Weebly Review: Forget the Hype. We Put This Website Builder to The Test.

Introducing Weebly

Weebly is one of the most user-friendly, robust, and reliable website builders, and anyone can use it to launch a blog, online store, or personal website without writing a single line of code. Weebly gives you a personalized domain and email address, reliable and free hosting, fully customizable and modern themes and templates and premium support via email, chat and phone, video tutorials, webcasts and more. You also get a 30-day money-back guarantee plus loads more features. Their cheapest paid plan is  25.00 per month.

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Weebly Features

Back in 2006, three college buddies launched an online platform allowing users to create high-quality websites easily. The platform was named Weebly and it completely changed the web design landscape.

Currently, Weebly boasts a user base of more than 30 million websites. It’s one of the most user-friendly, robust, and reliable website builders, and anyone can use it to launch a blog, online store, or personal website without writing a single line of code.

That being said, Weebly is not the only all-inclusive site builder out there. The features it offers are more or less the same as to what you’ll find on other platforms like Squarespace and Wix. However, Weebly has a few unique aspects that make it stand out from the crowd.

Usage and Plan Structure

Getting started with Weebly is quite simple. All you need is an email address, password, and site name. After signing up, Weebly lets users manage their own accounts from an easy to use dashboard.

There are four account types to choose from, which include Free, Pro, Business, and Business Plus. Prices vary depending on the chosen Weebly plan and users have to part with a small monthly fee to keep using the site builder. The full list of the four plan types are:

• Free
• Pro
• Business
• Business Plus

Side-By-Side Comparison of Plans

Let’s take a look at what you do and do no get in terms of site features when comparing your options side-by-side.

Free Plan

The free account is a great choice if you want to test Weebly or launch a temporary site. It comes with 500MB storage, free hosting, and no expiration date. However, Weebly will automatically install ads on your free site. The free account will also be a sub-domain of Weebly, meaning your website URL will have the format https://yourwebsitename.weebly.com.

Paid Plans

The paid plans remove Weebly’s branding and ads on your site. Additionally, you’ll have the freedom of choosing your own custom domain name. All Weebly plans offer free hosting as well as the drag and drop site builder that can create unlimited pages.

For every paid account, Weebly imposes no limit on storage space and offers a free domain that’s valid for 1 year, customizable footers, expanded stats, and search engine indexing.

Pro and Business Plans

The Pro and Business Weebly plans to allow users to create password-protected pages and include e-commerce features such as site search, various product display options, tax calculators, and integrated Facebook ads.

Fees and Product Limitations

The Pro plan has basic e-commerce features and is described as suitable for small organizations. You’ll be able to take online payments and it comes with a shopping cart.

The Business and Business Plus plans offer better e-commerce features, which include zero transaction fees, SSL security, unlimited product uploads, ability to sell digital goods, inventory management shipping, and tax calculator, and coupon codes to keep customers coming back.

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Weebly Free Plan Vs Competitors

For small business owners on a budget, there’s no better price than free. Weebly offers a free plan, as do its competitors, Blogger and WordPress. How do these options stack up against each other?

Weebly’s free option gets you to access to their drag-and-drop site builder, 500 MB of storage for your files, a Weebly subdomain (so your site is accessible via a URL similar to mySite.weebly.com), and basic security. There is no such thing as a free lunch, however, and Weebly will display ads on your site.

Blogger – A Decent Alternative

Blogger is an entirely free service from Google that lets you get started with a blog with little hassle. You sign up (or use an existing Google account — who doesn’t have Gmail?), choose your template, and begin writing.

Blogger is fully integrated with Google since it’s owned by them. 

Your site is accessible via a Blogger subdomain (though you can purchase a custom domain if you’d like), and as a Google product, it integrates well with Google’s other offerings, such as AdSense and Analytics.

WordPress.com

WordPress.com is the hosted version of the accessible, open-source content management system (CMS). It is owned by Automattic, who says the free plan is for those just getting started and looking to be on their way to publishing content in less than five minutes.

It is very similar to Weebly’s free option, but instead of a drag-and-drop site builder, you get customizable themes. Like Blogger, WordPress aims to launch blogs, but you can certainly use it for any content.

Extended Functionality

The Weebly App Store is loaded with apps you can install onto your website to extend its functionality. For example, some of the options currently featured on the App Store front page include:

• Facebook Like buttons
• Event calendars
• Tabbing
• Display tables
• Social Media Grids

Basically, there is a feature you would like on your website, you can easily add it (and without needing to code anything).

Further Functions

In addition, the Weebly App Store offers many custom on-site apps made by Weebly specifically. Some of them are:

• Custom accordions – great for FAQs or compressing content
• Content tabs – useful when packing thousands of words of content
• Team cards – ability to build team pages
• Google Apps – you can integrate Google applications for $49/month
• Custom Eventbrite app – the ability to display events with ease
• Custom price charts – great for presenting options and plans
• Customizable forms – ensure a smooth user experience when collecting data
• Live chat app – Weebly’s custom live chat application
• CTA solution – custom call-out boxes

E-Commerce and Weebly

If you are looking for an e-commerce site, look no further than Weebly’s dedicated e-commerce builder. In addition to all of the features you would get with a traditional site builder, you’ll get extras like:

• SEO
• Integrated shopping cart and secure checkout
• Inventory management
• Product displays and search

The templates provided for your use are also a bit different — they’re more geared toward online selling. You’ll also get access to Android/iOS apps that allow you to manage your store on the go.

Google AdSense

If you would like to generate additional income on your website, you might consider the Google AdSense program. The Google AdSense program is where you earn affiliate payments in return for displaying select ads on your website. Google tries to tailor the ads shown to the interests of your users. Weebly comes with built-in support for AdSense, so adding this to your website requires nothing more than dragging-and-dropping the appropriate content box when you are working in the site-building editor.

Notable Features

Weebly is a drag-and-drop site builder. This means that it’s quite simple to use. All you have to do when dealing with elements is to drag them to the desired location on your page before releasing and resizing as required.

True Ease-of-Use

Weebly’s site builder features an intuitive interface. On top of your dashboard, there’s a menu bar with service-wide and site editing options. You can alter the layout for common static pages such as home, about, contact us, and services. Weebly’s interface arranges elements in groups such as e-commerce and media for easy access too. When editing text, you can make changes directly instead of typing into a text field on the sidebar, as is the case with Squarespace and some other site builders. Whenever you alter an element on Weebly, changes are saved automatically. So, there’s no need to click the “save” button every time, which is the case when working with Wix.

Themes, Design, and Customization

Before the Carbon update, Weebly offered hundreds of templates. But now, there are about two dozen responsive themes to start with. Site building tools include all the usual elements on a modern web page such as images, text boxes, social media icons, spacers, audio files, videos, and maps. Weebly also provides tools to design forums, RSVP forms, and surveys. In case you’re not sure what a particular tool or menu does, just hover the mouse over it and Weebly will generate a tooltip describing its function.

Customization

Another advantage of Weebly’s themes and design templates is that you can customize raw HTML and CSS files. This level of control offers advanced developers the ability to create a unique website layout. In comparison, Wix comes with a full set Aviary image editor while Weebly’s photo editing tools are a bit limited: you can only apply four filters, darken, blur, or zoom images.

Built-in SEO Features and Mobile Friendliness

Weebly is on par with other all-inclusive site builders when it comes to SEO features. The site builder allows users to edit meta descriptions, title tags, and keywords for every web page.

Using the blogging interface is simple and it lets you create optimized content to help you gain better rankings on search engines. Ever since Weebly rolled out the Carbon update, some new improvements were introduced into the site builder. For instance, newer themes are now responsive to every device.

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Should I Prioritize SEO When Choosing a Website Builder?

While you probably shouldn’t completely prioritize SEO, it’s a good idea to take it into account. But how can good SEO with a website builder help you in the long run? Here are 9 ways they can benefit your business:

1. Better chance of getting seen by search engines
2. Less manual SEO work
3. Saves you money to be spent on SEO
4. Less man-power needed, whether it’s your time or your colleague’s
5. More visitors, supposing you pay attention to retention
6. Healthier website structure
7. Increased trust with customers
8. Brand exposure across the web
9. Exponential growth, when done correctly

Additionally, Weebly also added the mobile site designer. So, much like Squarespace, Weebly’s mobile site designer generates a responsive mobile site based on the chosen template.

Help and Support

Weebly has a community forum and their “Help Center” is a great place to learn more about the platform. There are plenty of FAQs, help articles, and tutorials to help you get started.

Weebly also has a YouTube channel offering numerous videos for beginners and even advanced users. If you want to reach Weebly’s customer support team instead, you can use 3 different channels:

• Live Chat
• Phone
• Support tickets

Summary

Is Weebly any good? No Weebly review would be complete without looking at the strengths and downsides to expect from this site builder. In a nutshell, the pros and cons of using Weebly as your site builder of choice come down to the following list:

As outlined above, there are a few drawbacks to contend with should you decide to settle for this site builder. Nonetheless, Weebly offers everything you would expect from an all-inclusive website builder.

All-in-all, it’s easy to use, comes with fully customizable responsive themes, and offers a variety of competitively priced plans for the features you get in return.

Weebly vs. Wix

Wix and Weebly are very similar, very popular products with lots of overlap. As a small business owner, which site-building option is better for you?

Wix offers a huge variety of features too. 

First, both Weebly and Wix offer pre-designed templates you can use for your website so that you aren’t starting from scratch. Wix offers over 500 designs, while Weebly offers just over 100.

While it can seem like a good thing that Wix offers so many more designs, we think that it’s possible to suffer from decision fatigue when searching through such a large number of themes for the perfect option for you. In the end, we do not think you can go wrong with either option based on this criterion — you’re likely to find something appropriate regardless of which option you choose.

Drag-and-Drop Rivalry

Both Wix and Weebly are drag-and-drop site builders, but one of the biggest distinctions between the two is that Weebly allows you to change your templates.

All of Weebly’s templates share a structure, so you have the option of changing your themes as designed. Wix, however, does not allow you to change just the theme — such an action is likely to require a complete re-do of your website.

Weebly is easier to use (it has fewer features and less complexity than Wix), but Wix offers more support options and better documentation.

Essentially, if you want to get up and running as soon as possible with as little hassle as possible, you cannot go wrong with Weebly. However, if you want a fancier website that allows you with more control over its design, you would probably be better off with Wix.

Weebly vs. WordPress

While both are options for getting your website off the group, Weebly is an all-in-one site builder, while WordPress is strictly a content management system (CMS).

WordPress has a hosted option (available at WordPress.com), but there’s also a self-hosted version (available at WordPress.org) that is 100% free to use.

Self-hosted WordPress requires you to purchase web hosting, but Weebly is not a standalone option that will work — Weebly hosts only websites built using its platform.

Furthermore, the two options are basically mutually incompatible; sites built on WordPress cannot be exported and moved to Weebly, and Weebly sites cannot be moved to WordPress. There are ways to move content but you can expect moving design to be a challenge (if not impossible).

Hosted WordPress is a closer product to Weebly, but it is still not an option that’s interchangeable. With hosted WordPress, you’ll get everything you need to spin up your website, but the focus for the product is definitely on blogging and not general site-building.

Try Weebly for free for 30 days. Get started now.

Weebly Plans and Prices

Weebly offers “perfect” (in their words) plans and pricing, from a free but very limited plan all the way up to a all-inclusive business website creation plan. For latest and most up to date prices visit Weebly’s website.

Try Weebly for free for 30 days. Get started now.

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