Weebly offers you a broad range of website building features that can help you build a website without knowing how to code. Our review will go over these tools and assess how they can help you build a better website. Weebly is very user-friendly and even though their tools are minimalistic, they give you pretty advanced functions. Dec 18, 2020 Select the type of page you want to create – a blog page, for example – and give it a name. As you do this, Weebly automatically loads the page for you, with pre-filled images and content for you to make your own. Remember to click ‘Done’ to save your new page’s settings.
Once you start building, Wix’s design features help you make an attractive website. It has pre-built content blocks that feature eye-catching shapes and colors. These blocks make it easy to create pages that look professionally built. Plus, the Wix builder has guide lines that appear when you move elements so you can keep everything neatly. Weebly supports an unlimited number of blogs within your website, with full comment moderation features allowing an open, moderated, or closed conversation. It’s Free It is completely free to create and publish a website with Weebly.
Weebly is a drag-and-drop solution for building your website. To get to Weebly:
Legacy
- Log in to your Bluehost cPanel account.
- Scroll down to the Website section.
- Within this section, find Weebly. Choose a package, select the domain you want to use, and click login to get started.
Rock
- Log in to your Bluehost account.
- Click on the Marketplace tab from the side navigation tab to the left.
- Choose Addons from the sub-menu.
- Within this section, scroll down, find the Weebly option. Select the domain you want to use, and click Use Weebly to get started.
For more Weebly resources, please also see the Weebly help pages.
Features
- Custom headers and page sections — Choose between six different header types and control each one by adding images, logos, slideshows, menus, buttons, etc. Customize your page by including a site menu, social icons, contact form, logo, and more! Every custom section you drag onto the page works like its own mini-site and can contain multiple design elements like color, backgrounds, text, images, and video.
- Commerce system — Sell your products online and provide a consistent shopping experience across all devices. Select sophisticated storefront themes and choose from a variety of payment options including Stripe, PayPal, and more. New product and category elements provide you with the flexibility of designing and laying out your online store. You will have full control of the entire process from product creation, to shipping configuration, payment processing, and order management.
- Store Design Elements — Easily drag and drop products or categories anywhere on your site to create beautiful stores, and drive sales.
- Bulk Importing and Exporting — Quickly make bulk edits to your products, import and export batches of information, and implement key SEO terms to get found online.
- Tax Setup — Save time with one-click tax rates for the entire US, guidance for international rates plus easily set by region, price, or manually.
- Shipping Management — Save time by using our shipping management tools, which enables you to easily configure shipping rates based on quantity, setting a flat rate per item or order, and offering free shipping based on order price or weight.
- Optimized One-Page Checkout — Get your customers through the checkout flow easier than ever with a simplified one-page purchase process.
- Membership system — Build a membership-based website that allows users to log in to access special content. Add members, build groups, and manage access all from the admin area. Further, you can add a “Register” button to the site allowing visitors to sign up to become members. The options will then be available to manually review each case for approval, simply automatically approve everyone, or even upload a CSV file with all the data for your member database.
- Blog system — Create blog posts with all of the same tools you have in the main editor. Other blog features such as archives, categories, RSS feed, comments, and more are at your fingertips. You can even schedule your posts to publish at a future date.
- Fully responsive themes — Create and manage a website that works everywhere for everyone. All Weebly themes have been optimized to automatically resize so they look great on any device your visitors use to access your site.
- Spacer element — Add blank space anywhere on the page with a new “spacer” element.
- No “text + image” element — Add an image to text by simply dragging and image into a text box.
- Page management in the sidebar — Pages are now created and managed via the sidebar interface that won’t hide the page you are currently editing. Moving between pages, editing, and setting up the framework of your site is now done effortlessly.
- Image editor — New image editor includes features such as image cropping, filters, focus, and other adjustments like brightness and saturation. It is HTML-5 based and a huge update from the previous flash-based editor.
- Page type icons — After selecting which type of page you’ll be adding to your site, you can select an icon that best represents how you would like that particular page to be laid out. This icon will always show in the “pages” tab for reference.
- Open access to the HTML/CSS editor across all plans — For those comfortable with HTML/CSS code, this feature allows you to modify the source code of your site. Another way of doing this is to use the element called “embed code” where you can actually copy/paste any kind of 3rd party tool or custom code into a specific page on your site. This includes Youtube videos, opt-in forms, etc.
- Element options user interface — All drag and drop elements have an updated option interface making setting element options much easier. Adjust spacing, add borders, link, align, caption, and more!
- Theme options — Additional customization options to many of the new responsive themes. Examples include navigation placement, header overlay settings, page width, etc.
- Theme gallery — An updated theme gallery user interface makes it easier to find and preview themes, view recently used themes, and manage custom themes.
- Custom color palettes — Color palettes allow you to choose both a primary and accent color to better personalize and brand your site. If you want, you can create default palettes that have primary and accent colors already defined. You then get to decide where those colors are used throughout the page.
- Video Backgrounds — Impress your visitors with high-quality video backgrounds. Choose from Weebly’s free video library or upload your own unique video to make header images and sections pop.
Founded 2002 in San Francisco by college buddies David, Dan and Chris, Weebly is a site builder that has helped over 40 million websites.
With a combined annual traffic of more than 325 million unique visitors, the company is now backed by funding from major players such as Sequoia Capital and Tencent Holdings (April 2014).
Overview: What is Weebly?
How does Weebly work?
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Weebly powers more than 40 million websites. It is equivalent to 2% of all websites that are currently live. It looks great when you compare it with the vast availability of website builders. It was founded on the belief that “anyone should have the tools to take their business from idea to launch to growth”.
Weebly works by offering users a very visual interface which they can use to build their websites and requires no knowledge of coding at all. All you need is to drag and drop stuff, resize things with a mouse and add or edit text and images.
Examples of Websites built with Weebly
Some great sites built with Weebly-
To see more, check out this roundup of beautiful Weebly websites.
Weebly Features
Right off the bat, Weebly gets down to business and the first thing you’ll be asked is if you’ll be selling stuff online or not (more on this later). Next, fill in your website information such as name, products and other descriptions and you’ll be shown the template selector.
Weebly features many beautiful templates and once selected, you’ll be asked if you’d prefer a Weebly domain, to purchase your own, or use a domain you already own. Having looked at the templates, I’m left wondering if there is a need for much of Weebly’s drag and drop features.
Despite the massive amount of options that you can drag and drop onto the existing templates, they are already so comprehensive and editable that most people who are seeking simple, static websites would need not much further modifications. One good point to note though is that Weebly automatically helps you create a mobile version of your site.
The catch comes in when you want to sell stuff online. While the setup for this is fairly simple, Weebly charges sites that sells products on top of monthly fees. Unless you’re a business user that pays top dollar of $25 a month, Weebly will charge you a 3% fee per transaction.
To look into this in context, read our study on how much should a website cost here.
Weebly Features Demo
Weebly Themes Demo
* Click to see a clearer, larger animated-image.
See all Weebly themes: www.weebly.com/themes
Pros: What I like about Weebly
1. Good mix of templates
Once upon a time, Weebly followed the road traveled by most website builders and that was to offer users a ton of templates to choose from. Today they have somehow managed to optimize this even though the number has been cut to a couple of dozen templates.
I feel as if this is a two-edged sword because some people just might like to spend the time browsing through templates of various designs but also configurations. However, on a more personal basis I feel as if it is in-line with Weebly’s core mission – to help in easy, rapid site development.
As I browsed their template database (Weebly calls them Themes), I noticed that they offer a spread that while spartan, covers most of the categories that people would need for basic sites. This means that, it’s all there but has been streamlined to prevent users from wasting time and searching through hundreds of templates to find that ‘perfect one’.
Many moons ago, Weebly has a ton of templates to choose from but for some reason they cut it down to a more manageable 50-odd. I’ll be honest here and say that I’m a little on the fence about the whole ‘number of templates’ thing.
It also encourages users to get a little more creative in their own designs, so overall, I count this as a win for them.
2. Easy to use site editor
The drag-and-drop builder is the core of the Weebly system and is what helps users build websites quickly. Through the manipulation of some visual elements, users can piece together their website in a ‘what you see is what you get’ interface.
The core of this is twofold. One – it requires zero coding knowledge. Yes, completely zero. Even if you can’t tell HTML from PHP you can build a complete and functional website that has the potential to be as powerful as any other (almost).
The second part is that the system allows for rapid site development. Think of it as like modern construction where contractors use prefabricated parts instead of having to build everything in place. It cuts down development speed by a ton!
Using their builder and templates I have personally built a functional website with customizations in less than a couple of hours! Of course, this only applies if you don’t let yourself get distracted by everything that Weebly has.
3. Weebly App Centre
For those who are looking past the basic website building experience, that is where the Weebly App Center comes in. The drag and drop interface allows the use of basic website elements, but the app centre is where you go for more powerful tools.
Weebly has a total of more than 270 apps here which are a mixture of free-to-use and paid. Here you can easily add and enable things such as eCommerce, marketing, or social media features. Again, they require no coding knowledge, although some may require an understanding of basic concepts such as email marketing and the like.
4- Analytics help you monitor your site
Once a site is up and running, site owners can then monitor how their site is performing to track and understand visitor behaviour. Weebly lets you view some basic metrics like what pages your visitors are going to, how many hits you are getting, what people search for on your site or even what external sources are referring visitors to your site.
Exactly what level of access to the analytics you get depends on your Weebly account. Free accounts only can view Page Views and the Unique Visitors so you might need to ‘pay to play’ as some might say. Still, it is great to know the feature exists.
5. Built-in SEO tool
Search Engine Optimization is an extremely large chapter in the book of website development and management. While some might scoff at the very basic functionalities Weebly has where SEO is concerned, I again urge you to consider what Weebly is meant for – quick and easy site development.
As such, in this Weebly review, I find that more limited SEO options are better for basic sites and what Weebly has already covers that. They allow for the entry of page titles and descriptions, header and footer code, search engine indexing control and redirects.
6. Great for eCommerce
One category of websites which is popular given the popularity of online shopping is eCommerce sites. Weebly is simply great for this and has everything you need to start setting up an online shop all on your own.
There is even a system to add and maintain a product database, complete with images and categories. Their eCommerce segment comes in templated form as well, affecting how you display products. There are even difference templates for different types of goods; for example, to manage the separation of digital versus physical goods and services.
It even helps users manage payments and will allow you to let your customers pay by various means like Credit Cards and PayPal. In this area there are many options and anything you can’t find in Weebly’s main payments area can be found in the app center.
It can also help you in other ways for eCommerce, such as:
- Coupon: Offer coupon codes to attract more sales seasonally.
- Gift Card: Send surprise gift cards to your customers through e-mail.
- Shipping: Set shipping rules and rates for different types of orders.
- Tax: Set up taxes for each country and state you ship products to.
Cons: What I dislike
1. Bloggers Might Shy Away
Don’t get me wrong, it isn’t as if you can’t blog with a Weebly site. However, for someone like me who is very familiar with the WordPress content management system, Weebly seriously lacks in this area.
Yet using the Weebly blog tool feels so much like I am using a very primitive version of a word processor that it feels so… dull. There is very little that is dedicated to content and allows extended functionality there.
The entire blogging experience on this platform felt strange and it seemed like a cumbersome attempt at offering something they really didn’t want to do. Your formats are mainly fixed, and you are allowed to craft a title and dump in contents, that’s about it.
Given the massive number of blogs exiting today, I was a little surprised that Weebly didn’t seem more keen on tapping that market as well. Perhaps it didn’t want to get in direct competition with WordPress.com.
2. Help Can be Expensive
Customer support can be expensive for companies – I understand this. Yet at the same time, bad customer support can make or break a company. Therefore I am a little curious as to how Weebly decided on a very clear-cut tiered customer support plan.
How much assistance you get from Weebly depends on what plan you are on with them. Of course, the basics are all there for everyone (e.g. knowledge-base, FAX and even some video tutorials) but unless you are on anything other than a free or starter plan, you won’t have access to their phone support or priority support.
They do have a community forum but when I peeked in there it looked a little … bare.
3. Not the Greatest Backup System
This is something that had me hopping mad – the poor backup system offered by Weebly. Backups are something that is critical to almost anything that is tech-related. On a local computer, website or anything, you always need backups. Unless you don’t mind losing countless hours of your work if something goes wrong.
The Weebly backup system takes a little navigation to get to, but the most ridiculous thing of all is that even if you backed up your website, Weebly doesn’t let you import the backup file back into its own system!
Given this, I am not sure why they allow the backup at all.
4. Issues with Images and Photo Editing
For an all-in-one site builder, the image editing capabilities offered by Weebly are simplistic at best. In fact, you could do better by using Microsoft Paint (if you’re on a Windows system). In Weebly itself all you can do is Zoom, Blur, Darken or apply a color filter.
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Weebly Site Performance
Weebly Plans & Pricing
Weebly offers free accounts that are capable of handling basic sites easily. That scales up in varying degrees offering extra features such as video backgrounds and user registrations. At the top end of the scale with full bells and whistles, Weebly can cost up to $25 per month.
Weebly Plans | Free | Pro | Business |
---|---|---|---|
Yearly Price | $0.00/mo | $12.00/mo | $25.00/mo |
Disk Storage | 500 MB | Unlimited | Unlimited |
SSL Security | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Connect Domain | No | Yes | Yes |
Free domain | No | Yes | Yes |
Transaction Fees | – | 3% | 0% |
Add Products | – | 25 products | Unlimited |
Suitable for… | Flyer Website | Small Business / Online Store | Everything and more |
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Compare Weebly plans: www.weebly.com/pricing
Weebly Success Stories
The majority of Weebly users seem to be varied individuals or small businesses. Some, through the help of Weebly’s site builders have built successful businesses and extended their reach globally. Dharma Yogi Wheel, for example, was founded in 2014 and over the past 3 years has sold more than 15,000 products via their Weebly-built site.
Visit online: www.dharmayogawheel.com
Weebly Review: Our Verdict
Though it does have its advantage and disadvantages, I feel that Weebly is a success and will work well for almost anyone. The basics are all there and it certainly is a powerful tool for budding eCommerce site builders.
The primary features are easy enough to use for almost anyone, even considering a little time needed for familiarisation. At the same time, the app center gives more advanced used the tools they need to make their sites more powerful.
Best of all, you can start off with a free plan to see if it suits you and if it does, then you can choose a paid plan.
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PROS
- Good mix of templates
- Easy to use site editor
- Weebly App Centre
- Analytics help you monitor your site
- Built-in SEO tool
- Great for eCommerce
CONS
- Bloggers might shy away
- Help can be expensive
- Not the greatest backup system
- Issues with images and photo editing
Weebly Alternatives
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- Other site builders: Wix, Squarespace
- Online store builders: Big Commerce
- Traditional hosting providers: SiteGround, InMotion Hosting, A2 Hosting.
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To Begin with Weebly
Also read – other ways to create a website.