WordPress vs Weebly – Which Is Better? (Comparison)

After speaking to countless website owners, we’ve seen how choosing the wrong platform can cost you time and money.

At WPBeginner, we use WordPress for our blog and online stores because it offers the features and customization we need to build our websites the way we want.

The truth is, while Weebly offers an easier starting point, it often becomes restrictive as your website grows – and we’ve actually helped countless users migrate from Weebly to WordPress.

In this comparison, we’ll share our real-world experience with both platforms to help you choose the right website builder for you. We’ll break down exactly how WordPress and Weebly stack up in terms of ease of use, flexibility, cost, and more. This way, you can make the right decision for your website.

In a rush? Here’s a quick overview of our comparison between Weebly and WordPress:

	Weebly	WordPress
Hosting	Hosted platform	Self-hosted
Ease of Use	Beginner-friendly	Slight learning curve
Features & Plugins	Limited apps supported	Supports 59,000+ plugins
Design & Layout	Drag & drop builder	Full Site Editor + Theme Customizer
eCommerce Support	Limited support	Extensive support
Data Portability	Very difficult	Very easy and smooth
Pricing	Free + Paid	Free

Weebly vs. WordPress: Hosting Platform

Choosing the right website builder is a big decision, and one of the first things to consider is whether you prefer a self-hosted or a fully hosted platform. Let’s break down what that means for both Weebly and WordPress.

Weebly – Hosted Platform

Weebly is a completely hosted service. This means that your website lives on the Weebly servers, and you have to abide by their terms of service.

The problem is that you don’t truly own all your content. If Weebly decides to change their policies and your content violates their terms of service, then you could lose all your data.

On the flip side, Weebly’s admin dashboard is designed to be user-friendly, providing all the tools you need to build, edit, and manage your Weebly website.

However, a significant drawback of a hosted platform like Weebly is that if you ever decide to move your website to a different platform, the migration process can be extremely difficult.

WordPress – Self-Hosted Platform

In contrast, WordPress is free, open-source software that you install on your own web hosting account.

This means that you own 100% of all your content, and you don’t have to worry about relying on a third-party service to host your website. What’s more, WordPress makes it relatively straightforward to switch to different platforms or hosting providers, should you ever decide to do so.

The good news is that there are lots of WordPress hosting services to choose from. Many of these providers even come with WordPress pre-installed or offer a simple one-click installation process. Opting for a self-hosted platform like WordPress gives you greater flexibility and freedom in managing every aspect of your website

You can see our guide on how to start a WordPress blog (step by step) for more information.

Winner: WordPress

Weebly vs. WordPress: Ease of Use

Choosing a user-friendly platform for building and managing your website is super important.

If the platform has a steep learning curve, you’ll end up spending valuable time trying to figure out how it works instead of focusing on what really matters – growing your business.

So, let’s take a close look at how WordPress and Weebly compare when it comes to ease of use.

Weebly – Ease of Use

Weebly offers a simple and neat interface for users. You get to choose different options from the dashboard, whether you are building a website or viewing reports.

A key feature of Weebly is its intuitive drag-and-drop interface. This lets you visually build your website without needing any coding knowledge. Setting up a website is quick and straightforward, and Weebly manages all the hosting and security for you.

If you need some extra help, then Weebly has a detailed knowledge base filled with helpful support articles. These can be very helpful for beginners who might need a solution if they get stuck during the setup process.

WordPress – Ease of Use

WordPress also offers a user-friendly dashboard and visual editor for creating content. You can easily manage your website from the admin panel.

For instance, it lets you access your blog posts and pages, view comments, manage plugins, and choose a theme from the dashboard.

The sheer number of themes and WordPress plugins means you have almost limitless customization possibilities, especially when you compare it to Weebly’s more restricted set of options.

One area where Weebly has a slight advantage over WordPress is that it comes with a prebuilt drag-and-drop visual builder. While the WordPress block editor is intuitive when it comes to creating content, you’ll typically need to install a separate page builder plugin to get true drag-and-drop flexibility.

However, WordPress benefits from a massive and active community and a robust support system. You’ll find an endless supply of tutorials, articles, and videos dedicated to WordPress, making it easy to find solutions to any issues you might encounter.

Winner – Weebly

Weebly vs. WordPress: Features and Plugins

There will almost certainly be times when you need to add extra functionality to your website to accomplish a specific task. In this section, we’ll compare how WordPress and Weebly handle features and the availability of add-ons (plugins for WordPress, apps for Weebly).

Weebly – Features and Plugins

Weebly comes with a good selection of built-in tools. You can use them to create various kinds of websites, including an online store, blog, portfolio, business site, or event page.

However, if you require a feature that isn’t already part of their platform, you’re quite limited. Unlike WordPress, you can’t just hire a developer to build a bespoke solution to extend what Weebly can do.

Weebly does offer different free and paid applications, but the selection is limited and not as extensive as WordPress.

WordPress – Features and Plugins

WordPress, on the other hand, offers virtually any feature you could possibly want for your website.

For instance, you can easily add features for online stores, contact forms, galleries, portfolios, SEO, and more. While many of these features aren’t built into the core WordPress software, you can easily add them using plugins.

There are over 59,000 free plugins available in the official WordPress plugin directory alone. Not to mention, there are countless other premium plugins available from third-party websites.

If you can think of a feature, there’s a very good chance that a WordPress plugin already exists to provide it. For example, if you need to create a contact form without writing code, then you can use WPForms.

Also, if you’re looking to optimize your site for search engines, create sitemaps, and fix broken links, then plugins like All in One SEO (AIOSEO) are extremely useful.

Winner: WordPress

WordPress vs. Weebly: Design and Layout Choices

Next up, let’s consider the design and layout options each platform offers. You’ll want a platform that’s easy to use and provides plenty of visual design choices to make your site stand out.

So, let’s see how Weebly and WordPress compare when it comes to design flexibility and customization.

Weebly – Design and Layouts

Weebly truly shines when it comes to design, and arguably, its best feature is its intuitive drag-and-drop page builder.

You can choose from different elements in the left menu. From here, simply drag and drop the elements on your template.

Weebly also offers a good selection of themes that you can further customize using these same drag-and-drop tools.

For example, you’ll find themes specifically designed for stores, business websites, online portfolios, personal websites, events, and much more.

WordPress – Design and Layouts

WordPress also boasts an impressive number of design options, with over 12,000 themes available. You can find themes for all sorts of websites, such as an eCommerce store, business site, wedding website, personal site, and more.

WordPress does not come with a built-in drag-and-drop page builder. However, the newest themes do support the full-site editor, which uses blocks to help you customize your site. It’s similar to the WordPress content editor, where you can add different blocks to edit your site’s appearance.

You can see our list of the best block themes for full site editing in WordPress.

That said, there are some WordPress themes that still use the theme customizer. Depending on the theme you’re using, you can change the background colors, edit your menus, widgets, homepage settings, add custom CSS, and much more.

For more details, you can go through our detailed guide on how to use WordPress theme customizer.

If you’re looking for a drag-and-drop option in WordPress, then you’ll need to use a plugin like SeedProd.

It is the best WordPress page builder and helps you create landing pages, coming soon pages, and more.

We’ve used SeedProd to design many of our partner sites and have always been happy with the results. To learn more about our experiences with this page builder plugin, check out our detailed SeedProd review.

There are also thousands of pre-made templates that offer drag-drop functionality. You can find many free options in the official WordPress.org themes directory, while others can be purchased from theme shops like StudioPress, Themify, and ThemeLab.

Winner: Tie

WordPress vs. Weebly: Pricing

Cost is always an important factor when you’re deciding which website platform to go with. To help you choose between WordPress and Weebly, let’s take a look at their different pricing structure.

Weebly – Pricing

Weebly offers 3 premium pricing plans starting from $10 per month and going all the way up to $26 per month.

You get free SSL certificates in all the plans, including the free option. However, if you want a free domain, unlimited storage, password protection, and other advanced features, then you’ll need to select the Professional or Performance plans.

Weebly also offers a free version, but it has limited features. Plus, your website will have the Weebly branding.

WordPress – Pricing

In contrast, WordPress itself is a free and open-source platform. All you need is a web hosting service and a domain name to get started. However, the total cost of creating a WordPress website will vary depending on your needs.

For instance, you can get a domain and hosting for as low as $2.75 per month, along with a free domain and SSL certificate if you pick a provider like Bluehost. Plus, there are many free WordPress themes and plugins – your initial outlay could be as low as around $10 per year.

However, if you need more advanced features and choose to use premium plugins and themes, your annual costs could potentially exceed $500 per year.

The beauty of WordPress is that you have control over what you spend and can scale your investment as your website grows. You could even partner with a team of experts who can work out a budget and create a WordPress website for you.

Winner: WordPress

Weebly vs. WordPress: eCommerce and Business

Are you looking to start an online store and wondering whether WordPress or Weebly is the better platform for your eCommerce venture?

Let’s compare the eCommerce and business features that both platforms offer to help you make the right choice.

Weebly – eCommerce and Business

Weebly does allow you to set up an online store. However, its eCommerce features are quite basic, and you’ll find there isn’t a great deal of flexibility when it comes to customizing your shop.

One of the positives we noted is that Weebly offers some attractive themes specifically designed for online stores. You can then use their familiar drag-and-drop builder to tweak these themes and add various product display elements.

That said, a significant drawback is that Weebly charges a 3% transaction fee on every sale you make. This is in addition to the fees charged by your chosen payment processors, such as Stripe and PayPal. So, you end up paying double transaction fees, which can eat into your profits.

You can avoid this extra fee by upgrading to their Business plan, which costs around $26 per month.

WordPress – eCommerce and Business

WordPress, on the other hand, boasts several powerful and flexible eCommerce plugins that allow you to create your own fully featured online stores. Popular options include WooCommerce, Easy Digital Downloads, iThemes Exchange, WP eCommerce, and several others.

WooCommerce is particularly popular and is one of the leading eCommerce platforms for WordPress. In fact, it powers nearly 38% of all online stores. The best thing about a WooCommerce store is that it’s free to use, beginner-friendly, and highly flexible.

Plus, WooCommerce integrates seamlessly with popular website and page builder plugins like SeedProd, giving you complete control over your store’s design. You can choose from a wide range of themes and tailor them to your exact requirements.

Most WordPress eCommerce platforms also come with dozens of pre-made themes. You can add coupons, customize receipts, and basically do everything you want to do in your online store.

Crucially, WordPress itself does not charge any additional transaction fees on your sales. All you’ll pay are the standard processing fees charged by your chosen payment gateway – which you would have to pay regardless of the platform you use.

To learn more, please see our guide on WooCommerce Made Simple: A Step-by-Step Tutorial [+ Resources].

Winner: WordPress

WordPress vs. Weebly: Data Portability

Data portability is something that many website owners don’t think about when they’re first choosing a platform. However, it’s a crucial factor that determines how easily you can export and import your website content and other important data should you ever need to switch platforms.

WordPress – Data Portability

When you host your website on an open-source platform like WordPress, you can easily export your data into many formats. You can export your WordPress site as an XML file, export your database, or download your files and content.

You can also easily migrate your WordPress site to any other platform that you like. This freedom gives you complete ownership and control over your online presence, which provides significant peace of mind.

Weebly – Data Portability

In contrast, Weebly’s data portability options are quite limited. While they do allow you to download your website as a zip file, this download typically only contains your basic HTML pages and images.

Crucially, if you had a blog on your Weebly site, those posts would generally not be included in the export. Similarly, any slideshows or other advanced features you might have implemented likely wouldn’t function correctly on the exported site. Essentially, moving a website away from Weebly can be a very difficult and often incomplete process.

Recognizing this challenge, we decided to tackle the problem head-on and created a free Weebly to WordPress Importer. For full instructions, see our complete guide on how to move from Weebly to WordPress.

Winner: WordPress

WordPress vs. Weebly – Which One Should You Choose?

After taking a good look at both Weebly and WordPress, our conclusion is that Weebly looks good from the outside, and it can be suitable for small websites. However, it falls short when it comes to creating a proper blog or running a fully functional online store. That simple drag-and-drop builder might catch your eye at first, but appearances can be deceiving.

In the contrast, WordPress gives you the freedom and flexibility to create practically any kind of website. Crucially, WordPress also gives you complete ownership of all your content. Thar said, you’re not reliant on another company that could potentially change its policies or even shut down your site. For any serious website owner, that level of control and future-proofing is invaluable.

We hope this article helped you compare WordPress vs. Weebly and pick a platform for your next website. You may also want to check out our comparison of Squarespace vs. WordPress and how to choose the best blogging platform.

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