We are lucky that we live in an age where building a website does not have to be a painful process, full of technicalities that only an elite group of programmers and geeks are able to navigate through. In fact, today, it is quite easy to design and publish a website for anyone who can basically hold a mouse. Website builders are one of the main reasons that make things a lot easier, and Weebly Website Builder is among the most popular of these tools.
In this article, we will do an extensive review of this tool, so that you can find out whether it is the right choice for you or not.
About Weebly Website Builder
Operating with the slogan “A website builder made with you in mind”, Weebly Website Builder is a tool designed for building websites and online stores, available free or with premium plans. Used by “40 million creative entrepreneurs” according to their website, it lets users create responsive websites without any coding knowledge needed.
Weebly was started in 2007 and was acquired by Square in 2018. Still a part of Square’s commerce offering, today Weebly powers more than 50 million sites around the globe.
Weebly Website Builder Features
Weebly offers a series of helpful builder features to its users, to make the process of designing a website as smooth as possible for them. Here are some of them:
Elements – Drag, Drop & Build
Weebly bases its websites on things called “elements”. So, for example, if you wish to place a text box on a page, you just drag and drop the “text element”, and start writing your content inside. Sounds easy enough, right? It is a very quick and convenient solution.
Easy-Image Editing
Weebly offers easy and efficient photo editing to its users. Like what you do on Instagram, you can apply a range of filters to your images, place texts over them, and, of course, you can easily make adjustments on contrast, brightness, saturation, etc. It is quite convenient, as it removes the need to opt for third parties for basic photo editing. But of course, if you need a more sophisticated editing tool, this will probably not cut it for you.
E-Commerce Tools
If you are a premium user, you can create an e-commerce website with Weebly’s wide range of e-commerce tools. You will be able to import products from platforms such as Shopify and Etsy, and also integrate payment models like PayPal and Stripe to your website. Using the store builder, you will be able to manage a rich selection of e-commerce elements including shopping cart, invoices, coupons, etc.
Convenient Page Management
Using Weebly website builder, you can add pages to your site easily from the menu bar, with the choices of standard page, store page, blog page, and external page- this makes things quite convenient.
App Center
By heading to Weebly’s App Center, you can browse through a very broad range of widgets, designed for different purposes, that you can add to your web pages. Some of these widgets are available for free, while others need to be purchased. These apps give you a lot of options when customizing your website.
Responsive Themes
Weebly has an array of website themes with cool designs. And they are responsive, which means they can visually adapt themselves to different devices, which is a must in this day and age!
SEO Tools
We cannot overstate the importance of SEO, and Weebly seems to be aware of it too! They make it easy for you to keep your site Google-friendly, as even their free plans come with built-in SEO tools and features.
Weebly Website Builder Pricing/Plans
Weebly offers several packages with different features and pricing options. Here is an overview of Weebly’s packages:
- Free: Weebly’s free package allows users to create a website with basic features, including a drag-and-drop editor, customizable templates, and limited storage and bandwidth. However, this package includes Weebly branding on the website and does not allow for a custom domain name.
- Personal: Personal package starts at $6 per month and includes a custom domain name, expanded storage and bandwidth, and access to Weebly’s analytics and SEO tools.
- Professional: Weebly’s Professional package starts at $12 per month and includes additional features such as password protection, site search, and video backgrounds.
- Performance: Performance package starts at $26 per month and includes advanced e-commerce features, including shipping and tax calculators, inventory management, and real-time shipping rates.
Premium: Premium package starts at $29 per month and includes all of the features of the Performance package, as well as priority support and access to Weebly’s membership and subscription features.
Weebly also offers a range of add-ons and third-party integrations, such as email marketing tools, social media integrations, and payment gateways. Additionally, Weebly offers a 30-day money-back guarantee for all of its paid packages.
Weebly Website Builder Pros & Cons
Weebly Website Builder is quite convenient, but of course, it is not without its cons. Here are the main pros and cons of Weebly:
Pros
😊Generous, even for free plans- Weebly has quite a lot of cool features, available even for free plans. For example, with a free plan, users are getting free SSL and SEO optimization tools & features.
😊 Rich collection of tools – Weeble has a very wide range of powerful tools -especially for e-commerce- which will make your job much easier when you are customizing your site.
😊Easy-to-use builder – Weebly Website Builder’s easy-to-use drag and drop system makes things quite convenient when designing a webpage.
😊Has cool, responsible templates – Weebly has a range of simple, good-looking, and most important of all, mobile-friendly templates that you can choose from.
😊Good pricing – Considering its tools and features, Weebly’s prices are quite reasonable.
Cons
☹Limited drag-drop customization – Yes, it is simple enough, but in terms of creativity, Weebly’s drag & drop model might be limiting for you- especially if you do not know how to code. If you know some coding, on the other hand, you can try the Weebly Coding Editor.
☹Moving can be difficult – In case at some point you wish to move your website to a new platform -such as your own WordPress-powered site- content migration and URL redirections can be difficult.
☹No chance to personally restore your site – If your website goes down -well, let’s hope it doesn’t!- you will be relying on the Weebly support team for the restoration process.
Weebly Performance
First of all, Weebly has excellent uptime, which is always a big plus! Independent tests show an average number of 99.97% and that means you can trust it as a strong foundation for your website. Weebly’s response times average somewhere around 400 – 600 ms, which is not spectacular but should be good enough for most sites.
Support
As we have mentioned in a number of our previous posts, efficient support is crucial for a successful website, and Weebly does OK overall in this department, if not exceptionally well. Community Forum, chat, and e-mail support options are available for all plans, while phone support is only available for Pro, Business, and Business Plus plans.
While it is perfectly understandable that there is only chat and e-mail support for the free plan, one might expect phone support for a paid Connect Plan too. In addition to the alternatives above, users can also try posting their questions on the platform’s Facebook and Twitter pages. Weebly Support Team’s response times were generally satisfying, and independent reviews we have checked seem to be satisfied with them as well.
Security
Both our tests and independent reports show that Weebly is very safe and they take the security of their websites very seriously. It is a big plus that they provide their users with SSL encryptions for every plan- even for free plans! Of course, it should be mentioned that it won’t hurt you to employ additional security measures, but most of the time Weebly will provide a solid cyber-attack protection for your site.
Weebly Website Builder FAQ
If you still have questions, check out our Weebly FAQ and you might find your answers!
Q: Can I build a multilingual website using Weebly Website Builder?
A: Yes! As we have mentioned, Weebly’s App Center has a very rich selection of apps. There you can find apps that will let you create a website in multiple languages.
Q: Do I need to know any coding to use Weebly?
A: No, you don’t. Anyone can use Weebly, without any technical knowledge of web technologies, let alone coding. But -as is almost always the case- if you know how to code, it might certainly help with further customizations!
Q: Where will Weebly host my website?
A: Weebly will be hosting your website in California. (USA)
Conclusion – Final Verdict: 8/10
In conclusion, we give Weebly Website Builder a solid 8 points out of 10. It is a very good option for blogs, personal sites, and small online stores- although if you have a large-scale business, it might be better if you consider alternatives. Yes, it is probably not the most flexible website builder out there, but it is very easy to use, and it offers an extensive selection of helpful tools, not to mention some stylish themes. Its prices are very reasonable, its support team is more than decent, and the built-in SEO tools help you a great deal. Long story short, it’s questionable whether Weebly is the best out there or not, but it will surely do the job for beginners!