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Picking your site’s platform is no small decision. It can impact almost every site decision you’ll make in the future. Weebly vs. WordPress is a standard comparison, as they have many site-building features.
Even so, they each have a unique outlook on building a site. Your question is: Does one have everything you need to create and manage your site?
To answer this, we’ll compare Weebly and WordPress in several areas. First, let’s give you some background information on each platform.
Introducing Weebly and WordPress
First, Weebly.com is a ‘website builder’. In other words, it’s a hosted platform that offers almost all the drag-and-drop functionality you need to create a site.
The goal is to give you no reason to look for third-party tools and services. This means Weebly becomes your site’s hub for almost everything.
In contrast, WordPress is a self-hosted, open-source platform for building your site.
It began as a blogging platform but has now evolved into a full-fledged Content Management System (CMS).
The idea with WordPress is to give you a set of core features and functionality. From there, you choose what to add almost modularly.
We’ll learn how to extend both platforms later. First, consider what Weebly and WordPress offer by default and their key differences.
What Each Platform Offers Out of the Box
Weebly and WordPress both approach website building differently. On a broad level, Weebly has more in the box than WordPress. For example, there are Search Engine Optimization SEO features and tools to improve rankings, create contact forms, and more.
Although it targets e-commerce users, Weebly offers meager features at lower tiers. We’ll discuss this further later.
In contrast, WordPress doesn’t have any of these things. If you fire up a fresh install, you can create posts and pages and manage users and comments with little know-how.
WordPress can’t do any of this by default if you look at all the inclusions for each drag-and-drop Weebly plan. There’s a good reason for this; we’ll look at it next.
Extending the Platforms’ Core Functionality and Customization with Plugins
WordPress’ pared-back nature is by design. The idea is to give you complete control as the site owner. As such, you can choose what tools you use to create your site through themes and plugins.
It offers thousands of themes in an official directory. A team of volunteers vets each one, so your site’s security and stability are unaffected.
The same rules apply to plugins. The WordPress Plugin Directory has thousands of plugins. You should be able to find one for any site feature, such as security, contact forms, SEO, and more.
WordPress also has a rich premium ecosystem. These solutions give you more significant support and regular updates.
Because Weebly is an all-in-one beginner’s user-friendly tool, there’s a natural ceiling for what you can achieve. Yes, there are site templates to help get your site looking right and ease of use, but you’re restricted in variety:
Also, a dedicated ‘App Center‘ looks to give you ways to extend your site. Like WordPress, there are both free and premium solutions:
Even so, lots of the available apps cover elements that a WordPress theme will provide:
WordPress has much more potential for creating your ideal site with a simple and fast learning curve. Conversely, Weebly has an excellent all-around package, but there’s nowhere else to go with the platform, which has few customization options. Everything you can achieve is evident almost straight away.
Of course, none of this matters if you’re priced out of a solution. Let’s compare Weebly vs WordPress sites next.
Pricing: The Great Leveler
The cost of a platform is essential, but here it’s complex. This is again due to the goals of both platforms.
There are five pricing plans, starting with Weebly websites. The difference between the free and Connect paid plans is the ability to use a custom domain. The Weebly pricing is around $70 per year yet still includes ads Weebly serves on your site. The pricing plans do provide a level of customer support.
The Pro account is over double the price of the Connect tier. It allows you to remove ads and add functionality to an e-commerce store’s shopping cart.
It’s not until the Business Plan and Business Plus that Weebly becomes competitive. These tiers will be tempting for online stores and e-commerce websites. In a bubble, $300–360 per year for an e-commerce site is a good deal.
In WordPress’s case, the core platform is free forever due to its open-source base. We’ve mentioned that themes and plugins could be free, but a WooCommerce (e-commerce features) premium theme (around $99 per year) is the way to go. Also, some plugins may warrant an annual subscription.
With a WordPress website, you will need hosting and a domain name, which will cost money. The good news is that your budget won’t prohibit you. You could piece a site together for free using online tutorials and forums without question. Though, here’s a real-world list of what you’ll need (sans WordPress):
- WordPress Hosting Provider: We recommend staying away from free hosts. A good starting point for a hosting service is spending around $ 120 per year for one with an inclusive SSL certificate.
- Domain name: Depending on your chosen top-level domain (TLD), this could be $10–20 per year.
- Theme: A premium theme is around $50–100. This could be a one-off payment or a subscription.
- Plugins: You’ll likely find free solutions that do everything you need. Still, premium plugins are often priced similarly to themes. Expect to pay around $30–100 per year for some subscriptions.
You may have other costs, too, such as email marketing. In short, WordPress will cost more in the short term. Even so, you’re paying for complete web development control, HTML coding, flexibility, SEO tools and features (SEO plugins like Yoast SEO), and scalability. With this comes peace of mind, worth its weight in gold.
Wrapping Up
Paying attention to your choice of site platform is a sound strategy. It will influence all your future decisions and determine how your site can scale. Given this, researching your available options will pay dividends.
In this post, we’ve compared Weebly and WordPress. In our opinion, WordPress is the better platform on almost all counts. Weebly has more in its default package, though you’re almost at the ceiling of what it can achieve. WordPress has more potential if you have coding knowledge and can power enterprise-level sites with advanced features. You can also check out Wix and Squarespace, two other drag-and-drop website builders, as an alternative to Weebly.
Are you considering Weebly vs WordPress, and if so, has this head-to-head helped? Let us know in the comments section below!
Author Bio: Tom Rankin is a quality content writer for WordPress, tech, and small businesses. When not putting his fingers on the keyboard, he can take photographs, write music, play computer games, and talk in the third person.
