jimdo Support?
Jimdo is an internationally-based business and, as such, provides support for a broad range of languages, including English, German, Japanese, Chinese (simplified), Turkish, Spanish, French, Italian, Dutch, Portuguese, Polish, and Russian.