Weebly Website Builder Review
Creating and maintaining a personal website has become increasingly common. Whether you are looking to start a blog, build an ecommerce business, or create a virtual portfolio, having a website has become a staple for business and self-promotion.
Weebly offers professional, modern website templates to get you started building your online store, promoting a personal event, or blogging your experiences. Weebly has free or paid plans for you to choose from, and you can upgrade or downgrade your account based on your continued needs.
Overall Rating
Weebly’s easy-to-use templates and website builder tools are great for beginners to create a polished and personalized website. While its themes are not easily customizable, its extensive app store allows you to add elements to make your website stand out.
Pros and Cons of Weebly
Weebly’s offerings may benefit some users more than others.
Pros
- Easy to use editor
- Affordable plans
- Straightforward SEO implementation and upgrades
- Customer service team offers call, live chat, and email support tickets
- Enhanced ecommerce solutions
- Extensive app store
Cons
- Limited flexibility when using their designs
- The platform is sometimes glitchy
- Cannot update other parts of your website while you are waiting for photos to upload
- Cannot track website revision history
- Need a paid account to take advantage of most features
Overview of Weebly
Weebly was recently purchased by Square, a leading payment processing company. Square has taken Weebly’s ecommerce features to the next level to position it as a leading website builder for ecommerce businesses.
If you are not looking to sell products or services, you can still build a Weebly website that focuses on blogging, portfolio building, or other business promotion. Weebly has created easy-to-use templates to give you a professional-looking website that will keep you competitive.
Weebly Video Review
Other website builders may offer more customization options, but Weebly’s high performance allows you to have a high-speed, stable website with minimal downtime. Watch Website Advisor outline all of the pros and cons of having a Weebly account.
Weebly User Reviews
Overall, users recommend Weebly if you are a beginner or are looking for an easy-to-build website. However, the most negative feedback is on the lack of customization. Weebly templates are not easily customizable.
Joanne S. (Sitejabber)
“I transferred my domain (and site) to Weebly when my Webs.com site started having major problems. Only the transfer wasn’t going through as smoothly as it was supposed to. Things seemed to get hung up for longer than it said it was supposed to. So I emailed Weebly asking for help. The guy who answered was really helpful. He told me Webs was supposed to be doing things from their end that they weren’t. We gave it another week. When Webs still wasn’t doing their job, he went in and “grabbed it for me” is how he described it. So they get big kudos from me for that.
The site works great. So far, no lag on loading times, the site is always up, etc. The only frustration I’ve had so far is that after a while, the site editor will stop responding. I have to completely close my browser and re-open for it to fix itself again.
Chose Weebly over Wix because I tried to build a site with both, and I found Weebly easier to figure out. Plus, they were a little cheaper.
My only negative is that the responsive themes you get all look exactly the same. And each one comes with its own set of colors, and you can’t change them without going into the CSS. I do like that I can go in and fiddle with the CSS, though, to change things like the color of the font on my navigation, but you have to hunt for a lot of them, so it’s not really easy.
But the site works, and I haven’t had any problems on that end. Easy to use.”
Logan O. (Sitejabber)
“It almost tells you nothing about how it works, like how to change the destination of buttons. It limits you to where you can place pictures, there isn’t even an undo button (had to rewrite an entire paragraph because of this), and sometimes it deletes text. Although, if done right, your website can look professional.”
How Easy is Weebly to Use?
Weebly is a very beginner-friendly website builder. You can quickly build your website from a template and customize it using its drag and drop features. However, more experienced website builders may find it challenging to customize the layout.
Your backend dashboard provides an easy to read a snapshot of how well your website is doing. At a glance, you can see how many unique visitors viewed or visited your page. Weebly’s user-friendly dashboard allows you to track emails, abandoned carts, marketing impact, and more.
Customer Satisfaction
Weebly makes it easy to try out their software for free. Free plans give you access to their templates and customization tools, as well as their app store. You can try their services and then upgrade to a paid plan that better fits your needs.
Overall, customers on websitetooltester rated Weebly at a 4.3 out of 5 stars for their beginner support and website speed.
Who is Weebly Best For?
Weebly markets itself as an industry leader for website building. You can find templates to start your own business, ecommerce, personal, blogging, or event page. Here, we break down if Weebly is genuinely the ideal solution for all of these ventures.
Business
If you are looking to grow a small business, Weebly offers 14 templates to get you started. You can choose from mindfully designed templates that highlight the food industry, services, and non-profit organizations.
Businesses would do best to start with a Professional plan since it allows you unlimited storage and multiple team members.
Ecommerce
After Square purchased Weebly, it has gone through a rebranding as an industry leader in ecommerce. Square capitalized on its existing point of sale software to enhance Weebly’s ecommerce features and make it more competitive in the ecommerce website market.
Weebly’s ecommerce tools allow you to track inventory and open carts and provide a better customer experience by fully integrating shopping carts and offering a secure checkout. If you are opening an ecommerce business through Weebly, you can choose from 1 of 15 customizable templates, which are more templates provided than any other category on its website builder.
Personal
You can create a personal website for pretty much anything. Everything from weddings and other special events to portfolio management to personal passion projects can all be hosted online. Weebly offers a variety of templates to cover a range of personal website building.
If you are looking to get your feet wet when it comes to website building, you should sign up for Weebly’s free plan. Once you know where you want to take your personal website, you can upgrade to a paid option to remove the ads and take advantage of additional features like increased or unlimited storage.
Blogging
Weebly’s blog features allow you to promote yourself with SEO optimization tools, including custom URLs, title tags, and meta descriptions to help your posts show up in more online searches.
Successful blogs are very integrated with social media, so Weebly offers features that allow you to sync your social media accounts with your website. Choose from 1 of 8 templates to get your blog off the ground.
Like with a business account, you will have to purchase a Professional Weebly account to remove ads and receive unlimited storage. High-quality photos are essential to attract the reader’s attention, so you will quickly run through the limited storage of free or even Personal plans.
Scalability
Many reviews note that Weebly is a great website builder for when you are just starting. However, you may find it more efficient to move to another website host once you have established your business or better understand the ins and outs of website building. Weebly’s limited customization options play a significant role in users switching to other website services.
Despite marketing itself as an ecommerce leader, Weebly may also not be the best long-term solution for your ecommerce business. Website hosts like Shopify have been building and perfecting ecommerce solutions for a while. If you have a large online store or are doing a lot of shipping, another platform may become a better option for your business.
How Good Are Weebly Templates?
Weebly offers just over 60 templates, called themes, to choose from based on your needs. There are seven categories, including online store, business, personal, and blog, and each category has allows you to choose from seven or eight templates. If you select a theme but are not satisfied with it, you can change it from the website developer screen.
Design Customization
Weebly does not allow for much design customization. Based on your plan, you are limited to the number of photos, files, and videos you are allowed to upload, which can severely limit how much you can personalize your website.
The templates offered by Weebly are also very rigid. It is not easy to deviate from the fonts created for the template, and you cannot move text or elements from a pre-designed layout. For example, you cannot drag your website title to the top of your website screen if it is already in a layout box in the middle of the screen. However, you can delete elements from layout boxes.
Weebly’s website editor does not allow you to undo recent actions. There is no button to review previous saves, nor is there an undo button. As a Windows OS owner, I tried to undo an action by typing Ctrl + Z, but this does not work either.
Tools and Features
Weebly offers convenient tools and features to make building your website easier, enhance SEO, take payments, and more. These best features make Weebly stand out from other website builders.
Mobile Apps
Take Weebly with you wherever you go. Download the Weebly app, and customize your website from your smartphone or tablet. Weebly makes it convenient for you to build and maintain your website from any device.
App Center
Weebly’s app center allows you to add elements to your website that may not have been offered with the basic template. Apps are created by Weebly or curated from partners to give you everything from enhanced social media experiences to SEO and marketing support. Here are a few apps that integrate with your free or paid Weebly site.
- Eventbrite: You can sell tickets to your events or create registration forms through Eventbrite, and it integrates with Weebly for free through their app.
- Google Ads by Kliken: Start with this app to learn more about how you can market your website through Google Ads. You can start with the free version and then upgrade to a paid version once you have a better understanding of how advertising on Google works.
- Social Media Stream: Showcase your social media accounts on your website. You can stream your feeds from Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, and other major social media networks.
- TrustedSite: Integrate your website with the widely used TrustedSite app, so customers feel more secure when checking out on your website.
Photos
Upload photos and create your own slideshows through Weebly’s website builder. Both free and paid accounts allow you to create, upload, and edit your photos to build a unique photo library. You may have more photo storage availability, depending on which paid account you have.
Videos
Much like the photos feature, Weebly offers a video feature that allows you to embed videos to play directly on your website. You can upload video files directly to Weebly or embed them from Youtube or Vimeo.
Ecommerce Website Builder
Weebly makes the buying experience easier for you and your customers with inventory tracking, product search and filter options, and a secure shopping cart.
Pricing
Weebly offers four pricing packages depending on how you are using their website. Personal accounts may only need the services provided with a free package. Whereas, larger businesses may benefit from the services offered with Professional or Performance packages. However, if you do not want ads to appear on your website, or would like a personal domain, you should consider a paid subscription.
Weebly rewards customers who pay ahead. Here are the discounts you will receive if you choose to renew a year in advance rather than monthly.
| Plan | Paid Monthly | Paid Yearly |
| Free | $0/month | $0/month |
| Personal | $9/month | $6/month |
| Professional | $16/month | $12/month |
| Performance | $29/month | $26/month |
Free Package
Despite the Free package providing minimal features, you can open an online store with a free account. Weebly provides ecommerce solutions as well as online marketing support, like SEO and an Instagram feed for free.
A free account does not allow for a customized URL. Weebly will also display an ad in the footer of free pages. You may still end up paying to use apps, regardless of whether you have a free or paid account.
Personal
If you are looking for a personal website with more features than a free account can offer, consider a Personal package. Personal packages come with all of the ecommerce solutions of the Free package, but allow you to connect to a custom domain.
Professional
If you are a small business, you should start with Weebly’s Professional package or higher. The Professional package gives you more freedom to customize your website by providing a free custom domain, unlimited storage, and removed ads.
Performance
Weebly’s Performance account is for small businesses or larger companies looking to take advantage of the ecommerce solutions Weebly has to offer. Performance accounts allow you to accept payments through Paypal, create shipping labels, and send automated emails to abandoned carts.
Alternatives to Weebly
Weebly may not work for everyone. These website builders are similar to Weebly but offer other features and benefits.
Wix
Wix is an industry leader in website design, and for a good reason. They offer all of the convenience of easy-to-build websites at competitively-priced packages. Wix offers four paid website plans for small businesses and individuals, and 4 paid business and ecommerce offer more business-oriented features and optimizations.
You can choose from one of the hundreds of templates that you can customize to make them your own. Wix templates are categorized by type and then subcategorized by a specific industry. For example, you can choose a blog template and then narrow it down to only show templates that focus on food and travel blogs.
If you are an experienced web designer or can understand and write code, Wix now offers Corvid by Wix that gives you complete design freedom. You can seamlessly create and edit code to create a website that is entirely yours.
Wix has optimized its software to be mobile-friendly. You can not only update your website from the Wix app, but you can also preview how your website will look on a mobile device. Wix has also optimized its marketing features like built-in SEO.
Squarespace
Like other website builders, Squarespace offers four pricing plans that range from personal accounts to basic and advanced ecommerce solutions. A personal account is $12 per month, a business account is $18 per month, a basic commerce account is $24 per month, and an advanced commerce website packages is $40 per month.
All paid Squarespace accounts allow for multiple contributors to your website. However, you are only allowed two contributor accounts with a personal account. Personal accounts do not provide marketing tools like website analytics, a $100 credit for Google Adwords, or the ability to add popups and banners. These features will require a business account at a minimum.
While Squarespace provides many different options for templates, they are not very customizable. It also does not have an autosave button, so you must manually save your edits in Squarespace.
Shopify
Shopify was created and is marketed as an ecommerce solution. Shopify offers three paid options that all provide ecommerce features to get your online business running, including an online store with unlimited products, multiple staff accounts, discount codes, and abandoned cart recovery.
In addition to ecommerce features, Shopify also offers general website development features to make your experience seamless. Any paid account entitles you to 24/7 customer service support, a free SSL certificate, and a professional report builder with a Shopify or Advanced Shopify account.
Shopify focuses on ecommerce building and is not a platform to consider if you are looking for a platform to host blogging, events, or personal websites.
Bluehost
Bluehost is one of the top-rated websites if you are looking to start a blog. Bloggers and those looking to build a professional website will benefit from its WordPress plugin. WordPress is a leader in optimizing SEO and building website traffic.
If you are new to website building or run into problems along the way, Bluehost offers 24/7 customer support to answer your questions as quickly and efficiently.
Bluehost also offers a paid integration with Microsoft Office 365 to provide excellent email solutions. Once you add Office 365 to your account, you can customize your email domain and take advantage of the tools and features of Microsoft Office.
Weebly for Bluehost
Weebly has now integrated with Bluehost so you can host your website through Bluehost if you prefer. You can also take advantage of Bluehost’s advanced email features and integrate it with your Weebly account.
FAQs
Frequently asked questions help to get a better understanding of the Weebly platform.
Why Not Hire a Web Developer Instead?
Weebly makes it easy for first-time website builders to create a high-quality, attractive website. Meanwhile, a website developer can charge you anywhere from $150-300 on top of hosting costs. If you are stuck and feel that you could benefit from a developer, Weebly does offer developer services starting at $99 to hire an expert.
Does Weebly Offer a Free Account?
Yes. Weebly offers a free account, but it is not ideal for anyone looking to publish for a business or anyone looking to publish a clean, ad-free site. Free accounts require ads and do not offer a free domain.
Creating a free Weebly account is an excellent way to test drive the software and learn more about what it has to offer. A free account allows you full access to Weebly’s extensive app store and drag and drop builder tools.
Is Weebly Mobile-Friendly?
Yes. You can update your website from Weebly’s mobile app.
Weebly also creates mobile-friendly pages that you can preview from your website builder screen. About half of those who will visit your website will visit from your phone, and Weebly recognizes that by optimizing their pages to be mobile-friendly.
Both iOS and the Android app store allow you to download and use the Weebly app. You can update your website and review metrics from the Weebly app dashboard.
Which Browser is Best for Editing in Weebly?
Some website builders like Wix have reported that they do not work as well when using specific browsers like Firefox and have reported loading issues. Weebly does not have any access or loading issues regardless of the browser you are using. Be sure to make sure all browsers are updated to avoid any problems.
If I Choose a Free or Personal Weebly Package, Can I upgrade to the Professional or Performance Plans?
Yes. Weebly makes it easy to upgrade your account, even if you’re in the middle of a billing cycle. Weebly will credit previous payments, so you do not lose money by upgrading.
Is There a Free Trial for Professional or Performance Plans?
No. You can only test out Weebly’s free plan, which does not offer as many features as its Professional or Performance plans.
If you purchase a more expensive plan and find that it does not work for you, Weebly does provide a 30-day, money-back guarantee.
Should I Purchase My Domain from Weebly, or is it Better to Use a Third-Party Domain Host?
Weebly’s Professional and Performance plans offer domain hosting for free in the first year. However, after your first year, you will be charged $19.95 annually.
You can find websites that will host your domain for as little as $1 per month, but most reliable domain hosts charge between $2 and $7 per month, making Weebly’s annual fee less expensive.
Who Owns Your Weebly Website?
You do. If you choose to close out your Weebly account, Weebly no longer has the right to host your information.
You also own your domain once you purchase it through Weebly. If you choose to move your website from Weebly, you can transfer your domain to your new website host.
Final Thoughts
If you are a beginner business owner or new to website development, Weebly’s easy-to-use website builder will help you create a modern, professional website. You can create a free Weebly account that will allow you to preview its features and decide if it is best for you. Free accounts do not offer you a free domain, and your website will show ads at the bottom of the screen, so it is helpful to purchase a Professional or Performance account.
Weebly’s recent acquisition by Square has transitioned its offerings to be more ecommerce-oriented. If you are looking to start an online store, you can take advantage of Weebly’s vast ecommerce tools and increased security features.
If you are looking to create a blog or another website that is more for personal or event promotion, you may find that other website building platforms offer better customization.
