WEEBLY – THE BEST WEBSITE BUILDER FOR SMALL BUSINESSESS AND PORTFOLIOS
Weebly powers more than 50 million websites around the world, but what makes it so popular? Okay, it’s a website builder that’s easy to use and great for small business and portfolio websites. He’s one of the best website constructors out there. Welcome to another comprehensive review brought to you by www.websitesdadvice.com. Today, we’ll take an in-depth look to Weebly, considered to be one of the best website builders out there.
Weebly ‘s outstanding strength is its functionality–due to its wide range of useful built – in tools and its vast App Store, it came top in this category. It’s also for value for money, with a generous free plan on its premium plans, and affordable prices. One of the main things to note when launching Weebly is that it was bought back in 2018 by payment company Square. This has seen Weebly adopting a stronger focus on ecommerce and, impressively, seamless integration with Square.
We’ve enjoyed using the drag – and – drop editor from Weebly because it’s super simple and easy to use, so you don’t have to use a single line of code if you don’t want to! Weebly has a built-in coding editor for those who do want to, however, to allow you to further customize your site. The way Weebly provides users with all skills virtually sums up its entire attitude towards building websites–anyone can build a Weebly website, and once you get to grips with the basics, using Weebly ‘s features, apps, and guides, you can grow your site.
Weebly has the features you need to create functional websites, without spending too much time or money, from SEO to blogging and ecommerce.
WHO IS WEEBLY BEST FOR?
Weebly is best for small businesses, as it equips you with all the tools you need to get off the ground a business website. Its simple editor cuts the trouble of building your site – which means you can get online sooner –and its huge app store means you can customize your site with all the tools you need.
Because of its plain, trendy themes it is also a good choice for personal portfolios. If you want a portfolio that looks good without having to worry too much about the design, Weebly is the perfect one. If you want a lot of customization control over your website, we don’t recommend Weebly. Wix gives tons of creative freedom, and Squarespace has far more professional designs than Weebly does – chances are you’ll find Weebly limiting if you’re too advanced after anything.
IS IT EASY TO USE?
Weebly is a website builder that is “What You See Is What You Get / WYSIWYG,” meaning you are designing your website just as you would see it online.
Simply use your mouse with Weebly’s drag – and – drop editor to move elements like text boxes, shapes, buttons, and images around your page. This makes it super easy to build your website-if you ‘ve ever made a PowerPoint presentation, you can create a Weebly website.
That said, in our ease of use study, Weebly could not quite keep up with Wix. You see, most website constructors on the market are using this drag – and – drop technology, but what really sets them apart is how intuitive the editor of each constructor is. Where Weebly drop in our user-friendliness check was its customizability. People found the basics on Weebly super easy-but they ran into trouble when it came to making their website look exactly as they wanted. We will go into more depth on this in this Weebly review’s topics segment.
All in all, though, Weebly is an uncomplicated and straightforward builder. Once you’ve learned your way around, you’ll be quickly and easily creating websites – especially if you don’t have to push the boundaries of Weebly’s templates too far.
WHAT KIND OF WEBSITE/S CAN YOU CREATE USING WEEBLY?
Weebly has an enormous app store, and like many website builders out there, it comes packed with built – in features to help you build and extend your dreams website. Weebly, however, also has strengths and weaknesses which make it better suited to some users than others. Let’s take a look at who is best for Weebly, to help you make the right decision.
BUSINESS
Business websites with Weebly are right at home–in fact businesses are the main target market for Weebly. Visit Weebly ‘s website and you’ll see a lot of advertising focused on helping businesses get going, develop online, find customers and sell goods.
There is a reason for this, that is, the features of Weebly are ideal for starting and growing businesses:
- Business-specific themes
- Strong SEO tools and support
- Ecommerce tools on all plans (yep, even the free plan!)
- Marketing tools such as blogging and newsletters
- Analytics to provide insights on your performance and visitor interactions
Weebly also has seamless integrations with Square ‘s payment system on top of this impressive list of business features –making it easier than ever for pop – up shops, brick and mortar stores, and ecommerce websites to start selling online.
ECOMMERCE
There are also many business features of Weebly that make it a sensible choice for small online stores. Strong SEO and marketing tools are still important and will optimize your theme for ecommerce. During the building process, when you select “online store,” you will be led to your own e – commerce dashboard –from there you pick a theme, configure your interface, add products, manage payments and more.
Though, the new online store builder for Weebly ‘s Square is quite limited so if you want a custom-branded shop, you ‘re better off with Wix or Shopify.
To new sellers looking to start a small store we prefer Weebly, rather than major ecommerce businesses. If you’re serious about online selling, you ‘re going to need a great ecommerce platform like Shopify, BigCommerce, or even Wix. One of the biggest advantages to new sellers in the United States is that Weebly is one of the only builders we’ve reviewed that allows you to sell free.
That’s right-you will make money out of the free plan of Weebly! Extremely generous, right? The only downside is that only vendors in the U.S. can accept payments using Square. Weebly is ideal for both new and existing small stores who want to make money online with mobile platforms and built-in Square integrations.
PERSONAL AND PORTFOLIO
Weebly always has plenty to sell personal projects. Even though Weebly ‘s designs aren’t the flashiest on the market, they ‘re clean, simple, and stylish – perfect for creating a website without headaches or hassles.
- Built-in image editor
- Parallax and reveal animation effects
- Custom fonts
- Video backgrounds
- Newsletters
- Social media marketing
If you want to concentrate on your job, Weebly is best, rather than perfecting the design of your web. If you want creative freedom then you’re better off with Wix or Squarespace, but overall, for personal websites, Weebly is a solid choice.
BLOGGING
While Weebly’s ecommerce game has only recently improved, its blogging features have always been rock solid. Whether you’re looking to start a blogging website, or you just want to run a small blog alongside your store or business, Weebly has an awesome set of blogging tools to keep you and your readers happy. These include:
- Blog-specific themes
- RSS and social sharing features automatically built-in
- Scheduled sharing across Facebook and Twitter
- Media integrations in your blog dashboard and app store
- Category, tag, and sidebar customizations
- Advanced comment management
You also get good blog SEO options such as adding custom header and footer code to your pages, and custom URLs, title tags, and meta descriptions. Weebly makes creating attractive yet powerful blog content simple, and then sharing it with your readers.
SCALABILITY
Could Weebly be scaled? The short reply is, yes! It offers the best tools for scaling a website with many incorporated features and more in the Weebly App Center. You can begin small and develop at your own rate.
It’s an enormous benefit for Weebly to be able to further customize your website using JavaScript, which means you can build your own skills and trust. We would not say, however, that Weebly is ideal for very large online stores. A dedicated ecommerce platform like Shopify or BigCommerce is a better fit if you’re serious about selling online.
HOW ABOUT THE THEMES?
Weebly has not the largest range of themes –for 50 of them are available –but they are attractive and well designed. Every user is mobile, so they are nice, no matter on which computer they are viewed, which is important because mobile accounts account about half of the world’s web traffic!
So, how do Weebly ‘s themes look exactly? Can they help you build an elegant website? The brief reply is yes! The themes of Weebly are not the most innovative or futuristic on the market, but they have a range of styles that prefer grid and full-screen images for a simple and visually friendly interface.
Another great win for themes is that you can change your theme any time –even after your site has been published! This is great for redesigning, or if you change your mind and want to shake the esthetic of your website. All Weebly topics are free, but, if you have space in your budget, if you want something more special, you may consider buying a Weebly theme made by a developer.
The themes of Weebly are divided into categories to help you find the best design for your site. You can get a general overview of these themes and categories below or discover how the Weebly themes can be customized.
ARE THEY CUSTOMIZABLE?
All right, so that Weebly’s themes tick the core boxes-they look good, they all seem free and sensitive. Themes can even be changed at any time. However, another important check box is left and customizability is necessary.
You want your website to be unique and distinguish yourself from the crowd, and you might wish to change your design to do so. This is where Weebly makes editing the website very convenient, but it provides less creative freedom compared to other builders like Wix. The themes of Weebly are more structured – you can’t just drag anything you want to. This is helpful if you are nervous because it acts as a guide for your page design. This is a positive thing. Nonetheless, Wix is a better choice if you want full control over your website.
If you have complete creative control, the organized themes of Weebly may become overwhelming when you try to adapt your site exactly as you like.
You have only a few color options to select from in the sidebar when changing your color scheme, for example, and this only covers areas such as buttons and menus. You can manually edit other block colors, but not buttons. It may take a while to get used to that but is designed to make your website more consistent.
After Weebly’s somewhat limited personalization has been mentioned, it is only correct to highlight the strongness of Weebly when it comes to editing your website. That’s why Weebly lets you edit your theme using JavaScript. This means you get more control over your website design and can customize your site on the next level if you are comfortable coding! However, even if you cannot code it’s easy to find:
- Add apps
- Upload your own images
- Change text
- Tweak the color scheme
- Add buttons, videos, image galleries, and more
- Create new pages
- Change fonts
All you need to do is drag and drop elements onto your page from the left sidebar and hey! Without any tech skills, you are building your own site.
HOW MUCH DOES IT COST?
Weebly is first of all considered to have a free plan. There’s no time limit and no secret expenses to collect you, it’s 100% free to build, publish or even sell with Weebly. The free plan is perfect for Weebly to check out whether it’s your correct web builder or save money while you’re ready to publish your website.
We recommend not, however, to keep up with the free plan of Weebly. Why does this happen? Okay, on your website you can see ads, there are restricted functionalities (such as storage of 500 MB), and no custom domain can be used. These are three major disadvantages, which make moving to a paid plan a sensible thing if you plan on seeing the website for anyone else.
Weebly has three paid plans of between $6 and $29/month:
- Personal plan: $6/month
- Professional plan: $12/month
- Performance plan: $26/month
The $6/month Personal Plan is pretty similar to the free plan in terms of the features you receive, except that it lets you connect to a specific domain. We ‘re not endorsing this plan, because it doesn’t give a great value for money.
The $12/month Professional Plan is best suited to any portfolio, small business, or blog that needs to make a good impression. Why? Why? Because it’s the cheapest plan to remove Weebly Ads from your website. On top of that, you unlock unlimited storage, plus a free domain!
The $26/month Performance Plan is ideal for growing businesses or any online store looking to boost sales –you’ll have access to more advanced e – commerce tools, such as shipping labels and abandoned cart emails.
Just look out for monthly versus yearly plans. Weebly reveals its monthly prices, billed every year. It is because you’re saving money by signing up for an annual plan–but it can be a nasty shock at checkout to know you have to pay upfront for the year! The good news is, if you want more flexibility, you can pay monthly, but that will cost more per month –check out the table below for a monthly and yearly price comparison. You could save from 10 per cent and 33 per cent anywhere, depending on your package and the duration of your subscription. The longer you commit, the more the discount is significant:
There is a lot to be gained by committing to a year plan as you can see.
REVIEW SUMMARY
We can confidently say Weebly is the best website builder on the market right now for small businesses. Navigation is uncluttered, simplistic, and relatively easy so you won’t feel overwhelmed. It may have emerged from our testing with a lower ease of use score than Wix, but once you’ve accustomed yourself to the platform, it’s becoming a breeze.
Weebly offers you the option of fine – tuning your site using HTML and CSS, and even exporting it to edit elsewhere, meaning it’s not just for beginners. It also offers numerous rates of subscription including ecommerce plans. We recommend that you start with a free Web site to get the best out of Weebly. This is your chance to get to know the interface of editing, and to decide for yourself how simple (and difficult) the different features are.
We recommend foregoing the Personal plan once you’re ready to upgrade–you get more for the money on the Professional plan! Overall, we recommend Weebly-especially if you are starting a website for a small business or portfolio. It’s perfect for total beginners and those who are confident coding, and Weebly has proven itself to be a versatile and reliable web builder with its generous ecommerce features. If Weebly sounds right for you, get on its free plan and start trying it out for yourself–it’s the only way to know if Weebly is your dream builder!
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