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Entrepreneurs looking to build a website, online store or money-making blog have plenty of options, but not all are created equal. If you’re comparing Weebly vs. WordPress, you’ll find that both let you build feature-packed websites for all types of businesses. However, that’s where the similarities end. Weebly and WordPress are very different when it comes to ease of use, versatility and total cost:
- Weebly: Best for beginners and users who want to quickly launch a modern website, blog or online store and get on with their goals of blogging or building a business.
- WordPress: Best for businesses and those that want a highly versatile platform, such as those seeking to build a site with unique features.
This guide highlights the features and drawbacks of each website builder to help you find the best fit.
Featured Partners
Price Per Month
From INR 165.53 ($1.99) onwards
Benefits
Free CDN, Domain and SSL for 1st year
Features
10 GB SSD Storage and 1 Website
Price per month
INR 149 onwards
Features
Drag-and-Drop Editor, Free Domain and Unlimited Free SSL
Price per month
INR 219 ($2.64) per month
Benefits
Free domain and SSL for 1st year
Features
10GB SSD Storage and Basic email included
Weebly vs. WordPress: At a Glance
Weebly is a software-as-a-service (SaaS) website builder that delivers all-in-one simplicity—but don’t let Weebly’s beginner-friendly platform fool you. It can support all types of business websites including online stores, marketing blogs and service booking sites. Weebly offers a free plan and three paid plans, and all plans support an online store.
WordPress is the most popular website platform in the world. Unlike Weebly’s self-hosted platform, WordPress.org is a free, open-source system that you can host with your choice of providers. WordPress also delivers almost unmatched versatility. It supports everything from side-gig startups and personal blogs to e-commerce powerhouses, major news sites, educational portals and much more.
The key differences between Weebly and WordPress come down to ease of use, learning curve and overall versatility. Deciding which is right for you depends on what you need from a website and how much you’re willing to learn.
Weebly
Free Plan
Free plan includes online store
Design
More than 50 customizable themes
Free Plan
Free plan includes online store
Design
More than 50 customizable themes
Why We Picked It
With Weebly, you can create all sorts of modern, mobile-friendly websites, blogs and online stores. Weebly comes with more than 50 built-in free themes, which are easily customized using Weebly’s intuitive drag-and-drop page editor.
Looking to sell online? A full-featured online store is built into every Weebly plan and supports online sales of physical and digital products, services and memberships. Since Weebly is owned by Square, you can also seamlessly connect Weebly store sales with in-person sales via Square’s popular retail and mobile point-of-sale (POS) system.
Square powers card payment processing on Weebly stores and offers competitive rates of 2.6% to 2.9% plus 30 cents per transaction, depending on your plan. However, you can use Stripe if you prefer, and add PayPal as an option on the INR 2,398.12 ($29) and INR 6,532.82 ($79) per month plans, but these are your only payment options on Weebly.
Pros & Cons
- Competitive pricing on paid plans
- Switch website themes any time
- Powerful e-commerce features
- Can’t connect your own payment processor
- Square ads on free plan
- Phone support on paid plans only
WordPress
Free Plan
Free software and free hosting is available
Ease of Use
Higher learning curve compared to Weebly
Design
Thousands of unique, fully customizable themes
Free Plan
Free software and free hosting is available
Ease of Use
Higher learning curve compared to Weebly
Design
Thousands of unique, fully customizable themes
Why We Picked It
WordPress powers more websites, blogs and online stores worldwide than any other platform. This versatile system delivers endless design flexibility and functionality, all driven by a universe of WordPress themes and plugins. With free blog hosting available and e-commerce-ready hosting starting at around $1 per month, WordPress is also an extremely economical solution.
WordPress’ versatile plugin-based system supports all types of business and online sales-focused websites as well. Unlike Weebly’s Square-based payments, you can connect your own payment provider to most WordPress store plugins and shop the top payment processors to get the best rates.
WordPress’ unmatched versatility does come at a cost, and that’s ease of use. Building a WordPress website requires more moving parts and has a far greater learning curve than Weebly’s plug-and-play simplicity. Most of the best WordPress hosting providers include security and data backups in basic plans, but you still need to update themes and plugins regularly to keep everything running smoothly.
Pros & Cons
- Grow any type of web-based business
- Best-in-class SEO tools
- Versatile, plugin-based platform
- Big learning curve
- Ongoing theme and plugin updates
- Potential plugin conflicts
How Weebly vs. WordPress Stack Up
Web Design
With more than 50 free plug-and-play themes, designing your Weebly website takes just minutes. You can customize site headers, footers, pages and blog posts using the intuitive drag-and-drop editor. Most themes are responsive, meaning they automatically resize page elements to fit mobile devices. You can also change your Weebly theme at any time, however, some customizations may not carry over to the new theme.
Prebuilt themes from Weebly
Most WordPress hosting services provide basic design themes to help quick-start your website. You can also shop for themes that fit your unique needs right from your WordPress dashboard. There are thousands of free and paid WordPress themes to choose from. Plus, free drag-and-drop page-building tools such as Elementor, Divi and Spectra make it easy to build a WordPress website from scratch.
Verdict: WordPress offers virtually unlimited design freedom compared to Weebly’s limited theme library and customization options. Weebly’s plug-and-play themes let you quickly launch a blog, business website or online store, but WordPress lets you build exactly what you want design-wise.
Weebly’s built-in SEO toolkit is rather basic, pulling metadata from page titles, tags and descriptions. Weebly SEO apps expand these SEO features and add valuable SEO tracking and analytics tools, but those come with added costs.
WordPress is a very SEO-friendly platform and SEO experts can optimize WordPress without added plugins. However, most WordPress users turn to plugins such as Yoast or Rank Math to manage WordPress SEO elements sitewide and boost search rankings.
Verdict: WordPress is better than Weebly in terms of marketing capabilities, thanks to its SEO-friendly content structure, built-in WordPress optimization tools and SEO plugins including Yoast and Rank Math.
Blogging
Weebly provides a tidy set of blogging tools that let you organize posts in categories and subcategories, plus you can add tags and turn comments on or off. Each post can be customized with the drag-and-drop editor, and you can add elements such as videos, images, photo galleries, forms and sidebars to any post.
WordPress was developed with bloggers in mind and remains the world’s leading blog content system. WordPress blog posts support videos, photos, sliders, galleries, forms and calls to action, plus an array of monetization elements. It’s easy to turn WordPress blogs into moneymakers with affiliate links and ads, thanks to plugin-driven affiliate product reviews, comparison tables and ad program widgets. You can also easily enable, disable and manage blog comments however you wish on WordPress.
Verdict: WordPress is better than Weebly for blogging, especially for blog-based businesses, news sites and content marketers that monetize blog posts. Weebly provides useful blogging tools for creating engaging posts, but WordPress is unmatched in terms of versatile post and category features, unlimited contributors and plugins for affiliate sales and other blog functionality.
E-Commerce Features
Weebly gives you a full-featured e-commerce store with unlimited product listings on all of its plans, including the free plan. If you’re looking for a completely free e-commerce website, Weebly is a good option. However, you’ll need a paid plan to sell digital goods via download, plus managing membership and subscription sales and online bookings require adding Weebly apps that can increase monthly costs.
Weebly e-commerce stores connect seamlessly for social media sales on Facebook and Instagram, but direct Amazon and Walmart.com marketplace integration isn’t available. Plus, you must use Square or Stripe (or PayPal if you upgrade to a higher-tier plan) to process card payments in your Weebly online store, so you can’t shop for lower rates with other payment providers. However, Weebly stores seamlessly integrate with the robust Square POS system to streamline in-store, mobile and online sales in one place.
You can choose an e-commerce website or a personal website during sign-up, but if you start with a blog or portfolio, you can add an online store at any time.
To add e-commerce features to a WordPress website, you need a WordPress e-commerce plugin. There are plenty to choose from and most are free to use for basic online sales needs. Some enable specific types of sales, such as Easy Digital Downloads, which is popular for selling e-books, music and digital art files on a WordPress website. Others, such as WooCommerce, Ecwid and BigCommerce, enable a full set of multichannel sales features and deliver a feature-packed shopping experience. You can even add the Square store plugin to power an e-commerce store on WordPress and connect it to Square POS.
WooCommerce is the most popular e-commerce plugin for WordPress. You can add it to a WordPress website anytime to start selling products, digital downloads, memberships, online courses and more.
Many WordPress e-commerce plugins support a full range of social media and online marketplace sales. If you want the freedom to list products on Facebook, Instagram, Amazon, Walmart.com and other seller marketplaces worldwide, you can do it using WordPress. Speaking of freedom, most WordPress e-commerce plugins let you connect your own payment processor, so you can shop around for the best rates.
Verdict: WordPress far outshines Weebly in terms of online sales versatility, multichannel sales and payment processing options. Weebly’s seamless integration with Square POS makes it a great quick-start all-in-one sales tool, but WordPress provides more opportunities to grow and scale.
Overall Costs
Weebly pricing plans range from free to INR 2398.12 ($29) per month, and you can save around 10% on paid plans by paying annually. All plans include e-commerce sales features, but the free plan runs Square branding on your website and store pages and has storage limits. Paid plans drop the Square branding and offer unlimited storage, a free domain name for a year, more store features and priority phone support. You can add Weebly apps to expand functionality for SEO tools, membership sales and built-in shipping labels, but most apps have annual or monthly costs.
WordPress is free content management software, but you need a hosting provider to house and host your website. WordPress.com and a few other providers offer free WordPress hosting. However, paid hosting with unlimited storage and security features is a better choice for e-commerce stores, business sites and monetized blogs.
Paid hosting prices and features vary, but top providers, such as GoDaddy, Hostinger, Nexcess and IONOS, generally offer economical startup plans ranging from INR 82.69 ($1) to INR 3307.76 ($40) per month. Most plans include basic design themes, built-in security, backups and a domain name. Adding plugins can increase your WordPress site costs, though many offer free basic versions.
Verdict: WordPress tops Weebly for overall costs if you’re looking for scalability in the long run. Weebly’s set pricing tiers are predictable, but if you need top-tier features, WordPress’ scalable platform, lower hosting costs and economical plugins deliver a better value as you grow.
Featured Partners
Price Per Month
From INR 165.53 ($1.99) onwards
Benefits
Free CDN, Domain and SSL for 1st year
Features
10 GB SSD Storage and 1 Website
Price per month
INR 149 onwards
Features
Drag-and-Drop Editor, Free Domain and Unlimited Free SSL
Price per month
INR 219 ($2.64) per month
Benefits
Free domain and SSL for 1st year
Features
10GB SSD Storage and Basic email included
Ease of Use
Weebly is one of the most beginner-friendly website builders on the market. With modern plug-and-play themes, an intuitive drag-and-drop design screen and simple controls for changing colors and fonts, anyone can build and launch an attractive Weebly website in an hour or two. It’s also easy to add and categorize regular pages, blog posts and product pages, and create customized menus with drop-down navigation.
Weebly interface
Every Weebly website is automatically linked to a Square account that you create upon sign-up, so you can add items and build an online store at any time. Weebly’s e-commerce sales, inventory, customers and shipping details are handled in its user-friendly dashboard as well.
WordPress has the largest learning curve of all the top-rated personal and small business website builders. Setting up a WordPress website takes time and typically involves research and decision-making. To start, you need to decide on a hosting provider, choose a theme and decide if you want to use a page builder plugin or the native WordPress page editor tools. Then you need to explore plugins for added functionality, such as SEO controls, content tables, email marketing, search maps, social media links and more.
WordPress interface with Elementor
E-commerce plugins need to be researched, chosen and set up as well, which adds a few more steps to your learning curve. Plus, all WordPress plugins and themes require regular updates and occasional troubleshooting if you encounter errors or conflicts.
Verdict: Hands down, Weebly beats WordPress when it comes to ease of use. Any beginner can launch an attractive Weebly website within a few hours, whereas the same type of website on WordPress might take a new user a week or more to launch.
Customer Support
Weebly, through Square, offers 24/7 phone support on paid plans and 24/7 chat and email support on free plans. Since Weebly is owned by Square, you can get answers to questions concerning your Weebly website, Square payments and Square POS from one source. This is handy if you have setup questions for e-commerce store setup or management or want to learn how to handle products across online and in-person sales tools. Weebly and Square also have complete online resource centers with video tutorials and how-tos covering every feature.
As open-source software, WordPress doesn’t have a centralized help desk or direct phone, email or chat support. Most WordPress hosting providers assist with hosting-related issues, but you’re typically on your own for site setup. Themes and plugins are supported by developers, but typically only through online forums or email. Most new and seasoned WordPress users turn to YouTube for their WordPress education, which offers a wealth of informative tutorials and how-tos.
Verdict: Weebly tops WordPress for customer support because it offers customer support via phone, chat and email, plus an extensive online support center. WordPress has no formal support beyond online forums and documentation on WordPress.org. But thanks to YouTube, users can find the answers they need for everything from basic setup and troubleshooting to specific themes and plugins.
Plugins and Apps
Weebly’s app store offers more than 350 apps that add all types of performance, sales and user functionality to Weebly stores. A few are free, but most have a one-time, monthly or annual cost. Paired with Weebly’s already robust platform, Weebly apps let you craft unique user experiences, expand marketing efforts and better manage posts, pages and online sales.
WordPress plugins add all sorts of functionality to a WordPress website, and there are thousands to choose from. Each plugin is a unique tool and comes with its own learning curve, but they drive WordPress’ unmatched versatility in terms of design, user experience, content management, sales capabilities and scalability. Since many offer free versions, testing various plugins is quite economical, too.
Verdict: WordPress’ thousands of plugins offer more scalability and versatility than Weebly’s 350-plus apps. However, Weebly’s platform already delivers many built-in features that require plugins on WordPress, including e-commerce tools, payments, email, site stats and SEO tools.
Security
Weebly provides both the software and the platform that runs your website, so core security features are built into every Weebly website. This includes hosting on secured servers with regular virus and malware scans, plus built-in SSL certificates on paid plans. Square’s built-in payment portal also ensures that sensitive customer data is collected and transferred via encrypted connections.
For added security and to prevent hackers from accessing websites, Weebly recommends that site owners use strong account passwords and change them regularly. Most Weebly apps are created by third-party providers and can be vulnerable to hacking, so Weebly recommends using strong, regularly updated passwords on app accounts.
Managing security on a WordPress website is the job of the site owner. Luckily, reputable hosting services provide core security features including servers with firewalls, regular virus and malware scans and built-in SSL certificates. With this type of hosting, WordPress server security is on par with Weebly and other all-in-one web builder platforms. However, outdated WordPress software, themes and plugins also pose security risks, so it’s crucial to keep every element of a WordPress site updated using auto-updates whenever possible. This is a crucial detail that WordPress site owners must keep up with to maintain a secure website.
Along with Weebly, WordPress websites are vulnerable to hacker attacks through weak account passwords. Using strong passwords on hosting accounts, WordPress user accounts and all themes and plugins is highly recommended. WordPress users can also add security plugins for extra protection, but a top-rated hosting provider is the first line of defense.
Verdict: Weebly beats WordPress for easy-to-maintain website security. Weebly handles the core security features for you, whereas secure WordPress sites require reliable hosting and constant updates to software, themes and plugins.
Featured Partners
Price Per Month
From INR 165.53 ($1.99) onwards
Benefits
Free CDN, Domain and SSL for 1st year
Features
10 GB SSD Storage and 1 Website
Price per month
INR 149 onwards
Features
Drag-and-Drop Editor, Free Domain and Unlimited Free SSL
Price per month
INR 219 ($2.64) per month
Benefits
Free domain and SSL for 1st year
Features
10GB SSD Storage and Basic email included
Bottom Line
Both Weebly and WordPress let you create attractive, modern and mobile-friendly websites for all sorts of business and personal needs. But how you go about creating, maintaining and growing a website differs greatly on each platform. Weebly is hands down the easier of the two platforms to learn, but WordPress is the decided champ when it comes to unlimited potential for site design, digital commerce and user experience. For many, WordPress’ versatility and scalability make tackling its steep learning curve worthwhile.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Who is Weebly best for?
Since Weebly makes it easy to craft an attractive website it’s best for web design beginners who don’t want a steep learning curve. With its seamless Square POS integration, Weebly is also ideal for businesses that want to connect online, in-store and mobile in-person sales in one system.
Who is WordPress best for?
If you’re prepared to tackle the learning curve and website upkeep in exchange for unlimited online potential, WordPress is for you. No all-in-one website builder—including Weebly—can match WordPress’ versatility and scalability for digital commerce, blogging, content marketing and branded user experience.
Can I use Weebly with WordPress?
You can connect a Weebly online store to WordPress by linking one to the other using the navigation menus on both websites. It helps to match the header and overall design of both sites for a seamless shopping experience. Since each site sits on its own platform, this method can increase your costs, plus isn’t beneficial to your overall SEO. Using a WordPress e-commerce plugin to add an online store is a better solution long term.
Is Weebly or WordPress better?
Weebly is one of the best website builders for beginners and users who want to quickly build and launch a blog, portfolio site, online store or business marketing website. WordPress is better for anyone who wants to build a website with virtually unlimited branding and growth potential. WordPress has a bigger learning curve than Weebly, but it’s far more versatile in terms of design, digital commerce and scalability.
What are the disadvantages of using Weebly?
Weebly’s functionality and scalability are limited to what the platform delivers and its 350 or so app extensions. You can do quite a bit with Weebly, but creating a highly customized site design and user experience requires coding knowledge. If you sell online, you can only accept payments via Square or Stripe, and PayPal can only be used on the two top-tier paid plans. You can’t connect your own payment processor to a Weebly store.
What are the disadvantages of using WordPress?
The two biggest disadvantages of using WordPress are its learning curve and the need for ongoing site maintenance and upkeep. WordPress websites are a tech stack that includes WordPress software, design themes, page builder tools and plugins that add specific functionality. Each element is a unique tool that must be installed, set up and regularly updated, plus each has its own learning curve. It takes time to understand all of the moving parts that go into a WordPress website.
What is the best website builder?
WordPress is the most popular website builder and powers more websites than any other platform worldwide. WordPress is highly flexible and versatile, and you can build practically anything imaginable using WordPress. However, it has many moving parts and comes with a large learning curve. For quick-start websites, all-in-one website builder platforms such as Weebly, Wix, Shopify and Squarespace can be a better choice.
What is the best free website builder?
If you’re looking for a cheap website builder with a flexible, scalable platform, WordPress websites can be set up with free hosting. But, if you want a quick-start website, blog or e-commerce store, Weebly’s free all-in-one website builder is hard to beat. It offers more than 50 free customizable design themes and simple drag-and-drop editing tools, plus it pairs with Square for easy online payments with economical flat-rate processing fees.
What is the best ecommerce platform?
WordPress, Shopify and Weebly powered by Square are frontrunners for the best ecommerce platform. Each offers a unique set of business tools, so deciding which is best depends on your specific needs. WordPress offers the most flexibility and scalability for digital commerce, but it comes with a large learning curve. Shopify packs everything you need to sell on your own website and on Amazon, Walmart, Facebook, Instagram and more. The seamless Weebly and Square POS connection makes it easy to launch an online store and connect online, in-store and mobile sales. Plus, the free Weebly plan includes an online store for a no-cost startup.
