If you need a website for your small business, portfolio, or hobby but don’t know the first thing about how to build one and don’t want to spend a fortune on it then Weebly might be the company for you. Weebly’s focus is on making building a website as easy as possible at affordable prices. Read our full review of Weebly’s website hosting below to see if they might be right for you.
Weebly brings something a little different to the table, offering numerous features and tools that can assist you in building a website without having to know any code. Their platform is very user friendly, and lends well to beginners, or to those who don’t want to overcomplicate things when setting up a blog or commerce site. While minimalism is the name of the game here, don’t let that dissuade you. Weebly is one of the most sought after website builders on the market, giving you plenty of advanced features and functions to work with.
The company was founded fairly recently in 2006 by Decid Rusenko, Chris Fanini, and Dan Veltri. At the time these men were only 22 years of age while attending Penn State. Weebly has come a long way since it’s humble beginnings, and it’s here to stay.
The Bottom Line:
- Drag & Drop website builder (no knowledge of HTML or other code necessary)
- Free plans available for hobbyists, personal websites start at $10/month
- E-commerce integration, sell your products through your website
- Email marketing integration
- One of the easiest platforms to use to build a website
Our Uptime Scores:
99.82% – very good
Uptime means the amount of time that the server is responsive and your website loads normally. With discount hosts it’s very hard to guarantee 100% uptime, a score of 99% or up is very good. If 100% uptime is vital to your business or very important to you then you may want to consider managed hosting through a company like Media Temple. It will cost quite a bit more, but you are paying for that guarantee.
The Types of Hosting That Weebly Offers:
If you’re curious if Weebly is right for you, you’re more than welcome to try it out for free. This gets you a drag and drop website builder and 500MB storage, but you’ll need to contend with Weebly ads and a Weebly.com subdomain—not something a budding enthusiast wants to deal with.
That’s why we suggest moving on up to an advanced paid plan such as Weebly Starter or Weebly Pro. For an affordable monthly fee (billed annually) you can say goodbye to annoying pop up ads, and hello to a custom domain name. The Starter and Pro plans offerimproved elements over the free version such as unlimited storage, HD video & audio, password protection, a free domain for the first year, $100 in Google Ads credits, and more.
Blogging has never been easier. With Weebly’s site builder, you can drag any page element (picture, text box, spacer, etc.) into a post or page. There are no standard blog templates, however, so you’re going to have to put on your creative hat and get to work here. We’re not sure why Weebly decided to go this route because having to drag in the same elements for every blog post can suck up valuable time if you’re publishing multiple posts per day.
If you’re incorporating a lot of media such as pictures or videos into your posts, Weebly offers unlimited storage on paid plans, however the files must not exceed 250MB on the Pro and Starter plans, and must be under 10MB if you’re using the free model—again, another incentive to upgrade. You’ll also want to do the majority of your picture and video editing before uploading as Weebly’s online editing capabilities are quite limiting.
There’s a fully equipped comment system and social sharing platform, allowing you to manage visitor feedback. It is also possible to synchronize your social media pages to announce to your followers when there’s new content available on your site.
If you’ve got a product you want to promote, Weebly’s premium packages allow Store and Product page types with a unified collection of commerce tools. Importing products from Etsy or Shopify is a breeze, and accepting payment can be done through Paypal, Square, Stripe, and Authorize.net.
Weebly provides you with a Store builder, allowing you to have full control in crafting not only the look and design of your store pages, but it gives you all the elements you need to run an commerce site: a shopping cart, coupons, sale prices, sizes and colours (if you’re selling clothes). You may also sell digital downloads, but you’re going to have to fork out extra cash to make this happen.
If you need an autoresponder, Weebly’s email marketing tool is an excellent way to manage your email list and send out news blasts when you’ve got a new post or product up. It’s also a great way to provide your subscribers with daily or weekly info pertaining to your niche as an incentive for them to purchase your product(s).
Weebly is certainly different from other web hosting companies, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t a suitable option. Their web builder service provides worldwide solutions for users to promote their brand, create, and establish a loyal online following without unnecessary hassle or technical difficulties.
Email:
Weebly does not give out unlimited or even one email address with any of their plans. Instead, they invite you to purchase Email Powered by Google. Another way around their lack of email offerings is to purchase your domain through a third party registrar such as GoDaddy or Blue Host, redirect it to Weebly, and then set up your email. It may sound difficult, but it’s really not.
Security and Other Included Freebies:
There isn’t much as far as security or freebies where Weebly is concerned. What you see with your plan is pretty much what you get. The Pro, Business, and Performance plans do include password protection, so you can protect the entire site or just certain pages, but you’re going to want to look into a subscription with a third party security company such as SiteLock if you want.
As mentioned above, there aren’t any freebies. However, here is a summary of Weebly’s features.
- User friendly web site creator (no code knowledge required)
- 100+ Professional themes
- Cloud hosting included
- Free domain with first annual term
- Video & Audio players (great for youtubers, podcasters, and musicians)
- Simple blogging
- Form builder
- No advertising (except FREE plan)
- eCommerce tool box
- Password-protected pages
- Memberships
- Full HTML/CSS control
Customer Service:
Weebly offer email, knowledgebase and live chat features for customers on the free or starter plans. Pro plans and higher get telephone support. While we understand not opening up phone support for free users, they should provide it to all paying customers. If in the event that you do need to talk to them, you shouldn’t have to wait to long to either get through on hold or hear back from them via email.
Conclusion:
As we’ve mentioned, Weebly’s focus is on serving the budding webmaster who isn’t really interested in learning how to code HTML, and they do it well. We feel this is a good choice for people who need a website for their small business, to sell their products, or for their club or group. It’s a great starter host, and as long as you don’t think your needs will become more serious later on they are a good choice. The one drawback, is that if you do decide to move on in the future, it may be difficult to port your existing website and you could be looking at a complete rebuild from the ground up.
