Weebly

Weebly is one of the most popular website builders on the market, hosting over 40 million sites around the globe. Why is it such a big deal? It’s designed to be simple and intuitive to use, with a drag-and-drop interface, so that anyone - yes, even those with no tech know-how - can build a website. You don’t need to be a coder or even know one to make a site with Weebly; they provide ready-made website structures that you can customize according to your particular needs. You can use Weebly to launch a basic website, a store or a blog, with flexible pricing options for all.

• Highly intuitive drag-and-drop interface
• Available in many languages
• Straightforward builder makes it perfect for inexperienced users
• Competitive pricing compared to other builders

• Easy to use
• Extensive template gallery with beautiful templates
• Great mobile editing app
• Their support team is very responsive
• Simple to add Ecommerce features

• Free plan is fairly limited
• Templates not fully customizable
• There’s no undo button
• Errors in uploading and updating websites
• No online storage for your site media

Weebly’s drag-and-drop editor is certainly one of its strong suits. Editing tools are in the left-hand sidebar and the page appears on the right portion of the screen, so just drag elements from the sidebar (text, images, etc.) onto the body of the page… and voila. But of course, there actually tends to be a fair amount of nuance in drag-and-drop editors - it’s not always as simple as it seems. But in the case of Weebly, it lives up to expectations. Plus, each element that you add has handy options for customization, and Weebly has info buttons built into the editor to guide and alert you to different tools and ways of improving your site.

It also allows you to see what your website will look like (the end result) while still editing, which means no annoying preview screens or toggling back and forth to see changes. You can also switch to mobile view to see what your site looks like on a phone or tablet. And when you’re uploading images, you can continue working as the files load, instead of occupying the whole screen with the download window.

The only issue with the editor is the lack of an undo button, so reversing changes can be somewhat complicated.

Weebly offers a solid free plan and several (quite affordable and generous) paid plans, ranging from $9 to $38 a month.

-The free plan: You’ll get a subdomain (of weebly.com), Weebly ads, email and chat support, SEO optimization and a storage limit of 500MB.

-Connect: $4/month. Includes everything that comes with a free plan, plus a personal domain, free for the first year.

-Starter: $8/month. Includes all features of a Connect plan plus unlimited storage, advanced site stats and removal of Weebly ads. It also introduces eCommerce features like up to 10 items in site store, a $100 Google ad credit and an integrated shopping cart.

-Pro: $12/month. Ideal for groups and organizations, this plan includes everything in a Starter, in addition to phone support, site search, site membership (capacity 100 members) and up to 25 items in an online store.

-Business: $25/month. Geared towards small businesses and stores, the Business plan includes everything in a Pro plan, plus lots of Ecommerce goodies: unlimited site membership, unlimited products in store, 0% transaction fee, coupons and inventory management.

-Performance: $38/month. For what Weebly terms “Power sellers,” this plan adds some more Ecommerce features into the mix: abandoned cart recovery emails, gift cards and 5 email campaigns per month.

There’s a 14-day trial period - take advantage of this to figure out which plan is best for you.

Weebly offers a highly reliable and functional set of built-in features: 

-Blog: After a simple setup, users can edit text, drag and drop elements into posts, create post categories, create RSS feeds, receive and moderate comments (through Facebook, Disqus or Weebly’s comment system), as well as integrate Facebook and Twitter buttons.

-Ecommerce: This is a new addition in the world of Weebly, and a welcome one. It works quite well, and is one of the few website builders that stands out from competitors in regards to ecommerce (amongst builders primarily dedicated to building websites, not store builders like Volusion). Weebly’s store offers standard fare ecommerce features, like order tracking, gift cards, shipping estimates, custom emails, abandoned cart recovery, etc. A particularly special feature not offered by many competitors? You can use payment gateways like Stripe, Square or Paypal to accept payment in most international currencies.

-App Center: In addition to built-in features, Weebly has an store with over 300 third-party apps, plugins, widgets and and services for users to choose from. They include marketing tools, site features, communication, eCommerce and social media. There’s even a Multilanguage app, which adds an icon to your site that allows users to switch languages.

-iOS and Android apps: Weebly’s mobile app is the most highly-rated website building app, both on Apple’s App store and on Google Play. And it’s the only one of its kind among website builders - no one else offers the possibility to edit from different kinds of mobile devices. You can download the Weebly app on iPhone, Android, tablets and Apple Watches, and design websites from your mobile devices.

-Email Marketing: Weebly is expanding from websites into Ecommerce and email marketing. And it’s going pretty well - their email marketing software, Promote, covers lead capture, marketing automation, newsletters and more, and integrates very well with Weebly sites.

Weebly doesn’t come close to the massive template gallery of builders like Wix, but the 40+ that they do have are sleek, very well-designed and fully adaptive across mobile devices and tablets. They aren’t categorized into industries, but rather divided into seven basic template groups: Online Store, Business, Portfolio, Personal, Event, Blog, and Other. 

Weebly leaves something to be desired in terms of theme customization. The templates are difficult to change (apart from the fonts used) - you won’t be able to alter its colors (beyond the theme’s color palette) or make modifications to the structure, which can be a bit frustrating for users who want to control all of their sites’ details. However, you will be able to change the theme without having to start from scratch, a feature that competitors don’t have (talking to you, Wix).

Overall

Solid is the word that best defines Weebly. This is a website builder that manages to do basically everything it sets out to. Easy to use, affordable, highly functional and practical, with intuitive tools and a great app selection, Weebly is not a super stand-out in terms of any unique features or templates, but it is certainly reliable, and there’s a lot to be said for reliability.