Established in 2006 by three college students, Weebly.com makes it easy to build a simple site quickly without any coding skills. Weebly is an all-in-one website builder that uses a familiar drag and drop editor that other popular site building platforms use. You can build everything from an elegant portfolio page to a food blog. While this platform is ideal for building simple websites and not worrying about site management, its lack of content management, site customization, SEO functionality, and e-commerce options does not make it a scalable option for businesses. Thus, I will discuss these main factors that prevent Weebly from being a sustainable, scalable option and alternatives to consider.
Content Management
Since Weebly is geared towards non-tech savvy users, this platform primarily handles content management for its users. For example, Weebly does not have a central location for accessing, editing and removing content, such as images, videos, and documents. Over time, a growing business will have a huge inventory of content that needs to be easily found and maintained by possibly multiple users. Unfortunately, Weebly does not offer a simple solution for content management. However, WordPress.org offers a media library on every site admin dashboard, where users can easily access, edit, and remove the content as needed.
Site Customization
Weebly limits how much users can customize their sites. As a website builder, this platform only allows basic customization, such as adding new elements, modifying text, and replacing images. Users are limited to customizing only the theme they choose. While Weebly uses a drag and drop site editor, users do not have the flexibility to move site elements compared to other site builder platforms. If you have a business site that needs to have a unique design and features, consider a top CMS (Content Management System) such as WordPress.org. WordPress allows users to fully customize everything from their hosting plan and domain registration to which theme and plugins they implement. To customize further, you can hire a WordPress expert to add custom code to bring your site to the next level necessary to scale your business and stand out.
To add site features, Weebly has an App Center with over 350 plugins and applications to implement on your site. While this is a decent amount, WordPress offers nearly 57,000 plugins (paid and free) to users in their Plugin Directory, as well as the option to upload third-party or custom-built applications. This type of flexibility allows businesses to customize every aspect of their sites, which is necessary to scale their businesses and bring their visions to life.
SEO Functionality
Aside from building a user-friendly, unique website, it’s essential to optimize your site with SEO. Search engine optimization is the process of improving your site, so it ranks higher for relevant searches and provides content that is useful and accessible for your users. While Weebly offers a basic SEO guide to fill in the information, it does not have the optimization power that WordPress offers to users. For example, WordPress has numerous plugins to help optimize sites with SEO and some even offer recommendations for how to improve SEO rankings on search engines. Indeed, SEO optimization must be a key component for businesses that need to reach their target audiences and continue to grow.
E-Commerce
Globally, around 12 to 24 million e-commerce sites exist, a number that will continue to rise. Indeed, an online shopping presence is becoming more popular and necessary to meet customers’ needs. To sell online, Weebly requires users to choose a pro plan to have a functional online store. Users have access to basic e-commerce features, including shipping tools and inventory management. However, this platform does not offer users flexibility beyond these features. On the other hand, WordPress has WooCommerce, which is the most popular e-commerce platform available with over 70 million downloads and counting. WooCommerce is an e-commerce plugin that provides complete customization to users. You can easily add products and display product ratings and reviews, as well as set the currency type and shipping options.
For international sites, WordPress is the best choice for ensuring sites are not only accessible but also usable by countries with different currencies. There are plenty of plugins that enable the site to be viewed and accessed in multiple languages. If you have international customers, note that Weebly does not have many options for creating a multilingual website. Also, Weebly blocks traffic from certain countries, including China, Russia, and Ukraine.
A Better Option
While Weebly is a good choice if you need to build a simple site quickly, it is not the best choice for scaling a business site. Weebly may be appealing because it is easy to learn and has fewer site customization options to choose from, but it will soon become frustrating when you need a better solution for your growing business, such as for content management, e-commerce, and SEO. Consider WordPress.org, which is a cost-effective alternative offering users complete flexibility in everything from their hosting provider and how their site looks (choose a theme or hire WordPress experts) to which plugins they use and how complex their site structure is. If you would like additional information comparing these two site builder platforms, check out these 38 Weebly vs. WordPress reviews for 2021.
