Which are some of the best Weebly alternatives you can use? In this article, I will help you decide which option is the best for a specific type of website.
Many find that Weebly’s slick page editor and free plan make it a good first website builder. However, things like limited website customization or restrictive eCommerce rules can become an issue when building your online presence.
Weebly is an excellent website builder, but not without flaws. So, a different website builder can be the perfect option if you’re looking to make your business more extensive or better. Luckily, there are some worthy Weebly competitors to choose from.
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Weebly Alternatives
Because of various Weebly problems, I decided to put together a list of alternatives based on which area of Weebly builder you can find lacking. No matter what issue you have with Weebly, there can be an excellent substitute builder:
- Wix (Weebly competitor with a less restrictive editor)
- Shopify (better for eCommerce than Weebly)
- Squarespace (jaw-dropping templates)
- BigCommerce (flexible online stores)
- SITE123 (easy-to-use Weebly alternative)
Wix
Were you put off by Weebly’s limiting design choices or its underwhelming customer support? If so, Wix is a service you should certainly consider.
Wix is a direct Weebly competitor that offers many of the same features, but it has a much wider choice of site templates and lets you make your own choices regarding page layout.
Wix sites can be built off more than 500 different templates. Compared to Weebly’s selection of around 50 themes, that’s a whole different world of choice.
That’s especially great news if you need to make a niche website, as Wix templates are created for different industries. And Wix hasn’t skimped on quality for the sake of quantity.
The templates are created for modern, professional-looking websites. You can tell a lot of thought went into every design, each with slick animated accents and appropriate stock images.
But if you don’t want to stick with one of the default Wix themes, you don’t have to.
You get a lot more control over site design than Weebly offers. It’s possible to drag and drop any element wherever you like to achieve that pixel-perfect layout. It also allows fine-tuning all settings of each element separately – colors, sizes, fonts, alignment, etc.
Not only can you modify everything in the template, but you can design websites from scratch. This way, you create a unique website using one of Wix’s blank templates.
But that’s not to say that Wix is only suitable for experienced website creators. It also trumps Weebly when it comes to website design assistance.
Wix is leading the industry with Wix ADI (artificial design intelligence). This automatic tool creates a complete website for you based on the questionnaire you answer. Trying it out, I was honestly surprised by how good it turned out, and it only took me a couple of minutes.
Wix, unfortunately, doesn’t offer a free plan. Paid plans start from $5.5/month for personal sites and from $20/month for eCommerce sites.
I have also made several Wix comparisons with other tools. If interested, check Wix vs Weebly, Wix vs Jimdo, Wix vs Webs, Wix vs Gator, and Wix vs Elementor and Wix vs WordPress.
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Shopify
Did Weebly’s online stores fail to live up to your expectations? If so, Shopify may be the right business-oriented Weebly alternative for you.
As the name suggests, Shopify is intended for users who want to create online stores. It’s one of the most popular eCommerce tools in the industry, powering close to a million stores.
Shopify is better than Weebly for selling online because of its narrow scope. Every Shopify feature is designed for business, so it feels like a precision tool that isn’t cluttered up by irrelevant options.
Setting up a store in Shopify isn’t like designing a regular website on most platforms. That means instead of creating individual pages, with Shopify, you simply add items to a catalog, and the store that your customers will see is created automatically. This method is a major time-saver if you’re running a large operation with many products.
As for the specific functionality, Shopify has a great app store. The number of apps in there dwarfs Weebly’s comparatively small collection.
I was surprised by the sheer number of options– thousands of third-party add-ons to choose from. Need to do a complex shipping calculation? There’s an app for that. Want to change the way your item variants are shown to customers? There’s an app for that too.
Each app from this spectrum can bring a subtle change to your website users or the management process.
Take the example of ReCharge. This app allows you to sell subscriptions to customers, making your Shopify store compatible with business models used by gyms or food-delivery services.
As you can imagine, any niche functionality that Weebly simply isn’t able to offer you’ll probably find with Shopify third-party integrations.
The only downside to Shopify I would see is its price. With a base package priced at $24/month and plans costing up to $299/month, this service certainly doesn’t come cheap.
However, considering given the features you get access to, Shopify may well pay for itself by improving your business’s bottom line.
You can also check Shopify vs Squarespace, Shopify vs WordPress, Shopify vs Wix, Shopify vs Volusion, and Shopify vs WooCommerce comparisons.
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Squarespace
Suppose clean designs and visually attractive pages are of primary importance. In that case, you should check out Squarespace’s themes, as they look far better than Weebly’s, making this platform a very solid Weebly alternative.
Actually, Squarespace might have the prettiest templates of any major website builder on the market today.
While Weebly is more geared toward businesses and selling, Squarespace is aimed at creative types, with plenty of template options for artists, photographers, and musicians.
Moreover, all Squarespace sites are automatically optimized for search engines, helping the website reach a larger audience.
And Squarespace doesn’t skimp on features when it comes to eCommerce. It offers a variety of different online store plans and attractive shop designs.
Also, Squarespace has some business-oriented features that you won’t find with Weebly or any other website builder, for that matter. One example is the Squarespace logo maker, which lets you create eye-catching branding for online and offline use.
It’s a surprisingly helpful feature, and using it can save you that cash you’d normally have hand over to a logo designer.
Squarespace isn’t the cheapest site like Weebly. Subscription costs begin at $16/month for a basic subscription and run up to $49/month for advanced eCommerce packages. However, you can try it out with a 14-day free trial before making the purchase.
Be sure to also check Squarespace vs Weebly, Squarespace vs WordPress, Squarespace vs GoDaddy, and Squarespace vs Wix.
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BigCommerce
If you’re after an eCommerce solution that’s more flexible and better suited to advanced users than Weebly, you should certainly consider BigCommerce.
It focuses on eCommerce and comes with excellent online store support. But what differentiates BigCommerce from others is numerous unique selling features that can impact your bottom line.
One example is its Google Customer reviews integration. With this option activated, a customer buying a product will be asked to leave a Google review. This way goes right into the search engine data, which is a fantastic way to build up your store’s credibility quickly.
Using BigCommerce, you can advertise and sell directly over social media with integrations for platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest.
Combine that with the search engine optimization built into all BigCommerce pages, and you can see that this is an excellent service for expanding your store’s digital reach. This is just one of the possible strategies to make purchases.
I was simply delighted to find more than 70 different promotion scripts, abandoned card recovery, and coupon support, all of which are great tools for customers to stop browsing and start buying.
When creating your site, BigCommerce stands between the approaches that Weebly and Shopify take. It’s a half website builder, half CMS experience.
Your editor is split into two areas, one where you can edit the final look of your pages and one where you can modify your inventory.
This means that, in many ways, BigCommerce offers the best of both worlds. You still get a lot of control over the final appearance of your site, but adding new products becomes a quick process. Therefore it’s easy to manage the inventory of larger businesses.
Not only that. If your business is a brick-and-mortar store, there’s another reason you might want to pick BigCommerce. It allows you to track offline sales in the same place that you manage online purchases. Whether your in-person customers pay by cash or card, BigCommerce will allow you to record their payments.
As for the website customization, there’s a nice option for more techy users. BigCommerce themes can be tweaked with both HTML and CSS code. Moreover, it’s possible to integrate numerous third-party APIs into BigCommerce sites.
With packages beginning at $29.95/month, you won’t find much difference in price between this service and Weebly’s eCommerce plans or Shopify’s base package.
Be sure to also check BigCommerce vs Shopify and BigCommerce vs Squarespace.
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Site123
If you’re looking for an alternative to Weebly that keeps things straightforward, SITE123 is one of the best services to check out. Weebly might not have the most complex interface, but SITE123 has an exceptionally clean and simplistic editing interface.
Everything about the SITE123 experience is geared toward helping you get your site up and running quickly.
After opening my account, I was forwarded to a setup wizard that requires responding to a few questions. That’s about the industry type and what style of website you need to create.
Right after that, SITE123 automatically generated a template, all without asking for any input. This process is based on artificial intelligence technology, and from what I saw, I think most users will get a template they’re happy with immediately.
But if you don’t, you can swap it out for any other option in SITE123’s large template selection. You can find templates intended for theatre group promotion or legal services advertising, and everything in between. Finding a theme that fits your site’s niche shouldn’t be difficult.
Figuring out the SITE123’s page editor, I soon found it very easy to use. Instead of moving content around like you can in the Weebly editor, with SITE123, you just add text or media into areas that have already been set aside for them.
Advanced users may find this approach a bit limiting. However, anyone who needs to share their new website quickly will certainly appreciate not having to micro-manage every individual pixel.
But just because SITE123 doesn’t make things unnecessarily complicated, that doesn’t mean it lacks powerful features. Lots of extra functions can be added through the SITE123 app store.
Here you’ll find tools that can integrate different social media platforms into your site (e.g., Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest) or analyze your SEO performance (e.g., Google Analytics, Yandex).
SITE123 is also an excellent free alternative to Weebly.
The free SITE123 plan comes with 250MB of storage and 250MB bandwidth which is very low. Of course, a paid subscription will be a better option for most users as the free site can only be connected to a subdomain and displays compulsory SITE123 branding. The premium plan is $7.80/month.
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Best Weebly Competitors Conclusion
Weebly definitely deserves the praise it gets, however, in some cases, there are better alternatives. And each builder in this list can be an improvement in different areas.
For example, if you’re looking for a more scalable eCommerce, Shopify would be a great option. But others will only need a simple tool to start a website, SITE123 will definitely come in handy.
Also, spend some time trying the free trial versions. See for yourself whether or not the platform is comfortable for your needs. For instance, I’ve said that Squarespace offers the best templates, but that doesn’t automatically mean that Wix’s themes aren’t any good.
In summary, these are the best Weebly alternatives you can use right now:
- Wix is excellent for advanced customization.
- Shopify has more versatile online stores than Weebly.
- Squarespace offers unbeatable site designs.
- BigCommerce is a powerful eCommerce tool.
- SITE123 lets you publish sites fast.
DISCLOSURE: Posts may contain affiliate links. If you buy something through one of those links, I might get a small commission, without any extra cost to you. Read more about it here.