Weebly Review
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- Date Established
- 2006
- Location
- San Francisco, CA
Pros
- Very easy to use
- Fully mobile responsive
- Includes a mobile app
- Numerous integrations
- Free plan
Cons
- Limited design customization
- Numerous public complaints
Overview
Weebly is one of the largest and most popular DIY drag-and-drop website builders on the market today. After the company’s founding in 2006, it experienced exponential growth, quickly hitting the one million user mark in 2008. This growth has continued to this day. Weebly now hosts over 40 million sites around the globe.
The company’s founders, David Rusenko, Chris Fanini, and Dan Veltri began working together on Weebly while studying together at Penn State. In March of 2007, the first version of Weebly’s editing interface was released to the public. Over the last twelve years, this company has been largely successful at its initial goal: delivering a simple, user-friendly service that is accessible to almost any person, regardless of skill or previous experience. It’s not meant to be a sophisticated design tool for pros with elite university-honed skills, but as an easy-to-use tool delivering website building to the eager masses, Weebly packs quite the punch.
In April of 2018, it was announced that Weebly would be acquired by payment processing giant Square for $365 million in cash and stock. Since Weebly’s acquisition, the company has made a few changes. They now offer a total of three different editors that you can use to build your online store (depending on your needs), and the website builder is now closely integrated with Square’s online processing service.
The company’s affordable pricing options, simple editor, and optimized mobile sites have attracted a lot of positive attention, and each month Weebly-hosted websites receive roughly 325 million unique visitors.
Let’s see how Weebly stacks up, shall we?
| Webstore | Integrations | Developers |
|---|---|---|
Build Your Webstore Quickly & Easily | Integrate With Popular eCommerce Software | Developer-Friendly Tools For Customization |
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Highlights:
| Integrate with:
| Highlights:
|
Instant Account Setup Fast Funding 2.90% + $0.30 for online sales | Instant Account Setup Fast Funding 2.90% + $0.30 for online sales | Instant Account Setup Fast Funding 2.90% + $0.30 for online sales |
Table of Contents
Pricing
As I mentioned before, Weebly offers three separate editing tools that you can use to build your site. You can only use one of these tools to build your site (you can’t switch between them), and your answers to Weebly’s initial questions during the setup process determines which editor you can access (more on this in the Ease Of Use section below). These different editors come with slightly different features and pricing options. The three editors are as follows:
- Legacy: Weebly’s older editing tool offers more customizability, but it isn’t quite as easy to use as the other tools. Legacy allows you to sell online with any paid plan, and it is the only editor that offers the “Connect” pricing plan.
- Editor Prime: Weebly’s newer editing tool offers the best ease of use, although it has more limitations in terms of design. The Editor Prime is the editor that is most likely to get love and attention (read: updates) from the Weebly crew. I’ve been told that Weebly developers run a new update every four days.
- Square Online Store: This is the editor that you’ll find if you sign up for an online store through Square. It is the same tool as the Editor Prime, although it has a couple of minor differences in features. You can only process your payments through Square (Stripe and PayPal are not an option), and you can sell online on the free plan. Pricing is a bit different too (in fact, it looks more expensive). Read more about Square Online Store in our separate article on how to accept online payments.
In this review, we will be discussing primarily Legacy and Editor Prime, as they are the options that you can access if you go directly through Weebly. Below are the pricing plans for those two editors. Remember, Legacy is the only editor that offers the “Connect” plan:
Free Plan
- Drag and drop website builder
- Free SSL security
- 500MB storage limit
- Domain with Weebly branding
- Search engine optimization
- Lead capture and contact forms
- Support: chat, email, and community forum
Connect (Available only on the Legacy editor)
- $5/month (for the one-year plan)
- $4/month (for the two-year plan)
- $8/month (for the monthly plan)
- All of the above PLUS:
- Custom domain
- Support: chat, email, and community forum
Pro
- $12/month (one-year plan)
- $9/month (two-year plan)
- $18/month (monthly plan)
- All of the above PLUS:
- Unlimited storage
- Remove Square ads
- Advanced site stats
- Remove Weebly ads
- $100 Google ad credit
- Site search
- Password protection
- Video backgrounds
- HD video and audio
- Add 100 members
- Integrated shopping cart
- List up to 25 products
- 3% transaction fee
- Accept payments through Square or third-party providers
- In-store pickup
- Support: forum, chat, email, and phone
Business
- $25/month (one-year plan)
- $21/month (two-year plan)
- $35/month (for the monthly plan)
- All of the above PLUS:
- Unlimited storage
- Unlimited members and membership registration
- Advanced store features
- List unlimited products
- 0% transaction fee
- Accept payments through PayPal
- Product badges
- Product options
- Inventory management
- Automatic tax calculator
- Coupon codes
- Square gift cards
- Product reviews
- Shipping calculator
- Integrated shipping labels
- Good shipping discounts
- Pop-up notifications
- Integrated Facebook ads
- Advanced ecommerce statistics
- Support: forum, chat, email, phone, and priority support
Business Plus
- $38/month (one-year plan)
- $35/month (two-year plan)
- $46/month (monthly plan)
- All of the above PLUS:
- Unlimited storage
- Email marketing (powered by Weebly Promote)
- Advanced store features:
- Abandoned cart emails
- Real-time shipping
- Support: forum, chat, email, phone, and priority support
Note that when you sign up for an annual plan, you receive a free domain for the first year. Afterward, domains renew at $20/year.
Some plans are also subject to a 3% transaction fee. Users on the Pro plan and the Connect plan have to pay this 3% transaction fee to Weebly, on top of the 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction that they pay to their payment processor. The only exception to this rule is merchants who sign up for Square Online Store. These merchants are required to process payments with Square, so Square waives the 3% transaction fee.
I’m not a fan of transaction fees, and most ecommerce platforms and website builders no longer charge them. I am discouraged to see that Weebly still charges some merchants these fees.
Weebly does not offer a free trial. However, all paid plans are refundable in full within 30 days of purchase.
Web-Hosted Or Licensed
Weebly is entirely web-based.
Hardware & Software Requirements
There are no official system requirements listed for Weebly, although for optimal performance, you should use the latest version of any mainstream web browser (Internet Explorer, Safari, Firefox, or Chrome).
Business Types Supported
Weebly does not explicitly cater to any specific industry or type of business. However, you can infer a few of the different groups of merchants they serve by looking into their template options. Weebly organizes their templates into six basic groups: Online Store, Business, Portfolio, Personal, Event, and Blog.
A closer examination of the available templates shows that restaurants, photographers, and musicians, in particular, have a lot to like with Weebly.
Ease Of Use
Weebly is well-known for its ease of use. Both Legacy and the new Editor Prime offer a simple solution for building a website or online store. Although there are a few differences between the two main editors, both editors are well-designed and straightforward, allowing users to take specific, pre-programmed content blocks (image galleries, slideshows, contact forms, text boxes, etc.) and organize them in unique configurations. In some ways, Weebly websites are akin to intricate puzzles but without a ‘correct’ solution. The user can place the various pieces in any order they like.
We’ll go into more detail on Weebly’s ease of use in the Web Design section later on, but for now, all you need to know is that anyone could learn Weebly’s design tools in the course of an afternoon.
Signing up with Weebly is an easy process. You begin by creating a username and password, and then you have to answer a couple of questions about your business. While this step seems pretty basic, it is extremely important in determining which editor you get access to.
When you reach this screen (below), you have two choices.
To access the Legacy editor, you need to select “I just need a website.” To get access to the new Editor Prime, you should choose “I need a website with an online store.” It is important to note that BOTH options allow you to create an online store on your site, and both options have the same level of ecommerce functionality.
Once you’ve finished signing up, you are directed to your dashboard. Here’s the dashboard for Legacy (you can also switch to the more updated dashboard):
And here’s what the Editor Prime dashboard looks like:
From this dashboard, you can manage your site’s general settings, change and apply SEO settings, and create your online store.
Adding products is a one-page process. You can add product options and set different inventory levels and pricing for each option. You can also use this page to add SEO information such as metadata and custom URLs for each product.
Weebly also offers a mobile app for Android and iOS, which you can use to manage your site on any device. Use the mobile app to view site stats and process orders. It isn’t very common to see a mobile app for a website builder, and I like that it’s an option with Weebly.
Overall, Weebly is an excellent solution in terms of ease of use. Back-end processes (such as managing your online store and site settings) are easy to handle and designing your site is foolproof.
Features
The feature set of this software is solid and practical. Weebly doesn’t offer any bells-and-whistles; however, the features they do offer fit the needs of many small businesses. You can also take a look into the Weebly App Center to add on a few extra features as applications.
- Blog: The Weebly blogging tool has a simple setup that allows users to edit post titles, list author information beside each post, host RSS feeds and visitor comments, integrate Facebook and Twitter sharing, and schedule post times, among other things.
- Contact Form: Weebly’s contact form is highly customizable, which makes it a useful, adaptable means of reaching out to your site visitors. You can add and arrange prefabricated fields however you wish, and you can also (somewhat) customize the look of these fields. You can also solicit file uploads from your visitors. Once you’ve collected your information, you can export that data to a spreadsheet to analyze it more easily.
- Online Store: In general, Weebly’s ecommerce features are a nice addition to the overall Weebly package, and they function well. Weebly offers features for basic tax management, inventory management, and a digital coupon system. You can use Weebly to sell physical and digital goods as well as sell services and accept donations. Weebly also offers a few advanced ecommerce features, including filtered search and the ability to calculate real-time shipping costs. Use the mobile app to manage your store on any device.
- Mobile Management: Use Weebly’s app for iOS and Android to check site statistics, respond to contact form entries, check blog comments, manage your online store’s products, and more.
- Stock Photos Library: Weebly offers access to numerous free and for-purchase stock photos, which you can use to quickly fill your site.
- Google AdSense Integration: Users can drag and drop a Google AdSense section anywhere on their sites to help generate revenue. This feature comes fully integrated with the editor.
- Shopping On Instagram: Tag your products on Instagram, and when customers click on those tags, they are redirected to your site to complete checkout.
- Video Hosting: Weebly’s video hosting allows users to embed videos from YouTube, Vimeo, or other services. You can also use Weebly’s own custom HD video player to upload videos directly to your site.
Weebly keeps users up-to-date on feature improvements and updates via its blog. Recent improvements include the ability to accept Square gift cards and set pickup-in-store options.
Web Design & Editing
With Weebly, you start designing your website as soon as you begin the signup process. Weebly prompts you to select your business type, and then it presents you with a selection of themes that are designed for that type of business. Here’s what those template options look like with Legacy (I accidentally switched my account to Spanish during the setup process, but all of the options in the header are business types):
And here’s what they look like with Editor Prime:
Once you’ve picked a template, you can customize it through your editor of choice. This is where the distinction between Legacy and Editor Prime makes a difference.
The Legacy editor is simple and neatly organized, designed so that users can easily drag, drop, and arrange elements on their websites. You can delete the pre-filled content and add text boxes, buttons, images, and media. All you need to do is drag the element from the toolbar into the right spot on your website.
Unfortunately, you can’t put these elements just anywhere. There seems to be a type of grid built into the software that each element has to fit into. In some cases, you may need to find a workaround to find a way to put text or an image in precisely the right spot.
You can also use Legacy to make small and large scale changes to your site: change colors, background, fonts, and text sizes; add new pages, and rearrange the order of those pages in your navigation bar. I was able to easily adjust my site to make it fit what I had in mind.
With Weebly’s newer Editor Prime, you can also drag-and-drop elements in your site; however, those elements are very different. Instead of adding smaller elements (such as a text box or an image), you have to add larger blocks of content (such as three text boxes AND an image). You can choose from a few different versions of that content block, but you’re pretty much stuck with the pre-generated options. This is great for quickly building a website, but not so great if you want your site to fit a specific vision.
I was especially frustrated by the lack of customizability in Weebly’s text boxes. You are not able to change the size and shape of your text boxes, and the only font sizes to choose from are Small, Medium, and Large. That is simply not enough options, especially when you’re trying to make a piece of text fit into a specific spot on your site.
At the end of the day, I think the Legacy editor is the better of Weebly’s two main editing tools. Legacy best balances customizability and usability, whereas Editor Prime makes setting up a site faster, but it is far less customizable.
Integrations & Add-Ons
Weebly provides an App Center with over 350 different apps to choose from. The apps are organized under the following categories:
- eCommerce
- Communication
- Marketing
- Social
- Site Tools and Features
This collection includes apps that were designed by Weebly to add advanced features. Many of these Weebly-designed apps are free, while some are premium apps. Here’s a quick look at Weebly’s proprietary apps:
- An FAQ (Free): Answer frequently asked questions with a FAQs section.
- SimpleChat (Free): Live chat with your site visitors.
- G Suite By Google (Premium): Get Gmail for your site.
- Promote Forms (Free/Premium): This is Weebly’s tool for creating lead capture forms.
The Weebly App Center also offers integrations with other popular software. For example, you can integrate your site with the following:
- Ecwid Online Store
- ShipStation
- LiveChat
- Eventbrite
- AWeber
I’m happy to see that Weebly offers these integrations. Connecting your website builder with powerful shipping software and email marketing software can significantly strengthen your system.
Payment Processing
Weebly offers three payment processors to choose from.
A quick note: Weebly is now owned by Square, so you can be sure that their Square integration is strong. You should consider how this partnership might affect its payments system going forward.
- Stripe: 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction
- Square: 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction
- PayPal: 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction
Remember that your payment options may be limited by your pricing plan. Users on the Pro, Business, and Business Plus plans can accept payments through Square and Stripe. If you want to accept payments through PayPal, you have to be on the Business or Business Plus plans. Giving your customers these options can increase your conversion rates because it allows customers to choose the payment processor that they are most familiar with.
I’ve been told that you can also embed other payment options (such as Authorize.net) into your site as payment buttons.
I am also not thrilled by the number of integrated payment processors available. Choosing the right payment processor can have a big effect on the success of your business, and I don’t like that your options are limited with Weebly.
Don’t forget that users on the Pro plan and the Connect plan are charged an additional transaction fee of 3%.
Customer Service & Technical Support
The level of customer support that you can access depends on your subscription plan. Users on the Free and Connect plans have access to personal support via chat, email, and the community forum. Users on the Pro plan and above have access to phone support. And users on the Business and Business Plus plans have access to all of that, plus priority support. Here are a few of the routes you can take to resolve any issues you encounter with the software:
- Support Center: Find articles and user guides that address common questions. Some of this support material addresses only the Legacy software, which doesn’t help users of Editor Prime.
- Blog: Read tips on best practices for the industry and keep up on Weebly news.
- Community Forum: Users help one another solve problems.
- Social Media: Weebly has accounts on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram, although it has been a few months since they last posted.
- Developer Docs: Use the developer docs to find information about editing HTML, CSS, and JSON. Or you can use this documentation to develop a Weebly application.
- Contact: Options vary based on subscription level.
- Live chat
- Phone
In my experience, Weebly’s customer support network was quick, helpful, and knowledgable. I was able to reach someone over live chat and by phone in just a few minutes.
User Reviews
Negative Reviews & Complaints
Weebly has received its fair share of complaints across review sites and comment boards. I’ve spent some time combing through these reviews to look for trends. Here’s what stuck out to me as the most common complaints:
- Customer Service: Users don’t always have good experiences with customer service. Complaints say that Weebly representatives are often slow to respond, or they don’t know enough about Weebly’s software to help.
- Bugs & Glitches: I’ve seen about a dozen reports of glitches and bugs within the software.
- Blocked Traffic: Late last year, Weebly started blocking traffic from select countries. That means that Weebly users who had site visitors from these select countries (most notably, Ukraine) increased a sudden downturn in traffic and a loss of customers. It does not appear that Weebly warned its users about this change with adequate notice.
- Limitations: This is a problem that I have noticed myself. While it’s true that Weebly is super easy to use, it is not very customizable. You can only edit your site content within Weebly’s pre-designed elements. You cannot simply move text boxes or images around to design the site from scratch (like you can with the Wix Editor). This can make the software frustrating for slightly more skilled users who want a higher degree of customization.
I’ve also seen a handful of comments in which users mention being billed for the software after they canceled. These users say that it was difficult or impossible to be refunded for the months that they were mistakenly billed. Be careful of this if and when you go to cancel your Weebly account!
All in all, I don’t think these negative comments are enough to discredit Weebly as an option. They are fairly common complaints about a website builder; however, it’s good to keep these negatives in mind.
Positive Reviews & Testimonials
While there are plenty of negative reviews online, Weebly has also received a good number of positive reviews. 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 up and rolling 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.
Weebly receives particular support from users who are new to website building, with many reporting ongoing happiness with both the product and customer support.
Final Verdict
As a whole, Weebly is a solid and practical piece of software. This program’s exponential growth and large customer base say a great deal about its overall track record. Weebly has a strong foundation and provides essential, intuitive tools.
However, Weebly has its weaknesses. I’m disappointed with the limitations of Weebly’s design tools (especially Editor Prime), and while Weebly’s online store can handle low-volume sellers, it isn’t the best ecommerce solution for most serious online retailers. Complaints about poor customer support and software glitches make me even less sure of Weebly.
While Weebly is certainly a workable solution, I can’t say it’s the best. I would instead recommend Wix for users looking for a versatile website builder and Shopify for those looking to establish an online store.
Nevertheless, I won’t discount Weebly entirely. If you’re looking to get a functional website online for yourself or your small business with absolute minimum fuss, you might find your answer in Weebly. Sign up for the free version of the software to try it out for yourself.
| Webstore | Integrations | Developers |
|---|---|---|
Build Your Webstore Quickly & Easily | Integrate With Popular eCommerce Software | Developer-Friendly Tools For Customization |
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|
Highlights:
| Integrate with:
| Highlights:
|
Instant Account Setup Fast Funding 2.90% + $0.30 for online sales | Instant Account Setup Fast Funding 2.90% + $0.30 for online sales | Instant Account Setup Fast Funding 2.90% + $0.30 for online sales |
Liz Hull
Liz Hull is a writer for Merchant Maverick. In her three years with Merchant Maverick, she has tested and reviewed over 40 eCommerce platforms and published two ebooks on the topic of online selling. Liz has also been published in Startup Nation and Home Business Magazine Online. Liz has a BA in English and Spanish from George Fox University.
Latest posts by Liz Hull (see all)
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- USPS VS UPS VS FedEx: Which Shipping Carrier Is Best? - November 19, 2019
- How To Prepare Your Online Store For The Holidays - October 28, 2019
- Best Free Project Management Software - October 11, 2019
To learn more about how we score our reviews, see our Website Builders Rating Criteria.
Organization Name: LEBAUSTRALIAN
I purchased x8 domain names from weebly and a Pro site.Then I was facing a real problem with my news website. I sent them x3 emails and no one answered. After I called them 3 weeks later, they sent me their help page link which I was struggling to find someone to help me in it. I’m so disappointed of this service.
Organization Name: Shepherdess Wool
I cannot comment on the pricing because I haven’t used anything else. However, the billing is highly inconvenient- I am getting billed for three different things, three different times a year- Email, domain and the web plan itself. I am not sure why/how it got split up but when I contacted them they said they cannot add months to get everything at the same billing cycle. I wasn’t getting notified when the billing was about to take place either, but supposedly they have fixed that. I would say the web builder is very easy to use.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Organization Name: Vom Echo Wald
customer service is horrible to work with. They make mistakes and ignore you site being down because of their failure……choose a different site builder for long term help or customer service that actually responds to issues.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Weebly drag and drop website building for a novice 100% perfect if you have some virtual experience.
Rating on Canadians wanting Canada Post 0% for real-time shipping API – 0%.
Weebly cannot support Canadian online-only business in terms of shipping. Which is critical for a business that is not bricks and mortal. An API interface cannot be facilitated to have control over your business not so different from Wix.
Make sure you are able to have real-time shipping (RTS) at checkout for your customers with options. Weebly has RTS options you set up but the shipping from Canada is out of this world without CPC.
~Canadian entrepreneurs do not take this path until CPC is integrated.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Organization Name: Cluny Grey Jewelry
Weebly is TERRIBLE. If I could start over, I would never, ever choose it. Things change on my site without my having done a thing! One day the fonts are 15, next they’re so tiny you can’t read them???Why?? And I’ve not even logged into the site builder. AVOID at all costs.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Organization Name: Middle Tennessee Fly Fishers
Without a doubt Weebly has the worse support of any product that I have used in the past 40 years. Their editor broke a week and half ago and it is still not fixed. Uploading any image from your computer when making page background change causes the screen background image to white out. I find it difficult to understand how any company these days who provides terrible support can remain in business for very long.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Organization Name: In Home Assistants
My wife and I sell diet cookies . We had a company try to create a commercal web page so we could sell our products online. It was a horrid site, and they could not get it right. Two months ago, we decided to ask FreeLogoServices if they could produce a site since we purchased the Domain name from them. They put us in touch with Sales, and a fellow named Bruce spoke in glowing terms of how they could solve all our problems. Bruce had Jessica call me, and we got started right away. Jessica has done a great job creating a site with all the info we required. She completed the site, and we published at the end of August. Right away, she ran into a problem connecting Authorize.net to the Merchant CC approval on the site. Authorize.net instantly ran some tests and I saw immediate results in my merchant account. Jessica confirmed that the problem was with the Weebly software. So once again, I am out of business due to software makers doing my web page. Does anyone have any suggestions as to how to get Weebly interfaced with Authorize.net? My Merchant Account is with Chase, and they set up Authorize.net for the CC merchant approval. Freelogoservices.com is now suggesting I use Stripe or Square. I guess that is because they charge the freight on transactions with those two companies. They also suggested PayPal, but Authorize.net told me Pay Pal is already a part of their approval package, and is not a separate entity in my Merchant account. I am very frustrated with the non response of Weebly. They seem to have made no effort in 10 days to fix their software.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Organization Name: Aluminiumart
An arrogant company who refuse to listen to their customers. So many systems need improving that have already been mentioned. I had the top paying account and am annoyed with the refusal to change the the analytics so you can easily download simple information like money in, money out (fees), undo facility, allowing customer to see postage costs before commencing purchase etc. All the things I hate in a website are in mine. What else is better?
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Hi Matt! Wix and Squarespace have eCommerce systems that are generally regarded as more sophisticated than Weebly’s. However, if you want the most formidable eCommerce package possible, you might want to go with a dedicated eCommerce platform like Shopify.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Hello to all, I can not belief that it is now 48 hours now since I upgraded my plan from free member to one year paid subscription. However since I paid for the domain I do not see the new domain name online still. I bought the dot com domain but up till date my site is not publish under the new domain. Only the free domain name continues to appear.
Also when I check the paid version of the domain name I see that it is still available for sale when I have bought it alread. So strange !!!
The bad part is that my money was deducted from my account. However i read in one blog spot that they have a 30 days refund policy. I have written to their customer service but no response yet.
I will give them 1 week to solve my issue if not then i will likely go back to my bank and make a charge back of funds. The situation is quite embarrasing. I can not just get anybody on the line.
Please if you have any idea of what to do then please email me using : rayan.dicks (AT) gmail dot com
Best regards
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
When I originally signed up to weebly 5 years ago I felt it was a good investment I could afford. As they have grown their customer base they have reduced the number of functions I paid for. Now I have to upgrade to regain the functions. Recently they downgraded my website because an automatic payment had failed. No warning was sent. Customer service glibly says there are other websites out there if I want to shop around. That did not feel an appropriate response to a loyal customer.Not recommending them and thinking I may have to pull out and build me a new site.What a drag.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Difficulties with navigation, simple process but issued began to escalate with changing site and expansion. Went with Wix for a business that needed shopping cart since Weebly did not support well. When left Weebly for my private business site, they did not refund my year I didn’t use. Only work with them via email for evidence, do not make changes via phone. They denied the conversation ever happened.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
I’ve found Weebly a great low-cost option for small niche non-commerce type websites. Generally easy to learn to use.
Whether the website ends up attractive or ugly though depends on what you make of the limited template option. Can edit page urls and have good SEO etc but info on how to do things like this are a bit sparse so can be a bit of figuring out beyond the basic design.
The downsides are for me are the very limited options of templates to choose from, not being able to undo, not being able to copy a website (with a particular style) to another account and edit it.
If use the logo/text header instead of a photo banner it reduces in size on iPads like it does on mobiles which is annoying.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
To be sure, the drag and drop features are appealing, but we what we have found is that 1) many changes are randomly not saved, so we lose blocks of text, images, code, etc.; 2) the interface is glitchy. The screen frequently freezes and you have log out and log back in; 3) customer support is available but no helpful in any way. They often do not understand (or pretend not to understand the problem) and the average chat session is 25-40 minutes going round and round with no resolution. 4) There is no undo button. If you make an interface change and you don’t like it, you have to go back and start over to the get the old one. This is costing our company so much time and money.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
I switched to Wix, and I’m quite happy with it. I left Weebly mainly because of the undo problem, but I did encounter some of the other problems that were mentioned. Now I’m a real Wix fan.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Ok for very small enterprise and basic websites. Try building a large e-commerce store and poor. The inventory can not be bulk edited, no SKU on sales reports leaving you to search your listings for the product SKU. Poor internal search function. No advanced search options. No possibility to search by price, by size, by color, time listed etc. All features you would expect of an e commerce store. Very limited choice of templates and of course – ask a question to support and get the repetitive standard answer “sorry we do not currently support that feature but will pass it on to our development team” Now looking to move to another company, having wasted 3 months of time. E commerce- dont even bother.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Organization Name: Aluminiumart
Would love to know who you went with, why and how well they perform.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
There’s one thing that most reviewers miss: Weebly has no undo feature. I accidentally deleted a text box with a photograph and couldn’t get it back.I changed an item and then hated the way it looked – but no way to revert.I wrote to Weebly support about this, and they said, basically, “sorry, we don’t do undo.” Wow. I paid for 2 years of a service that I can’t use. How can you design without being able to experiment?
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
It’s frustrating, isn’t it? Though you can undo/redo text edits within that individual text block, the lack of site-wide undo/redo buttons is hard to figure.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
i only gave this 5 stars to get at the top of the list..Weebly is a great site if you dont want any traffic, feel the need to spend hours working on each listing and dont want to be bothered with making sales.We sale wedding dresses and accessories…. got the business package for $299 for 1 year… total waste of money. There is no good way to upload product files properly with a csv… yeah, it offers one but you need to individually upload each image, categorize them, and every time you go in it wants you to “publish”… wtf i didn’t change anything.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
So… (continued from my take written on Feb 15, 2016) now I have made a site with Weebly ( migrated the content from my old site). After that, I have been making another site of mine with Squarespace in the past few days. And I can now clearly see the difference between the two platforms. One big thing I noticed today was how the platforms treat embedded codes. I specifically embed from YouTube, Flickr slideshow, and Google calendar. Oh, and Mailchimp. Weebly isn’t doing well with embeded material! Not all functions written in code performs on Weebly page, where as on Squarespace it not only look good but also does what they are supposed to do. Plus. there is a problem with code editing mode on Weebly. I have to click certain area of the box 100 to 200 times just to access the edit mode. Sometimes I get lucky and it takes me to edit mode after only several clicks. It is very inconvenient. It happens only when I need to edit code. Other text areas are not that bad. Also, since the result of the embedding is poor, I had to go back and try modifying the code to just to get by. And flickr slideshow is still not functioning fully. Autoplay code is not understood by Weebly platform. With Squarespace, on a bright side, I put the embed code in, and that’s it. No need to modify or do trial and error thing because it worked in the first shot. It shows beautifully, responsive, and plays automatically with loop. Weebly doesn’t do that even though I tried several different version of codes. For me, it’s really a waste of time to use Weebly. Generally speaking, Squarespace templates are much better looking, and also I was able to alter layout and colors without going into editing codes in Squarespace. With Weebly, on the other hand, I had to dive into the muddy css files just to change anything simple like colors and fonts. CSS and html files didn’t have much comments to guide me to anything, so it was a terrible experience. I managed to make a web site, but I realized that no matter how much work would I pot in, the site doesn’t look as good as I want it be, because the templates are not so pretty. I guess I could have bought a $180 or $140 template to make it better, but then the embedding problem is serious enough for me to not to stay with Weebly. It’s really better to go with a platform that can work with other things like YouTube, Flickr, Instagram, etc. If a website works with social network stuff poorly, it becomes static. A static website is a bad website in Internet universe.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
I use a bit of customer service chat. That’s nice, but often the issues are beyond their control. Templates look nice in a first glance, but once started adding content, there are a lot of glitches. I had to come up with so many work around to just get by. Generally, their templates are not thoroughly designed, especially in the mobile versions. I want visitors of my web site have very simple and clear navigation when they are visiting from mobile devices. But Weebly’s templates, all of them, don’t have well thought navigation design. So, I started looking at other people’s websites, and I found that the templates I was impressed with often came from squarespace templates. When I visit a site from my phone, it looked very pretty, navigation was not only elegant but also I had a sense of where I am at in the site. This still does not mean squarespce is better for me. I do embed stuff from other sites (flickr, google calendar, youtube, etc), and I don’t know how square space takes the heavy embed. Weebly’s embed box can be hard to use. I experience a lot of instability. Often it’s near impossible to open the edit mode. I finally discovered that if I click on a very certain spot, which I have to click 20 times or so just to get it right, then I can open the edit mode. I have no idea why they made it so difficult to use the embed box. Still, Weebly is easier to use than squarespace. A full customization is not available in Weebly. You can fix some things but not all things.Weebly templates I tried are responsive, but I believe that if mobile navigation sucks when people visit your website from mobile devices, they are likely to just move onto doing something else. A few clicks and if I don’t know where I am, I would stop browsing in the site. Wouldn’t you too?
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Most likely! Thank you for the input!
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.