Introduction Free Website Themes For Weebly

With More than 40M websites under its belt, Weebly is one of the world’s hottest web builders out there. Unlike certain opponents, they appear less interested in flashy marketing campaigns than enhancing their platform’s technologies. Free Website Themes For Weebly

Click Here to begin using Weebly now!

This all sounds pretty good on paper, right? Well let’s figure out how it looks in practice. Within this review, we will look at their drag and drop editor and see if it is any good for creating a website, blog or online store.

What Is Weebly?

On The wide spectrum of site building alternatives, Weebly lives on the end that’s comprehensive and provides everything you need to begin and grow your site. It is in contrast to solutions where you purchase, install, and manage all the”bits” of your site individually.

It’s Like trading off a few control for greater convenience.

Using Weebly is sort of like leasing and customizing an apartment in a nice development instead of getting and owning your own residence. You are still in charge of decoration, cleaning, and everything living-wise — but you leave the building, plumbing, safety, and infrastructure to the property owner. That point is critical because there’s usually a direct tradeoff between convenience and control.

All The functionality and design which are contained with Weebly work together collectively as a platform. That is what lets them have drag and drop layout, design, and content.

As Far as competition, Weebly competes directly with all-inclusive website builders such as Squarespace, Wix, and WordPress.com.

Site Builders as a group compete with choices like WordPress.org (that offers the totally free software to construct a website that you own & control — see my WordPress setup guide here) all the way to choices like typing actual HTML code into a text document. Make sense? Awesome, let us dive to the Weebly review.

One Other quick aside — a disclosure — I receive referral fees from all the companies discussed in this post. My opinions & research are based on my experiences as either a paying customer or adviser to a paying client.

Weebly’s Company Pitch.

What Makes Weebly So Easy to Use?

Good question. The first thing you’ll notice Is how nicely the drag and drop interface was created. Just select the element you want on the left, and set it on your design on the rightside.

You might find that components snap into place And arrange themselves flawlessly on the webpage. Other options, such as Wix, forego the grid system, so it is quite possible to end up with overlapping components. Together with Weebly, no risk of that occurring.

Working with text is also a breeze in Weebly. You just click what you would like to edit and type your words in the box. Some other solutions use”entrance masks” which are somewhat more abstract and not always easy to utilize.

The navigation system also works wonders. It’s possible to dig deep into menus and submenus. Weebly handles them just like a charm.

Ultimately, should you get stuck everywhere, the Weebly knowledge base may answer a great deal of questions through clear tutorials and step-by-step guides. Failing this, the support is excellent, whether by email, chat, or phone. Free Website Themes For Weebly

Click Here to begin with Weebly now!

So are there Any downsides? That depends. If you want more freedom with your designs, then you may feel frustrated with the rigid grid system. You ought to go for Wix. This competitor also has an automatic solution (Wix ADI) that can build the website for you by itself. You can possibly shave a few minutes of your website building time.

Additionally, there are two things we’d like to see. First is a worldwide undo button. You can undo everything you type in text boxes, but it would be nice to erase mistakes once you add or move components. Second, Weebly does not have an overall media database that keeps all of your pictures. You’re going to have to re-upload pictures for each and every element that needs them.

Which Weebly Pricing Program is Ideal for Me?

We would say the primary question to ask yourself is. Do I want to market online? Quite simply, if you really do, we recommend you go for Weebly Business.

For other kinds of websites, Weebly Starter Is usually sufficient. It provides everything you need for displaying information about your services, portfolio or business details. However, the Starter plan misses out on a few Pro features.

· Fancy header with slideshow or video background.

· Integrated video / audio player

· Password-protected webpages

· Membership module to allow users sign in and get personal sections of the Site

If some of those Above are must-haves for your site, you’ll have to update to Weebly Pro. And to get a more complete breakdown, please refer to our full Weebly pricing comparison page.

SEO. How Can My Weebly Website Rank On Google?

Let’s get 1 thing out of the way first. if You’re an innovative search engine optimization expert who absolutely must rank #1 on search engines for a very competitive keyword, you may have a tough time using Weebly. It is not impossible, but there are limits.

· Your headings are limited to H2. There is a free app that lets you add headings from h1 to h6, but it messes a bit with your formatting. We wonder why Weebly doesn’t integrate it in their system.

· Certain pages (categories and product pages) add a mandatory string for your URL. You get things like www.yoursite.com/store/p1/my-product/yellow. Not a massive issue unless your site is not in English. Same with the blog articles, they will have’/site /’ in the URL structure, which can not be changed.

· Adding structured data ( Rich Snippets) is performed via code. However, you are in your as Weebly does not help.

On the other hand, Weebly does things really Well in regards to.

· URL, Title tags & meta-descriptions. You can customize themalong as Alt texts for pictures. This is especially important to rank your images. Free Website Themes For Weebly

· 301 redirects. You can control them to avoid broken links as soon as a page URL was changed. Google deeply dislikes 404 pages.

· Picture optimization. Weebly does a fantastic job at controlling the images you upload. This enhances speed, always a boon for SEO.

Still a little Confused about SEO? Don’t forget that we’ve got a complete guide on the topic here.

Security & Backups. How Safe and Secure is a Weebly Website?

As far as we Understand, very secure. The company takes security very seriously. They market strong passwords, and offer SSL encryption on all programs. The free tier will run on https which offers an extra layer of safety. Especially important for on-site personal data exchange (e.g. credit card or email address).

Unfortunately, we wish Weebly offered more in the method of backup and restore systems. You’ve got to take care of it manually by conserving your website for a .zip file frequently. And there is no restore function in case disaster strikes. Wix, for example, tracks new adjustments and lets you jump back in time to a previous version of your site.

Weebly Design Options and Templates. Making it Look Good

We’ve Got a Detailed post about Weebly’s templates where you are able to read the main pros and cons. But, we want to give you here a quick overview of the key features here.

The First thing to note is that Weebly doesn’t have a whole lot of template designs (around 50), but you should easily be able to find one you like. There are various classes available. Online Store, Business, Portfolio, Personal, Event and Blog.

They automatically look great on each Device (by being responsive), and they can be adapted to match your own personal needs, using the templates as a foundation. No need for you to receive a web design degree!

Of course, if You’re all about design, and absolutely need to be able to personalize it down to the last pixel, you need to check out Wix also. Their template selection is unmatched and they have a much more elastic editor…

… unless you’re confident using coding. This Is because Weebly, unlike other builders, provides you access to the template source code.

Want to dig beneath the hood and change the CSS and HTML? You will have free reign here, because you can see in the picture above.

Ecommerce. Is a Weebly Online Store Worth it?

We would say yes, with a caveat. It’s great to Sell physical and digital products for small and medium-sized shops, but not for huge ones. Even though you can use the import and export function to manage many things, you might find Weebly lacking in features for enormous stores.

For Example, we don’t like this there Aren’t any offline payment choices (only credit card, PayPal, etc). At $30 CAD per month it’s also rather pricey. Wix’s Online Store is only $20 US for instance (but also has less features). Free Website Themes For Weebly

Ultimately, it’s worth noting that even though You can create a store with the Starter and Pro plan, updating to Business and greater makes more sense. You’ll get the automated shipping and sales tax calculator, which is very useful for serious store owners. What’s more, you won’t have to pay an additional transaction charge of 3%.

Still confused About the many online store plans? You can find detailed information in our Weebly Online Shop review.

App Store. Can I Enhance My Website with Add-Ons?

You bet! There are no less than 300 apps in A number of classes like eCommerce, Communication, Marketing, Social, or Site Tools. Some are free, some are compensated. Some are constructed by Weebly, some by third party programmers. For the latter, there is always an (unlikely) chance that it may shut down one day. Additionally a shame the apps made by Weebly are quite limited.

However, one thing all the programs have in Common is a super simple installation feature. One click and bam! All apps are tested and will work instantly on your own site. We tried some cool ones such as a way to include tables, event calendars, and data bars to display specific info. Our only qualm is the quality and amount of programs is a slightly inferior those from the Wix App Store.

Advantages of Using Weebly

Here is What I discovered to be the experts of Weebly — not only in comparison with Squarespace and Wix or WordPress, but also as an overall online site solution.

Speed & Security

Weebly provides Hosting for all the sites that are built in their own platform. That may be good or awful, however in Weebly’s situation, it is an expert. They have rapid load speeds. Their websites are optimized to their own hosting. They take care of security against hackers and spam. With company plans, they even install and maintain SSL across your whole website. Here is my speed test.

There Are still pace and security dangers, but overall, it’s an edge for many site owners to have someone else take care of speed, security, backups, etc.. The price tag is bundled with pro and free accounts, so it is a solid value-add.

Onboarding & Education

Whenever You start any piece of software — no matter how instinctive — there is that moment where you think”okay, what do I do today?” This approach is known as onboarding, and it is also incredibly hard to execute well.

The Software manufacturer does not want to be bothersome, but they also want to help. I love how Weebly assembles in solid onboarding and instruction not only via email trickle sequence but also via small info buttons built with their own platform.

After You sign up, it’s simple to dive right in. Free Website Themes For Weebly

Site Building Process

One Advertised advantage of using a comprehensive site builder is you won’t need to write HTML or CSS code. You only have to drag and drop elements. What you see in the builder is what you get on the website.

It’s Not necessarily that simple. There’s a lot of nuances to”drop and drag.” The majority of us really mean”I wish to drag and click this component and move it to a general place where it will seem great — you know, automatically centered, etc.” In other words, it is like playing tee-ball rather than baseball…or bowling with up gutter guards. You wish to do the thing, but also have a little bit of assistance.

For The most part, Weebly pulls off this. Their drag and drop actually works. And, for the control freaks among us, they supply access to some custom CSS module, so which you may edit the template to precisely your choosing.

Customer Support

For Free accounts, Weebly provides an email support option and also a well-done Knowledge Base. For paid accounts (even starter), they offer email, chat, AND telephone number. Response times for me were solid.

With An all-inclusive system, customer support can troubleshoot and fix any matter. This is a massive benefit of site builder platforms in general, but especially using Weebly since they have telephone support.

If You conduct your own site, you have to figure out just who can fix a problem prior to getting in contact with them. Together with Weebly, you just get in touch with them.

Constructed Feature Set + Extensions

The Big advantage of creating your own website on your own host is that you don’t need to count on a platform’s feature set. If you proceed the stage route, it’s essential to make certain that they have all the qualities you desire and need.

Weebly’s Feature set is strong. They have got all the basics — like website functionality, contact forms, etc, but also the necessary advanced features like URL redirects and page-level customized code positioning.

Even Beyond the complex requirements, Weebly even includes features including forums, subscription choices, integrated advertising options, file uploads, etc.. In addition they have eCommerce options, which I will cover individually below.

If You go the all-inclusive website builder course, Weebly’s feature set should offer everything you will need for typical personal/business websites (though as we’ll see in the Cons section, you really do want to be especially aware of advanced options).

Also — Weebly has a lot of built-in features, but it does not have everything. Platforms overcome this by allowing 3rd Party programs (think the App Store or Shopify’s App Store).

With your Own WordPress site, including functionality is as simple as installing a plugin. With Weebly — you can navigate their growing (though still somewhat limited) app center.

They Also compensate for lack of attributes with letting custom JavaScript, HTML, and CSS. If it is possible to copy and paste a code snippet (say, for A/B testing, blog comments, running an auction, etc) then you are good. Free Website Themes For Weebly

Anybody who retails online

Why? Square is a payments processor. They are huge offline and wish to be larger in the on/offline arena. That’s why they bought Weebly — and why the future is pretty bright for Weebly’s ecommerce features.

If You’re starting a site and plan on selling a few things here and there or in case you have an offline presence (ie, pop-up shops) and you would like to sell online, the Weebly provides a ready-made alternative with tightly integrated ecommerce characteristics which should only get better.

Product Investment & Company Construction

I’ve Been using site builders for 20 years since the Homestead.com days and have been closely paying attention to this sector for the past 5 years. 1 overarching trend is a firm’s structure drives product investment over the marketing group or the product team.

Even In a fast-growing marketplace, a organization’s structure and end targets will dictate how it behaves and what investments it makes. As I outlined in my Wix vs. Weebly vs. Squarespacestructure can vary wildly among direct competitors.

For Decades, Weebly was an independently owned and operated firm going for organic expansion. However, in 2018, they offered to Square — the huge player in payments processing. Weebly now functions as an independent subsidiary of Square.

On 1 hand, that could be a huge drawback. Acquisitions are notorious for destroying companies and value. However, this acquisition has a huge upside for a single market segment —

Overall Pricing

If You do not mind your site on a subdomain (ie, http. //yourwebsite.weebly.com) afterward Weeblyis free with no expiration. A pretty good deal — especially for temporary sites.

Total Pricing is quite competitive not only in contrast to other comprehensive website buildersbut also with purchasing your hosting. Their Starter plan starts approximately $8/mo when paid up front. And they do not possess the typical caps of other site builders. The Guru plan adds solid features and stays under $12/mo.

And Again — you’ll see that everything is accessible and unlimited. There are no limits on pages or storage space. And unlike competitors like Wix, they remove all advertisements with the initial paid grade.

Even Their business pricing, while more costly than doing the exact same thing on your own hosting, is much more affordable than similar plans with direct competitors.

Compared To building your own website on your host and notably with other website builders, Weebly’s pricing is quite competitive. Price is not everything, but I love how they structure it.

Disadvantages + Truth About Using Weebly

But Obviously, no Weebly review would be complete without studying the drawbacks. Each bit of software will have complaints. Let’s look at 3 specific cons I discovered.

Content Management System

A Content management system is exactly what it sounds like. It is an interface which permits you to sort, filter, edit, and publish unique types of content on your site. Free Website Themes For Weebly

Weebly Sort of features that. It’s a Pages section that lists out all of the pages on your website. It allows you to drag and drop the hierarchy and then click to edit each. Nevertheless, it’s far from a efficient system.

There’s No way to add custom content forms (except inside a single page). If you are planning a large site (like hundreds of pages), the articles contained in Weebly would require a private system to keep it sorted and easily accessible.

This Disadvantage could be overcome, however that I want content could be more easily managed within Weebly.

Platform Lock-in

The Last huge disadvantage of Weebly is that moving to a new platform is not difficult. If you would like to move somewhere else, including your WordPress powered site, migrating your content and redirecting your URLs will be a difficult procedure.

Weebly lets You to export your Page content via zip file but website articles will have to be manually copied and/or migrated via RSS.

Again — migrating platforms will always be difficult, but it’s something to think about if you are considering quickly growing content or traffic.

Advanced Marketing Tools

Since Weebly enables for HTML editing, most marketing tools and attributes can be added to your website. However, as you still don’t have 100% control on your website & host — it can be challenging or not impossible to include advanced marketing tools such as an EV SSL, custom email collection applications, custom analytics packages, custom social shares, specific Schemas and A/B testing computer software.

In The jargon — the main issue isn’t having”root” or”FTP” access to your own server files. This is not an unsolvable problem, however it is something to be careful of if you’re planning a long-term job.

For Most all website owners with average traffic — you’ll want to know about the constraints, especially if you are planning for rapid expansion.

Weebly eCommerce Addendum

Here is Weebly’s advertisement revealing their new eCommerce setup.

A bonus for Weebly is their eCommerce performance. You can sell products from your Weebly site without changing platforms or doing any distinctive developments. It fits in effortlessly and contains solid performance.

The Pricing is affordable. On lesser tiers, Weebly charges transaction fees but packages the complete eCommerce bundle for company plans.

Ecommerce Is a nice bit of functionality, but remember that it is not a full-fledged eCommerce that online shop platforms like Shopify or Bigcommerce have. Weebly includes a shopping cart, fundamental stock management, and payment approval. Here’s how Weebly matches about the eCommerce”spectrum” —

It’s Great for sites that are mostly lead-generation, informational, etc but also wish to sell a few goods. Additionally, it is a good fit for anybody testing out products before going to a long-term stage. It is not a long-term fit for sites that are eCommerce-first. For those, an internet shop you have with WordPress + WooCommerce or even a specialization eCommerce platform such as Shopify (review) or Bigcommerce (review) are a better fit.

Product Investment & Company Structure

Now — the acquisition from Square does come with a downside. That is regular site builder features. Weebly’s incentive would be to invest in features that make it even more valuable as a complete for Square. Free Website Themes For Weebly

Features Like appointment scheduling, blogging, etc are only valuable in so far that they gain the parent business.

If You’re looking to build a long-term content or direct generation website, then I’d look at WordPress.com (for articles ) or Wix (for general drag & drop) instead of Weebly. Even if Weebly matches your needs now, they may not in the medium future.

Wrap-up

When we first started testing Weebly many Years past, it was only another website builder. That’s completely changed. Weebly has now evolved into an outstanding site building tool that is better than most competitors. It is easy, uncluttered and easy to use — which is exactly what people with limited technical abilities need when it comes to making their own online presence.

Obviously, it’s not 100% perfect. We’d like To observe somewhat more templates, as an example. Finding an email address attached to a domain is also a bit pricey, as they recommend G Suite, that costs $5 per month, per user. (Though there are workarounds, as you can see in the FAQ below).

But all in all, Weebly reaches the very top of the list of website builders. Their ease of use combined with cool tools such as the iOS or Android program for editing your site on the go, or the amount of add-ons available in the program center makes it powerful, and fun to use.

Enough with the theory. Try it out for Yourself and see how you like it!

Click Here to begin using Weebly now!