Weebly Review: Is It An Ideal Website Builder For Creative Professionals?

If you are a small business owner, sell products, or provides services, a website is what you show to people through the internet so they get to know who and what you are and how they can reach you. A website is your online persona. In most cases, your site is also your business center where you can do transactions and accept payments.

An online website builder platform will help you create your website. This can be a professional website, a portfolio, a blog, a virtual store, a corporate site, or a combination of any of those. You can go for specialized platforms like website builders for photographers or opt for all-around website builders that you can customize for your type of business or industry niche.

Popular website builder Weebly falls in the latter category and is better known for building eCommerce sites. But can it also be an ideal website builder for creative professionals like designers, graphic artists, and the like? Let’s find out.

What is Weebly?

Weebly is a widely-used, web-based drag-and-drop website builder platform. It is designed to help you build professional websites and online stores without complication. This means you can easily create a site for your profession or business whether you are into providing services or selling products online.

Check if you can get any special discount with our Weebly coupon code article.

The platform is one of the more established names in the website builder software category. It boasts millions of users and millions of websites created through its builder tools and resources that can be accessed from any connected device.

Weebly provides integrations with nearly two dozen third-party apps that you can use for your website, online store, or blog. Also, you can purchase a domain from Weebly or publish your website with the Weebly subdomain.

SEO capabilities have been built into the Weebly platform to help you gain traction on search engines and boost organic traffic. One of the best things Weebly has in store for you are its tons of professional themes that you can quickly customize to reflect your style, brand, or content.

Key Features

• Content management
• Customizable templates
• Drag & Drop/WYSIWYG editor/site builder
• Electronic payments
• Email marketing/management
• Inventory management
• Landing pages/web forms
• Online store builder
• Reporting & statistics
• SEO management
• SSL Security
• Integrations
• Website management
• eCommerce management

Pricing

• Free – $0.00 for basic use
• Personal – $10/month, connect to a custom domain
• Professional – $12/month, connect your domain, add more customization
• Performance – $26/month, features to drive growth and manage online operations

Highlights

All-in-one platform

Weebly is more than just a website builder. It likewise gives you tools to grow your business. So if you’re an enterprising creative professional, you’ll find many useful features like SEO, lead capture forms, shipping and inventory management tools, payment systems, etc. From building and customizing your website and putting up a storefront or gallery to boosting your traffic and maximizing revenue streams, Weebly got you covered.

Customizable templates

The builder platform offers dozens of customizable templates regardless if you’re putting up a blog, portfolio, online store, or business site. These templates range from classic and bold to modern and minimalist. With powerful customization tools, you can tweak the theme, fonts, and background to personalize your website according to your taste and style. Such functionality paired with an easy drag-and-drop editor gives you more control over the design and look of your site.

Free plan to start you off

While it’s a limited free plan with Weebly ads and branding, it will help you jumpstart your website-building project at no cost. This is suitable if you like to put Weebly in its paces and test out the features so you can assess how it works with the hands-on operation. Anytime you’re ready and good to go, you can quickly upgrade to any of the low-cost plans.

Affordable packages

Weebly offers some of the most pocket-friendly premium plans that come with all the features you need to put up a website or an online store. The platform did not scrimp on tools and even put in advanced features you’d only expect from enterprise-level plans. Not with Weebly; even its regular business plans will have you enjoy sophisticated eCommerce tools and end-to-end store management features.

Low Points

Where’s the AI?

Other well-established website builder platforms come with artificial intelligence to give you super fast and optimized website creation with just a few informational inputs from you. This provides a deeper and smarter experience for users. Ironically, AI, or a distinguishable form of smart assistance is missing from a widely-used platform like Weebly.

Not that many themes

Again, compared to other similar software, Weebly feels lacking in more extensive themes and templates that you can choose from. You’ll just have to make do with what’s offered which, in fairness, are quite attractive and are all mobile responsive. Themes though tend to be more on the minimalist side.

Top Alternatives

Website builders are a dime a dozen. There are so many of them that you’ll be hard put to make a solid choice. Do consider your needs – are you better off with a portfolio website maker or a general-purpose website builder? The alternatives below are a mix of both options.

• Wix – Design, create, and manage your website the way you want; offers a free plan and several paid plans starting at $14/month.
• GoDaddy – Domain registrar and website builder offering 4 premium plans starting at 49.99/month.
• Gator – Web hosting and easy website builder platform; 3 paid packages are available starting at $3.84/month.
• Squarespace – All-in-one website builder designed for eCommerce businesses; offers 4 paid plans with the lowest price going for $16/month.
• Web.com – DIY website builder for professional and business websites; 4 pro packages are offered starting at $4.95/month.

Now to the query at hand – is Weebly an ideal website builder for creative professionals?

The Verdict

Weebly is an excellent site builder for whatever type of website you need – be it a virtual store, blog, portfolio, or company site. Creative professionals will find a lot of good compelling reasons to go for Weebly.

It offers customizable themes and templates and has an easy-to-use, codeless builder platform. On top of that are eCommerce tools that let you market and sell your works. Of course, the icing on the cake is its affordable plans teeming with features.

You can start right away by signing up for free and trying the no-cost plan so you can see how it addresses your needs as a creative. Know that you’re in great company – more than 50 million artists, content makers, and creative entrepreneurs from around the world have already built their websites using Weebly.
Check Weebly Pricing