Weebly vs Wix: Website Builder Comparison

We tested both WIX and Weebly and found that WIX was the clear winner, thanks to a better app store, strong customer support, impressive templates, and a superior mobile experience – in fact, it's the best website builder we've tested.

The only front Weebly wins on is value for money – it's not only cheaper than WIX, but one of the cheapest website builders you can currently get your hands on that'll help you build a brilliant website.

In this guide, we’ll explain why we think WIX is the better website builder overall, and point out the situations in which Weebly would be a better choice. Sections include:

• Weebly vs WIX: Head-to-Head
• WIX – Everything You Need to Know
• Weebly – Everything You Need to Know
• Weebly vs WIX: Best Value
• Which is Best for Business features?

• Best for Design Features
• Which is the Best for Ease of Use
• Which is the Best for Customer Support?
• WIX and Weebly Alternatives
• Verdict
• WIX vs Weebly FAQs

WIX vs Weebly: Head-to-Head

WIX is a better choice than Weebly for almost everyone. We've spent more than 80 hours testing website builders, and WIX actually proved itself to be better than all the other providers we tested in our last round of research. In a head-to-head against Weebly, it wins in a number of areas:

• Website Templates – WIX has significantly more templates, and we think they look better as well.
• Customer Support – WIX has unparalleled customer support with a great knowledge base.
• Pricing – Weebly is much cheaper than WIX, so cheap in fact it's better value for money despite lagging behind in key areas.
• Custom Coding – Weebly gives you the option to get into real detail with its custom coding. WIX, however, hides most of it away.
• Mobile Editing – While both have mobile responsive templates, WIX lets you actually change how your site appears on mobile devices whilst Weebly does not.

However, that's not to say that Weebly isn't a good website builder — it is. WIX is just better in most areas.

WIX

WIX's reputation as one of the world's best website builders is well deserved. Not only is it one of the most feature-rich website builders available, but it's also got one of the biggest app stores on the market. Whatever you need to build your website, WIX certainly has it.

On the app store, you’ll find apps to cover everything from appointment bookings, to live chat functions and everything in between. They're all incredibly easy to implement – simply drag and drop them onto your site. You won’t need to add a single line of code to get them working, either.

WIX users often remark on how easy it is to make the website look exactly how you want it to – something you can check with the super useful ‘preview' feature.

WIX also has a new design tool called Artificial Design Intelligence. It sounds complicated, but it’s simply the system WIX uses to help build your site for you. During the setup, it’ll ask you some questions about the type of website you want to make, and then present you with a website template created specifically for you.

However, if you want to edit it this, it's pretty simple – you're not confined to grids and blocks, and WIX users often remark on how easy it is to make the website look exactly how you want it to – something you can check with the super useful ‘preview' feature.

It is also relatively inexpensive to get started with an online store using WIX. Pricing plans start from just $16/month, making it one of the most affordable website builders on the market. What's more, you'll get a lot of bang for those 14 bucks, including generous storage allowances.

The only real drawbacks are that when you're building a site with WIX, once you publish, you won't be able to change your site's template. This might not be a problem if you love your template but, if you need to change a feature or the layout down the line, you might be stuck.

Weebly

Despite not scoring quite as well as WIX, Weebly is still a great website builder. Most importantly, it's excellent value for money (more on this below) and one of the cheapest website builders you can buy. All of Weebly's plans are cheaper than comparable plans provided by WIX, and their first paid plan won't set you back as much as Squarespace, GoDaddy, and Duda's least pricey plans.

Weebly allows you to go deeper into the customization of your website than the average website builder. You get full access to the code that powers your website, meaning that you can fine-tune any elements or functionality. You'll need to be a bit handy with CSS or HMTL coding languages but you can pick these up pretty easily – however, if you're looking to avoid coding altogether, WIX is a much better choice.

Weebly has a decent selection of templates. This means you won't find it a struggle to create a professional-looking website, regardless of whether you want to run a blog, a business, or a portfolio.

Weebly has a decent selection of templates. This means you won't find it a struggle to create a professional-looking website, regardless of whether you want to run a blog, a business, or a portfolio. Secondly, the templates are flexible – so you’re able to chop and change the base design to your liking – and you can switch templates after you’ve published your site.

However, there aren't many to choose from – compared to WIX, at least. This might make getting online more of a chore as you'll have to do more editing. It might also mean that you're unable to find one that really suits your business — meaning an even greater waste of time.

The Weebly app center has a number of useful website add-ons for you to choose from – including plenty of free ones. – but it isn't quite a match for WIX's.

Who are Wix and Weebly Best for?

Wix is a better choice than Weebly in almost all instances, but that doesn't mean businesses won't get a lot out of the latter provider. Here are some use cases and which provider would suit them best:

• If your budget is your main constraint, Weebly is the best option
• If you're looking for creative freedom when building your website, WIX is better
• If you're looking to build an online store, WIX is the better alternative
• If you'll need features, apps, and add ons, then go for WIX
• If you're looking to build a portfolio on the cheap, Weebly is the best option
• If you're looking for industry/business-specific designs, WIX is a far better option
• If you like to get to grips with the coding on a website's backend, opt for Weebly

Best Value: WIX

Weebly is much cheaper than WIX. Both providers have free plans, but WIX's cheapest pricing plan is the Combo, which starts at $16 per month if you pay annually. Weebly, on the other hand, has a personal plan that starts at just $6 per month – aside from WordPress.com, that's the cheapest Personal/Basic/Starter Plan provided by the website builders we tested.

Our research team concluded that Weebly is better value for money despite the fact it's nowhere near as good as WIX for building a website. WIX is easier to use, has better support options, a much bigger range of design templates, is generally a speedier builder, and has lots of other advantages – but it's pretty expensive. Weebly isn't nearly as impressive, but conversely, it's one of the most affordable providers on the market.

WIX Pricing

As mentioned just above, WIX's combo plan is the cheapest paid-for plan available ($16 per month) – which, as Wix says, is for ‘personal use'. On this pricing plan, you get 2GB of data per month, 3GB of storage space, and the ability to upload 30 mins of video. You'll also get a custom domain and the ability to remove WIX ads.

WIX's second paid plan, the Unlimited plan, is $22 per month if you pay annually. Choosing this plan will grant you access to WIX's Site Booster app and Visitor Analytics app, which is free for a year, and offers 10Gb of storage space.

The Pro version (great for small businesses looking to revamp their branding) comes in at $27 per month when paid annually, and you get 20GB of storage, 2 hours of video, and an Events Calendar app. The highest tier – the VIP package – is available for $45 per month, and includes priority customer care, a professional logo, social media logo files, and 25GB storage.

WIX does provide a free plan for users who don't want to spend anything, but it doesn't have nearly as many features as WIX's paid packages.

Business-Focused Plans

There are also a number of business packages, including the Business Basic package ($27 per month), the Business Unlimited plan ($32 per month), and the Business VIP plan ($59 per month).

These plans are geared towards businesses who want to expand their ecommerce horizons and offer a number of additional features that you'll find useful if you're planning to sell stuff in your online store.

The Business Basic plan, for instance, will let you accept online payments, remove WIX ads from your site, change the WIX URL to your own custom domain, upload up to five hours of video and use 20 GB of storage – all very useful if you're hosting a lot of content, and looking to sell products.

The Business Unlimited and VIP option expands storage to 35GB and 50GB respectively, and effectively let you access a fully-featured e-commerce platform provided by WIX. This includes accepting payments in multiple currencies, subscriptions, advanced shipping, and several other useful features that you'll find out more about in the business features section.

Alternatively, check out our Wix pricing page for a more in-depth look at the provider's different packages.

Weebly Pricing

Like WIX, Weebly has a free plan if you don't want to spend anything, although it's naturally quite limited as you'd expect a free plan to be. You'll get 500MB of storage, and access to SEO tools and some site analytics is granted. However, you won't be able to use a custom domain, and you'll have to run ads on your site.

Weebly's paid plans are much cheaper than WIX's – its second paid plan (Professional – starting from $12 per month) is actually cheaper than WIX's first paid plan (Combo, $14 per month), for instance.

Weebly's Personal Plan also comes with adverts ($6 per month, billed annually) but you will be able to connect your own custom domain. The storage limit granted to Personal Plan users is the same as the free plan and you won't be able to remove any adverts either, meaning this plan is really only suitable for personal portfolios or blogs and not professional sites.

The aforementioned Professional Plan is the first plan that will let you remove ads from your site, and as well as all of the features provided on cheaper plans, you get unlimited storage, a free domain, and password protection. You'll also be able to contact Weebly by phone for customer support, something you can't do on the lower plans – making it a great option for businesses and freelancers.

The Performance plan, which is priced at $29 per month if you pay annually, is geared towards online stores. It comes with advanced e-commerce statistics, shipping discounts, abandoned cart emails and prioritized support from Weebly.

Best for Business Features: WIX

Ecommerce Features

WIX's business plans really set the standard for ecommerce capabilities. On all of WIX's Business plans (Basic, VIP, and Unlimited), you'll have the ability to secure online payments, collect reoccurring payments, sell subscriptions and allow customers to create accounts.  You'll also be able to recover abandoned carts, offer subscriptions and sell unlimited products.

With WIX's business plans, you'll be able to sell on all social channels with ease, which makes WIX one of the best website builders for businesses that want to sell products through sites like Facebook and Instagram.

WIX's most expensive packages, the Business Unlimited and Business VIP plans, will allow you to collect and post user reviews.

It doesn't stop there, though. WIX's most expensive packages, the Business Unlimited and Business VIP plans, will allow you to collect and post user reviews (3,000 on the Business VIP plan, 1,000 on the Business Unlimited plan). You can even start dropshipping if you'd like.

These pricy plans will also grant you access to features included in apps like Wix Stores, WIX Bookings, WIX Restaurants, WIX Hotels, WIX Videos, and WIX Events – basically everything you need to run a successful online store. Wix Stores, for instance, will let you fully customize the design of your eCommerce site, create shipping rules, manage your store using the WIX Owner app and secure your site with SSL encryption.

Other useful tools WIX will provide for your business include a logo maker, as well as access to WIX Payments, WIX Ascend (CRM), and a POS system that was launched last year. You can even hire an expert to help you out.

Weebly's ecommerce features are largely confined to the Performance plan, the most expensive plan Weebly offers. With this plan, you can send abandoned cart emails and accept PayPal payments, the ability to collect product reviews and tools to gather e-commerce insights.

However, we'd always recommend WIX over Weebly if you're building an online store, whatever that store may be. That's because Weebly was bought by payment services company Square – and since then, Square has been redirecting people who are looking to build a business website with Weebly to Square.

Marketing and SEO Features

WIX also leads the way when it comes to marketing and SEO – although this is one of Weebly's strong points too. Both WIX and Weebly provide the ability to create meta descriptions, custom URLs, header code, 301 redirects, and Google Analytics integration. Both sites also offer social media integration and have SEO-specific apps.

Despite Weebly's very commendable selection of SEO tools – and having mobile-responsive templates – the provider won't change how your website looks on mobile devices.

However, WIX edges it due to how mobile-friendly it is, which is key in SEO terms because so many people use mobile phones as their primary device for Googling. Surprisingly, despite Weebly's very commendable selection of SEO tools – and having mobile-responsive templates – the provider won't change how your website looks on mobile devices, leading to a diminished experience for mobile users.

It would be nice to see WIX add keyword support in the future, but this isn't a feature that Weebly offers either – Squarespace, on the other hand, is a provider that does offer this. WIX, however, will give you SEO best practice prompts when you're building your site – as does Weebly – whereas this isn't provided by Squarespace.

Weebly also has some additional marketing functionalities that your business will find useful, including a photo studio and email marketing support via Promote, which will let you create and send announcements, promotions, newsletters, and events. WIX also has email marketing support available.

Best for Design Features: WIX

Overall, we think WIX offers users a much better template experience – it offers more templates to choose from than Weebly (over 800 versus less than 100). Plus, we think that WIX’s often look nicer as well.

On the WIX platform, there a professional-grade templates for everything from personal travel blogs to sophisticated ecommerce retail stores. WIX provides a number of site-specific templates that Weebly doesn't, including for electronics stores, education & book sites, fashion & beauty pages, medical/healthcare resources, and real estate businesses. Weebly's are a lot broader and are, unfortunately, a bit blander than WIX's.

One of our favorite WIX template features we discovered during testing is its mobile optimization. With the WIX mobile editor, you can make bespoke changes to the mobile-view version of your site, or trust WIX to automatically put the best mobile-optimized settings in place. Weebly is pretty poor when it comes to mobile formatting, and even features included in set themes are not properly formatted on phones.

The only downside to WIX is that you can’t change your WIX template after you’ve published your site, which isn’t ideal. Weebly, on the other hand, is much more flexible – you can switch templates after your site goes live. However, Wix does compensate for its “no going back” philosophy by having a much broader selection of templates than Weebly, so you’re much more likely to find the right template the first time around with Wix.

Another reason to choose WIX when it comes to design is the fact you can use clipart and edit using Wix studio – particularly helpful for social posts – which you can't do on Weebly. You can also adjust both the color and size of pictures, whereas Weebly only lets you adjust the size.

Best for Ease of Use: Wix

The bottom line is that Wix is by far the easier site to use. Both sites keep their technical jargon to a minimum, so things are easy to understand, but it's a lot easier to correct errors in Wix than it is in Weebly, and there are more visual clues too. What's more, in our user experience testing, we found users were more likely to recommend Wix to a friend than Weebly.

If you’re already an experienced coder, or fancy stretching your legs with your new website, Weebly might be the website builder for you. You’re able to edit your site’s code, even on the free package. Weebly also allows you to access the raw code at the heart of the site. Wix, on the other hand, offers what it calls “developer tools”, which allow you to edit certain parts of the code, rather than all of it.

A big part of how easy a website is to use is how quickly a website loads pages. Unfortunately for Weebly, it performed extremely poorly in our speed tests, and was one of the slowest website builders we tested. Wix, on the other hand, was one of the quickest.

Best for Customer Support: Wix

Wix edges Weebly when it comes to customer support, scoring much higher on our testing. Although you cannot email Wix for support (there is a contact center, however, as listed below) Wix has pretty much every other base covered. You can contact them on live chat, social media, and the phone, and there are on-site GIF/Video/Image tutorials.

Unlike Wix, Weebly does not provide these tutorials, nor can you contact the provider via social media – and phone support is only available on the more expensive e-commerce plans.

However, both website builders have pretty responsive knowledge centers. We searched for a number of common website building queries (e.g. “how to redirect visitors to the right page”, “changing meta tags” etc) to see what information Wix and Weebly would return to us, and subsequently scored each provider on how relevant the information was. Wix scored 11 out of a possible 15, whereas Weebly scored 10 – so there really wasn't much in it at all. However, as we've covered, Wix beats Weebly on other support fronts.

Weebly and Wix Alternatives

Although Wix and Weebly are top website builders, they're not the only two providers on the market – there's a whole range of website builders out there, each with its own merits and pitfalls.

So, if you're deciding precisely which website builder will work best for your prospective site, it'll be good to take a look at some of the other competitors in the space.  To do this, you can use our comparison tool to compare website builders  or take a look at the table below:

Wix vs Weebly FAQs

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