Weebly

Even though Weebly brands itself technically as a web host, it is more than that. It joins the ranks with top builders like Wix when it comes to offering rapid-build abilities for websites. The amount of extended functionality that you can build into Weebly websites are ideal for eCommerce. 

Site builders offer several tools for the uninitiated site builders. These serve as building blocks to help them in assembling a website. What makes Weebly somehow more special is that even though it has such great features, anyone who needs a website can use it and publish the website for free. All you need are just some caveats. 

It is an increasingly common means of building a website and hence continues to attract so many website builders. Weebly started in 2007 and grew to host 50 million sites in 2018 before Square, which is a payment processing company owned it. This shows that Weebly is a highly competitive platform that is growing to remain among the best website builders in the market. 

What is Weebly?

Weebly is an all-inclusive website building solution. It provides everything that will help you start and grow your Weebly website. It differs from platforms that allow you to purchase, install, and even manage the pieces of your website separately. It is like trading off some level of control for convenience. 

When you use Weebly, it is like to lease and customize an apartment in a pleasant development instead of purchasing and owning your own house. You will have control of everything living wisely like cleaning, and decoration. However, you leave the infrastructure, security, plumbing, and construction to the owner of the property. It is a critical point because there is always a direct tradeoff between control and convenience. 

All the design and functionality that come with Weebly work together seamlessly as a platform. It is what makes the brand to have a drag and drop design, layout, and content. What makes Weebly among the best website builders is that it competes directly with all-inclusive platforms like WordPress.com, Wix, and Squarespace. 

All WordPress builders compete with WordPress.com. The reason is that WordPress gives you free software to build a Weebly website that you comfortably own and control. If this makes sense to you, let us now move forward to our Weebly review.

Weebly has some of the Best Features that a website builder can possess. These include: 

1. Templates to Begin With 

Even though Weebly has a ton of templates that you can select from, it cuts it down to a more manageable 35 for some reason. The issue of the number of templates may keep you a little bit on the fence. On one hand, reducing the number seems to be cutting down on the cost to some extent. The reason could be pruning out the old templates that do not fit perfectly for mobile responsive design. 

Overall, the templates that Weebly offers grants you a spectrum that is broad enough to launch the design of their website without turning you into a mindless zombie that hopes for a one size fit all solutions.  

2. Easy to Use and Simple Editor

After choosing the template, the next thing is the drag and drop editor. The drag and drop builder is figurative in some rapid builders. However, when it comes to Weebly, it is a drag and drops editor literally. 

All that you do is dragging the objects from the toolbar on the left side of the screen and then dropping them in the page area at the desired location to build the pages that you want. You can add so many elements from plain text boxes to complex product listing blocks. 

From the time you hit the editor, you are ready to go right. There are no ridiculous loading times, no need for additional downloads, and no extra steps are required. If you wish to build a basic website, all things are right there from the onset. 

Given the ease of use and simplicity of the layout, you can comfortably use the editor to build a regular website. It explains why there are so many people who use Weebly eCommerce. It is a great choice for people who are beginning on web building.

If you are an advanced user, you can use the customized code to further customize things using CSS files and HTML. It implies that even developers can use Weebly as it gives them greater control over the website. 

The other additional feature here is SEO integration. Weebly has non-expensive inbuilt SEO features that support the entry of footer and header code, redirects, and Search Engine Indexing control. It is by far much better than what you have seen in several cases. 

Weebly also allows contributors and this is an incredible thing in any web builder. You can invite people to collaborate with you on the website from the settings page. It is a good thing if you want the input of a designer, writer, or people who are specialized in another field. 

3. Version 5.0 Weebly Mobile App

The Mobile App of Weebly is currently at version 5.0. Apart from Weebly, I have not seen this feature in another builder. Therefore, don’t allow the term ‘mobile’ to fool you. When you come to the Weebly Mobile App, it is exactly what the terminology means. Weebly has an application that works on mobile devices and you can edit your website from there. 

The world continues to shift towards mobile and mobile users exceed desktop users globally. Therefore, it is crucial to shift the development experience to also the mobile world. You will get the Weebly Mobile App on the two popular platforms (Android and iOS). Therefore, you are free to use it on your iPad, iPhone, and Android tablet. You can check data like site statistics from the mobile device and also edit your website. 

Weebly gives users a touchscreen drag-and-drop editor that works both with the basics and allows you to manage complex backend tasks like payment acceptance, inventory check, fulfillment, and order processing. 

You can choose to work offline and synch all the changes that you make when you connect back to the internet. This App is truly powerful and further extents the abilities of Weebly. 

In addition to building your Weebly website, the Weebly Mobile App will also allow you to track mobile data. You can review the statistics of your website to see how it is doing at any point in time. It also helps you to leverage insights. The tab allows you to get detailed information on business intelligence issues like the origin of your traffic and the products that sell best. 

If you manage more than one website, you will benefit from the site overviews courtesy of the Weebly Mobile App. It means that you will have a birds’ eye view for all of them using the Websites Tab. The app can also help you to add more sights and buy new domains to help you grow your network. 

The fact that Weebly has all these features in a single app makes it stand out from the competition. The app also works so well for smaller eCommerce which is a key focus for Weebly. The app is ideal for small-scale entrepreneurs who work on the go most of the time. 

4. Weebly App Centre 

You should not confuse this with the Weebly Mobile Application. The App center provides you with add-on options for increasing the abilities of your website. It is a feature that all site builders should have because it keeps the extended functionalities and core business separate. 

In this case, users who just require basic functionalities will not get an interface that is bogged down with so many extras that they may never use.  Similarly, users who want extra features may have a selection of them to meet their needs. 

The Weebly App Centre has five main app categories that it covers. These include Site Tools or Weebly Templates like Social, Marketing, Communication, and eCommerce. They either come in a mixture of free to try, free or premium and hence all the extended features will cost you money. 

Prices greatly vary hence you have to be keen if you would like to use any of them. The cost exclusively depends on the app that you choose. One of the app. that will help you significantly is the promo bar. The tool fixes a customizable and responsive promo bar on the website that you can use in highlighting certain features or sales products. You can also offer discount codes or other information that you would like to bring to attention.

The second important tool is MarketGoo. It an app that you will have to install when using the SEO analysis feature of Weebly. It can help in doing a check on your website and help you know what you require to fix or optimize your SEO. This is a thing that you sorely require for all eCommerce sites.

Even though there are so many apps from third parties, Weebly has also built some for itself. Some of them, like the Code Block app, are so interesting. The app enables you to show formatted code to users and is good if you are running a programming tutorial website. There are also some apps that allow you to build more advanced features for your websites like tabs and tablets.

Weebly has a free domain for all the plans including the free one. The paid plans will get you a real domain but you can host the free plans on the subdomains of Weebly unless you choose to get your own.

There is also a free SEO report from Weebly. If you choose to install the MarketGoo App, you may get a free SEO analysis report if you publish it on your website. It can assist new users to tweak their SEO settings to get better optimization.

When using Weebly as a web builder, you will discover that it is easy to upgrade. All the Weebly plans are scalable and hence if you purchase into a plan and discover that you need a higher version, you can scale it up at any moment. It is highly convenient and enables you to test the system from any level that you are comfortable with. 

5. Moving Away from Weebly is Possible 

Several reasons can motivate you to move away from one service provider to another. These could be better deals elsewhere, increasing prices, being unable to acclimatize to the platform, and changing to a new platform such as WordPress.  

It is always a good thing to have an option regardless of the reason. It’s like Wix locks its users down and needs them to ‘do or die’ with the platform. Weebly is a more realistic alternative as it allows users to export their websites and has a tutorial of teaching you how to do so. Most website builders will lock you down in the ecosystem and will not allow you to move. The only option that you have is deleting your website and starting over again. There is no need to do so if you are happy with Weebly but you are free to do so if you so wish.

In the BitCatcha speed test, Weebly registers a solid A rating. This is not expected as its intention is to host eCommerce websites. It has a fantastic response rate in the United States but tends to drag if you are far away from this region. 

This is fairly normal owing to the fact that the servers of Weebly are more likely based in the USA. The response in Asia as shown by the results from Japan was a bit disturbing. 

Weebly shows an excellent TTFB (Time to First Byte) in the Web Page Test results. Some weaknesses are revealed in content caching and image compression that could have contributed to a poor response from the servers. Overall, Weebly tends to have pretty amazing results.

One thing you need to understand is that customer support will cost you money. However, Weebly tends to take this element a little further than is required. The help or support level that you get depends on the plan that you purchase it too. Naturally, it tends to have the basic stuff that is available for everyone. It comprises of FAX, a knowledge base, and some video tutorials.

Weebly customer support also has other support channels like email, phone, and live chat. You won’t get access to Weebly’s priority support or Weebly phone number unless you are anything apart from their starter plan or free plan. 

While Weebly help has a community forum, the area does not appear to be very active. There are so many topics but minimal interaction. However, you can still depend on the community for some level of support. Overall, Weebly customer service is something that you can rely upon whenever you are in need.