Weebly Review

Pros

• Very easy to use
• Free plan available
• Fully mobile responsive
• Includes a mobile app
• Numerous integrations

Cons

• Limited design customization
• Numerous public complaints

What Is Weebly?

Weebly is a drag-and-drop website builder with online store features. Owned by Square and specializing in user-friendliness, it isn’t intended to be a cutting-edge platform for web designers. Instead, it’s an easy-to-use tool that provides the masses with website building and eCommerce capabilities.

Weebly’s affordable pricing options (including a free subscription plan), user-friendly editor, and optimized mobile sites have a lot to offer hobbyists and small business owners, particularly online sellers. It’s not what we’d recommend for larger eCommerce businesses, but as a low-cost, low-hassle option, there’s a lot to like about Weebly. Keep reading to get the full story.

Weebly Pricing

Through the magic of SEO, we can tell that many people wonder, “Is Weebly free?” Well, yes, it can be! You can use Weebly to create a free website, but if you need a more well-featured site or online store, Weebly offers three paid subscription plans.

Free

Weebly’s Free plan includes:

• Drag-and-drop website builder
• SSL security
• 500MB storage limit (10MB max file size limit)
• Domain with Weebly branding
• Search engine optimization
• Lead capture
• Instagram feed
• Support (chat, email, and community forum)
• eCommerce
  • Standard processing rate (2.9% + $0.30)
  • Unlimited items
  • Shopping cart
  • Item options and badges
  • Inventory management
  • In-store pickup
  • Automatic tax calculator
  • Coupons
  • Square gift cards

Personal

Weebly’s Personal plan costs $9/month ($6/month when paid annually) and includes everything in the Free plan, plus:

• Connect a custom domain
• Pop-up notifications
• eCommerce
  • Digital goods
  • Shipping calculator

Professional

Weebly’s Professional plan costs $16/month ($12/month when paid annually) and includes everything in the Personal plan, plus:

• Free domain for one year (annual plan only)
• Unlimited storage
• Remove Square ads
• Advanced site stats
• Password protection
• Support (forum, chat, email, and phone)

Performance

Weebly’s Performance plan costs $29/month ($26/month when paid annually) and includes everything in the Professional plan, plus:

• Advanced eCommerce analysis
• Priority support
• Advanced eCommerce features
  • Accept payments through PayPal
  • Item reviews
  • Shipping labels
  • Shipping discounts
  • Abandoned cart emails

Extra Costs

Weebly offers perhaps the best pricing in the website building industry. Being able to sell unlimited products with a free subscription is very rare, and the paid plans are all very affordable by industry standards. As for extra fees, there are only a few:

• Domains: Domains can be renewed for $19.95/year after the initial free year, with discounts available for two, five, and ten-year domain purchases.
• Domain Privacy Protection: You can protect your domain for an additional $10/year.
• Hire A Designer: This optional service lets you hire a designer to build your site for you. Pricing is quote-based.

No free trials are offered for the paid plans, though you can cancel your subscription within 30 days and get your money back.

Weebly Features

Weebly’s features are well-designed and practical. The platform doesn’t have a surplus of bells and whistles, but its features fit many small business needs. You can also check out the Weebly App Center for any add-ons and integrations you might need.

Weebly Themes

Weebly’s 50+ themes (not that many by website builder standards; consider that Wix offers over 900) are quite serviceable, though some are a bit outdated. Moreover, Weebly’s website editor allows only a limited degree of customization, so you might have some trouble getting them to look exactly how you want. Thankfully, you can switch templates at any time.

Type Of Payments Accepted With Weebly

Weebly accepts the following payment types:

• Square Payments: Square Payments is Square’s in-house payment processor and is the default payment acceptance option when you build an online store with Weebly. It lets you accept payments from all the major credit card brands, along with Apple Pay and Google Pay.
• Third-Party Payment Providers: You can also use PayPal and Stripe to accept payments.
• Point Of Sale: Weebly integrates with Square POS, allowing you to take in-person payments while connected to your Weebly store.

Weebly Marketing Features

Weebly gives you access to the following marketing features:

• SEO
• Lead capture
• Instagram feed
• Pop-up notifications
• Advanced eCommerce insights

Please note that you’ll need a paid subscription to implement pop-up notifications and a Performance plan subscription (the highest level) to access advanced eCommerce insights.

Weebly Product Limits

Weebly does not limit the number of products you can sell — not even under the free plan, which is remarkable. However, you will need a paid plan to sell digital products.

Inventory Management With Weebly

Weebly offers the following inventory management features:

• Add categories to organize your inventory
• Sort your products by name, category, SKU, product description, and product type, all from the dashboard
• View your orders
• Connect multiple online stores
• Inventory tracking tools let you display how many items are available — you’ll also get an icon that notifies your customers if an item is on sale or running low
• Track statuses and shipments

Weebly Shipping Tools

Weebly provides master accounts with USPS and DHL Express. You can also connect to other carriers, such as UPS and FedEx. With a paid Weebly plan, you can also get access to a shipping calculator and shipping labels.

Real Time Shipping is available to sellers in the US, Canada, and Mexico. With RTS, carriers provide dynamic rate estimates at checkout based on weight, distance, and the number of boxes needed to complete the shipment.

Weebly also offers integrations with shipping services like ShipStation and XPS Ship.

Weebly SEO Tools

Weebly gives you basic SEO tools, such as a sitemap, SEO-friendly HTML formatting, mobile responsive design, meta descriptions, alt tags on images, and page-specific descriptions. For additional SEO features, searching “SEO” in the Weebly App Center brings up 44 different SEO add-ons you can integrate with your Weebly site.

Blogging

The Weebly blogging tool has a simple setup that lets users edit post titles, list author information beside each post, host RSS feeds and visitor comments, integrate Facebook and Twitter sharing, and schedule post times. Blog-specific themes and blog-specific SEO, advanced comment management, and media integrations are also available.

Developer Tools

Weebly lets developers integrate into the platform with OAuth2, Webhooks, and REST APIs. Weebly’s APIs give you access to site and user data, products sold in your online store, and more.

In-Person Selling Tools

With Weebly, you can connect to Square’s POS services for in-person sales. Depending on your business needs, you can choose from the standard Square POS, Square for Restaurants, Square for Retail, and Square Appointments.

Is Weebly Easy To Use?

Weebly is well-known for its ease of use. Both the legacy editor and the new Square Online editor offer a simple solution for building a website or online store. Although there are a few differences between the two main editors, both are well-designed and straightforward, allowing users to take specific, preprogrammed content blocks (image galleries, slideshows, contact forms, text boxes, etc.) and organize them in unique configurations.

Weebly’s legacy editor allows for a bit more design freedom than the Square Online editor. While you start with your choice of a preformatted template with the legacy editor, the Square Online editor starts you off with a set of eCommerce elements that you can then add to, rearrange, and edit to your heart’s content. Whichever editor you use, you shouldn’t have a hard time building a site.

Overall, Weebly is an excellent solution in ease-of-use terms. Back-end processes, such as managing your online store and site settings, are easy to handle, and designing your site is foolproof.

Weebly Customer Service & Support

The level of Weebly customer support you can access depends on your subscription plan. Here are a few of the routes you can take to resolve any issues you encounter:

• Phone: Reserved for those on the Professional plan and above, phone support is available Monday-Friday 6 AM-6 PM PDT and Saturday through Sunday 8 AM-5 PM PDT.
• Email: Email support is available to all users.
• Live Chat: Live chat support is also available to all users during the hours listed above.
• Help Center: Find articles and user guides that address common questions. Some of this support material addresses only the legacy editor, while some materials only address Square Online.
• Community Forum: Users help one another solve problems.
• Developer Docs: Developers can use this documentation to develop themes and apps for Weebly.
• Blog: Weebly has a blog and an Inspiration Center where you can read tips on best practices for the industry. Sadly, it was last updated in December 2021.
• Social Media: Weebly has accounts on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram.

Weebly Integrations & Add-Ons

Weebly provides an App Center with 360 different apps to choose from. The apps are organized under the following categories:

• eCommerce
• Communication
• Marketing
• Social
• Site Tools and Features

These apps allow you to fill most of the feature gaps you’ll find in the main package. Many of these Weebly-designed apps are free, while some are premium apps. Additionally, the Weebly App Center includes many integrations with third-party software. Connecting your website builder with powerful shipping and email marketing software can significantly strengthen your system.

Weebly also integrates with PayPal and Square for payment processing. You can also accept Apple Pay and Google Pay on your Square Online store. Just keep in mind that your payment method selection may be more limited, depending on your pricing plan. For more information on these services, look at our in-depth reviews of each payment processor.

Weebly Reviews

Negative Weebly Reviews & Complaints

Weebly has received a high volume of complaints across review sites and comment boards — for example, Weebly currently scores a low average user rating of 1.8 out of 5 on Trustpilot based on 607 reviews. Here are a few of the most common critiques found in Weebly reviews:

• Customer Service: Users don’t always have good experiences with customer service. Weebly representatives are often slow to respond or don’t know enough about Weebly’s software to help. Some report that Weebly’s customer service has gone downhill since Square took over.
• Bugs & Glitches: I’ve seen numerous reports of glitches and bugs within the software.
• Limitations: This is a problem that I have noticed myself. While it’s true that Weebly is easy to use, it is not very customizable. You can only edit your site content within Weebly’s predesigned elements. You cannot move textboxes or images around to design the site from scratch (like you can with the Wix Editor). This limitation can make the software frustrating for slightly more skilled users who want a higher degree of customization.
• Poor Mobile Websites: Though Weebly touts its mobile responsiveness, many users are left unsatisfied with the quality of their sites when visited on a mobile device.
• Billing Issues: Some users mention being billed for the software after they canceled. These users report it is difficult (or impossible) to get refunded for the months they were mistakenly billed. Watch out for this if you go to cancel your Weebly account!

Positive Weebly Reviews & Testimonials

While there are plenty of negative reviews online, Weebly has also received a fair number of positive reviews, particularly from users who are new to website building. This software is most frequently praised for the following positive characteristics:

• Easy To Use: Usability is by far Weebly’s top strength. Even if you have never designed a website, Weebly can get you set up in a matter of hours.
• Reliable Over Time: Weebly’s biggest fans are those who have used it for years. These users typically say that they have been with the platform for more than five years, and it has served them well all that time.

Final Verdict On Weebly

Weebly provides a solid and practical platform for personal websites and online stores. Weebly’s huge customer base says a great deal about its overall track record. It has a strong foundation and provides essential, intuitive tools.

However, Weebly has its weaknesses. I’m disappointed with the limitations of the Square Online editor. Weebly’s online store can handle low- to mid-volume sellers (Square’s acquisition of the company has been a big boon to the eCommerce side of the product), but it isn’t quite the best eCommerce solution for most serious online retailers. Complaints about poor customer support and software glitches are also concerning.

Weebly is certainly a workable solution, but it’s not the best. If you’re willing to deal with a bit more complexity, I’d instead recommend Squarespace for users looking for a versatile website builder and Shopify for those looking to build an online store.

Nevertheless, I won’t discount Weebly entirely, and neither should you. Sign up for the free version of the software to try it out for yourself if you’re looking for a functional website online for yourself or your small business with as little fuss as possible. You can even launch a basic free online store with no product limits!

For more on building a website with Weebly, check out our handy guide to building a Weebly website. And if you’re looking for other options, check out our list of the best Weebly alternatives.

Weebly FAQs

The Merchant Maverick Seal of Approval 🏆

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After hours of in-depth research and evaluation, we can confidently recommend this brand to our readers. Get started today and see Weebly for yourself.

The Merchant Maverick Seal of Approval 🏆

Weebly	Visit Site

After hours of in-depth research and evaluation, we can confidently recommend this brand to our readers. Get started today and see Weebly for yourself.

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