Creating and maintaining a website can be a complex and time-consuming process, especially for those who do not have experience in web development. Fortunately, there are now many constructors that greatly simplify this process.
One of the popular tools in this area today is Weebly – a cloud service with which you can easily develop websites without experience in writing code or working with HTML.
Next, we will consider its main advantages, and also evaluate the interface, design themes, main options and functionality. This Weebly website builder review will help you determine if it’s the right tool for your needs.
What is Weebly?
Weebly is a builder with which you can quickly create and publish simple, but beautiful and modern Landing Page for your tasks. It was released in 2007 and today has more than 40 million registered users around the world.
Its distinctive feature is a simple and intuitive interface, built on the drag-and-drop principle. This means that all the main elements of the page – text, images, videos and others – can be easily placed in the right place with a simple drag-and-drop.
It also allows you to choose from a variety of professionally designed themes and customize it to suit your needs – you can make changes to fonts, color palette and other design parameters. Built-in search engine optimization tools help promote your resource in Google and other search engines.
Weebly website builder has a number of advantages:
Easy to use. It is intuitive and suitable for both beginners in web development and more advanced users. Inside there is a powerful editor with rich settings for creating and formatting content. For full-fledged work, you do not need special web design or programming skills.
Wide selection of templates. Inside there is numerous professionally designed themes for all types of projects – business cards, portfolios, stores and blogs. Thanks to this, you can easily customize the design to suit your needs – choose colors, change fonts or block layout.
High speed. This is achieved through the use of our own powerful servers with data backup. The kernel is regularly updated to fix vulnerabilities, and server performance is monitored in real time.
Flexible tariff plans. They are suitable for projects of any type – from personal pages to small online stores. You can choose the best option with the required amount of traffic, storage and functions.
Scaling. As the project develops and traffic increases, you can upgrade to a more expensive plan to add the functionality your business needs.
Built-in tools. Inside there is the possibility of expanding functions in accordance with the objectives of the project: an integrated CRM system, powerful tools for collecting subscribers and accepting payments, coupons, discounts, bonuses, affiliate programs and much more.
Technical support. The service provides round-the-clock technical support to promptly resolve emerging issues. You can contact the service by phone, email or online chat. Qualified specialists will help you understand the problem and promptly offer the optimal solution.
Safety guarantee. To further protect your data, Weebly performs regular backups. We also use advanced technologies to protect against DDoS attacks to ensure stable operation of the project and comply with industry standards for the security of personal data.
Ease of control. The user interface of the control panel is intuitive and allows access to set project parameters without the need to involve developers. You can freely find detailed instructions and training materials for self-learning.
Main disadvantages of the Weebly service
Despite a significant number of advantages, the Weebly service also has its disadvantages:
Difficulty in integrating third-party services. On the site it is almost impossible to connect external applications via the API, which greatly limits the functionality. It is also extremely problematic to implement integration with third-party CRM, ERP and payment systems, so you have to use ready-made solutions from the marketplace or look for workarounds.
Lack of full control over the resource. The designer generates code for templates and pages automatically, without providing access to the source code. It is impossible to make changes, add your own scripts or modify the markup to suit the needs of the project, which greatly limits the user.
It is difficult to significantly change the design. Issues of visual design are resolved by choosing a theme from the available list. But if you want to change the theme or move content to a new template, you will have to deal with a lot of manual work, because after creating the page it is not possible to do this automatically.
Platform dependency. When developing a project, it is important to remember that it will be difficult to get rid of the connection to this service in the future. Transferring to another CMS or another hosting provider can be a real problem, because this is a cloud service and there is no export function.
Overview of the capabilities of the Weebly website builder
The following is a more detailed overview of the Weebly platform – its key features and options to help you decide whether this tool is suitable for your tasks of creating and promoting a resource on the Internet.
Templates and themes
Vibley offers more than 40 free designs and hundreds of paid design themes to create a web resource on almost any topic. They were created by experienced designers and optimized for various purposes – landing pages, product catalogs, blogs, portfolios, corporate websites, business cards, etc. Adaptive versions are also available for them for screens of any size.
A distinctive feature is a user-friendly interface, thanks to which you can see all changes in the design in real time. You can also easily change colors, fonts, backgrounds, and drag blocks and widgets around the page. The theme library is regularly updated, and inside there are convenient filters by category, popular queries and date added for quick search.
Visual editor
One of the main advantages is a convenient visual editor. It works on the drag-and-drop principle – all page elements can be placed and customized using simple actions, without having to delve into the code.
The arsenal includes more than 25 different widgets: text blocks, images, sliders, maps, forms, media players, social network icons, etc. They can be combined with each other and create the desired page composition.
The designer also provides access to the source HTML and CSS code through the built-in editor. You can add your own JavaScript, change style sheets and track the result in the preview window nearby.
The main disadvantage of the visual editor is the difficulty in precisely controlling the arrangement of elements, especially on mobile devices.
Ability to launch your own online store
Vibli allows you to create a full-fledged online store from scratch and start selling online without the need to attract web developers and additional financial investments. For this purpose, powerful eCommerce tools are integrated inside.
In the interface, you can conveniently add and configure a product catalog using built-in tools for managing products and orders. You can configure taxation features (depending on the region), work with delivery services, payment acceptance and current discounts depending on the product range or user group. Support for PayPal, Stripe, Square, Apple Pay and other systems for accepting online payments is also available.
Plugins and applications
One of the key features is the built-in App Center – a marketplace of useful applications. Essentially, these are ready-made modules with additional options that can be integrated into the project in just a couple of clicks.
The marketplace features over 350 free and paid solutions from the development team and third-party web studios. They include a variety of widgets, plugins and services for almost any task: feedback and booking forms, sliders, online chats, payment modules and much more.
It is especially worth noting the ease of installing applications – the whole process takes literally a minute and does not require special skills.
Technical support
Unfortunately, the user support service has a number of serious shortcomings and cannot boast of high quality. Technicians are only available during business hours in the US time zone, which may be an issue for users in other countries.
The support is formally stated to be 24/7, but in reality it only works from 6 am to 6 pm on weekdays and from 8 am to 5 pm on weekends, Eastern Time. Even during normal business hours, getting a prompt response from specialists is not as easy as we would like.
Integrations with third-party services
Weebly allows you to connect popular third-party services to expand functionality and automate routine tasks. Most integrations can be configured through the App Center in a couple of clicks.
One of the most popular options is integration with analytics and statistics systems. The service supports Google Analytics, LiveStats and AWStats to track visitor behavior and collect valuable marketing data.
It can also work with common CRM systems – Salesforce, Insightly and Zoho, to automate interactions with customers and other tasks. In addition, integrations with e-mail and SMS mailing services are available: MailChimp, SendPulse, UniSender and GetResponse.
Selling digital goods
Using the Weebly service, you can not only create full-fledged online stores with physical goods, but also effectively sell e-books, video courses and other digital products.
The setup process is no different from usual. It’s just that instead of delivery and logistics, you will need to set up digital delivery of goods to customers after payment for the order. You can upload digital product files (ebooks, videos, images, audio and software) to the server and store them for an unlimited amount of time.
After payment for the order, the files automatically become available to the buyer for downloading from his personal account. There is also integration with Google Drive for storing large documents.
Your own mobile application
The Weebly mobile app is also available for download for iOS and Android. This way you can manage sales on the website directly from your phone. You can not only respond to customers in chat and process new orders, but also adjust prices and texts on the site if necessary.
The application will include the main sections of the admin panel of your resource in a convenient mobile interface. If you have an online store, you can edit the product catalog, category descriptions, and much more from your smartphone.
Free domain name
Among the advantages of the system, we can also mention the provision of a free domain name on the Professional and Performance tariffs. When registering an account or upgrading to these plans, you can specify the desired domain name, and you will be provided with it for 1 year of use.
After the end of the first year, the domain will be automatically renewed for the user as long as he continues to use paid plans. Thus, you can get a free domain for the entire period of operation of the resource, which saves the business $15-20 per year.
Opportunities for promoting sites on the Weebly platform
The Weebly platform provides good built-in tools for promoting and promoting a web resource to make this task as easy as possible for users.
SEO optimization
The service provides flexible tools for managing the main parameters that affect search engine results. With its help, you can optimize individual resource pages: set meta tags, headings and set indexing parameters. An XML sitemap is also automatically generated for faster entry into the search engine index.
A certain disadvantage is that the tools for SEO optimization of media files are poorly developed inside. To change ALT and Title, you need to re-upload the image, while deleting the old one. With a large volume of images, this may cause some inconvenience.
Blogging
Convenient tools for creating and maintaining your own blog are built inside. You can easily add and format posts, insert images, videos and tables into them, and also set up convenient categories in the form of tags and categories.
Visitors can subscribe to updates and leave their comments. There are also built-in integrations with popular social networks to easily distribute your content to your audience and attract their attention to certain topics and blog posts.
Built-in e-mail newsletters
Convenient tools for setting up e-mail newsletters help promptly inform the audience about news, promotions, special offers and other important events.
To organize them, you just need to install a special module from the App Center, after which you have access to the interface for creating letter templates, creating subscriber lists, planning and sending mailings.
Weebly completely takes care of sending e-mail messages to subscribers and working with possible refusals, so there is no need to connect and configure third-party e-mail marketing services.
Weebly builder tariff plans
The Weebly builder offers 4 main tariff plans with different amounts of functions, disk space, traffic and cost:
Free. Weebly’s free plan is not so bad, because you can even connect an online store here. True, its functionality will be somewhat reduced. For example, you won’t be able to set up a shipping cost calculator. At the same time, for basic use, it’s quite good.
Personal. The $10 per month plan removes some of the limitations of the basic version: you can add your own domain name, additional eCommerce features, and Pop-Up notifications for visitors.
Professional. The $12 per month tariff provides access to running a full-fledged business online. Here you can remove the built-in Weebly advertising, gain access to full advanced statistics on sales and visits, give you a free domain, and improve security.
Performance. The $26 per month plan removes almost any restrictions on using the service. Thus, online stores can now accept online payments via PayPal, reviews for products, the ability to work with abandoned carts, and much more. The tariff is aimed at owners of large businesses with a large volume of visitors.
