Weebly Vs Shopify: Which One is Best For You?

Weebly, and Shopify, are two distinct platforms. We’re here to assist you in deciding which is suitable for you. In this guide we will discuss Weebly Vs Shopify: Which one is best for you.

Shopify, a web-based online eCommerce platform that is designed to aid entrepreneurs with the creation of online stores. It does include selling products via Square Online, but its main focus is not on eCommerce sites. Weebly is, on the other side, is a site builder.

Due to their different areas of focus, Weebly is best for small and small portfolios of businesses because of their other target markets. In contrast, Shopify is more suitable for larger online retailers.

This article will utilize our extensive analysis to examine the different features of Weebly and Shopify to help you determine the most suitable option for your needs.

Pros and Cons of Weebly vs Shopify

Pros and Cons of Weebly

There’s no core eCommerce functionality. It’s possible to create your online shop. However, you’ll be using Squarespace Online instead of Weebly (Square purchased Weebly in the year 2018)

Shopify Pros and Cons

Pricing and Value for Money

Weebly offers a more economical option in comparison to Shopify. It comes with a no-cost plan you can test out for the duration you want, and its basic plan costs only just $6 each month (billed each year).

Comparatively, Shopify’s most affordable plan costs 29 dollars per month.

When you’re operating an online shop, you’ll get a lot of value to your money with Shopify. When running an online shop, it has scored 3.5 ratings out of 5 during our value for money study.

Weebly won with 4.1 stars from five! Weebly gives you more value for your money due to the many features it offers in its budget-friendly plans.

Weebly vs Shopify: Monthly Pricing Side-by-Side Comparison

Weebly Pricing: Closer Look

Weebly offers four plans:

• Free: $0 per month
• Personal: $9 per month
• Professional: $16 per month
• Performance: $29 per month

They are even less when you pay annually. The Personal plan costs just $6 per month on an annual basis, for instance.

What do you get on Weebly’s plans? Compare essential characteristics in the table below:

We suggest the Professional plan as it’s the least expensive plan that eliminates ads from your website and grants unlimited storage space and an unlocked domain .

It also comes with advanced analytics on your site as well as telephone assistance. In essence, it provides more quality for the money than Weebly’s lower-priced plans.

Shopify Pricing: Closer Look

Shopify offers three plans as well as a 14-day trial for free so that you can test these plans risk-free:

• Basic Shopify: $29/month
• Shopify: $79 per month
• Advanced Shopify: $299/month

You could save 10% if you select an annual plan.

It is also possible to save 20% when you sign up for a two-year subscription and make the payment in advance. However, you will save over time through these discount rates.

Find out the key features of Shopify in the following table:

We recommend beginning with Shopify’s Basic Shopify plan, as it includes everything an online store with a modest size may require, including abandoned carts to the recovery of gift cards.

Shopify’s plans are designed to support online stores, and that’s why the features it offers are specifically designed for e-commerce. It is perfect for those creating an digital store. However, it’s challenging to get value from your investment if you’re making something other than an online store.

Ease of Use

Shopify outdoes Weebly in terms of user-friendliness. We found that our customers appreciated the organized way Shopify has helped you create your online store.

The drag-and-drop editing tools of Weebly are simple and easy to use and is suitable for people who are new to the field. Both Weebly or Shopify require any programming abilities to operate, and therefore you can dive right in.

Onboarding

The onboarding process at Shopify is more thorough than Weebly’s. It is because creating an online business is a lot more complicated than creating a basic website, so Shopify must be more proactive in guiding its customers through making their store.

It’s not that Weebly’s onboarding process isn’t good. In fact, it guides you through the entire process from selecting your theme and then editing support in the editor that shows you how to accomplish various tasks:

Building and Running Your Website

Weebly, as well as Shopify, were relatively evenly matched in our testing of ease of use. The users of both platforms found them easy to work with, and neither required any prior knowledge of technology to begin with.

Weebly scored points during our ease of use tests thanks to its drag-and-drop editing feature and simple customization tools. However, Shopify is more clunky to use, dividing its building tools into two editors: frontend and backend.

However, Shopify’s more elaborate setup makes running the operation of your store more efficient since you can monitor your inventory and orders on the backend and manage your storefront’s design on your own.

If you need a simple website, then Weebly’s simple editor is an easy method of building and maintaining your website. If you require the ability to create an online shop, then Shopify’s builders are designed to make your job as simple as it can be to track multiple orders.

Website Design

Weebly is superior to Shopify in the area of designing websites. However, it’s still close. Weebly received 3.8 stars from 5 stars, while Shopify was in the middle in the rankings with 3.7 stars.

Although Shopify offers more design options than Weebly, the sheer number of designs did not secure victory in this contest. Shopify’s designs are primarily designed for online stores, and It was Weebly’s wide range of themes that pushed it into the lead in this round.

Template Choice

Weebly Themes

Weebly offers around 50 themes you can choose from that cover a variety of sectors like portfolios, business blogs, and more. The themes are accessible for free, regardless of whether you’re using its free plans or the paid subscription.

We love Weebly’s designs, but we weren’t entirely awed by their designs. They’re neat, intelligent and fashionable; however, they’re not going to blow your socks off. We enjoy using large images as well as grid-based layouts. However, we would appreciate some new and exciting styles.

The templates available on Shopify are more than impressive. There are 74 themes available within its collection — the majority of themes are available with different design options, which means there are plenty of designs to choose from. There is a variety of information available for every theme, including:

• The design includes features
• Reviews and comments from customers
• Different style previews
• Examples of stores that use the theme

Shopify Themes

The Shopify themes are all designed to be used in online stores. While specific themes may have blogs but they’re mainly designed to sell items.

Shopify offers nine free themes as of the date of writing. 65 premium themes are paid themes ranging from $100 to $180 in a one-off payment.

Customization

Weebly utilizes drag-and-drop editing tools. It is a straightforward method to personalize your design. Just select the element (such as text box)

You’d like to add or move and drop them where you’d like to place them on your site. It is exactly how users will see your layout when it’s live. There’s no switching between a backend preview and a frontend preview.

The editor on Shopify has a more distinct divide. The information you enter on the backend and is then used to populate your storefront.

You can personalize your storefront’s design, but it’s not as cheap as Weebly’s drag-and-drop editor and not as simple! The Shopify editor is cumbersome, and the choices for design are much smaller.

Marketing Features

Weebly beats Shopify in terms of marketing capabilities. It won over Shopify in the category of marketing features.

Shopify received 4.1 stars from 5 during our analysis, while Weebly scored 4.2 stars, which means it was pretty close. However, Weebly’s outstanding SEO and blogging features made it enough to earn the top spot in this category.

Weebly is the clear winner for its marketing-related features. We were impressed with its extensive yet easy-to-follow SEO tutorials and its extensive blogging tools, its integrated email marketing tool Weebly Promote.

Shopify was a close second with its vast selection of marketing integrations and International selling choices.

Shopify offers more marketing applications from third parties to help you create a targeted marketing strategy, but Weebly provides the best blogging tools. You’ll get features Shopify does not offer, such as:

• Archive feature
• Social bookmarking
• Search feature

Alongside these benefits, Weebly offers unlimited storage at a significantly lower cost and users with a domain for free with the Professional plan and above.

Ecommerce Features

Shopify surpasses Weebly in terms of eCommerce features. We could say that Shopify outdoes Square Online in this category since this is the platform Weebly utilizes for its e-commerce service.

The features of Shopify are robust and can be scaled regardless of the size of the business you have and includes sophisticated tools, such as abandoned cart recovery for the most basic plan.

If you’re creating your online shop and you want the most effective e-commerce features available, Shopify is likely the right option for you.

It scored 4.7 ratings out of 5 when we conducted our research, which means it offers the most effective selling features of all builders we tested and not only the top for this particular comparison.

It’s good to be aware of…

We’re discussing Square Online rather than Weebly. Square purchased Weebly in 2018 and combined its services to form Square Online, which is the e-commerce focused portion of Weebly.

It’s indeed a bit complicated; however, don’t stress about the precise distinction. It’s an oddly disjointed system. We’d like to see the customer experience more organized to avoid this confusion.

Make sure you visit Weebly’s site and decide to create your online shop, then you’ll get directed into Square Online. Square Online builder — they’re two different versions of the same thing.

Square Online offers simple ecommerce features that are perfect for businesses looking to be online in a hurry. Some of the best features are curbside pickup and text notifications for customers. Not surprisingly, it also offers an easy interface with Square POS.

In spite of all the fantastic options, Shopify still wins this round. It has a wealth of features that include:

• Multichannel integrations
• A myriad of payment options
• The checkout page can be personalized to fit your needs.
• Cart recovery abandoned in its most affordable plan
• Dropshipping
• Customizable invoices

What was most noticeable to us during our testing was Shopify’s innovative inventory system that was simple to navigate despite its being built to handle a wide range of items. The combination of usability and power is the reason why Shopify truly shined.

Square Online is best for small brick and mortar businesses that want an easy online store synchronized seamlessly with the POS system. If you are looking for a robust online store that can achieve the potential for long-term growth and a massive catalogue of products, then Shopify is the best choice.

Apps and Integrations

Although Weebly’s app store is enormous, Shopify’s is much bigger and more effective, meaning that Shopify is the winner in both apps and integrations in the round.

The apps could quickly become expensive, but it’s essential to keep your eyes on your budget while browsing the Shopify app store.

Weebly generally wins applications and integrations heads-to-head competitions with other platforms. But, Shopify has no typical rival — it beats Weebly’s app store right out of the water by offering more than five thousand apps! It has a well-stocked application store that has nearly 400 apps.

With the number of apps available to pick from, you’ll be wondering what you’ll find you’re seeking. In Shopify’s app store, you can sort according to category, price, and popularity, or you can use your search function to locate an app you’re looking for.

Weebly has more than 60 apps for free, and more than 3,000 Shopify apps are available for free, which means more than half of Shopify’s apps are free to use.

The prices for apps differ among Weebly or Shopify. The Weebly applications tend to be less expensive than Shopify’s, with prices ranging from $ 3 to $300 per month. Shopify’s premium applications have more options in terms of cost that starts as low as $3 per month, all the way to $1,500 per month.

Performance and Security

It’s an even tie! The two Shopify and Weebly offer security and updates for their customers, meaning you don’t have to worry about your website being obsolete, as you would with WordPress, for instance. Weebly and Shopify offer free SSL certificates for all of their plans.

You shouldn’t be able to fault Weebly and Shopify concerning their security measures.

Both offer free SSL certificates in all their plans, meaning that all data that passes between your site and your site’s visitors, including passwords for logins or details about payments, are secured. Even the free plan of Weebly comes with SSL security!

Furthermore, Shopify and Weebly also allow you to create password-protected pages, which means only authorized users can access your website.

Web builders are typically insecure about their specific security measures to make it more difficult for criminals to breach their security measures. However, we are aware that both Weebly and Shopify have safeguards in place, including security from DDoS attacks.

Switching Process

Shopify allows you to transfer an existing website from your current platform compared to Weebly, which is why it takes the top spot in this time.

With Weebly, the only option is to begin starting from scratch. However, Shopify has a migration option with the Store Importer application.

Weebly isn’t a particularly efficient method of shifting or moving your existing website over to Weebly. Instead, you’ll need to start over by copying and pasting your content wherever you can.

Contrarily, Shopify has a Store Importer application, which allows you to import your items, customers, and order information into the Shopify store.

The most straightforward way to change to Shopify is to use its Store Importer application that imports items, customers, orders, and customer information.

Shopify has guides on transferring from:

• WooCommerce
• Squarespace
• Etsy
• BigCommerce
• Big Cartel
• PrestaShop

In all instances, you’ll have to export your store’s information before you import it into Shopify.

Help and Support

Shopify provides more support over Weebly! Weebly has been slammed because it restricts its support options to those on less expensive plans, which prevents users on the lower plan from seeking help directly. Shopify offers support regardless of which plan you pick.

Weebly received 3.5 stars out of five for assistance and support during our study, while Shopify received 4.1 stars.

The disadvantage of Weebly is that the company can only provide phone support for its Professional plan or higher Personal plan, meaning that customers who are on the free or personal plans are limited to email support and Help Center assistance.

Beneath you can differentiate the distinct types of support available through Weebly and Shopify.

If you want to read more please click here.