WordPress vs Weebly: a Detailed Comparison

If you’re in confusion about WordPress vs Weebly, you’ve landed in the right place. Our detailed comparison will provide everything you need to know before deciding which platforms you should go with. 

In this article, we’ll cover: 

• What is WordPress?
• What is Weebly?
• Pros and cons of WordPress vs Weebly 
• WordPress vs Weebly: Detailed Comparison 
• WordPress or Weebly – Which is better for you?

Let’s get started with the mano-a-mano between WordPress and Weebly!

 

A Closer Look at WordPress vs Weebly 

What is WordPress?

WordPress is the most popular content management system (CMS). It’s an open source platform for any content creators planning to build professional blogs and websites.  WordPress is used by 64.3% of all the websites whose content management system we know. This is 43.0% of all websites. 

Initially, WordPress was mostly used to create blogs. Nonetheless, now you can use this platform to build any type of website you want such as personal or professional blogs, portfolios, company websites, eCommerce stores (using WooCommerce), and membership sites.

 

What is Weebly?

Weebly is a popular website builder that allows you to create a website in a drag and drop interface.  

It is a tool that can be use to create any type of site, from blogs to online stores.

 

Both Weebly and WordPress are among the best platforms for blogging and website creation. If you already have a website of your own and are considering moving to Weebly or WordPress, LitExtension will help you perform that painlessly.  

 

WordPress vs Weebly: Pros & Cons

 

WordPress Pros: 

• Access to 9,000 WordPress themes that you can use to create a website. These themes have free features, but you might need to upgrade if you want more advanced design options. Most of these themes come packed with templates for a variety of niches.
• The WordPress community has created tons of plugins that provide extra functionalities to WordPress themes, from design capabilities to SEO, marketing, security, image optimization, and so many more. Some powerful WordPress plugins are drag and drop page builders (like Kubio and Colibri). Page builders are design tools that allow you to create a website by drag and drop starting from a base theme.
• You don’t need any coding experience in order to create a site using WordPress.
• There are tons of resources out there that can help you kick-off with website design: documentation, tutorials, blog articles, etc.
• Most of the themes and plugins developers out there are offering product support.
• Competitive pricing plans for the WordPress themes.
• When you choose to use a page builder such as Kubio or Colibri, the free plan will allow for a lot of design freedom. If you don’t want to build a complex website, the free plan will do just great!

 

WordPress Cons:

• Depending on the theme or plugin you use, sometimes support might be offered only to paying customers.
• The learning curve can be a bit long.
• You will need to buy hosting separately.

 

Weebly Pros: 

• Free plan and competitively-priced premium plans: Weebly provides a free plan with enough tools to start building your website from the ground up. Its paid options run from $5/month to $38/month (billed annually).
• Easy to use: It’s a piece of cake to learn to use Weebly. No programming skills are required because everything you need to nail it is to choose the suitable themes and drag-and-drop any features, images, or buttons into the right places. 
• You can extend the functionalities of your site by using apps (for SEO, marketing, etc).
• The Weebly plans include hosting as well.

 

Weebly Cons: 

• Weebly branding visible for free plans.
• Weebly ads get removed when a professional is acquired. 
• Weebly has a small number of apps that can boost the functionalities of the website you design. Most of them are paid.

                                               

WordPress vs Weebly: Detailed Comparison 

Ease of Use

WordPress Ease of Use 

WordPress has an admin area where you can manage themes, plugins, media, general website settings, users, updates, and more. Things are pretty intuitive around here.

The moment you enter any page or post, you will be using blocks with specific functionalities: text, images, slider, etc. You can drag and drop them to the canvas, then style them however you see fit.

You can easily save and publish pages and posts. You can preview a page on desktop, tablet and mobile as well. Most themes and builders allow you to create responsive websites.

At first, things can feel overwhelming in WordPress, there’s clearly a learning curve involved. But once you dig in a bit, things will be clear.

 

Weebly Ease of Use 

Weebly page Editor has a user-friendly drag and drop interface which doesn’t require much effort to get used to. 

The users, main site settings, and apps are managed inside the same interface, inside a different menu.

 

Pricing 

WordPress Pricing 

Like I said before, most of the WordPress themes and builders out there are free to use. At the end of the day, WordPress is an open-source project.

If you use a page builder on top a theme (which is definitely recommended if you want to enjoy more design freedom), you can definitely find a free one that comes packed with tons of features and customization options (eg: Kubio).

Now, if you want to create a really unique site, with some advanced styling options, the theme prices can start as low as ~$40 per year. There are lifetime plans as well.

If you add extra functionalities to a site, via plugins, you can use free versions, or upgrades that can vary in price.

Hosting is also a cost that will add up.

Here’s the sine qua non of a WordPress site when using WordPress:  

• Domain name: $12/year. 
• Hosting: from $3.95/month. 
• Plugins: $0 – $1,000 (ongoing or one-off charge). 
• WordPress theme/builder: $0 – $90/year.

Aside from that, if you want to sell online, you’ll need an eCommerce-specific WordPress plugin, for instance, WooCommerce, Easy Digital Downloads, Ecwid, as well as several free and premium efficiency-enhancing features.

 

Weebly Pricing 

Weebly is one of the most favorable website builders in the market thanks to its affordability. In addition to four paid plans with monthly prices ranging from $5 to $38/month paid yearly, Weebly offers a free plan for websites. 

When it comes to a free plan, there will undoubtedly be restrictions on the features you can use. Your site will include advertisements, a Weebly’s default domain (example.weeblysite.com), files no larger than 10MB, and 500MB of storage space. 

Want to learn more about Weebly pricing? Check out Weebly Pricing: Detailed Explanation & Comparison [2022] now! 

 

Blogging

WordPress Blogging 

Compared to other platforms, WordPress may offer the most robust blogging options. It was initially designed as a blogging platform before progressively developing into a complete website builder. Up to this point, this platform has been the backbone of close to 43% of all websites worldwide. 

WordPress provides all the advanced tools you’ll ever need for blogging, including tags, categories, and a built-in commenting system. 

Besides, thousands of easy-to-install add-ons help to promote your website. You can collect leads, create contact forms, create subscriptions, automatically backup your site, and a whole lot more. What’s more, social media plugins are available for you to share and boost your content. No matter what you want to do, there’s a plugin for that. 

 

Weebly Blogging 

Weebly is a good option for blogging as well. Blog templates can be fully customized and adjusted to fit your goals. 

You can start outstanding blog sites thanks to full control over layout and post format. The essential navigation and interaction components that contemporary blog readers demand are provided with category, tag, and sidebar customization.

 

SEO 

WordPress SEO 

There are several built-in features that make optimizing your content for search significantly easier if you use WordPress as your content management system (CMS).

• Permalink Structure: WordPress allows you to customize your URL permalinks for each of your posts and pages. You can also add a clear description of your page’s content as well as any relevant keywords, making your URL structure search-engine friendly.
• Meta Description: Creating a unique search engine friendly meta description will not only help you enhance your ranking on Google but also increase the click-through rate. 
• Categories and Tags: Both categories and tags assist you develop a better structure and allow Google to detect it while indexing your WordPress blog posts.
• Lots of WordPress SEO plugins available, the most popular being Yoast, AIOSEO, and RankMath. Being known as a powerful plugin in WordPress, Yoast SEO has 5+ million active installations and gets 4.9/5 stars overall. Yoast SEO free version is available for everyone; however, you can upgrade to the premium one to get extra special features.  Yoast SEO makes sure your website complies with the most demanding technical SEO requirements. Furthermore, it provides you with the necessary tools to improve the readability and SEO of your content. 

 

Weebly SEO 

To help your blog posts perform better in search results and drive more visitors to your pages, URLs, title tags, meta descriptions, and alt text for pictures are available to be customized inside Weebly. For even better SEO-friendly articles, you can add personalized header and footer code to blog pages. 

Weebly also provides an essential function called 301 Redirects. This is a good improvement because broken links are an issue that search engines dislike. 

Besides, to minimize the negative effect of loading speed on your site’s SEO, Weebly has taken a further course of action. It compresses any large-sized images uploaded to boost ranking and smoothen the customer experience on your site. 

 

Flexibility 

WordPress Flexibility

With WordPress, you can fully utilize your creativity and professional coding skills to create a one-of-a-kind website. A distinct interface that reflects your unique style will undoubtedly be what people remember about you, distinguishing you from the rest of the crowd.

Furthermore, WordPress allows you to install extra plugins for your blog site for powerful functionality. This adaptability is also one of the reasons why so many people choose WordPress.

 

Weebly Flexibility 

Regarding flexibility, Weebly blogging may not come up to high-demanding customers’ expectations. 

Although the drag-and-drop interface simplifies things, it does not allow for much customization. 

I particularly don’t like the user experience behind editing each website element (image, text, etc).

 

Customer Support 

WordPress Customer Support 

WordPress has a large user community so you can learn from others. However, there is a ton of untested information coming from many sources. Therefore, you must sort the good from the bad. 

If you are good at self-education, WordPress’s online instructions will walk you through burning issues. The whole instructions are grouped into categories ranging from “Getting Started” to “Security,” making it easier to select the correct paper.

Also, each theme and plugin developer has its own documentation and support options.

 

Weebly Customer Support 

In general, Weebly offers adequate customer service. By clicking on “Support” at the top of your home page, you can visit the Weebly Support Center, which contains virtually everything you need to know to set up and maintain your website. 

For convenience, the guide articles are divided into areas such as eCommerce, Building Your Website, Your Account, and so on. Each area has several articles that will meet the demands of the majority of users. 

Additionally, emails and live chat are available for all plans. If you still need assistance, the Weebly community may be able to answer your queries. The community is very active, with moderators responding to many topics and providing extensive information. Most of the time, they’ll even ask for your store’s URL to double-check. 

 

WordPress vs Weebly: Which is better for you? 

WordPress is far superior as an open-source platform for any kind of website in the long run. Whereas, Weebly helps customers to easily create websites. Actually, it all depends on what you need the site for and how tech-savvy you are when it comes to website-building. 

You should choose Weebly if you have no experience making a portfolio or a blog before. It’s considerably easier to use right out of the box, and you can have your site up and running in minutes. Weebly will help you through the entire process from beginning to end. 

WordPress is ideal for anyone who wants to be in charge and learn how a website operates. It provides you with complete control over your website. You can add or delete any plugins you like, and even change the underlying code by hand in any way you desire. 

 

Lastly, we hope this article can help you to make a comparison between WordPress vs Weebly and decide which is better for you.

You should think long and hard about what your website needs and apply that to make up your mind. There is no universally right or wrong decision.