08/22/2022

Every Reason Weebly Is The Website Builder For You

Insights

11 min remaining

Weebly has one of the most affordable website builders. It’s a simple choice if your business uses Square products. Weebly integrates seamlessly with Square’s point of sale (POS) system. It’s a great choice for small business owners who are just starting in web hosting or design services in Miami.

Compare Weebly with the Best Website Builders

Weebly, like many other options on our top website builders lists, lets you create an online website or store for free. Their free plan offers a wide range of features and is not limited to the basic ones. Weebly is also one of the most user-friendly platforms.

It is possible to build an entire store without having to use complex configurations, even for small ecommerce websites.

If you are looking for a professional website, you will need to upgrade to a paid subscription. You can upgrade to Weebly for a fraction of the cost of other website builders.

Weebly: The Good and the Bad

The Good

Weebly offers a generous free plan. You’ll receive a one-click SSL certificate, 500MB storage, free SEO tools, lead capture forms, and 24/7 live chat or email support. Weebly offers 24/7 support. This is unlike most website builders. It’s great that the support is offered to complete the free trial, especially for those who have never created a website.

Weebly’s user-friendliness is unmatched. They’ll walk you through the process to get your site online. The platform allows you to easily add or remove content from any location you choose without having to touch a single line of code (unless that’s what you prefer–custom HTML/CSS or Javascript are available). Intelligent technology means that as you move one widget around, other objects will follow suit. You can also see the published design in real-time as you move.

Site speed and security: Weebly offers free hosting that is faster than other site builders. Your website will be accessible and working well no matter what plan you choose, so you can rest assured that it will work as intended.

Mobile app: Although the Weebly app by Square doesn’t have as many functions as it does on the desktop, that’s not the point. Weebly’s mobile application allows you to make quick changes while on the move, which is what it excels at with its intuitive interface. It’s easy to interact with visitors and keep in touch without having to be at your desk. If you enjoy tracking performance and want instant access to site statistics, you’ll love the mobile app.

These tools are useful for your site’s marketing. Weebly provides email marketing (with customizable templates to create different types of emails), as well as SEO tools that automatically optimize your site. This also allows for easy integration with other SEO tools and tracking tools.

Square integration: Square acquired Weebly in 2018. Square integration: In 2018, Weebly was acquired by Square. This ensures that your customers have a seamless and secure shopping experience. Square’s trusted POS system is the best way to accept credit card payments. This is why Weebly has one of the most attractive perks for ecommerce business owners. Weebly currently offers a special deal where you can get free processing for your first $500 in online payments if you create Square.

The Bad

Weebly’s design limitations: Weebly’s biggest complaint is the presence of locked design features in pre-built templates or widgets. Although Weebly’s themes make it easy to create a website, some templates and widgets can be difficult to customize. There are only 50 themes available, which is a lot compared to Wix’s more than 700 templates.

Customer service: Weebly used to be known for its excellent customer service. However, it has become more difficult to get in touch with a person since the platform has grown. While 24/7 support is great, it can be slow to get answers. You might need to wait for days for a reply, especially if you depend on the community. It’s not ideal if you have an urgent problem.

Weebly branding Your users won’t remember the default domain because it is too long. This is why the free plan is not suitable for ongoing projects or websites. After you have started to get traffic, we recommend that you upgrade to a paid plan on Weebly.

Language support: Weebly currently supports English and about a dozen other languages. However, it is difficult to create a multilingual website without using third-party apps. Weebly doesn’t fully support non-English characters like Chinese, Russian, or Arabic.

Reporting is the only feature not available on the free plan. If you want to integrate Google Analytics, you will need to upgrade to view statistics on visitor behavior and traffic.

Weebly Pricing and Other Options

You have two choices when you create an account on Weebly: a personal website or a business website using Square Online. The site can be free with the minimum features required to create a complete website.

Free Plan ($0 per Month)

Although other site builders offer free trials and free plans, Weebly’s forever free plan is a great way to see what this site builder can do.

  • SSL Security Free
  • 500 MB Storage
  • Add third-party embed code
  • SEO
  • Forms for lead capture
  • Instagram feed
  • Participate in the community forum
  • Chat and email support
  • Ecommerce essentials include shopping carts, item badges, and product categories. Inventory management is also important.
  • Unlimited products

We think that the Free Plan is best for testing Weebly before you invest in more advanced features. It can be used by designers for creating mockups or personal projects. You can use the free plan for many purposes. However, you won’t be able to keep your site up forever.

There are four pricing options available on Weebly if you wish to upgrade from the free plan. These include Personal, Professional Performance, Premium, and Premium.

Personal Plan (from $9 per month to $72 annually or $72 monthly)

  • All features included in the Free Plan, plus:
  • Connect a custom domain
  • Pop-up notifications
  • Sell digital products
  • Shipping calculator and shipping labels

The Personal plan is ideal for creating a portfolio site, blog, or resume. This plan allows you to publish your site to a customized domain. It is therefore the best option for professional-looking sites. If you have bigger plans or wish to completely remove ads, you can upgrade.

Professional Plan ($16 per month or $144 annually)

  • All features of the Personal plan, plus:
  • Unlimited storage
  • Advanced site statistics
  • No cost domain
  • Square ads removed
  • Pages password-protected
  • Video backgrounds
  • HD video & audio
  • Register as a member and receive 100 points
  • Telephone support

For small businesses and membership websites, the Professional plan is ideal. You can now connect to a custom domain and add customization. Your visitors can sign up to gain access to exclusive content. You can also use options to approve or manually review all members, group them, and manage what pages they have access to.

Performance Plan (29 per month or $312 annually)

  • All features of the Professional plan, plus:
  • Marketing insights for ecommerce
  • Unlimited members
  • Priority support
  • PayPal payments accepted
  • Review of item
  • Recovery of abandoned carts

The Performance plan is ideal for dedicated ecommerce websites and allows you to accept PayPal payments. You can now add features to drive business growth. Customers can review your products and send them abandoned cart emails.

Premium Plan (79 per month or $864 annually)

  • All Performance plans include the following:
  • Lower processing rate
  • Shipping in real-time

There will be a sharp jump in price between Performance and Premium. This is due to two reasons. Premium is the only plan that offers a real-time shipping rate calculator as well as a lower processing fee. It’s worth upgrading if you process enough transactions to justify the monthly price. This is a very small number of Weebly users. You won’t be able to see the upgrade option until you create an account.

Let’s look at these plans in greater detail.

Weebly Site Features

This is a common feature of most website builders.

Standard SSL security is free, so it’s nothing to brag about. Some website builders restrict your site to a limited number of pages, but Weebly doesn’t.

Weebly’s paid plans have the main draw, with the custom domain and more advanced backend administration. However, the free plan includes everything you need to set up the front end.

Even if you are a complete beginner, it shouldn’t be difficult to build the entire site. Weebly offers the possibility to hire a designer for your site, starting at $199

Weebly Ecommerce

This is where Weebly shines. Website builders often expect ecommerce functionality to be expensive. However, you can get almost all of Weebly’s ecommerce features for free. This includes the ability to add unlimited products to your website store.

This free plan allows you to set up your storefront exactly as you wish it to be before the grand opening.

The features include an integrated shopping cart, secure checkout, and inventory tracking. Customers can also get badges showing discounted prices or when a product has been sold out.

The Performance plan gives you more flexibility: PayPal is available, customer reviews are allowed, and abandoned cart emails can be sent.

The Performance plan, along with advanced marketing insights (more below), is the best way to go for dedicated websites that want to drive revenue-driving customer behavior.

The premium features (not shown here) include the ability to calculate shipping rates based on weight, destination, and carrier. There are also lower transaction fees which can be a deal-breaker for some businesses. All paid plans save Premium, which charges 2.9% + 30c per transaction, keeping 2.9% + 30% of each transaction. If you process many transactions, it’s worth upgrading.

You might consider other website builders at this point, as Weebly’s eCommerce capabilities aren’t quite as robust or configurable as Shopify’s. We recommend Weebly to create simpler online shops.

Weebly Marketing

The free plan includes SEO, lead capture forms, and social media widgets.

The Instagram Feed is one example of a social widget. It’s free and highly rated. This responsive plugin lets you easily add Instagram photos directly to your website.

These plans can be used for both personal and professional purposes. All the features of the plan are included for free, as well as pop-up notifications. This is great for promoting email sign-ups and generating more business via promotions.

The Premium and Performance plans offer all of the above, plus advanced ecommerce analytics via a dashboard. This includes real-time statistics on website traffic, top pages and products, email marketing performance, and SEO reports. You can also install apps such as Google Analytics to get more detailed reporting.

Weebly Support

All plans include chat and email support. Professional and Performance have phone support. The Premium plan offers priority support.

It is interesting to note that the Premium plan has no other distinguishing features than lower processing fees. It makes sense, however, that transactions with higher volumes are more likely than others to need urgent and complex support.

How Weebly ranks

Weebly is one of the most popular drag-and-drop, no-code website builders available today. It is the best free website builder and online store builder because it offers the most functionality for a low-cost plan.

Here is a brief overview of our complete ranking:

  1. Wix is the best website builder for most users
  2. Squarespace is the best website builder for creatives
  3. Zyro is the best for online shops with simple products
  4. Web.com is the fastest way to create a new website
  5. Shopify Best ecommerce website builder
  6. WordPress is Best for bloggers and content writers
  7. Weebly is the best free website builder

Summary

We recommend Weebly if you are building your first website or looking to quickly get a website up and running without professional assistance. This is a great option for a simple website that works right out of the box. It takes only minutes to sign up and you can start building your website in no time.

About the author

Kobe Digital is a unified team of performance marketing, design, and video production experts. Our mastery of these disciplines is what makes us effective. Our ability to integrate them seamlessly is what makes us unique.