by Tolovaj
Weebly is simple yet appealing drag and drop service where you can set your web site in couple of minutes and start your on-line presence or support existing one. It is attractive, it has millions of users, it is search engine friendly and it is free.
Here are top 10 things you should know about www.weebly.com if you want to incorporate it in your web strategy:
(All images: Openclipart.org, PD licence)
1. They are free. If we are talking about business, we should know profit is made when you deduct costs from the revenue. If the costs are zero, one part of equation is optimized already. So you have more time to concentrate to the other half: the revenue.
2. Weebly is popular. It is among top 500 most visited sites on the internet. With more than 10 millions of sites hosted under that domain it is roughly the same rank as Squidoo or HubPages. This still doesn't guarantee it will be up 100 percent of time or search engines will index your site on Weebly fast (or at all) but it certainly offers good chances for that. In 2007 it was declared as one of top 50 sites in the world by choice of Times' editors. This means quality and calculating in web years there is tradition too!
3. Weebly sites are really easy to made. They are based on drag and drop concept of modules and there are tons of free already made designs available.
You don't need any HTML knowledge to set a site on Weebly but if you got any, you can use it to your full advance.
Did I mention there are many free tutorials for absolute beginners and for experienced users available?
4. It has a lot of features even in its basic form: you can use text, pictures, galleries, slideshows... It also includes contact forms, audio and video players and you can also add files to download. Weebly can be used as static site or blog or combination of both.
5. One great advantage of Weebly is very important to all non-English speaking world (and yes, it is still more than a half of the world). 
You can set your free site on Weebly in any language you want and of course I have set my sites on Weebly in Slovene:
Pravljice za otroke (Fairy Tales for children)
and
Pravljice bratov Grimm (Grimm's Fairy Tales)
As you can notice, both sites are simple, they are still work in progress, but they have some traffic and links to my main sites. It took me only couple of hours to set them up. Pretty cool, huh?
6. It is limited in design. Maybe free templates are not enough for you. If you don't know HTML programming you can feel certain limitations with existing modules very fast.
7. It is limited in number of pages you can create, number of sites you can register through one account (e-mail based), size of files you can upload and bandwith you can use. All limitations are negligible for 95 percent of web users but if you think about serious business, you should be aware of them and think about Weebly Pro features.
Weebly Pro or Reseller options have a lot of additional options, like direct video upload, password protection of certain pages, improved built-in statistics and their price ranges from just under three to 250 US dollars a month.
8. You can use your Weebly site to offer your goods or services. There are some limitations but most of them are not important to small business owners.
Weebly also allows you to set practically all sorts of links to your affiliate partners and it supports Google AdSense program.
Of course you can use it to support your external landing pages to improve their positions in SERP.
And as nice addition there is also Weebly's Affiliate Program, where you can earn commission from sales on different Weebly sites. If you are interested, just check their main site!
9. Weebly has basic support based on e-mail. There is no phone support and you should take care of your backups in case anything bad happens.
And occasionally it really happens. I have read about Weebly sites being erased or hacked or hi-jacked what is certainly big no no for all e-commerce based sites.
Weebly's blogs have very poor spam protection and Weebly has a lot of bugs especially when you use its sites with third party content.
All these problems makes Weebly unsuitable for landing site in my opinion.
katiem2
on 06/18/2012
I would avoid any site with known security issues, it's just to risky and there are safe options available. Thanks for the pros and cons of Weebly.
katiem2
on 06/18/2012
I gave Weebly a go long long ago and it was a bit limited for me back then. I certainly would avoid any site with know security issues. Thanks for the tips and for highlighting the pros and cons of this site.
Jasmine
on 06/28/2012
I'm in the process of making my first website with Weebly. The design is simple and it's very easy to set up a website of your own - writing optimized content takes some time, of course. All that you've said is true and I've learned a thing or two as well :) Great review!
ethelsmith
on 06/25/2012
I have used weebly now for over a year and had no problems security wise. I do use the pro service and have paid roughly what you say. Weebly have updated their system a lot lately and it is faster. It works for me, at least for now
10. I have a good news: there are many sites similar to Weebly. None of them is so popular, but all are easy to use, all are free at least in basic versions and all can be used to increase our on-line presence and strengthen our virtual empires.
I have written two more articles on this subject and you can check them here:
My minisites and microsites about fairy tales
and
How to use free blogs and free sites to support your e-store
or you can have a quick peek on my another free minisite, made to support our main site with articles on culinary subjects:
Kulinarika za zacetnike (Culinary for beginners).
One day in not so near future I will probably make another article on Weebly alternatives because some of them offer pretty advanced features and it is always good to have a backup plan if something goes wrong. But I still have a lot of experiments to do before that and I guess for now this is it.
Go, try Weebly for yourself and don't forget to have fun!
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Do you have any experience with Weebly? Please share it with us!
I believe premium versions give you a chance for AdSense and all affiliate marketing ways to earn some money.
Your first Weebly basic considers that the site charges nothing even as it can be possible to earn something.
What revenue-generating sources does a Weebly presence make one eligible for?
Weebly has interesting and I think pretty successful business model. You can get a site for free (with some limitations), just like at wordpressDOTcom, or you can pay for full service which has better SEO options and this one is harder to recognize in search results because it has custom domain. I don't think Weebly is best option for blogging, blog is best used there only as a part of of a site, as some kind of news feed or announcements.
In my opinion best thing at Weebly is you can set really good site to try almost everything without paying for anything and without a hassle with technicalities.
BTW, JoHarrington has a site on Weebly: http://www.beautiful-britain.com/
Feel free to check it out:)
I have to explore Weebly option more closely - I see many reviews on Weebly these days. However - I have rarely come across a weebly site on Google search. Perhaps it has.. I do not know how to recognize a Weebly blog.
Thank you very much, ologsinquito:)
I"ve always liked this article, and I'm pinning it to "My Wizzley Writing Board."
You are right, JoHarrington, your site should be updated more often (RSS feeds don't count for bots), but I totally understand you. Most writers enjoy writing new stuff thousand times more than maintaining (editing, rewriting, updating) old ones. Anyway, site looks good to me and when you'll find additional hour you can always get back to it and add something fresh...
I set up my Beautiful Britain site there! I had all good intentions of keeping the blog up to date, and I even spent my first Wizzley wages on a domain name. Then kind of let it slide. I know that was wrong. :/
@CeresSchwarz: I never experienced any kind of problem with Weebly (except lack of traffic before I learned the basics of kw research and backlinking), so I can only repeat what I have heard - most of problems with security were reported in 2011 and it seems things are pretty much under control at the moment although I can't say how are thing working under PRO license because I use only free service.
Anyway, I would never use any site which is not 100 percent under my control for any kind of collecting of sensitive data (personal names, addresses, numbers of credit cards etc.). I still highly recommend using Weebly for alternative blog or mini site which can serve as additional source of traffic and is also useful for learning the basics of maintaining own sites which should be the ultimate goal on the web. In the end of the day everything is about authority and control. If you don't own the domain and you can't change your host when you want, you are limited at both.
Hello, ologsinquito, it looks like Jigsy is another easy to use free platform worth considering. Thanks for the heads up.
I look at all these opportunities only as support sites at first and I use them mainly for backlinks. If some of them will gain significant traffic which could be monetized, I would certainly consider payed versions with options to monetize this traffic or redirect the authority to sites under my control.