Item: Square Online
Rating: 4
Author: Momoko Sudo

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

I used Weebly for my artist portfolio page. To make a long story short, I ended up in switching to Squarespace after reaching the limitation of what Weebly could not do. For an artist's showcase site, appearance is everything, Weebly didn't stick around in terms of the appearance. It wasn't terrible but it wasn't good either. Also, some bit of coding skill was required to alter simple matters, and I totally dreaded having to do it myself. I liked that customer service was available, and they were nice, but what I wanted required so much coding which they are not equipped to support. I did not want to pay extra $1000 or so just to make the website the way I wanted. If appearance is not important at all, then Weebly can make a website very quickly. But it does not become very pretty, like other platforms do.

Pros and Cons

When you don't like Weebly, they refund the money with no questions asked, as long as you cancel the paid account within the specified time range.
Figuring out how to build a website may be faster with Weebly than other platforms.
Customer service was prompt and very available.

Templates are not up to date to today's website trend. Not great looking.
It requires so much coding skills just to alter background colors and such.
There was something very wrong with footer layout. Footer area gets hidden no matter how the site is made. Footer should be visible at all times especially when there is not too much content on the page. It requires scrolling down just to see the footer. I find it very strange.
Templates needed so many things being fixed and it required me to go into the files and do the coding... I really hated it. Templates should be ready to use as is.

Return on Investment

Site was not visually appealing to what I wanted.

Alternatives Considered

Squarespace, Wix and GoDaddy

I thought Weebly had better reviews after reading reviews on various sites.

Other Software Used

Google Hangouts, Google Voice, Shopify, Squarespace, Google Drive, MailChimp

Likelihood to Recommend

If someone needs a website as soon as possible, Weebly is good. Also, if the site is text based in content, not like artist or apparel or something that requires visual appeal, then you can make a site very quickly and have a decent look. For example, if it is a professional service, such as an accounting service, attorneys, and such, which content consists of texts, and visual is only supplemental to the content itself, then Weebly is okay. Weebly is not suited if the site needs to look really cool.

Users and Roles

Support Headcount Required

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Vlad Kucher
commented 7 years ago
I start describing the good and bads for each one of them and then give you my suggestion, the final decision will be up to you.Weebly:It's a free platform to begin with where you can start working on your website and get it up and running. The free version is limited to only five products, and they will charge you 3% transaction fees on every successful sale.Pros:- You can get up running very quickly.- You don't need a Ninja coding skills.- Free to begin with minimal cost.Cons:- No real control over what you can do and you can't do. - What if they take your site down the next morning you wake up?- 3% transaction fees on every purchase can be tedious.- No control over the payment gateways you can integrate, you will have to wait for Weebly to release them - Weebly can have access to your data.WordPress:WordPress is undoubtedly the best CMS available on the internet. You can close your eyes and go with them.Pros (I will only mention the major ones or else it would take my entire day to write down the goods):- Complete Control over your codes & website.- No limit on the number of products you can add. You can use WooCommerce - a free eCommerce toolkit for WordPresswoothemes.com along with any theme that supports WooCommerrece.- You can get your eCommerce website up in few days.- You can have complete control over your hosting account. My recommendation for hosting would be: Cheap & Affordable SSD VPS Hosting On Windows & Linux- Massive amount of support available on various forums, websites etc.. You just need to a quick shoutout asking for help and the entire community will pour their heart out to help you. I am huge open source fan :)- Tons of Free Plugins available on the WordPress › WordPress Plugins Store.- You can find tons of developers & designers in case you need help forCons:- You don't need to be a ninja coder but you do require some basic CMS operational knowledge, you can find tons of videos to overcome this con.Other than that, it's tough to say anything bad about WordPress as I use WordPress for majority of my projects.For me, having a complete control over each and every part of my website is very important. Also, I want my data to be 100% secured and only accessible by me. Conclusion:Close your eyes and go with WordPress, right here http://www.webbuildersguide.com/website-builders-reviews/weebly-review/ you can read the advantages of wordpress under weebly

Good for Quickly Building a Website - Not Good for Trendy Visual Appeal

Overall Satisfaction with Weebly