Weebly Full Review: When to Use It?
With over 50 million customers, Weebly is doing something right. The website builder has a free plan with no time limit and many features, you can even sell some products, and it includes an SSL certificate to encrypt any information.
Paid plans include other features and more e-commerce tools for you to create a better store. Want to know more?
Pros
Cons
Quick Stats
Nowadays, every business should consider having a website, especially if you’re selling products online. All you need is a website builder with top-notch security. Lucky for you, Weebly has got you covered. Weebly is an easy-to-use drag-and-drop website builder. With over 50 million websites, you can definitely rely on it.
Not sure?
You can try their free plan and decide for yourself.
Who is Weebly For?
The question remains, is it the right one for you? With all the tools and the variety of apps in their store, you can create a perfect website and have it up and running in no time, but it all depends on what kind of website you’re creating, making it a better fit for some users than others.
Weebly is usually recommended for small businesses and personal websites. Let’s dig deeper and find out if it’s the website builder for you:
- Businesses: Weebly’s target audience. Weebly includes many features to help companies to grow and expand. They include:
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO) tools
- Business-specific themes
- E-commerce tools
- Marketing tools
- $100 Google Ads Credit (for Pro and Business plans)
- E-Commerce: Many features can help businesses create a small online store. These include SEO and marketing tools that are important for your ranking.
There’s an e-commerce dashboard where you can select a theme and customize it, add products, manage payments, and everything you need to have in your store. Still, it’s a bit limited if you want to customize it.
The best part of Weebly is that you can sell products online using their free plan if you’re in the United States. Worth a try! The only drawback is that you need to accept payments using Square.
- Personal Website: You can create a simple online portfolio without any trouble using Weebly. Some features that can help in creating a personal website include:
- Built-in image editor
- Parallax and reveal animation effects
- Custom fonts
- Video backgrounds
- Newsletters
- Social media marketing
- Blogs: If you’re looking to create a blog, Weebly includes some of the best features, which are:
- Blogging themes
- RSS and social sharing features automatically built-in
- Media integration
- Advanced comment management
- Category, tag, and sidebar customization
- SEO tools
Overall, if you’re looking to create a small business website or e-commerce store, you’re on the right page. With the various tools available, you’ll be able to grow and easily create your website.
Weebly’s Plans
The best part of using Weebly is that it includes a free plan. Of course, with limited features but without a time limit. You can even use it to sell your products online if you’re in the United States. So, why not give it a try and see if it’s your choice?
There are three paid website plans, the first one Connect is very similar to the free version, but you can connect your custom domain. Honestly, it doesn’t offer value for money. Therefore, it’s better to consider the Pro or Business plan; they have unlimited storage, free domain, and remove adverts. The Business plan has more e-commerce tools like shipping.
Let’s take a look at Weebly’s website building plans:
| Free | Connect | Pro | Business | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Storage | 500 MB | 500 MB | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Bandwidth | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | |
| Free SSL | Included | Included | Included | Included |
| Domains | N/A | N/A | Free Domain for the first year | Free Domain for the first year |
| Ad-Free | N/A | N/A | Yes | Yes |
| Customer Service | Customer Forum, Chat & Email | Customer Forum, Chat & Email | Customer Forum, Chat, Email & Phone | Customer Forum, Chat, Email & Phone |
| Price per month (Annually) | $0 | $5 | $12 | $25 |
There’s a one-month money-back guarantee on all their plans.
Pricing and Payment Methods
The prices vary according to the plan you choose. You can upgrade for more advanced features depending on the amount of traffic that you expect on your website and what you're going to use it for. Whether it is for blogging, businesses, or online stores, you will find a plan that meets your needs.
Prices start at $5 and go up to $25.
What will you get with all plans? Let's find out:
- A free SSL certificate
- 500 MB storage
- SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
- Contact form
- Chat and email support
- Weebly branding domain
While the prices displayed are the prices per month. However, they are billed annually. People have the choice to pay monthly, but prices will be higher than those for annual plans.
There are three different plans for creating an online store. Pro, Business, or Business Plus. Prices range between $12 and $38 per month if you’re paying annually. All the plans include $100 Google Ads credit; they’re free of adverts and have more e-commerce options.
Weebly provides many payment options, including:
- PayPal
- Mastercard
- American Express
- Discover
Ease of use
The perk of using Weebly is that anyone can use it to create a website. There’s no need to know any coding, but you might need some help if you get confused. Still, Weebly is a “What you see is what you’ll get” website.
Using the drag-and-drop feature, you can add any element you need (texts, boxes, photos, etc.) If you want to edit a text, you press on it and start typing, kind of like creating a PowerPoint presentation. Unfortunately, you can’t customize pages the way you want.
Customer Service
If you want to contact an agent, you can refer to the customer forum, chat, or email them. Their live chat is available Monday to Friday from 6 am till 6 pm PST and Saturday and Sunday from 8 am till 5 pm PST. If you’re using the Pro or Business plan, there’s a phone call option available from 6 am till 5 pm PST.
You can also contact them on social media, whether on Facebook or Twitter. If you prefer to do things by yourself, you can refer to their knowledge base which is full of articles and can guide you along the way.
Website Design
Weebly explains how to create your website step by step. Let's start with creating an account, then you will need to choose a template from 50 designs. Now, it is time to add your content using Weebly's drag and drop editor. You can watch the real-time changes and customize as you wish using text, photos, maps, and other elements
Did we forget to tell you how customizable Weebly can be? Weebly allows you to customize every single part of your website. From the heading to the colors, slideshows, high-quality videos, and logo to your brand.
Share ideas and creativity with other users via Weebly Community, where you can find all you need to know about and get answers to every single question you have in mind.
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Security Tools
Let’s start by looking at security, which is crucial if you’re creating an online store. Weebly provides customers with the essential security tools that ensure a safe and secure website, including DDoS protection, Password manager, and SSL certificate. Let's see why every one of these features is important.
SSL certificate
The good news is Weebly has an SSL certificate with every plan, even the free version.
I know their free plan is the best compared to other web builders. SSL certificates help encrypt data on your websites to make it safer for online transactions, passwords, or anything else.
DDoS protection
To ensure their servers are always working, Weebly has DDoS protection to protect the devices from any attack. Hence, you don't have to worry about malicious attacks and can sleep knowing your website is safe. If you don't know what a DDoS attack is, let's explain it a little bit further. This kind of attack overwhelms your connection with a fluid of traffic, which extremely slows it down.
Password Manager
A password manager saves you the headache of storing your passwords; it can store and manage your online credentials. Storing sensitive information might sound scary, but let me tell you that a password manager saves your passwords encrypted in a secured database, and in some cases this database is protected with a master password, making it impossible to reach.
Weebly's Features
Besides its user-friendly interface, Weebly is known for its wide range of features available to help you create your website.
What's Included in Weebly's Plans?
There’s no need to worry about finding a web host; Weebly has got you covered with your Weebly plan.
Moreover, Weebly has an app store full of 1-click installation apps; some are free; others are paid. Every essential thing you need is included in the Weebly editor, but you can search for more advanced tools to download and create your website. The apps are divided into the following categories:
- E-Commerce
- Communications
- Marketing
- Social
- Site tools and features
This makes it easier to find the applications you need.
If we take a more in-depth look at Weebly’s e-commerce features. Weebly has focused on enhancing its e-commerce features. Some of the e-commerce tools found on Weebly include:
- Shopping Cart
- Quick Shop
- In-store pickup
- Inventory management
- Reviews
- Different payment options
One of the best marketing tools used is email marketing. To make it easy and effective for Weebly users, email is powered by Weebly Promote, a Square product. Weebly Promote syncs with your website, and you can easily customize it using the drag-and-drop editor, making it easier to contact customers and gives you an overview of how many people clicked or opened your emails.
If using email marketing is essential for your website. Weebly Promote is worth trying for free and then upgrading to one of their three paid plans that range between $8-$75/month.
Weebly’s SEO
Search Engine Optimization tools are essential to help with your ranking. No one wants their website to be on the second page of their search engine. Plus, improving your SEO means more traffic. Weebly comes with a selection of SEO tools as follows:
- A sitemap
- SEO-friendly HTML formatting
- Meta titles and descriptions
- Customize URLs
- Responsive design
- Image optimization
If you don’t know what to do, there’s an Ultimate SEO Guide to help you optimize your website.
You can monitor how well your site is doing by installing Google Analytics. You can also use Weebly’s own analytics tool, Insights, to monitor and understand your customers’ preferences.
Social Media Integration
Of course, to succeed, you need to market your website. You can integrate different social media applications like Instagram, Facebook Messenger or run Google Ads campaigns to your website. Weebly allows all of this to hit the success that you aim for.
Conclusion
Overall, if you want to use Weebly for your small business which aims to expand, or for a small online store, then you’re on the right page. They have 50 million websites worldwide, which reflect how great it is. With a variety of apps, you will have your website up and running in no time. You can even boost your website ranking with the variety of Search Engine Optimization tools available. Try their free plan and decide if you’d like to upgrade it afterward.
You be the judge.