Wix vs Weebly Comparison – Which Option Is Better For You?

In this article, I’m going to compare Wix vs Weebly as well as briefly review their features, ease of use, and performance – to help you pick the better one for your next online project.

Wix and Weebly both present themselves as the best website builders available in the industry. With many similar claims for personal websites and eCommerce, choosing between the two can be challenging.

 

Wix vs Weebly Comparison

While Wix is ideal for designers who want unlimited creative freedom and don’t mind a steeper learning curve, Weebly is better for launching a basic website quickly.

Both Wix and Weebly are competent drag-and-drop website builders, but they differ quite a bit in the website’s customization process. Mainly because Wix offers complete editing freedom, while Weebly is much more restrictive.

Wix takes what I would call a kitchen sink approach. It throws an overwhelming number of themes, content elements, and design tools at you, and then gives you unlimited flexibility to move content around your pages however you want.

 

 

Weebly is much more limited. There are only around 70 themes, customization options are significantly restricted compared to Wix by the layout grid, and you can’t control many aspects of your website.

Which approach is better for you depends on what you want from your website. I have also compared Weebly vs Squarespace and Weebly vs GoDaddy website builder.

Wix is great if you have an elaborate, multi-faceted design in mind. However, you’ll need to overcome a steep learning curve and will likely spend many hours building your site.

Meanwhile, Weebly is great for people who want to save time when building their websites. The customization offered is way more limited than Wix’s editor, yet it allows for a quick setup process.

 

 

Beyond design, Wix and Weebly are closely matched in their capabilities for supporting online stores. The product design tools are surprisingly similar between the two builders, given how they differ in website design.

On the whole, both providers are good options for building a website. Wix offers more customizability at the expense of simplicity, while Weebly restricts your freedom to create a more streamlined design experience.

However, let’s not forget that not everything revolves around the site designing process only. Some features affect the maintenance of your website as well. Be sure also to check Wix vs Gator builder, Wix vs. Jimdo, Wix vs. Webs, Wix vs Squarespace, Wix vs WordPress, Wix vs. Elementor, and Wix vs. Shopify comparison.

Considering this, I’ve done a deep analysis of both providers’ interfaces and put everything in this Weebly vs Wix comparison.

 

Ease of Use

To me, Weebly is significantly easier to use than Wix. Setting up your website takes far less time, and the site editor is far less confusing.

However, the restrictive nature of Weebly can be extremely frustrating, and Wix gets easier to use the more you play with the editor.

 

Getting Started

Getting your website started is simple with either Wix or Weebly, but I liked the process in Wix a little bit better. When creating a new website with this site-building platform, you get to pick from two options.

You can either choose Wix Editor, then pick a template and start customizing your website, or get a custom-made template using Wix ADI (Artificial Design Intelligence) after filling out a short questionnaire to give this AI a base of your website’s idea.

Although this difference is slight, I felt like it made a big difference in how I was introduced to the platforms.

In Wix, I could select my theme and then start editing it right away after picking the Wix Editor option. The starting point also introduced me with two options and briefly explained the difference between them.

 

 

Meanwhile, in Weebly, you’re given a choice between building a basic website or an online store when you start a website. Everything looks clear from here. However, there’s no information whatsoever on how the process will go.

 

 

In Weebly, when you pick a basic website option, you’re just redirected to choosing a template and then continue to customize it in Weebly’s editor. However, if you’re aiming for an online store, a questionnaire pops up.

So what was different from Wix? After completing the questionnaire, Wix redirects you to picking a template while Weebly redirects you to its dashboard. And for complete beginners, it might be sort of confusing.

What I will say in favor of Weebly here is that the dashboard offers a simple seven-step setup guide. That provides some guidance, although I wish it were more prominent when you launch your site. It would be easy to miss if you don’t know to look for it.

Going back to Wix, using its ADI significantly limits your freedom compared to its other site editing interface. I could even say that it’s more limited than Weebly’s site editor.

 

 

However, if you pick the Wix Editor option instead of ADI and invest some time into getting around the interface, you would achieve the best possible design out of all 3 options.

 

Site Editors

The Wix and Weebly site editors take widely differing approaches to building your website. Wix is chaotic but offers an unparalleled level of design freedom.

Weebly is significantly easier to navigate, but the level of inflexibility can leave many designers frustrated.

 

Editor Layout

Wix and Weebly keep their site editors and dashboards separate, making navigating your website on either platform much easier. However, the layouts of the editors couldn’t be more different.

Wix editor is immediately overwhelming. There are menus on three sides of the screen, and it’s not obvious at first glance what all of the potential buttons do.

 

 

The menus contain more options than only those relevant to page design, including sub-menus for email marketing, blogging, and app management.

It took a few hours of playing around with the Wix editor to figure out that only a small fraction of the available options are relevant to building your website. Ultimately, I found that the Wix editor makes a lot of sense — but you need to be willing to work at it.

The Weebly editor is extremely intuitive. The main menu across the top of the screen has all of the options demarcated, and the left-hand menu is effectively a sub-menu rather than its own set of unrelated choices.

 

 

Most of the page is free of clutter, which was a huge relief after spending hours navigating the Wix editor.

 

Editing Content

Editing content is fairly straightforward in both Wix and Weebly. On either platform, clicking on the existing content block will bring up all of your options for editing it.

You can also easily drag and drop content around your page in either Weebly or Wix. However, Weebly will restrict it slightly using its grid layout.

 

 

That said, I liked the content editing functions in Wix a lot better. That’s largely a result of Wix having more options for editing every piece of content.

When you click on an element, you can choose from a few menus for customization. These menus then lead to pop-ups with settings options, so you have a ton of flexibility.

The pop-ups on top of menus can get confusing, but I didn’t think it was too hard to track what I was working on.

In Weebly, the only menu consistently offered allows you to move or copy an element to another page on your site.

I never found a case in which this was actually useful for me, particularly since Weebly just drops the element on the top of the page you selected.

As for resizing content elements, Wix wins handily. Every element has an option to stretch it to the page’s full width, which is an awesome feature for making full-width images and galleries. In addition, there are essentially no limits on sizing an element up or down.

In Weebly, it was often impossible to create full-width images even if I created a full-width image container. Many elements couldn’t be resized by dragging a corner handle, and those that could were restricted by the grid layout of your page.

I felt that the Wix editor was more intuitive than the Weebly editor. It’s not that Weebly makes it hard to edit content, but it’s nowhere near as fast and simple as it is with Wix.

 

Online Store Setup

Setting up an online store was comparably easy on Wix or Weebly. However, I liked the simple page layout of the Weebly store manager and the process of creating new products. Weebly has a definite edge for the ease of launching an eCommerce store.

 

 

Almost all of the options for setting up your online store are the same between Wix and Weebly. But Wix scatters these options across the dashboard, so you have to spend a significant amount of time finding them.

In Weebly, a simple ‘Manage Store’ page puts all of your eCommerce options in one place.

This same difference in the degree of organization was apparent in how you go about setting up products in Weebly and Wix. Wix mainly presents all of your options for a single product on a single page, but there are also a number of links that take you to additional menus and settings.

Weebly puts all of your options for each product on one page, making it much easier to stay organized.

As a result of these small differences, I felt that getting a series of products defined and up for sale was significantly easier on Weebly.

The process felt smoother, and I also had advanced selling tools like discount offers, inventory management, and store emails in the same place as my products.

 

EASE OF USE WINNER: Wix requires a much steeper learning curve and feels chaotic whether you’re designing your site or adding products. At the same time, Weebly is frustrating when editing elements, but is otherwise straightforward.

 

Templates

Wix offers way more templates than Weebly alongside unlimited design freedom. Meanwhile, Weebly’s forced grid layout can be frustrating for creating an advanced website.

Wix is by far the better choice for design, in my opinion, although Weebly does have a few benefits, like being able to change the site’s template after you’ve published it already.

 

Themes

Wix offers more than 500 templates, whereas Weebly only has around 70. Both platforms provide modern, responsive themes, and I didn’t feel like I had trouble finding good options from either Weebly or Wix. Importantly, Weebly allows you to change your theme anytime, while Wix only lets you pick a template for a website once.

Wix’s library of themes is large, but I found it easy to navigate when setting up my website. All of the themes are categorized into common industries and sub-industries, making it easy to find a good starting point for a personal or business site.

 

 

Weebly’s theme library is a lot smaller, and the main categories are ‘Personal,’ ‘Business,’ or ‘Portfolio.’ Since there are only about 70 themes, it doesn’t take all that long to browse through all of them to find one that works for you.

 

 

One significant difference between Weebly vs. Wix themes is that you can change the theme anytime in Weebly. In Wix, you can’t change your theme after setting up your site.

However, Wix’s design tools are strong enough that you can overwrite all of your chosen theme’s designs, but that takes a lot longer than starting with a good template.

 

Theme Customization

One of the main reasons I would recommend Wix over Weebly for advanced website designers is that Wix gives you absolute control over customizing theme. You can change any aspect of the design, from how your pages are laid out to the color and style of every element.

The upside is that no matter what Wix theme you choose, you can treat your website as if you’re designing a theme from scratch. You’re not limited to what Wix’s designers came up with, but rather can use it as a starting point for creating your website however you like it.

However, the downside of Wix’s freedom is that it’s really easy to fall into the trap of having every page on your website look different. If you don’t put in a special effort to keep fonts, colors, and page layouts consistent, visitors can find your website disorienting. Unfortunately, there is no menu for editing site-wide styles in Wix.

In Weebly, you are extremely restricted in how much you can change your theme. This makes things simpler and less time-consuming, but Weebly was far too restrictive for my taste.

 

 

Essentially, the only things you can change about your theme are the font styles. Even the background is fixed between light and dark.

The result is that Weebly leaves you extremely dependent on its theme library. If you want to make more significant changes, you’ll need to dive into using the theme code editor.

 

Page & Content Layout

Wix offers the most impressive freedom for any website builder’s page and content layout. When placing elements on your page, you can drop them anywhere — including on top of existing content. The right sidebar offers tools for aligning elements and controlling layering.

I loved this freedom, and it didn’t feel overwhelming to me. That’s because Wix also makes it easy to activate guidelines and snap-to-object features, so you can easily create a standard grid layout if you’re willing to.

Weebly limits you to a standard grid layout. You can only place content in rows and columns. If you want to resize an element, Weebly limits you to shrinking or enlarging in intervals.

That’s fine, and it’s what I’ve come to expect from most website builders. But once I tried out Wix’s flexible content arrangement, I found it was hard to go back to a simple grid.

 

Content Elements

Wix also far outdoes Weebly regarding the number and type of content elements available. Wix has hundreds of content elements spanning various unique styles, including slideshows, video and music players, lightboxes, and more.

You can see a preview of every element before selecting it, which I found extremely helpful.

Weebly only gives you about 30 content elements. They’re not very customizable, and I didn’t feel like they popped in the same way that Wix elements did.

Weebly’s elements just aren’t that exciting — the unique elements are a blockquotes item and an RSVP form, which aren’t very impressive.

 

Mobile Editor

It’s also worth noting that both Wix and Weebly let you customize how your website will look on mobile devices. This is important since an increasing amount of web traffic is coming from smartphones and tablets rather than desktop computers.

Wix’s mobile editor is great because it offers just as much flexibility as the standard site editor. You can move content anywhere and resize elements without any restrictions.

 

 

However, it’s essential to realize that changes to the desktop version of your site aren’t reflected on the mobile version. That means that for every change you make in the Wix site editor, you need to make the change again in the mobile version of the editor. This meant that I essentially had to design every page twice.

In Weebly, changes to your desktop site are automatically made to your mobile site. Although, customization options in the mobile editor are much more limited.

If you are already using a responsive theme, you may not have any direct control over your mobile site.

 

TEMPLATES WINNER: Wix beats Weebly when it comes to themes and design features. Wix has more than 500 themes and hundreds of content elements, plus gives you the freedom to place content anywhere you want. Weebly is significantly more limited, although you do get the ability to change themes at will.

 

Business Features

Both Wix and Weebly are extremely well designed for business owners. The eCommerce features are very competitive, although Wix goes above and beyond by allowing you to sell bookings and add SEO information for individual products. Weebly has slightly better email marketing tools, although visitor data is expensive.

 

eCommerce

Wix and Weebly both offer excellent eCommerce features, and there are a lot of similarities between the two platforms.

For example, both services allow you to add an unlimited number of products and categorize them so that customers can find them easily. You can also easily set up discounts to attract new customers.

Still, there were some additional features that stood out to me in Wix eCommerce options that Weebly lacked. For example, Wix makes it easy to sell services and book clients through your website.

 

 

You can even add staff members and assign shifts through a calendar in your dashboard. That means that you can use your website to help manage staff assignments for your business.

Wix makes abandoned cart recovery a standard business feature. That’s huge since this is one of the most effective tools for increasing your conversion rate. Weebly has abandoned cart recovery, but you have to pay for a pricey ‘Business Plus’ plan.

I also didn’t love that you can’t customize the checkout page with Weebly. Wix gives you total control here, as it does with the rest of your website. That’s an important feature if you rely on input from customers during the checkout process.

Still, Weebly does a lot right for eCommerce. The product setup is easier than in Wix, and I liked the shipping and inventory management tools.

 

 

You can even allow customers to leave reviews on your products, encouraging more visitors to buy from you.

 

SEO

Wix and Weebly both offer basic tools for site-wide SEO. But Wix goes one step further by allowing you to add SEO titles and descriptions for every individual product.

That’s a big deal since customers can go straight from a search engine result to your product pages in Wix.

 

Analytics

Both Wix and Weebly allow you to connect your site to Google Analytics for basic stats about site visitors. But, if you want detailed information about your site visitors and customers, you’ll need to pay for third-party analytics apps.

 

 

Wix and Weebly diverge quite a bit in how they go about offering these paid apps. In Wix, an all-in-on analytics dashboard costs $4.99 per month.

If you pay for a business plan, your website will come with the app already paid for. I liked this analytics app, particularly the summary visualizations.

In Weebly, visitor data is shockingly expensive. There are multiple apps available, each costing around $15 per month to give you what I’d consider relatively basic information about your customers.

 

 

While there are free versions of these apps, the free versions are extremely limited.

This was a significant strike against Weebly for me. If you’re running an online business, analytics are essential to growth. By charging you an arm and a leg for relatively basic information about your customer behavior, Weebly creates a huge burden for small business owners.

 

Email & Marketing

An automated email feature for marketing to customers is included in Wix and Weebly.

Ultimately, I liked Weebly slightly better because you can customize the email receipts sent to customers after a purchase. Otherwise, there’s not a lot of daylight between the two platforms in this category.

Both Wix and Weebly give you relatively basic email builders that you can use to design email blasts. The builder in Wix is far simpler than the main site editor, so customization options are on par with the Weebly email builder.

I liked that either platform allows you to schedule emails for the future, so you can design now and send them later.

As you’d expect, Wix and Weebly also do an excellent job of using past customer data to help you build email lists. You can easily segment past site visitors and customers into sub-lists for more targeted marketing efforts.

 

 

The only real difference between Wix and Weebly is that Weebly marketing features allow you to customize the automated email receipts that go out to customers after a purchase. Wix doesn’t let you design these emails instead of focusing on giving you control over the checkout process.

 

BUSINESS FEATURES WINNER: Wix and Weebly are relatively well-matched for businesses. In my opinion, Wix has a slight edge for eCommerce because it allows you to sell bookings and add SEO information to every individual product. I also liked that Wix makes abandoned cart recovery a standard and offers analytics much more cheaply.

 

Pricing

Weebly is cheaper than Wix if you just want to create a personal website without an eCommerce store. While the two platforms are much closer in the price for hosting online business, Weebly is slightly cheaper than Wix for the same selling features.

Both Weebly and Wix offer free plans to get you started with a personal website. As you might expect, free plans on both platforms are limited — you can’t use your own domain name, and you’ll see ads prompting you to upgrade throughout the site editors.

I really liked Weebly because you can launch an online store for less than a non-eCommerce Wix site would cost you. With Wix Pro plan for a $12 per month, you can sell products and accept payments through Square, PayPal, or another third-party payment provider.

While selling features are overall limited, the fact that you can run an eCommerce business for $12 per month is pretty attractive.

The math gets a lot more complicated if you want all of Weebly’s eCommerce features. A Weebly ‘Business’ plan costs $25 per month, while a Wix’ Business Basic’ plan costs $20 per month. But, note that Wix’s ‘Business Basic’ plan limits you to 20 GB of storage space. Upgrading to a ‘Business Unlimited’ plan to get 35 GB of storage costs $30 per month.

It’s also important to note that both platforms hide additional costs for analytics in their app stores. The Visitor Analytics app in Wix costs $4.99 per month but comes free with a business plan. In Weebly, analytics can cost upwards of $15 per month for business owners, which is extraordinarily pricey.

On top of that, Weebly reserves one of the most important eCommerce features for converting customers, abandoned cart recovery, for its $38 per month ‘Business Plus’ plan. Abandoned cart recovery is standard with every Wix business plan, which is a huge checkmark in favor of Wix.

 

WINNER: Weebly is cheaper than Wix for most personal websites. Basic business sites are also less expensive in Weebly. However, eCommerce plans in Wix offer better value for money if we take advanced features like abandoned cart recovery into account.

 

Weebly vs Wix Verdict

My Wix vs Weebly comparison found that Wix is the superior website builder for advanced website designers and most eCommerce businesses.

It offers unlimited customization options and better features for online stores. However, Weebly has a lot to offer and makes it much easier to design your website.

Weebly is an excellent choice for personal websites since it’s cheap to add your own domain. The themes are stylish and modern, and the simple drag-and-drop builder allows you to get a website up and running quickly.

However, Weebly’s builder can be frustrating if you want to create a multi-faceted website. There aren’t many content elements, and the layout is quite limited. On top of that, Weebly makes important eCommerce features like abandoned cart recovery and analytics quite expensive.

Wix is overwhelming at first, but I’d strongly encourage you to give this platform a shot if you’ve got time to play around.

The editor allows an incredible degree of customization, and the hundreds of content elements can help you design a website that really pops. On top of that, Wix offers just about everything you could ever want for running an online business.

 

Alternatives

Wix and Weebly are good website builders for either a personal website or an eCommerce store. But, you may also want to consider alternatives like Squarespace, SITE123, or Shopify.

 

Squarespace

Squarespace is an all-in-one website builder with great features to be worthy Weebly and Wix competitor. The platform offers a much more curated website design experience than Wix but also gives you far more flexibility than Weebly. The main downside to Squarespace is that advanced eCommerce features can be expensive.

Check Squarespace vs BigCommerce, and Squarespace vs. Shopify for more info.

 

Site123

SITE123 is a limited website builder in the same vein as Weebly. It’s inexpensive, and the site editor is similarly restrictive. However, SITE123 is extremely easy to use, which is excellent if you need to get a basic website running quickly.

 

Shopify

Shopify is an extremely popular eCommerce platform and a great option if you’re largely focused on selling goods. While Shopify has some limited functionality for designing a website, it’s primarily useful for setting up an online store so it can ge great alternative to Weebly and GoDaddy if you need best ecommerce features.

For more info, see Shopify vs. BigCommerce, Shopify vs. WordPress, Shopify vs. Wix, Shopify vs. Volusion, and Shopify vs. WooCommerce.