Weebly Vs WordPress

March 11, 2018
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We went through the two main entry level CMS alternatives, with our two previous articles regarding Wix and Squarespace. Now, after reconnecting with someone on Linkedin, who is using weebly, I was thinking to give you an evaluation of this alternative.

Looking at stats from a CMS identification website, I ended up looking at what makes the panel based on all the offers out there.

We see that weebly is not part of the TOP 9 showcased on the graphics above. So you must be asking “why?” instead of Joomla, Drupal or Magento… The focus was “DIY” platforms, that are very easy to use and customize.

Ease of Use – Weebly

Weebly offers a drag and drop interface just like the two previous CMS we looked at. It’s definitely very user friendly and will provide you with all you need to build a website such as self hosting and templates.

WordPress on the other side requires a little more to get setup, a little bit of technical knowledge and the ability to look through different place to apply themes and plugins. Those tasks are definitely manageable by most people.

Flexibility – WordPress

As with the previous two CMS we looked at, Weebly solely offers a self hosted solution, meaning you have to use their servers to use the weebly system. It starts as free and as low at $4 a month, but you’ll have to display weebly ads on your website. Then from $8 to $25 a month if you want to add more features. This is really reasonable but the limitation of what you can do depending on the plans you choose show its limits.

WordPress on the there hand, has this flexibility due to being independent of the server it is installed on. You will find numerous hosting solutions offering “self hosted” wordpress plans, or regular hosting plans where you can install wordpress for even cheaper. We are not only looking at price here, but looking at data ownership. You want to be able to transfer your data easily without having to rebuild something completely new.

Design and Features – WordPress

At the time I write this article, there is just over 55 themes available from weebly. There is over 10,000 to choose from with WordPress, now are all 10k wordpress theme good? Can you only do so much with those themes, and sometimes using the same ones? Yes indeed, but the number of themes showcases a community behind the projects that will keep developing exclusive designs continuously. Same for Plugins and Apps, even though weebly has quite a collection of them. Those themes operate within it’s interface natively, which is a good thing. It does not provide you with the selection of available plugins that the WordPress repository has to offer.

E-Commerce – WordPress

Even though weebly has an e-commerce feature, most of their plans will take you to their own website to proceed with checkout and get a 3% transaction fee on orders. Which is totally fine, as most credit card companies charge around 3% on transaction fees anyway. Woocommerce, which is the leading E-Commerce module on wordpress is so powerful, that it is tough to beat, at least by user friendly solutions.

Support – Weebly

Weebly has an extensive knowledge base, phone support, live chat to help you out with issues. While for wordpress you will have to search through forums, youtube videos and other support channels to find solutions to potential issues.

Conclusion – WordPress

The powerful features, E-Commerce and the flexibility that WordPress offers still make it the #1 in our books. Weebly offers quite an alternative that would be potentially helpful to people wanting something simple. Now would you be looking at it for a website to develop steady growth? It’s limitations listed above would be what make us choose WordPress.

Note: Our activity is to create wordpress websites, and use wordpress for over ten years. This means you can look at us as opinionated. But with 17 years of success stories in the web world. We seem to believe that we have knowledge that can be helpful to you.

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