Wix vs Weebly is an interesting comparison to begin with.
A long time ago, when I was just a wee lad, I thought to make websites was the coolest thing anyone could do (what’s changed?).
Of course, the first thing I would look up was how to create a website for free—which is still a relevant topic I care about.
And so I created my first websites using Weebly, Wix, and Blogger. As a younger guy, Weebly and Wix really caught my eye—they were flashy, had lots of fun widgets, and let you create just about anything you wanted.
Over the years, Weebly and Wix have grown tremendously. They’ve increased their features since being founded in 2006, have ecommerce and blogging functionalities, and have redesigned their user interface multiple times.
By this point, these two are by far among the most popular website builders around.
Wix may be the bigger brother, with over 110 million active users at the last count. Weebly is no runt though, supporting over 50 million active sites.
I truly consider them brothers, by the way. They have remarkably similar pricing, features, user interfaces, and core focuses.
They both start with the letter W and are popular for letting users make free accounts that can publish under the companies’ subdomains.
But that’s the thing—brothers, not identical twins. They’re not the same, they’re similar, and that means they will have different strengths and weaknesses. The question is therefore begged: who’s better?
Let’s find out.
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Wix vs Weebly: Who has better Pricing and Features?
Price is important and one of the first things we look at. Features are pretty essential, and can make a price tag excellent or a false bargain. Pricing and features are a place Wix and Weebly have a ton in common.
Well, we’ve got to start somewhere. Let’s take a look at Weebly.
What is Weebly’s pricing?
Weebly categorizes its plans as “for Websites” or “for Online Stores,” but realistically these two categories overlap heavily. The latter two plans shown above are also for Online Stores, as they come with ecommerce functionality.
However, there is one more tier for Online Stores, at $38 a month. In other words, Weebly’s price range (excluding the free option is $12 and $38, split between three tiers.
A free account has 500MB of storage, basic SEO, SSL security (which I find surprising), and the usual drawbacks of a free builder—Weebly advertisements and a subdomain.
Although I don’t want to spend too much time talking about the free plan, it’s a great way of checking out the building software: even a free plan shows how powerful Weebly’s builder is.
Weebly offers a nice intermediary plan at $5 a month, which basically is the free plan with its own domain.
The free plan is well featured in that it has the website builder, which is excellent, so $5 a month is a good option for those who want a nice looking website but don’t need much else.
However, it doesn’t remove Weebly ads, which is really unfortunate and in my opinion, stingy.
The other premium plans are well-featured in my opinion, partially because storage limits are entirely removed (rather than having limits that get increasingly higher across plans).
Starting with Pro: you of course get the ads removed; can connect to a domain (a free one is included, too); get better site stats, SEO, and lead capture; you also can add up to 100 members; some media allowances; and you get limited ecommerce functionality (limited products and a transaction fee.
Higher plans let you add unlimited members to your site and a membership registration process. They also significantly upgrade the ecommerce functionality to something that’s more fully-featured, with just about all the tools necessary to be a competitive ecommerce platform.
Now let’s take a look at the bigger brother.
What is Wix pricing?
Like Weebly, Wix has two categories of site building: one that’s “normal,” and another that’s for ecommerce.
Wix’s prices are pretty close to Weebly’s. Keep in mind that Wix also has a free plan, but it doesn’t address it in its formal structure. It’s pretty much on par with Weebly’s, in that you get all the normal resource limitations and full access to the builder application.
Something that disappoints me is that Wix used to have an extra tier between Combo and the free plan for about $5 a month.
It didn’t have a lot of resources, but it was a great option for people who didn’t plan on using such resources—they could use Wix’s software and have their own domain for a low price, like Weebly’s current intermediary.
Anyway, the current range is $11 to $29 for normal Website plans and $20 to $35 for Business & eCommerce plans. Despite my complaints about Wix dropping the $5 plan, I still appreciate their breadth of options.
True, Weebly is in some ways more accessible by combining its ecommerce features directly into its higher tiers. Nonetheless, Wix’s prices put ecommerce on par with “normal” plans.
Anyway, Wix starts you off with 2GB of bandwidth and 3GB of storage, and then increases the amount of storage as your tiers increase, to a 20GB limit with VIP. Business plans go up to 50GB of storage.
This isn’t a huge deal because it’s unlikely you’ll really run up against the limits, but it’s admittedly unfortunate compared to Weebly’s unlimited parameters.
Higher tiers grant you unlimited bandwidth, more media perks (more video minutes on-site), and free apps that would otherwise be pricier.
Ecommerce plans are entirely commission free, which is a great starting feature, plus you get Google Analytics and more video hours.
Aside from that, you basically have all of the Website plans’ features plus store features.
On that note, let’s briefly compare ecommerce between the two platforms.
One area that Weebly has a unique advantage over Wix is ecommerce. To be fair, Wix has pretty good ecommerce functionality: so good that I think it can even be a more affordable alternative to Shopify for some businesses.
Wix has been growing into ecommerce with a healthy set of shop tools and access to an app store that can make ecommerce surprisingly robust. Unfortunately, things are a bit rudimentary for people with serious shipping needs or who want more in-depth store editing capabilities.
Weebly is an overall better ecommerce candidate. Part of this has to do with its being acquired by Square in 2018, which improved its already-developing ecommerce features.
For example: Weebly has shipping discounts and can handle dropshipping. Wix can’t even integrate with a dropshipping app, which significantly limits those who want Wix for their retailer sites.
Aside from ecommerce, both Wix and Weebly have really great site builders. It’s difficult to compare without devolving to pure subjectivity.
Nonetheless, I think it’s fair to say at least that both builders are fully-featured.
It’s not just the page editing capabilities, but the different formats you can work with off the bat—for example, blogs.
Above: Weebly’s quick options for adding a new type of site page, such as a blog.
Above: Wix’s quick sidebar menu has a button just for blogs.
You can do just about anything you need to as far as page elements go: you can add, remove, or edit page elements, alter the designs as needed, and so on.
This would be Weebly’s. I prefer Weebly’s sidebar because, although it’s larger, it makes it easier to pick what you need.
Wix’s sidebars take up less space, and the one on the right can be moved around as needed. Plus, you can expand the one on the left as you need to, thus saving space when you’re not using it.
So while I prefer Weebly’s editor personally, I must admit Wix’s is more efficient and probably preferable to most other people. You can judge for yourself with free accounts, anyway.
Another important thing: Wix’s editor is generally more intuitive. It’s easier to make subtle changes to anything on the site, whereas I’ve found myself battling with Weebly’s editor to make specific changes.
Weebly also has a tendency to misinterpret what I want to do. I’ll try to move an element around, or select this or that portion of text, and it will snap into an odd position.
It feels as though Weebly tries too hard to be intuitive and winds up with the opposite effect.
To sum up the overall pricing and features comparison, Wix and Weebly are extremely comparable, but have some important differences. Prices are overall similar. Weebly has more generous resource allocations, but this isn’t a deal-breaker for Wix.
Wix vs Weebly: Themes and Apps comparison
Any website building software will place a lot of importance on themes and apps. Ordinarily I’d consider these a subset of “features,” but they’re so important to Wix and Weebly, let’s give them the proper weight.
Let’s start with themes/templates. Note: it’s true you can start from scratch/from a blank site if you’re interested in that, on either platform.
But it’s still nice to have some preset designs that you can edit as you see fit, so…
Weebly’s selection of themes isn’t bad. There’s a decent diversity in style, plus several useful categories for different kinds of sites, with a handful of themes per category. But Weebly simply can’t compare to Wix.
It’s difficult to know where to start in this point of comparison. Wix simply has way more themes than Weebly, both free and paid. In fact, Weebly’s themes number in the hundreds, whereas Weebly’s are in the dozens.
Wix also has a far better template categorization in place: it has all the categories Wix does, plus more, and each has subcategories with its own selection.
Yes, there is some overlap, and not all themes are high quality, but a lot are. Plus, the sheer quantity speaks for itself.
Things even out between the two platforms once we get to apps. Weebly and Wix both have fairly standard app stores that should be able to satisfy most people’s needs, even if they’re unusual.
Above: Weebly’s app store.
Above: Wix’s.
I think Wix’s app store is generally better—mostly in that apps perform a little better—but take that with a grain of salt. I think the jury is still out on that.
Both app marketplaces have a lot of different types of apps, and impressively, a lot of free apps.
I give Wix and Weebly credit for making their own apps that are usually free or otherwise affordable.
Just about every popular app is present, but it’s not only those popular apps. I do think that Wix’s slight advantage is having a larger number of practical free apps.
Again, the jury is still out, but you can add a lot more free tools that are highly desirable on Wix’s app store.
Weebly’s, on the other hand, has a bit less to choose from. Though having said that, Weebly does have better ecommerce apps.
Wix vs Weebly: Which is easy to use?
Website building is supposed to be easy. That’s the point of making and selling a website building software: to let anyone interested build a site. Even so, builders can be better at accommodating different skill levels, and sometimes at the expense of others.
Wix and Weebly have staked their image on being so easy that anyone, bar none, can use the software.
They have beginners in mind, but are aware of everyone else with a higher degree of proficiency, and their software hopefully makes things faster for such people without any drawbacks.
I think this ideal is the case in practice, at least for the most part. Another common fear: “ease of use will sacrifice the depth to which I can work, or reduce the tools I have.” This can be the case on certain platforms, but you needn’t worry about that with Wix or Weebly.
Yeah, things are sleek looking, but you don’t lose as much complexity as you may fear. And for really advanced users, both companies let you edit your site’s code directly.
This makes it a great collaborative tool: for example, one team member could handle more nuanced edits and another could use the drag-and-drop tools.
Aside from that, both services make it very easy to get started.
Wix (above) even gives you the option of getting a site auto-generated based on some survey questions.
Weebly is more typical about the setup process, but it hardly matters. The two are more or less the same as far as setup goes.
Once you’re in the editing process, things are magnificently easy. I’ll reiterate that Wix has been more intuitive in my experience.
For both, sidebar and overhead menus alone will provide all the tools needed to manage a page or site design (as you can tell from the earlier screenshots).
By “all the tools,” I’m being pretty literal. Remember that Weebly and Wix really popularized drag and drop builders in the 2010s and just before.
It’s not just page and design ease, of course. Everything else about your website and account is easy to handle.
The strength both companies offer is the all-in-one website builder is seriously an all-in-one application.
The builders aren’t limited to page design and elements: you can access your account settings, SEO, eCommerce and shop details, etc, all within the builder.
All things considered, I really can’t say one is easier than the other. They’re both at peaks in ease of use.
Wix vs Weebly: Whose customer support is best?
As I often say, ease of use is no replacement for good customer support. You never know when you’ll need to deal with an unexpected technical difficulty, or when you’ll want advice on upgrading or making the most of a particularly feature.
Customer support is always essential, even if your product is an easy website builder. I’ll look at both representatives and on-site information, as usual.
Weebly offers live chat, ticket/email support, and phone support, though only Pro plans can use phone support. Sorry in advance for the censor—it’s a top secret project/side hobby!
I was annoyed because while I waited, I was sent a long paragraph asking if I was interested in promotional emails. I didn’t really appreciate the upselling, personally.
I got an answer after three minutes. This is ultimately a short amount of time, but still on the longer side compared to better live chats. I guess I can’t complain.
For the on-site resources, Weebly does alright. The big resource is Weebly’s help center.
The help center is decent. It’s got the essentials, but it lacks a lot of details, which I find unfortunate. There aren’t a ton of articles, though the ones that are there are somewhat detailed. It’s still not enough to qualify for what I consider to be a comprehensive knowledge base.
Luckily, Weebly also has a community forum, titled the Weebly Community. This community page is one of the best I’ve seen—it’s super well organized and is easy to search, which is something a lot of forums lack.
Lastly, Weebly has an SEO guide that some may find useful, and a blog (which is nothing unusual).
For its part, Wix only has email/ticket and phone support. There is no live chat, and even the phone support isn’t 24/7. Having said that, representatives have been friendly and responsive.
Wix’s Help Center is the cornerstone of its onsite information.
Wix’s knowledge base is significantly more in-depth than Weebly’s. There are more articles, on a wider variety of topics, and with sufficient detail (though some articles can be stubs).
That’s the end of it, unfortunately. There’s a company blog, but I wouldn’t bank on it. There’s a code forum, but that’s pretty niche.
Because Weebly’s representatives are more accessible and because it has more resources, I’d say Weebly edges out with customer support, but I’m not super impressed with it either.
Wix also has a much better knowledge base, so I don’t consider the customer support gap to be anything but marginal.
Wix vs Weebly: Which is more secure and reliable?
Last but not least, how secure are our competitors?
Drag and drop website builders such as Weebly and Wix tend to add a certain layer of security and stability because they’re usually all-in-one solutions.
They run the software making the sites work, and the servers hosting the sites, they take care of backups and updates, etc.
However, that’s more of a general reassurance than a hard line. Vulnerabilities can of course exist, so it’s good to hear directly from companies what security practices get employed.
Unfortunately, neither entity says much about their security. This Wix help center article is a good example.
…Informative, huh?
Weebly isn’t significantly better, though.
Both companies have full PCI-compliance, which is a gold standard for being able to process transactions. But if you’re not too interested in ecommerce, it’s not too important.
And even if you are, it’s a standard, not above and beyond one.
Both have enabled SSL for all plans. This is good, but again, kind of standard.
Now aside from the unfortunate lack of information, both companies at least perform quite well.
I’ve found both to have really good uptime as well as great response times. For example…
You can see Wix’s latest uptime here.
Even aside from the numbers, Wix and Weebly make sure the actual software you use works reliably.
You’re expected to make good use out of their software products, and they ensure those products have the capacity to work day-in, day-out, for millions.
So in sum, it’s a mixed bag. On the one hand, we know very little about Wix or Weebly security. I’m inclined to trust them because they’re very popular and have supported millions successfully for over a decade.
Weebly’s ownership by Square also leaves a good impression on how I view their security protocols, particularly for commerce.
But aside from that, they have simply excellent performance.
Which Do I Recommend?
The battle between Wix vs Weebly has been nothing if not contested. Every time you think one of them has a clear victory in a certain area, the other reverses it. So, now that we’ve covered all the above, who’s coming out on top?
Both Weebly and Wix perform really well, but could tell us more about their security.
Weebly’s customer support is marginally better than Wix’s, but Wix has a significantly better knowledge base even if accessing customer reps isn’t a strong point.
Both are equally easy to use, in my opinion, though Wix’s website builder is a little more intuitive.
Both have decent app stores, but I think Wix’s is a little stronger, with a larger amount of practical integrations. Wix has a much better selection of templates than Weebly.
The pricing plans are another thing they have in common, though with some differences. Wix has more distinct options, but Weebly has a cheap plan (which lets you connect a domain and use minimal resources).
The features they offer are about comparable, but Weebly has better ecommerce functionality and less storage limitations. On paper, Weebly sounds like it might eke out a victory.
However, I find that Wix performs best at the core service of easy website building. It’s not just the more intuitive builder—things are more conscious of space and speedy. Plus, the app store and templates really tip things in Wix’s favor—they make it a more capable site builder in practice.
So here’s my recommendation: if you’re interested in ecommerce, Wix may not be bad, but Weebly is likely a safer choice.
If you just want a really simple site with minimal storage use and you don’t mind company advertisements, Weebly has a better budget option.
Don’t worry if you’re still uncertain. Remember why each of these is so popular: you can make an account and fully use the software for free. It’s much better than a free trial—so go ahead and get experimenting!
