Weebly Reviews

Weebly – Website Builder

Weebly is one of the big names in website-building software. As we found out in the Weebly review, the platform still scores top marks for usability, and the free version is amazing. However, while there is a lot to love about Weebly, there are also some problems with the platform as it transitions to a division of Square (which acquired the site in 2018).

Read on to find out what the Weebly website builder gets right and some of our problems with the service. Then, as a quick spoiler, we can say it is still an excellent choice for personal and small business users, but organizations requiring more power are better off looking elsewhere.

About Weebly

Weebly is a major provider in the website building space, with over 50 million sites built using the platform. As one of the largest site development solutions, Weebly website builder delivers plenty of tools for creating a site where you can put a personal touch. Whether using templates or taking a more customized approach, Weebly delivers a robust set of tools.

Traditionally, Weebly was known for focusing on developing its platform with interesting features. However, in recent years, and since the service was acquired by eCommerce giant Square in 2018, that focus has changed. Since then, new features have been few and far between, with some tools starting to look archaic next to rivals such as Wix and Squarespace.

There is still plenty of power in Weebly website creation, especially for small or medium business owners or even personal users. However, unless the increasing feature gap is addressed soon, the platform risks becoming out of touch with modern website building. The unclear development makes this Weebly review hard to define because we like the product but are concerned about its longevity.

Don’t let our concerns put you off because there is much to like about Weebly, including excellent portfolio options, a generous free option, and a very user-friendly experience.

What is Weebly Used For?

Weebly is one of the leading website-building solutions and has been one of the most popular for years. But, as the demands of site creation are constantly changing, can the Weebly website keep up with evolving customer demands? So we decided to find out in this Weebly review, highlighting the best and worst of the platform.

If you want to build an efficient online presence, you will need a website. While creating your own site from scratch can be fun, it requires a specific set of skills (coding, design know-how, domain management) to do it effectively. Instead of bogging yourself down, a website-building tool is the best way to create your site.

Weebly web host is one of the most popular website builders available while remaining among the best. We think it is best for small to medium organizations, and personal users will also like Weebly. Please create a free website with an easy-to-use platform, allowing businesses to streamline their website building without consuming too much time or resources.

If you are part of a larger organization, we think you would be better off choosing Wix or Squarespace. Moreover, it seems to lack the same level of customization as those rival platforms, with larger corporations likely to want more control.

Weebly for Education

Weebly website builder has pros and cons for teachers and educators, making it a solid if unspectacular addition. Firstly, we want to praise the free version of Weebly again, which allows teachers to create up to 40 accounts for their students. If your school is willing to pay, you can expand that number.

However, we think Weebly education thrives more as an individual tool that promotes project learning. Teachers can challenge students to create their own Weebly free website with written work, interactive content, media, and presentations. Whether individually or in groups, Weebly’s slick templates and drag-and-drop UI make it an ideal tool for learners.

One slight drawback is Weebly template designs are clearly focused on e-commerce rather than education. However, this highlights the increasingly deep integration the platform has with the parent company Square.

Weebly Portfolio

Creating an online portfolio is one of the areas where Weebly comes alive. In many cases, a portfolio is used by an individual user to sell themselves. However, you can leverage Weebly to create a portfolio highlighting your unique work. Weebly portfolio sites provide more flexibility and detail than a LinkedIn page while also offering robust customization options.

Is Weebly Good for Portfolio?

Thanks to its rich template catalog, ease of use, and focus on “anyone can build a portfolio,” Weebly is an excellent choice for your portfolio. Drag and drop elements into place and put your own distinctive touch on your site. In addition, you can give your portfolio a lot of power and appeal with tools such as Parallax and animation effects, video backgrounds, and custom fonts.

How to Create a Portfolio on Weebly

Creating a Weebly portfolio is easy. You can select a site template when you sign up for a Weebly account. As you aim for an online presence that sells you and your work, we suggest choosing one of the portfolio templates. Building the site is simple, thanks to the excellent UI that lets you easily drag and drop design choices, text, and media into the template.

Whether you create a Weebly teaching portfolio, a writing portfolio, or a design portfolio, we recommend checking out Weebly Portfolio examples to get some inspiration.

How to Use Weebly

You will be pleased to know the focus on ease of use extends to the general user experience. For example, the Weebly login process is simple and efficient, allowing you to access the website builder with minimum fuss. As mentioned, Weebly emphasizes allowing anyone to build a website, no matter their skill level.

Thanks to the intuitive drag-and-drop editor, building sites is easy even if you have never done it before. Getting to grips with the basics takes just a few minutes, allowing you to focus on understanding more complex tools, such as apps and website features across SEO and eCommerce. Think of Weebly as a website builder that aims to save you time and money.

That is not to say you cannot customize and tweak beyond the templates and UI editor. In fact, Weebly hosts a built-in code editor if you want to develop a truly unique online experience. However, there is no doubt other services do the customization part of website design better. For example, Wix gives you much more flexibility in terms of working beyond templates.

Weebly Detailed Features

Weebly boasts a strong suite of features that allow you to build websites quickly. As you might expect, Weebly features to focus on making site creation as seamless as possible while also providing tools to manage your website properly. As a result, there is a lot to look at, from the drag-and-drop website builder to Weebly eCommerce features.

We will cover some of the main tools below in this Weebly review, including some pro features for power users.

We have already discussed Weebly’s website builder, which includes a handy drag-and-drop UI for quick site-building. Ease of use is core to the Weebly experience, including an editor that is easy to master in minutes. You can find a bar on the left side of the page that holds elements that you drag and drop into your site template.

You can also switch this bar depending on your required function: Theme, Pages, Apps, Store, Build, and Settings. Elements you can drop into the site editor window include typical site features like images, text boxes, spacers, images, video, and maps. It is worth noting some of these elements are only available to customers on paid plans.

While drag and drop are undoubtedly amazing, it does have some limitations. For example, Weebly does not let you drop elements wherever you want onto the site editor. Instead, specific elements have certain areas in a template where they fit. This means customization is relatively restricted on Weebly.

You can manage your site on Weebly from the sidebar via the “Pages” menu option if your site has multiple pages. Importantly, you can manage pages while keeping the preview page open. Tools available for managing pages include deciding what type of page you want to create (external, store, blog, or standard). In addition, you can click elements on the site to head to the area you want to see, a UI feature that is much better than similar tools on Wix and Squarespace.

Weebly also has one glaring usability omission that we cannot ignore. There is no global Undo function on the site editor. Essentially this means while you can undo a single element, such as a text error, you cannot delete wider mistakes in batches.

While you can add images to your site on Weebly, it is an exercise in frustration. That’s because there is no native media database. In addition, Weebly will not store your images, so if you want to re-use a photo, you must re-upload it. This seems to contradict the whole concept of a platform that thrives on saving users time.

Once you have an image on Weebly, the platform provides a fine photo editor. You can toggle settings such as color saturation and brightness and apply filters like on Instagram. Other image editing abilities include text inclusion, focus effects, and more.

Once a Weebly site is up and running, you will want to add content frequently. Whether you are blogging or simply publishing site content focused on your business, Weebly makes it easy. Like WordPress, the service offers a “New Post” button at the bottom of all pages on a Blog site.

Despite its rich catalog of templates, Weebly strangely does not offer specific blog designs. This means building a blog-like website involves dragging and dropping all elements and essentially building from scratch. We like the drag-and-drop system on Weebly, but not enough that we want to build whole sites with it.

If you are trying to make money from your site, Weebly provides one of the best eCommerce options. You can chalk up Weebly’s prowess in this area to its affiliation with the parent company and eCommerce juggernaut Square. By tapping into Store Mode on Weebly, you can create eCommerce-focused sites.

Elements include sale prices, invoices, shopping carts, coupons, and digital downloads. This is an improvement on rivals like Wix, which only allow digital goods to be sold through third parties. Also available on Weebly is the direct integration of AdSense ads on your website. Finally, we like the ability to leverage the newsletter email feature to directly access customers.

Understanding your site’s performance is one of the key principles of online success. Weebly provides a good selection of analytics and activity stats, even some for free version users (Rivals like Wix, Virb, and Squarespace do not offer this for free). It is also unique because it allows you to host your site away from the platform.

You can download your site as a ZIP file and send it to other web hosting services. Although you may lose some features, such as storefronts, it is still a tool that other website builders do not offer.

Weebly Detailed Integrations

Weebly scores well in terms of connections with other applications for third parties. In fact, with over 300 widgets available in the App Center, you can add a lot of power to your site through integrations. Some of these add-ins are paid, while others are free, depending on the third-party service you tap into.

Think of this as a similar functionality to WordPress plug-ins, and like on WordPress, the quality of the apps varies. Still, with over 300 available, you will almost certainly find some that will help to improve your website. In addition, while other services offer more widgets, you never feel like you miss out on a must-have integration when using the software. In other words, the widgets on offer cover all bases.

Weebly Review Conclusions

At the end of this Weebly review, we can conclude that Weebly does a lot of things right but also a few things wrong. It seems to be stuck between being the dedicated website builder it once was and being an eCommerce website creator for Square, its parent company. Nonetheless, the Weebly website builder is an easy-to-use tool and is ideal for small businesses, educators, and individuals.

However, if you are looking for an enterprise-grade solution, Weebly might not be the best choice as it falls short of some important features when compared to its rivals such as Wix and Squarespace. Nevertheless, these missing features are not necessarily dealbreakers, and the best-in-class free Weebly version is definitely worth considering. But if you require complete website-building software, then it might not be the best option for you.