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Weebly is one of the largest site builders with more than 50 million websites created. Unlike many of our competitors, Weebly has always been more interested in platform technology improvements than expensive marketing campaigns.
However, after Weebly was taken over by e-commerce company Square in 2018, we noticed a significantly slower introduction of new functions. While this sends mixed signals to us as the valuation side, it does not necessarily mean that the situation is deteriorating. It is also of considerable value to improve what you already have. But more on that later.
Weebly Review: What Can You Expect?
Weebly offers a drag-and-drop website builder with over 40 mobile-friendly themes. It includes a blog, picture galleries and an online shop. In addition to the free plan, Weebly Professional is available for $ 12 a month. This is the cheapest ad-free tariff that allows you to use your own domain name.
The first thing we noticed when testing Weebly was how easy it was to use. It’s like stepping into someone else’s kitchen and immediately finding everything you need to cook. Like the drag-and-drop editor, the tools are intuitive and very user-friendly for beginners.
They also keep pricing simple . According to the free plan (with a weebly ad in the footer), there are three premium offers called „Personal“, „Professional“ and „Performance“, which we describe in more detail in a minute.
It should be noted that we used Weebly to create some projects ourselves. One of them, Barcelona-Museum.com, is over 100 pages, and we were very impressed with how well Weebly deals with larger websites. For example, Wix or Squarespace would make managing a large number of articles difficult.
Landing page for our website created by Weebly. Works great with over 100 pages
Weebly also makes it easy to edit or add code. If you or someone on your team knows programming, the sky is the limit.
Now let’s dive into the basics of the Weebly website builder: Weebly Video Review Weebly vs. Wix
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Screenshots
Weebly pricing
| $ 0 | Free Displays a weebly ad in the footer and does not contain a correct domain name. |
| $ 6 | personal Connect your website with a domain name, but the Weebly ad is shown in the footer. |
| $ 12 | Specialist Contains additional functions such as video and audio players as well as telephone support. Ad-free. |
| $ 26 | Performance Comes with additional e-commerce functions for larger web shops. |
Monthly prices based on a 1-year contract. Free domain in the first year. The renewal costs $ 19.95 a year.
Advantages and disadvantages of using Weebly
Rating details
Let’s take a closer look at some of Weebly’s key features:
What makes Weebly so easy to use?
Good question. The first thing you’ll notice is how beautiful the drag and drop interface is. Simply select the desired element on the left and place it in your layout on the right.
Weeblys excellent drag and drop page builder.
You will notice that elements snap into place and line up perfectly on the page. Other solutions such as Wix do not use the grid system, so it is quite possible that overlapping elements result. At Weebly there is no risk.
Clean, sharp grid-based layouts. What do you want more
Working with text is also child’s play in Weebly. Just click on what you want to edit and type your own words in the box. Some other solutions use input masks that are somewhat more abstract and not always easy to use.
The navigation system also works wonders. You can dive deep into menus and submenus: Weebly treats them like magic.
No navigation level is too complex for Weebly.
If you get stuck somewhere, the Weebly knowledge base can answer many questions through clear tutorials and step-by-step instructions. Otherwise the support is excellent, be it via email, chat or phone.
So are there any disadvantages? Depends on. If you want more freedom in your layouts, you may be frustrated by the rigid grid system. You should choose Wix . This competitor also has an automated solution ( Wix ADI ) that the website can create for itself. You may be able to save a few minutes of your website creation time.
There are also two things we would like to see. First, is a global undo button. You can undo what you type in text boxes, but it would be nice to clear mistakes when you move or add items. Second, Weebly does not have a general media database that stores all of your images. You will need to re-upload images for each item it needs.
Which Weebly price plan suits me best?
We would say the main question you need to ask yourself is: Do I need a completely ad-free website? In this case you need at least the Professional plan .
It has everything you need to view information about your services, portfolio, or company details. Other features of the Professional plan are:
- Fancy header with slideshow or video background.
- Integrated video / audio player
- Password protected pages
- Membership module – so that users can log in and access private areas of the website
You can find a more detailed breakdown on our full Weebly price comparison page .
SEO: How will my weebly site rank on Google?
First, let’s get one out of the way: if you’re an advanced SEO expert who must be number 1 in search engines for a really competitive keyword, you may have a hard time with Weebly. It’s not impossible, but there are limitations:
- Your headings are limited to H2. There is a free app that lets you add headings from h1 to h6, but it does affect your formatting a bit. We wonder why Weebly doesn’t integrate it into their system.
- Certain pages (categories and product pages) add a mandatory string to your URL. You get things like www.yoursite.com / store / p1 / my-product / yellow. Not a big problem unless your website isn’t in English. As with blog posts, they have ‚/ blog /‘ in the URL structure and this cannot be changed.
- Structured data (rich snippets) are added via the source code. But you’re alone because weebly doesn’t help.
On the plus side, Weebly does things really well when it comes to:
- URL, title tags and meta descriptions. You can customize them for images along with alt text. This is especially important to organize your pictures.
- 301 redirects. You can control them to avoid broken links when a page URL is changed. Google doesn’t like 404 pages deeply.
- Image optimization. Weebly does a great job of compressing the images you upload. This improves speed, always a boon for SEO.
Still a bit confused about SEO? Don’t forget that we have complete instructions on this topic here .
Security and backups: How secure is a Weebly website?
As far as we know, very safe. The company takes security very seriously. They promote secure passwords and offer SSL encryption for all plans. Even the free tier runs on https, which provides an additional layer of security. Particularly important for the exchange of personal data on site (e.g. credit card or email address).
Weebly offers de facto SSL encryption for all plans, including free ones.
Unfortunately, we hope that Weebly offers more options for backing up and restoring systems. You have to take care of it manually by regularly saving your site as a ZIP file. And there is no recovery function in the event of a disaster. For example, Wix tracks new changes and lets you jump back in time to an earlier version of your site.
Weebly design options and templates: So that it looks good
We have a detailed article on Weebly’s templates where you can read the main pros and cons. However, we would like to give you a quick overview of the most important functions here.
The first thing to keep in mind is that Weebly doesn’t have many template designs (around 50), but you should be able to easily find one you like. Different categories are available: online shop, business, portfolio, personnel, event and blog.
They automatically look good on every device (by reacting) and can be adapted to your personal needs using the templates as a basis. You don’t need a web design diploma!
Weebly’s template selection – in our opinion, sharp and clean
If you only deal with design and absolutely have to adapt it to the last pixel, you should of course also look at Wix . Your template selection is second to none and you have an even more flexible editor …
… unless you are familiar with the coding. This is because unlike other builders, Weebly provides access to the template source code.
A template source code for designers who work with code
Do you want to dig under the hood and change CSS and HTML? You have a free hand here, as you can see in the picture above.
E-commerce: is a Weebly online store worth it?
We would say yes with one limitation. It’s great to sell physical and digital products for small and medium businesses, but maybe not for large ones. Although you can use the import and export functionality to manage a large number of items, Weebly may lack the functionality for large stores.
Easily add products to a weebly store.
You can even start an online store in the free plan, which is really great and doesn’t show up very often. Obviously, starting an e-commerce business in Free or Personal won’t look very professional since the weebly ad is in the footer. However, Professional is a good place to start, as you can always upgrade to performance if you need abandoned cart emails or priority support.
Still confused about the various online shop plans? You can find detailed information in our Weebly Online Shop Test .
App Store: Can I add add-ons to my website?
You bet! There are no fewer than 300 apps in a number of categories such as e-commerce, communication, marketing, social or site tools. Some are free, others are paid. Some are created by Weebly, others by third-party developers. For the latter, there is always an (unlikely) chance that one day it will shut down. It’s also a shame that Weebly’s apps are quite limited.
However, all apps have in common that the installation is very easy. One click and go! All apps are tested and work immediately on your website. We tried some cool ones, e.g. For example, adding tables, event calendars, and info bars to display specific information. Our only problem is that the quality and quantity of the apps is somewhat inferior to those in the Wix App Store.
Weebly Review: Conclusion
Weebly scores above all for its user-friendliness, the powerful e-commerce shop and its responsive templates. It’s also great that external apps can be added to Weebly websites. You should improve your design choices and also introduce new features more often.
When we started testing Weebly many years ago, it was just another website builder. That has changed completely: Weebly has now become an outstanding website builder that is better than most of its competitors. It is simple, clear and user-friendly – this is exactly what people with limited technical skills need to create their own website.
Of course, it’s not 100% perfect. For example, we want to see a little more templates. Attaching an email address to your domain is also a bit expensive, since G Suite is recommended, which costs $ 6 per user per user per month . (Though there are workarounds as you can see in the FAQ below).
It will also be interesting to watch where things are going now as they belong to the square. Their new logo already indicates that e-commerce will play an important role in the future.
All in all, Weebly is at the top of our list of website builders . The simple operation in combination with cool tools such as the iOS or Android app for editing your website on the go or the number of add-ons available in the App Center makes it robust and fun.
Enough with the theory: try it yourself and see how you like it!
