What is Weebly? - Create your free website

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Today I bring you a Weebly review in which we will see: what it is, how it works, the advantages, disadvantages, prices and the main features of the free plan and paid subscriptions.

Weebly is one of the oldest and fastest growing brands in website building. The best part is that you can start using Weebly for free. This platform is therefore worth the detour!

Let's start!

What is Weebly and how does it work?

Weebly is almost any type of website building platform that you can start using for free ...

It's such an easy-to-use program that within minutes you can have a website up and running and ready to receive traffic.

In the wide range of website building solutions, Weebly lives on the side all-in, providing everything you need to start and grow your website from scratch.

Weebly contrasts with the solutions where you buy, install and manage all the "parts" of your website separately ...

All of the interface and layout that comes with Weebly works seamlessly as a platform. This is what allows them to have layout, layout, and drag-and-drop content.

When it comes to competition, Weebly competes directly with the builders of all inclusive websites like Squarespace, Wix et WordPress.

Website builders as a group compete with options like WordPress.org (which provides the free software to build a website you own and even control options like writing actual HTML code to a text file. .

Key features of Weebly

You certainly won't run out of cool and useful features if you build a website with Weebly. The intuitive and easy-to-use build interface is almost sufficient on its own.

# 1: Wide variety of themes and templates

At Weebly, there is a wide variety of themes and templates available to create a site that delivers exactly what you and your users need.

You can easily include a variety of media and use options that will increase the overall value and usability of your site.

# 2: extensive image library

In Weebly, photos can be placed in a beautiful gallery, and you can create a slideshow to present them in an eye-catching and appealing way. Uploading your photos is fast and free in Weebly. And if you need photos but don't have them, Weebly has a huge library of free and paid professional images right at your fingertips.

If you want to add a video, they offer direct hosting and downloads on their site. You can also embed videos on your website from your youtube channel and various readers.

# 3: contact forms, surveys and information gathering

Another cool feature is the forms builder which allows you to create surveys and information gathering material ...

You create the forms you need from the list of form elements provided and customize everything to suit your needs. Weebly will store the information provided by your users on these forms and send it to you by email.

Another great option from Weebly is the ecommerce store builder.

# 4: functions for ecommerce

You can use features like shopping carts, secure payment, a mobile store, product search options, inventory management, and more.

Weebly's ecommerce offerings are some of the best available today.

Another great feature of Weebly that you can take advantage of is website statistics. You can see the data on which of your pages are the most viewed, how many people are visiting your site. It's even possible to see what searches led to your site and which websites referred viewers.

For more data, you can also easily add Google Analytics.

Advantages and disadvantages of Weebly

Overall, Weebly is a great platform with some really cool features (even in its free plan). However, there are some pros and cons of Weebly that are worth noting ...

Benefits of using Weebly

It is really easy to build a website of almost any type, and the best thing is that you can do it as a complete beginner with no budget.

Here are some of the benefits you get by joining Weebly:

General Weebly rate (free plan)

If you don't mind that your site is on a subdomain (i.e. http://yoursite.weebly.com), you can register and use Weebly 100% for free. A pretty good deal, especially for temporary sites.

Weebly's overall price is very competitive not only against other all-inclusive website builders, but also when purchasing your own hosting. Their starter plan starts at around $ 5 USD / month and doesn't have the typical limits of other similar programs.

Compared to other website builders, Weebly's pricing is very competitive. Price isn't everything, but I really like the way they structure everything.

Speed and safety

Weebly provides hosting for all websites created on its platform. It can be good or bad, but in Weebly's case, it's a pro.

At Weebly, they have fast loading speeds. Their websites are optimized for your own hosting. They ensure security against hackers and spam. Along with business plans, they even install and maintain SSL across their entire site.

There are always speed and security risks, but in general, it is a benefit for many website owners to have someone else take care of speed, security, backups, etc. The cost is included with both free and business accounts, making it a solid added value.

Attention to the client

For free accounts, Weebly offers an email support option and a well-designed knowledge base. For paid accounts (even for beginners), they offer email, chat, and phone.

With a complete platform, Weebly's customer service stands out and performs very well. This is a huge advantage with website building platforms in general, but especially with Weebly as they have phone support.

Home guided by Weebly

If you are starting a website and plan to sell a few things here and there, or if you have an offline presence (i.e. local stores) and want to sell online, Weebly offers a key solution in hand with tightly integrated e-commerce.

Site construction process

One of the advertised benefits of using an all-inclusive website builder is that you won't have to write any HTML or CSS code.

You can just drag and drop items. What you see in the builder is what you get on the website.

Weebly Editor

Weebly has an excellent and intuitive website builder. Its drag and drop feature works really well and includes a nice set of theme options.

Additionally, the Weebly builder provides access to a custom CSS module, if you want to modify the template exactly as you want, and you can even build your site on a mobile device.

Incorporation and education

Every time you start software, no matter how intuitive it is, there is a point where you think "ok, what am I doing now?" " This process is called integration, and it's also incredibly difficult to do well.

Weebly integration

The software maker doesn't want to be boring, but they also want to help you. I love how Weebly relies on solid integration and education, not only through the email flow, but also through little info buttons created with their platform.

Weebly integrated tutorial

Once you've signed up, it's easy to immediately find out how to use Weebly.

Built-in feature set + extensions

The great thing about building your own website on your own web host is that you don't have to rely on the functionality of a platform. If you are going the path of the platform, making sure it includes all the features you want and need is essential.

Weebly's feature set is robust. They have all the basics like blog functionality, contact forms etc. But also the necessary advanced features such as URL redirects and custom code placement at the page level.

Integration with Google Workspace

Weebly also includes features like forums, membership options, built-in advertising options, file downloads, and more. They'll also integrate the Google suite of apps into your Weebly dashboard, which is especially useful for a business owner using Google Workspace.

If you're going for all-inclusive website building, Weebly's feature set should provide everything you need for typical personal / business sites (although, as we'll see in the Cons section, you should be particularly aware of advanced options).

Additionally, Weebly has a lot of built-in features, but it doesn't have all of them. Platforms overcome this by allowing third-party apps (think App Store or Shopify's App Store).

With your own WordPress site, adding functionality is as easy as installing a plugin. With Weebly, you can navigate your growing (though still somewhat limited) app hub.

Weebly apps

At Weebly you can also choose from more than 200 applications to add to your website ...

These apps will help you optimize your pages and add additional advanced features that will make your work easier at the end of the day.

Disadvantages of Weebly

Now is the time to talk about some downsides of using a platform like Weebly versus using a CMS like WordPress, for example.

Content management system

A content management system is exactly what it sounds like. It is an interface that allows you to sort, filter, edit and publish different types of content on your site ...

Platforms like WordPress will give you much more control over your entire site than a platform like Weebly.

There is no way to add custom content types (except in an individual page). If you are planning a large site (like hundreds of pages), the content on Weebly would need a personal system to keep everything clean and easily accessible.

Advanced Marketing Tools

Since Weebly's site builder allows HTML editing, most marketing tools and features can be added to your site.

Weebly has a SEO (Search Engine Optimization) excellent but basic. Weebly sites do well with search engine performance. They have all the basic social media options like links to Facebook, Twitter, etc.

However, since you do not have 100% control over your site and server, it may be difficult and / or impossible to add advanced marketing tools such as: of email marketing tools Custom , personalized analysis packages, personalized social shares, software marketing. A / B tests.

The main problem is that you do not have "root" or "FTP" access to the files on your server. This is not an unsolvable problem, but it is something to keep in mind if you are planning a long term project.

All of this will help you improve your marketing strategy. Content marketing as well as social media marketing.

Platform lock

The last big downside to Weebly is that switching to a new platform is difficult. If you want to move somewhere else, like your own WordPress website, migrating your content and redirecting your URLs will be a difficult process.

Weebly allows you to export your page content via a zip file, but the blog content will need to be manually copied and / or migrated via RSS.

Again, platform migration will always be difficult, but this is something to consider if you anticipate rapid traffic and / or content growth.

Weebly pricing

As I mentioned earlier, you can get started on Weebly for free by selecting Basic Use.

To unlock more features, you can purchase a subscription. Weebly pricing starts at $ 5 per month for the entry-level Connect plan.

The Pro plan costs $ 12 per month and allows you to add videos to your site as well as membership features. This plan also includes a web domain free and removes Weebly ads from your site. Meanwhile, the business plan costs $ 25 USD.

Free plan: basic features for basic sites

If you've never built a website before and just want a basic site, Weebly's free plan might be right for you.

Weebly free plan features

Although it's free, you'll still have access to a drag-and-drop site builder, of SEO tools free and SSL security. However, if you want a dynamic website that gets seen by a lot of people, this isn't ideal.

Not only do you have to use a subdomain with a weebly.com URL, which will prevent you from standing out and ranking high in search engines, but it doesn't include any ecommerce functionality.

Who is Weebly's free plan for?

Websites built with Weebly's free plan are ad-based as well. Therefore, if you choose this plan, your site will have Weebly ads, which are not very professional.

While the free plan can be tricky for a basic blog, if you want something more, upgrading to one of the paid plans would be a good choice.