Intro Weebly Interactive Educational Games
With More than 40M websites under its belt, Weebly is one of the world’s most popular web builders out there. Unlike certain competitors, they seem less interested in flashy marketing campaigns than enhancing their platform’s technology. Weebly Interactive Educational Games
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This all sounds pretty good on paper, right? Well let’s figure out how it looks in practice. In this review, we’ll look at their drag and drop editor and see if it is any good for creating a website, blog or online store.
What’s Weebly?
On The wide range of website building alternatives, Weebly lives on the finish that’s comprehensive and provides everything you need to get started and develop your site. It is compared to solutions where you buy, set up, and manage all of the”bits” of your site separately.
It is Like trading off some control for greater convenience.
Utilizing Weebly is sort of like renting and customizing an apartment in a nice development instead of buying and owning your own residence. You’re still in control of decor, cleaning, and what living-wise — but you leave the building, plumbing, security, and infrastructure to the property owner. That point is key since there’s usually a direct tradeoff between convenience and control.
All The functionality and design which are included with Weebly work seamlessly together as a stage. That is what lets them have drag and drop design, design, and articles.
As Much as rivalry, Weebly competes directly with comprehensive website builders such as Squarespace, Wix, and WordPress.com.
Site Builders as a group compete with choices like WordPress.org (which offers the totally free software to construct a site that you have & control — see my own WordPress setup guide here) all the way to options like typing real HTML code into a text file. Make sense? Awesome, let us dive into the Weebly review.
One Other quick aside — a revelation — I get referral fees from all of the companies discussed in this post. My remarks & research derive from my experiences as either a paying client or adviser to a paying client.
Weebly’s Company Pitch.
What Makes Weebly So Easy to Use?
Fantastic question. First thing you’ll notice Is how well the drag and drop interface is designed. Just select the element you need on the left, and place it on your design on the rightside.
You’ll find that elements snap into position And arrange themselves flawlessly on the page. Other solutions, such as Wix, forego the grid , so it’s very possible to end up with overlapping elements. Together with Weebly, no risk of that occurring.
Working with text can also be a breeze in Weebly. You simply click what you want to edit and type your words from the box. A few other options use”entrance masks” that are a bit more subjective and not necessarily easy to work with.
The navigation system also works miracles. You can dig deep into menus and submenus. Weebly handles them like a charm.
Ultimately, should you get stuck everywhere, the Weebly knowledge base can answer a lot of questions through clear tutorials and step by step guides. Failing that, the service is excellent, whether via email, chat, or phone. Weebly Interactive Educational Games
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So are there Any drawbacks? This depends. If you would like more freedom with your designs, then you might feel frustrated with the rigid grid system. You should go for Wix. This competition also has an automatic solution (Wix ADI) that may build the website for you by itself. You may perhaps shave off a few minutes of your site building time.
There are also two things we’d love to see. First is a global undo button. It is possible to undo everything you type in text boxes, but it will be wonderful to erase mistakes when you add or move elements. Secondly, Weebly does not have an overall media database which keeps all of your pictures. You’ll have to re-upload images for each and every element that requires them.
Which Weebly Pricing Plan is Ideal for Me?
We would say the main 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 Sorts of websites, Weebly Starter Is usually sufficient. It provides all you will need for displaying info about your services, portfolio or business details. However, the Starter plan misses out on a few Pro attributes.
· Fancy header with slideshow or video background.
· Integrated video / audio player
· Password-protected pages
· Membership module — to let users register and access personal sections of the Site
If some of the Above are must-haves for your website, you will have to update to Weebly Pro. And for a more comprehensive breakdown, please consult with our complete 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 advanced SEO expert who certainly must rank #1 on search engines to get a really competitive keyword, you may have a tough time using Weebly. It is not impossible, but there are limits.
· Your headings are confined to H2. There is a free program which allows you add key words from h1 to h6, but it messes somewhat with your formatting. We wonder Weebly doesn’t integrate it into their system.
· Particular pages (groups and product pages) add a mandatory string for your URL. You get things like www.yoursite.com/store/p1/my-product/yellow. Not a huge issue unless your website isn’t in English. Same with the blog articles, they will have’/blog/’ in the URL structure, which can’t be changed.
· Adding structured info ( Rich Snippets) is done via code. But you are on your own as Weebly does not help.
On the plus side, Weebly does things actually Well in regards to.
· URL, Title tags & meta-descriptions. It’s possible to customize themalong as Alt texts for images. This is particularly important to position your own images. Weebly Interactive Educational Games
· 301 redirects. You can command them to prevent broken links when a page URL has been changed. Google deeply dislikes 404 pages.
· Image optimization. Weebly does a great job at controlling the pictures you upload. This enhances speed, always a blessing for SEO.
Still a little Curious about SEO? Don’t forget that we’ve got a complete guide on the subject here.
Security & Backups. How Safe and Secure is a Weebly Website?
As far as we Understand, very secure. The business takes safety very seriously. They market strong passwords, and supply SSL encryption on all programs. The free tier will operate on https which offers an extra layer of security. Especially important for onsite personal data exchange (e.g. charge card or email address).
Regrettably, we wish Weebly provided more in the way of backup and restore systems. You’ve got to take care of it manually by saving your website as a .zip file frequently. And there is no restore function in case disaster strikes. Wix, for example, tracks new changes 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. However, we wish to provide you here a quick overview of the key features here.
The First thing to note is that Weebly doesn’t have a ton of template layouts (around 50), but you should easily have the ability to find one that you like. There are different classes out there. Online Store, Business, Portfolio, Personal, Event and Blog.
They mechanically look great on each Apparatus (by being responsive), and they can be adapted to match your own personal needs, using the templates as a base. No need for you to get a web design diploma!
Of course, if You are all about design, and absolutely have to have the ability to customize it down to the last pixel, you should have a look at Wix in addition. Their template choice is unmatched and they have a much more elastic editor…
… unless you’re confident using coding. This Is because Weebly, contrary to other builders, gives 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, as you can see in the image above.
Ecommerce. Can be a Weebly Online Store Worth it?
We would say yes, with a caveat. It’s great to Sell digital and physical products for small and medium-sized stores, but not for huge ones. Although you may use the export and import function to handle large number of items, you might discover Weebly lacking in features for massive stores.
For instance, we don’t like this there Are not any offline payment options (only credit card, PayPal, etc). At $30 CAD per month it is also rather pricey. Wix’s Online Store is only $20 US for instance (but also has less features). Weebly Interactive Educational Games
Finally, it is worth noting that even though You can create a shop with the Starter and Pro program, upgrading to Business and greater makes more sense. You’ll get the automated delivery and sales tax calculator, which is very helpful for serious shop owners. Furthermore, you won’t have to pay an additional transaction charge of 3 percent.
Still confused About the various online store plans? You can discover detailed information in our Weebly Online Shop review.
Program shop. Can I Enhance My Site with Add-Ons?
You bet! There are no less than 300 apps in Quite a few categories like eCommerce, Communication, Marketing, Social, or Site Tools. Some are free, some are paid. Some are built by Weebly, some by third-party programmers. For the latter, there is always an (unlikely) chance that it might shut down one day. Additionally a shame the programs produced by Weebly are quite limited.
However, one thing all of the apps have in Common is a super easy installation attribute. One click and bam! All programs are analyzed and will work instantly on your own site. We attempted some cool ones such as a way to include tables, event calendars, and info bars to display special info. Our only qualm is that the quality and quantity of programs is a marginally inferior those from the Wix App Store.
Advantages of Utilizing Weebly
Here’s What I discovered to be the pros of Weebly — not just in comparison to Squarespace and Wix or WordPress, but also as an overall online website solution.
Speed & Security
Weebly supplies Hosting for all the websites which are built on their own platform. That may be good or awful, but in Weebly’s situation, it is a pro. They have rapid load speeds. Their sites are optimized for their hosting. They take care of security against hackers and spam. With company plans, they install and keep SSL across your entire site. Here’s my speed test.
There Are still speed and safety dangers, but it’s an edge for many website owners to have somebody else care for speed, security, backups, etc.. The cost is bundled with expert and completely free accounts, so it is a solid value-add.
Onboarding & Education
Whenever You begin any piece of software — regardless of how intuitive — there is that moment where you think”ok, what can I do now?” That process is called onboarding, and it is also incredibly tough to implement well.
The Software maker doesn’t want to be bothersome, but they also want to provide help. I love how Weebly assembles in solid onboarding and instruction not just via email trickle sequence but also via small info buttons built with their platform.
Once You sign up, it is straightforward to dive right in. Weebly Interactive Educational Games
Website Building Process
One Advertised benefit of using an all-inclusive website builder is that you won’t need to write HTML or CSS code. You can just drag and drop components. Everything you see in the builder is what you get on the website.
It’s Not necessarily that simple. There is a whole lot of nuances to”drop and drag.” Most of us really mean”I want to drag and click this component and transfer it to a general area where it will seem good — you know, mechanically focused, etc.” Put simply, it is like playing tee-ball rather than baseball…or bowling with gutter guards up. You wish to do the thing, but also have a little bit of help.
For The most part, Weebly pulls this off. Their drag and drop actually works. As well as for the control freaks among us, they supply access to a custom CSS module, so that you can edit the template into exactly your own choosing.
Customer Support
For Free accounts, Weebly provides an email support option and 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 service is able to troubleshoot and fix any issue. This is a massive benefit of site builder platforms in general, but especially using Weebly since they have telephone support.
If You conduct your site, you’ve got to figure out exactly who will correct a problem before getting in contact with them. Together with Weebly, you merely get in contact 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 attribute set. If you go the stage route, it’s essential to make sure they have all the qualities you desire and need.
Weebly’s Feature set is strong. They’ve got all the basics — such as blog functionality, contact forms, etc, but also the necessary advanced features like URL redirects and page-level customized code positioning.
Even Beyond the advanced requirements, Weebly even includes features including forums, subscription choices, integrated advertising options, file uploads, etc.. In addition they have eCommerce alternatives, which I will cover separately below.
If You proceed the comprehensive website builder route, Weebly’s attribute set must provide whatever you will need for typical personal/business websites (though as we will see in the Cons section, you do need to be especially aware of advanced options).
Additionally — Weebly has a lot of built-in attributes, but it doesn’t have everything. Platforms overcome it by allowing 3rd Party apps (believe the 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 browse their climbing (though still somewhat limited) app centre.
They Also make up for lack of attributes with letting custom JavaScript, HTML, and CSS. If you can copy and paste a code snippet (say, for A/B analyzing, blog comments, conducting an auction, etc) then you’re good. Weebly Interactive Educational Games
Anybody who retails online
Why? Square is a payments processor. They’re enormous offline and want to be bigger in the on/offline arena. That’s the reason why they purchased Weebly — and why the future is pretty bright for Weebly’s e commerce features.
If You are starting a site and plan on selling a couple of things here and there or if you have an offline presence (ie, pop-up stores ) and you want to sell on the internet, the Weebly provides a readymade alternative with tightly integrated ecommerce characteristics which should just get better.
Product Investment & Company Construction
I’ve Been using site builders for 20 years because the Homestead.com times and have been closely paying attention to the industry for the previous five decades. One overarching trend is a firm’s structure drives product investment more than the marketing team or the product group.
Even In a fast-growing marketplace, a organization’s structure and finish goals will dictate how it behaves and what investments it makes. As I summarized in my Wix vs. Weebly vs. Squarespacestructure can vary tremendously among direct competitors.
For Years, Weebly was an independently owned and operated company going for organic growth. However, in 2018, they offered to Square — the big player in payments processing. Weebly now functions as an independent subsidiary of Square.
On One hand, that might be a huge downside. Acquisitions are renowned for destroying companies and value. However, this purchase has a Massive upside for one market segment —
Total Pricing
If You really do not mind your website on a subdomain (ie, http. //yourwebsite.weebly.com) afterward Weeblyis free with no expiration. A pretty good deal — especially for temporary websites.
Overall Pricing is quite aggressive not only in contrast to other comprehensive site buildersbut also with buying your own hosting. Their Starter plan starts approximately $8/mo when paid up front. And they do not have the typical caps of other website builders. The Pro program adds solid features and still stays under $12/mo.
And Again — you will see that everything is bundled and infinite. There are no caps on pages or storage space. And unlike competitors like Wix, they remove all ads with the initial paid grade.
Even Their business pricing, while more expensive than doing the exact same thing on your own hosting, is considerably more affordable than comparable plans with direct rivals.
Compared To constructing your own website on your server and notably with other site builders, Weebly’s pricing is quite competitive. Price isn’t everything, but I love how they structure it.
Disadvantages + Truth About Utilizing Weebly
But Of course, no Weebly review would be complete without looking at the downsides. Each bit of software will have complaints. Let’s look at 3 unique cons I found.
Content Management System
A Content management process is exactly what it sounds like. It is an interface which permits you to type, filter, edit, and publish different types of content on your site. Weebly Interactive Educational Games
Weebly Kind of features that. It has 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. But it’s far from a efficient system.
There is No method to add custom content forms (except inside a single page). If you are arranging a large site (such as hundreds of pages), the articles within Weebly would require a personal system to keep it all sorted and readily reachable.
This Disadvantage could be overcome, but I want content could be more easily handled within Weebly.
Platform Lock-in
The Last big disadvantage of Weebly is that moving to a new platform is not difficult. If you want to move somewhere else, such as your WordPress powered site, Assessing your articles and redirecting your URLs are going to be a difficult procedure.
Weebly lets One to export your Page content through zip file but blog articles will need to be manually duplicated or migrated through RSS.
Again — migrating platforms will always be difficult, but it is something to think about if you’re planning on quickly growing content or traffic.
Advanced Advertising Tools
Since Weebly allows for HTML editing, most advertising tools and attributes can be added to your website. However, since you still do not have 100% control over your site & server — it can be difficult or not impossible to include advanced marketing tools like an EV SSL, customized email collection tools, custom analytics packages, custom social stocks, special Schemas and A/B testing software.
In The jargon — the main issue is not having”root” or”FTP” access to your own server files. This isn’t an unsolvable problem, however it’s something to be careful of if you are planning a long-term job.
For Most all website owners with average traffic you’ll want to be aware of the constraints, particularly if you are planning for rapid expansion.
Weebly eCommerce Addendum
Here is Weebly’s advertisement showing their new eCommerce setup.
A bonus for Weebly is their eCommerce performance. It’s possible to sell products from your Weebly site without changing platforms or doing any special developments. It fits in seamlessly 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 wonderful bit of functionality, but keep in mind that it’s not a full-fledged eCommerce that online store platforms like Shopify or even Bigcommerce have. Weebly includes a shopping cart, fundamental inventory management, and payment approval. Here is how Weebly matches about the eCommerce”spectrum” —
It is Great for websites which are mostly lead-generation, informational, etc but also wish to sell a few goods. Additionally, it is a fantastic fit for anybody testing out products before going to a long-term stage. It’s not a long-term fit for sites that are eCommerce-first. For those, an internet store you own with WordPress + WooCommerce or even a specialization eCommerce platform like Shopify (inspection ) or Bigcommerce (review) are a better match.
Product Investment & Company Structure
Now — the acquisition from Square does come with a downside. That is regular website builder features. Weebly’s incentive is to invest in features that make it even more valuable as a complete for Square. Weebly Interactive Educational Games
Characteristics Like appointment scheduling, blogging, etc are only valuable in so far that they gain the parent company.
If You’re looking to build a long-term content or lead 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 started testing Weebly many Years past, it was only another website builder. That has completely changed. Weebly has now evolved into an outstanding website building tool which is better than most competitors. It is simple, uncluttered and simple to use — which is exactly what people with limited technical skills need in regards to creating their own online presence.
Of course, it’s not 100% perfect. We’d like To see a bit more templates, as an example. Finding an email address attached to your domain is also a bit pricey, as they urge G Suite, that costs $5 a 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 our list of site builders. Their ease of use combined with cool tools such as the iOS or Android app for editing your website on the move, or the amount of add-ons out there in the app centre makes it robust, and fun to use.
Enough with the theory. Try it out for Yourself and see how you enjoy it!
Click Here to begin using Weebly now!