Wix vs Weebly

Wix and Weebly have a lot of similarities. They both are frequently used for building websites throughout the world.

Both of them have interfaces for dragging and dropping. This is needed in website building where there is no line of code.

Both of them offer free plans though they are accompanied by ads. But, their paid monthly plans do not have ads.

WIX vs Weebly: Their Major Difference

WIX has more than hundreds of customizable templates that are all tremendous. The feature of drag and drop is available on WIX that is needed for website building.

WIX also has built themes that are approximately 40 in number. Both Weebly and Wix offer free plans, ecommerce and blogs. There are more designs available on WIX.

Also, the features provided are of a better range. Larger websites would find Weebly to be perfect for them. We will discuss this further here below:

Design’s Flexibility – Wix vs Weebly

As mentioned earlier, both of these website builders have their own features. We will explain this to you.

When you use WIX, you can control your designs fully. It allows you to make additions to your animated images and background videos, external fonts, and select templates based on the type of your industry, which could be music/photography/portfolio/restaurant, etc.

You could rearrange any of the elements as per your needs. This technique or ability is called the Pixel Perfect. It allows you to position things anywhere as per your preference. This helps when website navigating becomes difficult. 

If you plan to use Pixel Perfect, you need to be good at designing and look at every aspect minutely.

Novices will find the WIX ADI of WIX perfect to work with. The full form of ADI is Artificial Design Intelligence.

It automatically helps in connecting with social media, creates the contact form for your business, and also picks the design best suited for it.

In case you are not satisfied with the results offered to you by ADI, then you could make some changes on your own.

It is not compulsory that you have to accept whatever this smart assistant offers. In fact, you could switch to WIX Editor if you wish to do the changes and design yourself. 

Weebly also works in a similar manner. The results would be similar, just that the exploration space will be smaller here.

Their templates are more structured. This helps in rearranging elements if you wish to do so. It has the grid form and hence feels somewhat locked.

Our winner here for this feature:

Well, WIX is definitely the winner here. It is very flexible as compared to Weebly.

User Friendly – Wix vs Weebly

Both WIX & Weebly are very popular today on the market. Both these website builders are preferred because one can use them easily. They start within a minute, as mentioned in their advertisements.

The first thing that you need to have to use one of these website builders is to have an account that has your name and email address.

Next, you need to select the template that best suits you and your requirements.

WIX & Weebly both offer a range of options that you need to select from. Editors of both website builders use the drag & drop feature. On looking at the WIX editor, it has many options and looks great.

Some may find it overwhelming sometimes. It allows you to animate images and text. Also, you are allowed to fine-tune fonts, colours, and style if need be.

Though it may look a little complex, you don’t have to worry. You will not damage your website. With WIX, you can rest assured that your website will not get broken.

This is because of its feature that has the website history and a Global Undo button. Both these are very powerful. 

We will discuss these in detail later. These features are not available on Weebly, unfortunately.

Our winner here:

Weebly has fewer options. When options are lesser, it gets less complicating and thus very easy to use.

Hence, Weebly is the winner here. Though, Wix ADI is good for novices. Weebly is our winner.

Navigation Levels and Responsiveness – Wix vs Weebly

We all have a preference as to how we would like our website to appear on our phones. And when we are allowed to decide on its look, it is awesome.

But, sometimes you may have to rearrange few things. This rearranging will need to be done as sometimes certain things do not align exactly the way you want them.

When it comes to navigation, you get one Sub-level. This is not enough if you want a complete home menu online.

As mentioned earlier, Weebly is more structured. The templates of Weebly are designed in such a way that they work better on your smartphones.

On finding the design that best satisfies your requirements, you will not be needed to change anything. These designs look great on any screen, be it on your smartphone or your tablet.

Though, a point to note is that on certain smart devices, the fonts appear to be a little too small. Also, you can do nothing about it. There is no option to alter the font look.

But having said the above, you will be provided with unlimited sub-levels for your site. That is great news.

It is a huge bonus, especially if you are planning on incorporating a maze that your users can use. We hope you don’t.

But frankly, Weebly is capable of accommodating large websites compared to WIX. When we say large websites, we mean sites that have more than fifty individual pages.

The winner here:

Weebly definitely wins here as the margin is just 2:1.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – Wix vs Weebly

Both WIX and Weebly provide excellent options that can help your website pages get a great rank on Google. This, however, was not the case years back. Thanks to these two website builders that it is now possible. 

Today you can make changes to your page’s Meta description, make 301 redirects, and change the name of your URL. Due to some reason, headline tags cannot be used by clients of Weebly.

This website builder restricts them from doing so. WIX allows its clients to shift all the way from H1 to H6.

If you are looking to fix some headlines issue, Weebly does offer a solution through an app that can help correct it.

But, this solution is not great. A perfectionist will not like it without a doubt. There are formatting issues faced when using this app.

If the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) of your image is important to you, you have to know that image file names get changed into cryptic by WIX site builder for some reason. This is certainly not ideal.

The winner here:

Here, the winner, according to us, is both. It is a tie.

eCommerce – Wix vs Weebly

WIX ecommerce is extremely good for small-scale stores online.

You are able to sell physical as well as digital goods online using WIX. You can sell anything from MP3 albums to even kitten paints. Your products can be optimized on search engines.

Also, you can add products, as well as receive payments via the offline payment method or credit cards (strip, Wirecard), and also through PayPal through this website builder.

Your product’s visual presentation is made strong by WIX. Images and videos can be easily added by you.

You could also make changes to the zoom effect of these images and videos. WIX site builder offers really great SEO options.

You will have no complaints about it at all. They recently added the import/export options for catalogues of products. Customer accounts were also added by them. Because of all this, regular buyers find it very easy to use such stores.

The ecommerce solution offered by Weebly website builder is close to that offered by WIX. At the outset, they started powerfully. But this quickly changed because of the number of WIX upgrades.

This all could change with Weebly’s latest acquisition, called Square. Its main focus is ecommerce.

You are allowed to import your product list automatically and create your storefront when using Weebly. It also allows you to sell digital products, physical products, MP3s or videos.

SEO fields for different items or products are available. And, if you own a business or performance plan, you can use SSL encryption.

Weebly also provides advanced features. For example, it has a calculator which can help you in calculating the sales tax. This calculator is automatic.

Even your shipping costs can be calculated automatically by this calculator. When you compare this to WIX, the calculator of WIX only allows the shipping cost to be calculated by their calculator.

Unlike Wix, Weebly doesn’t offer a variety of payment options. All its services are similar to that of WIX, but Weebly’s customers cannot make offline payments.

If you are someone who prefers the Cash on Delivery (COD) option, or other types of offline payment methods, then you will find this disappointing.

The charges of an eCommerce store that is completely featured by Weebly may be a minimum of 25 dollars a month. WIX site builder offers this for 23 dollars a month.

The winner here:

It is a tie. Weebly offers little more advanced features, while WIX clients have the benefit of affordable solutions.

Blog – Wix vs Weebly

Both Wix and Weebly have their options upgraded for blogging. Many changes have been made by them in recent years.

We consider this a result of healthy competition. Both offer the basic features needed for blogging. But, as compared to these two website builders, Weebly has more to give or offer.

This is possible only because the Editor used by WIX website builder has not been merged/ integrated with its website builder.

Images, videos, and texts can be uploaded by you but by using the external window. It may sound funny, but it needs fine-tuning to do well.

Your blog’s complex layouts can be designed by you. The editors let you have any element like forms, image galleries, anything that you like.

The winner here:

Clearly, Weebly is the winner for this segment. It leads by 3:1!

Customer Support – Wix vs Weebly

You will want customer support to be provided whenever you shop any product from any company. Both WIX and Weebly offer to help their customers over the phone and also through some excellent tutorials and active online forums.

You can also get their assistance via Facebook and Twitter. Sometimes when clients want a quick reply from the company, they try to shame the company on Facebook and Twitter. 

Weebly gets a point from us here as they have the Contact Us mentioned. It contains all the contact information needed by the customer, like the email address and phone number. A live chat option is also provided.

This is different when it comes to WIX. Their approach is very different from Weebly’s. They first want their customer to go through their FAQ section if they wish to get an answer to their questions. This could be very frustrating sometimes.

The winner here:

The winner is definitely WIX website builder.

Prices – Wix vs Weebly

The first thing we want to know when buying anything is its price. We are sure you were waiting for this since you started reading this article. As simple it may sound, it is, however, not so simple.

What we mean by saying this is that a website builder that comes for free is accompanied by ads. These ads will take away your website’s professional look.

Weebly offers an option called ‘Personal.’ This monthly basis option is economical. You can add your domain name.

However, it also has ads accompanying it. Earlier WIX offered a service called Connect Domain. Today it is not available in the United States.

Plans offered by both are on a monthly & yearly basis. The below-attached plans of both explain it well.

Some important things that we would want to talk about:

* The free plans offered by both the website builders support advertisements. Their banners also displayed self promote their offers.

Though these ads can be seen, the space occupied by them is less. WIX is a little more compared to Weebly.

* A WIX paid plan can be cancelled by you within fourteen days of subscribing to it. You also get a full refund of the payment made by you for it.

*Weebly lets you use their paid plan for thirty days before you decide to keep or cancel it. Within this thirty days period, if you decide to cancel the plan, you get a full 100% refund. And no reason will be asked from you for this cancellation. 

*All Weebly plans have an online store included in them. But, WIX allows you to first test it. This is possible if you choose one of the ecommerce plans provided by them.

* Both site builders charge an annual fee for applying for a domain name. This payment is paid in arrears and not at the beginning of the year.

* Both WIX and Weebly require you to spend some money to own an email account. You can use Google’s Google Workspace for this.

The winner here:

WIX is our winner here. According to us, if you get Weebly’s Profession Plan and WIX’s Combo Plan, it will be a great choice.

This will allow you to explore and use all the features provided by them. In terms of pricing, if you go to compare both these site builders, they are too close.

WIX is expensive by only a dollar. At the same time, Weebly’s online store is expensive by three dollars from WIX’s shopping cart that has all the features.

Thus, it is definitely very close. WIX has managed to level the score at 3:3.

App Markets – Wix vs Weebly

App stores of both WIX and Weebly are complete and external. Isn’t this great? Your own website can have many extra features added to it by you. Few of these additional features come free, while few have to be paid for.

Also, some features are awesome, while some may be just average. Hence based on their price and quality alone, it is not easy to decide which one is the best.

The App Market of WIX is more comprehensive compared to the one offered by Weebly. WIX has many in-house developed apps. These apps are of premium quality.

Some of these apps are WIX Restaurants, WIX Hotels, WIX Bookings, etc. There is no need to worry about using apps from 3^rd parties. The apps provided here will get enough support always.

The winner here:

WIX here stole the show. The ratio here is 3:2.

Restore and Back-up – Wix vs Weebly

Downloading your website’s copy and saving it locally can be done hassle-free. You will not be stopped by Weebly from doing so.

Having your full site’s content backed up and saved elsewhere is always good and helpful. But, there is a minus point to this.

The file downloaded will not be able to be restored. By this, we mean that the downloaded file will not be able to be uploaded by you on the site server of Weebly and return to the site’s earlier version.

When you upload the file to another server using FTP, it doesn’t function well. This is because its dynamic elements like the store, blog, etc., will not work.

Site History is one useful feature offered by WIX. It helps keep track of the total changes that have happened.

And, a copy of your site gets saved every time. Just one click and your site get restored to its previous version. When you compare this to Weebly, it is a lot better.

This is because its user will not have to do the backups. There will be no stress involved in making sure to remember that it is done.

You will be able to get your site restored in a matter of few seconds. This is little like Apple’s Time Machine and Google Docs. I hope you are familiar with these.

The winner here:

Weebly’s backup feature is loved by us. But, it cannot be compared to drop WIX. Hence, WIX is the winner here.

Case Study of WIX vs Weebly

A particular user wanted their new site to have a home. They wanted to construct it. Their website displays all their existing projects. They were not looking for anything too complex but rather something just simple.

They wanted the home page visible in 2 languages and a contact page. They understood that WordPress could create unnecessary complications for their project.

Hence, they chose Weebly. They prepared the draft.

In the beginning, they were satisfied with it. But, few things did bother them:

* When the background is busy, it gets difficult for the text to be read. And you are not able to make changes to the background below the text.

*The receptive versions generated by Weebly are optimized for every smartphone. Editing anything is no longer a need here.

This user wanted to text and images to be displayed alternately. This was impossible because it would need a complete reorganization of the desktop version. There was a bad alignment that couldn’t be corrected.

So now they decided to try with WIX. Just like us, they found WIX to be very flexible. You just need 3 hours to build the website. Adding the 2^nd language seemed difficult. This was because the menu bar of WIX is totally deactivated.

Hence implementing the 2^nd language feature was very challenging for them. Every page section allowed the implementation of animations. However, the user chose to let it remain simple.

When you use WIX as its user, you are allowed to customize anything you want on your site. This applies even to your smartphone version.

Having said that, we must accept that WIX helped to create a small portfolio.

Final Thoughts

In the website building competition, at first, Weebly did begin very strong. But, things changed later. WIX overtook Weebly in the end, concluding the score by 4:3.

As per our ranking and review, both Wix and Weebly are two excellent site builders. Maybe hence their scores are so close. You can also check our article on cPanel vs Plesk: What Is The Difference.

As per the example we gave of a user who wanted to make some changes on his site, WIX scored higher here. So you will now ask if WIX is the winner.

Well, it purely depends on what you need for your site. We will try to conclude with some points just in case there is still some confusion.

* WIX managed to get its services developed faster than Weebly. Right now, WIX is much above Weebly. WIX sites today run even faster with WIX Turbo.

* Users who want to design their own website based on the industry they come from find WIX perfect.

Few examples of such users are –liberal professionals (doctors, architects, accountants, etc.), creatives (artists, musicians, photographers), tourism industry (hotels, restaurants).

These have beautiful websites, and their templates match the industry they belong to. There is easy integration of online bookings.

* Weebly does offer a strong ecommerce. But it has not grown at nearly the same pace as WIX. 

* Weebly leads in many other categories. Users having very little knowledge in terms of design prefer it.

They find it extremely useful because of the structured design it offers. Apart from this, it is supposed to be great for blogging and larger projects.

* We accept that the templates of Weebly are stylish. They are also responsive and perfect to start with.

But, that is all. Weebly is good in terms of its basic use. It is limitless when compared to WIX.

If you are into ecommerce, then do have a look at all the different solutions available. This way you will be able to find the best match.

You need to always remember that both these website builders can be tried for free by you. We hope this article will help you make the right choice. We wish you all the success.