Weebly vs WordPress Comparison Review – An Insider Peek
Weebly vs WordPress Dilemma
Are you having a hard time fully understand the difference between Weebly and WordPress? Including how easy or difficult they are to use, the pros and cons of each website builder?
If you are, this article and video (below) will be able to help you out. I’ll keep technicalities to the minimum, and try to keep things very simple and easy to understand!
I’ve also included a brief summary and some Killer and Myth-Busting Tips for you towards the end of this article. I’m sure you’ll find them useful.
Let’s get going!
What’s Weebly?
Weebly allows you to build websites very quickly, easily and intuitively. They use a drag and drop technology so that if you know how to use a mouse, you can build a website.
Weebly provides you with website building blocks (or “elements”) so you can easily choose what you want and insert them into almost anywhere you want on the website.
Examples of building blocks / elements include paragraphs, pictures, titles, videos, contact forms, maps, etc.
They give you a blank canvas (new website) and you just drag their elements on to the content area with your mouse. Easy enough!
What’s WordPress?
WordPress is traditionally known to be a blogging tool for people to write blog posts. However, in recent years, more and more non-blog websites are using WordPress.
WordPress has a much larger community than Weebly, mainly because they have a lot of different designers and programmers that provide services and build tools (such as plugins) for WordPress users.
This is why a lot of people elect to use WordPress, because the support community is extensive and you will always be able to find help there (for a fee of course!)
The downside which discourages people from using WordPress is that it is a lot more difficult to master, when compared to using Weebly. There is a reason why the support community (i.e. designers and programmers) for WordPress is extensive – most people using WordPress have a harder time learning how to use it properly due to technical challenges, and hiring WordPress specialists to help build or maintain a website is definitely more expensive than Weebly.
On the flip side, you can do a lot more fancier things with WordPress, but you will need to either be proficient at using it, or pay for it.
Insider Peek into Weebly and WordPress
All the Weebly vs WordPress comparisons that you find on the internet will give you a bunch of technical points. But we’re going to SHOW you the differences in the following video tour.
While all the writing and text are wonderful, nothing beats going behind the scenes and see exactly how differ:
As you can see, building a WordPress site is not as easy as Weebly. The main benefit of Weebly is that you can see thing getting built directly in front of your eyes. It’s a more intuitive way of building websites.
Choose Weebly If….
So I hope you get a deeper appreciation for how Weebly and WordPress works, and why they are different.
Choose Weebly if…..
- You want to build a website rather easily and quickly
- Don’t want to take up the steep learning curve of learning WordPress
- Don’t want to spend a lot of money (which could sum up to hundreds or thousands or dollars for WordPress specialists)
- Don’t mind not being able to do all possible website tricks under the sun. As mentioned above, WordPress has a massive support community that builds all sorts of cool tools for WordPress users. Weebly has a smaller community.
But before you make your final decision, here are a few more tips for you to consider….
Killer Tip for You: Ignore Technical Geeks – Except for me of course! :)
After all, using Weebly is not something to be embarrassed about – don’t listen to technical geeks who claim Weebly is too restrictive and limited.
Understand Your OWN Unique Needs
Pay attention to what YOU need. Revisit the core reason of why you want a website.
For example, if you are a business owner, you have limited funds and limited time, but want a good yet simple web presence, why would you bother, and where would you find time to learn WordPress – which not as intuitive as Weebly? Or potentially paying a lot of money to experts to solve website problems for you and end up frustrating yourself, when you can accomplish your needs of having a functional website set up quickly and easily through Weebly?
You really should be spending your time and efforts in marketing your business and creating products. Those are tough enough already, and you don’t need that extra pressure to make you feel like ramming your face against a brick wall :)
Prioritize your time (which is a very limited resource).
SEO and Ranking (Myth Busted)
Some people will tell you that you can’t rank well with search engines (such as Google) with Weebly. Well, I’m going to stick my neck out and tell you that you can rank very well, even with Weebly.
It’s true that WordPress has “plugins” or that it is structured to help search engine better understand your website, but they are not a magic bullets. No such thing.
Having a clear SEO strategy, hard work and good execution of your strategy WORKS. Not a magic bullet. I’ve introduced some basic beginner techniques in our SEO articles here.
I’ve built websites with Weebly and have ranked very well with competitive keywords. So don’t let others’ negativity comments sway you.
Just because “they” can’t make it work, does not mean you can’t. :)
Seek Help
Here comes my bias :)
Who says you can’t have a beautiful and functional website with Weebly? If you are still in disbelief, check out our Weebly example websites.
DivTag Templates provide all sorts of design solutions for Weebly users. It’s really a 1-stop shop for all your design and knowledge needs.
We provide premium templates and add-on’s such as header plugins, widgets, splash pages and skins. We also provide useful and free tutorials as well.
We’ve designed them so they’re easy enough to be installed by yourself – you don’t have to be a technical guru – this I can promise you.
Final Thoughts on Weebly vs WordPress
So I hope you found the insider peek video helpful in improving your understanding of how Weebly and WordPress works.
I hope you gained more insights on the different consideration factors in your decision making process.
There really is no “right or wrong” decision, but your final choice should really be driven by your own unique needs.
If you want to build a world class online store, then perhaps Weebly isn’t the best tool for you.
But if you want to build a beautiful website, by yourself, without over-committing your limited resource (time), then using Weebly is one of the best solutions I know of.
Hope this helped.
Jeremy
Co-Founder – DivTag Templates
About divtag
DivTag Templates is created by Connie and Jeremy Wong. We provide you with designer Weebly themes to rock your Weebly website!Your website will Look Better, Your visitors will Stay Longer. Minutes to Setup, Extensive Support - Ninja Coding Skills NOT Required!
Hi Jeremy,
Thanks for the post. I’m one of those that have done their own websites in straight HTML, Javascript, & PHP, and when I went to WP for the first time I saw that the learning curve was still there and yet Weebly offered something much quicker. Only now that I have more time to reflect on how well my Weebly site is working for me, I see that as a programmer I do not know where the HTML for each page is so I can modify it. I only see the code for the theme. This is probably the part, unless Weebly shows me different, where restrictions come into play. Without having to wait for Weebly support to email me back, do you know where their html is available for each page?
Thanks,
Fred Weigman
Hi Fred,
Weebly only provides access to HTML for each page layout, so if you have multiple pages using the same page layout, you can’t edit the HTML for each webpage, but rather for the overall page layout that each webpage uses.
When you are in Weebly Editor, click on the “Design” tab at the top of the page, then on the left bottom corner you can click on the “Edit HTML / CSS” button to access the HTML codes for each page layout.
HOpe this helps!
– Jeremy
And, of course, you can add your own HTML on any page by using the standard drag/drop element. And the header/ footer HTML (for Google analytics etc.) can be edited in Page Settings.
Thanks you so much for the great explanation. I am building my first website and now I know which one to use. Cheers!
Hi Jeremy,
Thanks for the post. It cleared up many points for me. I am planning to write my first blog (foods & recipes, and as a beginner I’d like to go with the free blog), but I’m not very familiar with the technicalities of the computer. Your explanation made it clear that Weebly is a better choice for me. On the “pages” though, I will need many pages and those pages need some other pages, and some of these pages and words need to be linked to each other (as for recipes, herbs, nutrition, vitamins, …). Will I have these options on Weebly !?
Thanks
Arash
Hi Arash,
Yes. Weebly allows you to create as many pages as you wish, and you can also create subpages under each main page. You can see Weebly’s instructions here – http://kb.weebly.com/add-more-pages.html
Jeremy
[…] DivTag Templates who are one of the premium Weebly templates provider. They will highlight the key differences in Weebly vs WordPress in a simple, and easy to follow […]
thank you so much for this awesome explanation! really helped to clarify things!!! loved this article!
Hey Jeremy, this is something I try to explain to my clients very often. What I try to make clear to them is that Weebly is a visual editor, where as WordPress is not as visual.
The other big difference depends if you are computer savvy/know some stuff, or you are a beginner. If my client is a beginner I will usually try to set their website up with Weebly, that way they can make the small edits and required later. Where as WordPress requires me to do more one on one training to make it possible for my clients to do this.
One more thing that I think is important to mention is that WordPress does have a few drag and drop type editors available through plugins. Some that come to mind are Page Lines and Page Builder/Panels. These plugins give you the ability to easily add structure and make editing with WordPress very easy.
Just my two cents!
Thanks
Dan
Hey Dan – Thanks for sharing your thoughts!
For sure, WP is really a powerful platform, if one has time to learn and some financial resources to hire some experts to set it up or customize it. It all depends on the end goal of the user, and what they’re trying to achieve out of it.
Thank you again for sharing and adding to this discussion!
– Jeremy
Hi, Jeremy. I have one pivotal question about whether Weebly will ultimately work for us or not.
Ours will be an e-commerce site where people can download files… BUT, files in a FOLDER, that is… a set of files all at once.
Weebly allows downloading files, but not folders as far as I can tell.
Am I missing something? Is there a plug-in that will allow downloading a folder or set of files?
Thanks!
Mark Elam
Hi Mark,
What you can do, is zip up your folder and upload it into Weebly as a digital download for your e-commerce product. This way, your customers can just download the zipped file, which is basically the folder with your files within it.
Jeremy
Thanks, Jeremy.
I was hoping to avoid ‘zip’ somehow, but… guess not.
Thanks very much for the reply!
Mark
Greetings Jeremy
I have found your summary very interesting and helpful
I am about to embark on creating my own website and have decided upon Weebly for the solution.
I work as a Real Estate agent and require the facility to obviously load the normal current listings and have a search facility which I think Weebly has the capacity to do, infact it looks as if it will cater for my needs very well.
My query is that for some clients I will need to build a “landing page” specific to an individual property whereby I can have a large amount of data available for intending buyers. Floor plans, local area info, video content etc……the landing page will be the link from a Google Adword campaign.
I have my domain name registered….EG ‘www.domainname.com and a landing page that I need to create should be the web address/nameofproperty?
I have seen it done before EG ‘www.domainename.com/smithstreet.
Can I create a landing page for and individual property(ies) in Weebly and be able to link them onto the end of my domain name for a Google Ad campaign?
This is an example here
‘www.goodground.com/landing/luxury-new-zealand-waterfront-retreat/
Any help would be greatly appreciated .
Regards
Hugo
Hi Hugo,
Yes. What you can do is create a new / separate page for each landing page that you want, then use that page’s URL for your Adwords campaign. So when people click on the ad, they will go directly to the page that you set up for that ad.
On that page, you can insert whatever relevant information / content you need that relates to the advertisement.
HOpe this helps!
– Jeremy
Hi Jeremy. Thank you for this information. I am in the process of establishing my eccommerce website where people can upload images (and description for those images) to the website for viewing by other people. What I would like to know is: does weebly provide eccommerce plugins that would facilitate image-upload by subscribers to my website?
Hi Ruth – Unfortunately I don’t think Weebly has this ability. Have you tried emailing them directly to see if it’s something they’re interested in developing? I haven’t heard nor seen anything.
– Jeremy
Hi Jeremy
I have been reading through all your information on Weebly which is useful thank you. I am in a bit of a nightmare situation. I have used Weebly for 3 websites before and found it great. Having another one to build for a client I needed to be able to put 8 icons below the main picture to link to sub pages. Becuase you can’t put any more than 5 columns and can’t add a table I couldn’t work out what to do and emailed Weebly. They have not been great at replying and the first reply didn’t solve the problem. Because of that I redid the website in Wix which was a dram to use and I got a far better look. Problem is – I needed to call them about an issue and their service is worse than Weebly and when I read lots of online comments about them I now want to go back to Weebly. Problem is, I can’t solve my original problem so feel completely stumped. Do you have any suggestions on what I can do?
Kind regards
Adrienne
Hi Adrienne,
It’s true that you can’t add more than 5 columns… there is a workaround but it’s not an ideal solution unless you get into custom coding.
Try using 4 columns, then drag in a gallery element into each column. Then set up each gallery to display 2 images (or you can use 2 columns, but 4 images per gallery, etc. Test things out). Then hyperlink the images to subpages.
The final output in terms of styling may not be ideal… but it’s something you can try out. Good luck!
Jeremy
Create a 4 column page, and then drop a 2 column element into each of the 4 main columns. That will give you 8 separate columns to work with. That’s how I’ve worked around the limitations.
I run 6 websites on Weebly and one html based one…and I dread having to update that one. Weebly is a blast to work with…except their blog function.
I love your review of weebly . Do you think I should use weebly or wordpress for a site with that would be able to have high seo and ranking. I want to monetize my site and I know that wordpress free site can’t offer this. Right now I am only using free offers and I plan to upgrade when I get enough ranking, a job, and a personal bankaccount.
At the moment i have a WP blog, which i do not run as a business in any way and it is not why i began writing it and not really planning on doing so in the future, but who knows? However like you have said in your post above you need a mind full of computer wizardry, of which i have little or none and/or a deep pocket, again of which i have little or none. I will look into Weebly and see if it will at least expand my horizons – thank you.
No problem Beverley! Glad we can be helpful here.
– Jeremy
WordPress is easy to install and use when you need a very basic website. Most hosting providers have one click installation option. You can grab a free theme and start blogging in minutes.
It’s a different story when you want to create a custom site. For this task you definitely need a developer. Required skills: PHP, SQL, JavaScript, CSS, HTML, WordPress hooks, filters and other parts of the core.
Hi,
I have a couple questions:
Do you feel Weeby is the best choice for all of the website templates services available? What are your thoughts on Squarespace? That ranked pretty high in some reviews as well.
Also, I’ve been learning and building some websites using WordPress free themes. Are the paid themes more feature rich and have more customization without having to know css?
Thank you so much for your help
Cathy
Thank you,
Cathy
Hey Cathy,
Squarespace is pretty good – but each website builder has pros and cons, right?
Check out these reviews here which are also helpful
Jeremy
Thanks for this article, Jeremy. Just what I needed to read! I’ve loaded a couple of very simple websites on Weebly, and had a (considerably) more expensive site designed on WordPress (through a designer). I actually find my home-made-jobs MUCH easier to navigate and loads easier to update/modify, so I’m considering pulling my WordPress site down and throwing up a Weebly-one. The only thing holding me back is the blog: it’s been completely non-active to date (gulp!), but I’m planning to ramp it up in the next few months. Will a Weebly site restrict my blogging potential? (I’m not anticipating making money from this or having some huge following – it’s really just going to be a tool to educate my limited number of potential clients…) Your opinion would be greatly valued. Selina
Hi Selina,
Weebly has a pretty basic blogging function which works well if you are just creating simple blog post and don’t require any more advanced functions such as the ability to “pull” your blog post summaries to another page. If you need more advanced functions, such as those from WordPress, then it might be an idea to keep your blog on WordPress, and build out the rest of your site on Weebly as it is much easier to manage your Weebly site.
Hope this helps!
– Jeremy
Thanks very much for this video/blog. Really helped me out. I have just spend a week trying to get my head around WordPress. Just when you think you’ve cracked it – you find yourself googling “How to” questions again. I will look at Weebly as a stronger contender now. Thank you again
Thank you so much for this article! I’m thinking of choosing Weebly but I can’t make up my mind. I’m going to start a writing blog so I wanted to ask what you think which would be better for promoting your writing and books? I would really appreciate your opinion on this matter.
Erika
Thank you so much for confirming what I intuitively thought! So nice to have an expert’s stamp on this. I used WordPress and Weebly at the same time for different sites and while I found myself running to my Weebly site to update it, I have to schedule time to update my WordPress site. Just last month I moved one site to Weebly and now I am making the big move to all my sites. Thanks for the post!
Can i take my website which is WordPress and use weebly to drag and paste all contents on to weebly platform?
Hi Noah,
There isn’t any automated ways to migrate a website from WordPress to Weebly at the moment. So if you want to migrate to Weebly, you’ll have to rebuild your site again. So it’s a bit of an investment in time for sure.
There are freelancers that you can try to hire to help you do all the grunt work. Check out Elance or oDesk.
Jeremy