If you are looking for a great website builder, you will love this Weebly vs WordPress comparison post. Real quick, both help you to build a website, but since you need to choose one that suits your unique needs, which site builder is better for you?

In this Weebly vs WordPress comparison post, we bring the best of each platform forward, so when you make your decision, you won’t lose any money.

We won’t throw shade. Instead we will show you why either of the platform could be the right solution for you, although we swear by WordPress any day.

Today, we give love to each site builder, and we don’t need you to fall for either platform on our say so. Fall, instead, for a platform that meets all of your business needs no matter how diverse.

Weebly vs WordPress: Brief Overview

WordPress is an application framework (or content management system – CMS) that helps you to build any type of website or web application. It’s free software that you install on your web server.

Many big brands depend on the unparalleled power of WordPress to keep their websites running, which is why this platform powers ~ 26% of the web.

Additionally, it is built by hundreds of contributors from all over the world, meaning the development of WordPress is more alive now than ever.

Nonetheless, we won’t talk nineteen to the dozen about WordPress and forget about Weebly. That would make this Weebly vs WordPress comparison post hurtful.

Weebly is a composite website builder offering you “…websites, ecommerce and marketing in one place…so you can focus on what you love.”

In other words, it’s a paid hosted service much like WordPress.com (not WordPress.org, the contender) that helps you to build a website without much effort.

Now, we don’t want to sound cocky, but Weebly has nothing on WordPress. But who knows, perhaps Weebly is better for you.

Weebly vs WordPress: Installation

The best part of this Weebly vs WordPress comparison, let us setup a simple website on Weebly and WordPress. For the purposes of this Weebly vs WordPress guide, we use the free hosting solution from 000webhost.com.

WordPress Installation

000webhost offers you one-click WordPress installation whereby you simply add your site details, hit the install button and you’re done. Yep, it’s that simple. Here’s how:

Head over to 000webhost.com and hit the Free Sign Up button:

000webhost free sign up page

On the next page, enter email, password, website name and click the Get Free Hosting button:

000webhost free sign up form

On the next screen, you can either choose 000webhost’s free hosting service or choose premium web hosting. Here, click the It’s Ok, I want to Learn button:

choose 000webhost free or premium hosting service

This will lead you to this beautiful and intuitive dashboard:

000webhost dashboard

Before you do anything else, we recommend you login to your email account and verify your email address, which is as simple as clicking the Verify email button:

000webhost verify email address to activate free hosting

Clicking this button leads you back to your 000webhost dashboard from where you can manage your newly created hosting account:

000webhost manage new site

Click the Manage website “your-site” button or the Build Website button. On the build website page, you have three options:

You can:

  • Build a stunning website with 00webhost’s Easy Website Builder that requires no technical knowledge
  • Create a beautiful and powerful website using WordPress
  • Upload a website you’ve built previously

Here, choose the WordPress option or click the Install Now button:

000webhost build website page choose WordPress

On the popup that appears, choose your admin username, password, URL, language and click the Install button:

enter details for your WordPress installation

Word of Advice: Don’t use “admin” as your admin username and use a strong password that you don’t use elsewhere. Additionally, keep your login info safe. You use the username and password to login to your WordPress site so don’t lose these as well.

The WordPress installation starts automatically:

000webhost automatic WordPress installation

Wait out the automatic installation. Next, click the Go to configuration page button:

000webhost configuration page

Your WordPress site login page opens in a new tab. Login to your WordPress admin area using your username and password:

000webhost WordPress site login page

This takes you direct to your admin area where you can do plenty of things:

000webhost WordPress admin

Using the WordPress admin menu, you can:

  • Add new blog posts (Posts -> Add New)
  • Upload and organize media in libraries and galleries
  • Create new web pages (Pages -> Add New)
  • See and moderate comments
  • Customize your site’s appearance (You can change your theme, customize existing theme, add widgets, menus, favicons and so much more)
  • Install plugins to extend the functionality of your WordPress site
  • View your profile and add/remove users
  • Import and export content
  • Change your site URL
  • Completely control your entire WordPress site

At this point, you have a fully functional and SSL-ready site that users can access via your subdomain e.g. vistamedia.000webhostapp.com. Of course, you must add your content.

Now, let us create a site on Weebly.

Weebly Installation

Head over to Weebly.com and click the Get Started button:

weebly get started

On the popup that appears, enter your full name, email address, password and click the Sign Up button. Alternatively, you can sign up using Facebook or Google+:

weebly sign up popup

Next, you can choose to start your Weebly adventure with an online store right away or choose to add one later on. Click the Not Now button:

weebly choose online shop later

Next, select a theme:

weebly select theme

This takes you to the theme preview screen. If you love the theme you chose, click the Start Editing button:

click weebly start editing button

On the next screen, choose your website domain and click the Continue button:

weebly choose domain

For the purpose of this tutorial, we will choose a subdomain of Weebly.com. Once you choose your domain, you’re introduced to the beautiful site builder:

weebly site builder

Provided you have the design chops, you can build a passable website drag-and-drop style. But even if this site builder is drag-and-drop, you cannot drop elements wherever you desire; you are limited by the theme you choose.

This is discouraging since you cannot customize the theme fully, something that’s is as easy as pie with WordPress.

Up to this point, your site e.g. vistamediatest.weebly.com displays a 404 error page. After building your site, click the Publish button at the top right corner:

weebly publish button

Now, your site is live and can be accessed via the subdomain you chose. Hitting the Close (X) icon at the top left corner takes you to your Weebly dashboard:

weebly dashboard

WordPress vs Weebly: Features

You want your website to do a couple of things be it sell products, subscribe users to your mailing list, disseminate information, link to social media and so on.

As such, the features you want depend entirely on your specific needs. In the next part of this Weebly vs WordPress comparison, we pit Weebly against WordPress in terms of features.

WordPress Features

WordPress is a fully-fledged application framework. It allows you to create not only websites but also a wide range of web applications. Think of it as the engine that runs a vehicle, and just like the engine has a million and one parts, WordPress comes with a wide range of features it will blow your wig off.

Design Options

The only limit to what you can achieve with WordPress in terms of design is your imagination. There are virtually unlimited design options at your disposal, what with tens of thousands of WordPress themes.

The WordPress theme repository offers your thousands of free WordPress themes that you can customize to your heart’s content. Theme shops and marketplaces such as ThemeForest among others host thousands of premium WordPress themes with amazing features and customization options.

Theme Forest WordPress Themes

Plus you can always create child themes and/or edit your theme’s code by navigating to Appearance -> Editor inside your WordPress admin. This opens up a whole new world of design possibilities to suit your specific needs.

Moreover, you can get drag and drop page builders such as Visual Composer and Beaver Builder, meaning you can create websites out of this or any other galaxy. Many premium WordPress themes feature drag-and-drop page builders as well.

Moreover, WordPress comes with a theme customizer that lets you bend your WordPress themes in ways unimaginable. And by the way, did you know you can install multiple themes on different pages of your WordPress site?

On top of that, WordPress boasts of unlimited widgets that make adding content and features anywhere on your site a breeze.

Content Creation

Creating content with WordPress is a matter of point and click. You can easily add posts to your WordPress site and quickly optimize them for SEO and readability:

adding new post in WP

WordPress supports multiple post formats namely standard, aside, image, video, link, gallery and audio. This allows you to create a wide variety of content without breaking a sweat. You can add featured images, categories and tags to your posts with a few clicks.

Similarly, creating and optimizing pages is as easy as pie:

adding new page in WordPress

You can easily create navigation menus, upload attachments, create your own custom post types (e.g. portfolio, reviews, recipes etc) and much more.

Functionality

Whether you require spam blockers, SEO optimizers, security plugins, caching solutions, affiliate marketing programs, translation, site stats, memberhsip platforms, ecommerce systems, social media integration, contact forms and even social networking capabilities among others, WordPress has your back.

WordPress comes with thousands of free and premium plugins that make adding any functionality as simple as A, B, C. There is probably a plugin for any functionality you dream of. Plus you can hire a developer to build custom features into your website if you lack the time or skills.

Whenever you need to move your site, you can easily export or import your entire site. You can move your entire site using a plugin such as Duplicator without breaking your site.

WordPress further integrates with a wide range of 3rd party services such as payment gateways, email newsletters, cloud storage, Google Analytics and site managers such as ManageWP.com among others.

You can add new users to your WordPress site to create a multi-author blog. This feature also means users can subscribe to your WordPress site.

Additionally, you have complete control of your WordPress site. You can install WordPress on your computer meaning you can test anything without spending money or breaking/shutting down your live site.

And since you need a hosting environment to run a WordPress site, you have full control of your databases, redirects, backups, emailing services, FTP and so much more.

Verdict: No site builder, Weebly included, can compete with WordPress in terms of features and customization options.

Weebly Features

While Weebly doesn’t ship with as many features, it doesn’t disappoint in terms of the basic feature offering.

The two main demerits of Weebly are 1) you must pay up to unlock the best features, and 2) you cannot make extensive customization to your site. That aside, let us see what Weebly offers in the features department.

Design Options

Most of design options in Weebly are within the Site Builder. However, while the site builder features elements that you add to your site by drag-and-drop, it cannot rival select drag-and-drop WordPress page builders such as Visual Composer. Additionally, Weebly offers a simple HTML/CSS for minor code changes.

Weebly comes with about 66 themes, which is a disappointing number as far as this Weebly vs WordPress comparison goes.

In terms of the number of available themes, comparing Weebly and WordPress is like comparing a cat to a lion – both belong to the cat family, but one is bigger, stronger and fiercer – unless, of course, you’re a cat person and believe your furry friend can topple a fully grown lion.

In terms of design options, Weebly is a flop in comparison to WordPress in the sense that you can’t even add a simple favicon without springing for one of their paid plans. And since it’s all drag and drop, it might prove a challenge to edit your site on slower internet connections.

Additionally, you must keep hitting the Publish button every time you make a change. There are no exit-intent alerts or an auto-save feature meaning you can easily lose your changes if you navigate from the Site Builder accidentally.

Content Creation

Our author is fairly experienced in buidling sites, but he had to Google “How to add a blog post in Weebly” just to locate the New Post button at the bottom of the blog page:

adding new blog post in Weebly

This means, to create a mere post, you must open the site builder, navigate to pages, then to Blog page (and you must create this page first), and scroll down to the bottom.

This seems like too much work to create a post considering creating a post in WordPress is as simple as navigating to Posts -> Add New.

The post editor has nothing on WordPress even though it supports drag-and-drop functionality:

Weebly vs WordPress post editor in Weebly

There is a Post Options button at the bottom left corner that helps you to schedule your post, turn comments on/off, add categories, create a secret draft link and make basic SEO optimization. To publish your post, click the Post button at the top right corner.

All the same, you can create new pages right within the site builder and optimize the same for SEO. You cannot schedule a page to self-publish at a later date, which is incredibly easy in WordPress. Moreover, you can create only two types of pages namely standard page and blog page (without which you cannot create blog posts).

Functionality

Weebly comes with limited functionality compared to WordPress. Most of the stuff you require on your site are built into the site builder.

The problem with this is, unlike WordPress that benefits from the extra functionality that comes from plugins, Weebly’s built-in features are rigid and offer just enough power to get by.

Well, unless you raid their app store that is home to about 280 free and premium apps. Note, however, their premium apps attract recurring monthly fees, which is a downer.

You can add an online store directly from the site builder. In WordPress, you’d need WooCommerce (free) or a similar ecommerce plugin. WooCommerce offers more power as an ecommerce solution, which makes it the platform of choice for more than 3 million online sellers.

Pricing and Support

WordPress is a free open-source platform. To run a WordPress website, you need a domain name and hosting. While 000webhost offers you free hosting you can use to test the waters, you can always upgrade to premium hosting that starts at just $2.15 per month.

A domain name costs as little as $8.99 bucks per year. This means you can purchase a domain and connect it to your free website. If my math is correct, you can have a fully functional site with your own custom domain i.e. yoursite.com for as little as $3 bucks per month. That’s s steal by all standards.

Weebly offers 4 pricing plans for online stores, and 4 pricing plans for other types of websites. The free plan offers you a tiny number of features compared to 000webhost, who offer you a complete WordPress site with the free plan.

Other plans at Weebly cost between $8 and $38 bucks per month when you pay annually. If you pay on a per-month basis, you pay between $14 and $46 bucks per month.

Not to mention Weebly charges 3% for every transaction you make on your online store. This doesn’t include the fees payment processors such as Stripe and PayPal charge.

On other other hand, WordPress doesn’t charge you any fees to sell. You only pay fees payment processors charge.

Overall, WordPress is the cheaper option in this Weebly vs WordPress comparison.

In terms of customer care, Weebly offers 24/7 support since it’s a paid service. WordPress has volunteer support forums, plus you can always rely on the huge number of WordPress-related blogs.

Conclusion

WordPress beats Weebly hands down in all verticals. WordPress is a true winner here today in terms of user base, pricing and features among other things.

Did we miss something with this Weebly vs WordPress comparison post? Which is your favorite platform; Weebly vs WordPress? Please share your thoughts and questions in the comments.

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