Weebly vs Squarespace: A Comparison Of Two Major Website Builders

Meta Description: Explore a detailed comparison between Squarespace and Weebly. Uncover insights to decide the ideal website builder platform for your needs.

In this article, we comprehensively compare Squarespace and Weebly, helping you choose the perfect website-building platform.

Key Takeaways

• Squarespace offers exquisite, diverse templates, while Weebly caters to budget-conscious users.
• Squarespace provides comprehensive features for a modern website, whereas Weebly lacks updates and advancements.
• Weigh costs against features – Squarespace for all-inclusive quality, Weebly for budget-friendly simplicity.

Weebly vs. Squarespace: Pros & Cons

Weebly

Pros:

• Affordability: Offers budget-friendly plans, including a free option and low-cost plans.
• SEO Guidance: Provides helpful guidance for optimizing your website for search engines.
• Ease of Use: Generally user-friendly and suitable for beginners with limited web development experience.
• E-commerce: Offers seamless e-commerce capabilities, making online selling easier.
• Cost-Effective: Offers free and low-cost paid plans, making it budget-friendly.

Cons:

• Outdated Templates: The templates might be outdated and lack modern aesthetics.
• Limited Customization: Customization options might be more limited than other platforms.
• Editor Learning Curve: Some users find the website editor less intuitive.
• Design Flexibility: Design flexibility could be restricted, affecting unique brand representation.
• Advanced Features: Might lack some advanced features that larger businesses or complex websites require.

Squarespace

Pros:

• High-Quality Designs: Offers visually appealing and professional-looking templates.
• User Experience: Focuses on providing an improved and user-friendly experience.
• Multimedia Integration: Allows easy integration of multimedia content like images and videos.
• Social Media Integration: Offers strong integration with social media platforms.
• E-commerce: Provides e-commerce capabilities and tools for online stores.

Cons:

• Cost: Plans can be pricier than other website builders.
• Complexity: The platform might be a bit more complex for beginners.
• Limited App Store: A smaller selection of third-party apps than some competitors.
• Internationalization Challenges: Might not handle multilingual content and international payment options as seamlessly.
• Monetization Options: Might lack specialized features for content monetization for bloggers.

Weebly vs Squarespace: Quick Comparison

Weebly vs Squarespace: Pricing

Weebly

• Offers budget-friendly plans, starting from $10/month to $26/month.
• Needs updates for features, impacting its value.
• Free plan available, but includes ‘ .weebly’ domain and Weebly ads.
• Suitable for testing the platform before upgrading.

Squarespace

• Slightly pricier plans, ranging from $16/month to $49/month.
• Impressive features for the cost, providing value for money.
• Personal plan increased by 33% from $12 to $16.
• No free plan, but it offers a 14-day free trial with no ads.

Verdict: Weebly is the winner

While Weebly offers more affordable starting plans, Squarespace stands out with its higher-quality features and design aesthetics, making it a better value for your investment. Squarespace’s pricing might be slightly higher, but the additional features and design quality justify the cost. Moreover, Squarespace’s 14-day free trial provides ample time to explore the platform before committing

Weebly vs Squarespace: Ease Of Use

By nature, a website builder should offer simplicity, especially for those without coding expertise or the resources to hire a developer.

Weebly and Squarespace have prioritized user-friendliness, and we aimed to gauge how easy they are to use. Our recent analysis found that both platforms have enhanced their ease of use. As a result, Squarespace, alongside Wix, is one of the most uncomplicated website builders.

Weebly

Weebly is known for its user-friendly interface, making it an excellent choice for beginners and those without much technical experience. Its drag-and-drop builder is intuitive, allowing users to quickly assemble and customize their websites without delving into complex coding. 

Weebly’s straightforward navigation and clear design options make it easy to create and update pages, add content, and manage various elements. The platform’s simplicity, combined with its helpful built-in features, ensures that even individuals with limited web development skills can create appealing and functional websites with ease.

Squarespace

Squarespace offers a more sophisticated design environment that caters to beginners and users seeking more design control. Its interface strikes a balance between user-friendliness and design flexibility. While not as intuitive as some other builders, Squarespace provides a wide range of beautifully designed templates that users can easily customize. 

The platform’s design elements are well-organized, and its editing tools offer substantial creative freedom without requiring extensive technical knowledge. Squarespace’s learning curve might be slightly steeper, but the payoff is the ability to craft polished, professional websites with more design refinement.

Verdict: Squarespace is the winner

Weebly takes the lead in ease of use, offering users a more intuitive and streamlined website-building experience. It is easier to use Weebly in comparison to Squarespace.

Weebly vs Squarespace: Design Features

Design flexibility is significant in website builders. It’s worth noting that Weebly and Squarespace offer varying degrees of design customization. Let’s delve into the details.

Weebly

Weebly presents a choice of 50 distinct themes, categorized into sections such as features, online store, business, portfolios, personal, blog, and event for easy browsing.

Users can preview and test selected templates before commencing the editing process.

Pros

• Themes are simplistic and editable.
• Themes are categorized for a more accessible selection.
• Pre-editing previews are available.

Cons

• Lack of a search function for specific industries.
• Absence of theme previews for mobile and tablet screens before selection.
• The mobile responsiveness score is 2 out of 5, indicating room for enhancement.

Squarespace

Squarespace’s themes are luxurious, setting a high standard for website aesthetics.

Design, UX (User Experience), and Branding experts unanimously commend Squarespace for having some of the best themes among website builders. Features previously restricted to specific templates, like adding videos and forms, are now accessible across all templates.

Pros

• Exceptional and lavish themes.
• High score for template variety.
• Mobile responsive with previews for various screen sizes.
• Particularly suited for creative industries and offers impressive ecommerce options.

Cons

• Lack of advanced templates
• Limited typography options
• Limited animation and interaction features

Verdict: Squarespace is the winner

While Weebly offers simplicity and moderate design flexibility, Squarespace shines as a design powerhouse with its opulent themes and versatility. If design customization is a priority, Squarespace’s abundant options, mobile responsiveness, and robust creative capabilities make it the standout choice.

Weebly vs Squarespace: Website Tools & Features

Weebly boasts many built-in features, offering diverse options for website creation. However, the absence of internationalization features lowered Weebly’s usability for global audiences.

Meanwhile, with over 30 quality apps available, Squarespace prioritizes quality over quantity in its integrations. Squarespace also has improved its logo and video editing capabilities.

Ecommerce:

Squarespace’s acquisition of Weebly led to a migration of ecommerce capabilities to the latter platform. Both platforms offer features like discount creation, abandoned cart recovery, shipping management, multiple payment options, and no transaction fees on higher-tier plans. Squarespace holds an advantage with its multi-channel integration, allowing direct selling via social media platforms like Instagram.

Blogging:

Weebly and Squarespace enable blog creation and publication, reflecting a close match-up. Weebly’s significant improvement from the previous year contributed to this achievement. Key blogging features include social bookmarking, allowing comments, search capabilities, RSS feeds, post scheduling, and displaying categories.

Email Marketing:

Both platforms enable creating custom email addresses through G Suite.

Weebly offers ‘Weebly Promote’ for crafting email marketing campaigns, starting at $10/month. Squarespace provides elegant email campaign templates, automation, contact list management, and integrated analytics for enhanced email marketing effectiveness.

Social Media Integration:

Both platforms allow embedding social buttons on websites. Squarespace uniquely enables live social media feeds on websites, with the added ability to create social posts directly from the platform.

Analytics:

Weebly and Squarespace offer built-in onsite analytics tracking for page views, bounce rate, and sales. Both platforms also integrate with Google Analytics for more detailed data.

Verdict: Squarespace is the winner

While both Weebly and Squarespace offer an array of features and tools, Squarespace’s improvements in its app market, integrations, and marketing capabilities provide it with a slight edge. However, the choice between the two platforms largely depends on specific feature requirements and business goals.

Weebly vs Squarespace: SEO Features

Both Weebly and Squarespace offer SEO capabilities, yet Squarespace takes the lead with a perfect 5 out of 5 for SEO in our rankings, compared to Weebly’s respectable 4 out of 5. Let’s explore their SEO features in detail.

Squarespace

Squarespace strongly emphasizes enabling users to optimize their websites for search engines effectively. Squarespace’s advantage in SEO stems from its holistic approach that aligns with modern trends, including mobile optimization.

With over 60% of online searches originating from smartphones, mobile optimization is critical for SEO success. Squarespace’s mobile-responsive design ensures your site is optimized for mobile users, significantly improving SEO performance.

Squarespace’s SEO features include managing meta titles, descriptions, URL slugs, and image alt text. These components are fundamental for optimizing each page’s content for search engines and enhancing your website’s discoverability.

Weebly

Weebly is committed to equipping users with tools to enhance their website’s SEO performance.

Weebly’s range of SEO tools and features allows users to manage essential aspects of SEO optimization, such as meta titles, descriptions, URL slugs, and image alt text. However, Its lack of mobile optimization slightly impacts Weebly’s SEO score. As mobile searches continue to dominate the online landscape, not having the ability to optimize your site for mobile users can hinder overall SEO effectiveness.

Verdict: Squarespace is the winner

While Weebly and Squarespace offer valuable SEO features, Squarespace takes the lead due to its comprehensive approach, including mobile optimization. The ability to cater to mobile users is critical to modern SEO success. However, the choice between the two platforms ultimately depends on individual priorities and the significance of mobile optimization in achieving SEO goals.

Weebly vs Squarespace: Customer Support

Next, let’s delve into the customer support offerings of Weebly and Squarespace, understanding the various ways they provide help to users.

Both Weebly and Squarespace provide knowledge centers, acting as comprehensive help databases. These centers function as internal search engines, where users can input queries and access help guides that offer solutions. Squarespace’s knowledge center is particularly noteworthy, contributing to its more substantial customer support score.

Weebly

Weebly offers multiple channels for customer support, including email, phone, and live chat. Customer support is available from 6 am to 6 pm on weekdays and from 8 am to 5 pm on weekends. Weebly has made noteworthy improvements since the previous year, such as introducing a Restore Option and autosaving for website building. 

However, a drawback of its customer support is the lack of updates to its help center, resulting in outdated articles and resources.

Squarespace

Squarespace offers 24/7 customer support through email and live chat. Support hours for live chat are from 4 a.m. to 8 p.m. EST on weekdays.

However, Squarespace’s customer support lacks substantial updates in response to its price increase. Despite the decline, Squarespace’s customer support remains stronger than Weebly’s, primarily due to the quality of its knowledge center.

Verdict: Squarespace is the winner

Regarding customer support, Squarespace holds a slight advantage over Weebly due to the quality and comprehensiveness of its knowledge center. Both platforms offer multiple channels for support, but Squarespace’s 24/7 support, along with its more robust knowledge center, makes it a preferable choice for users seeking reliable assistance throughout their website-building journey.

Weebly vs Squarespace: The Overall Winner

Weebly

Weebly is a budget-friendly option for individuals and small businesses. It offers a range of features, making it great for various purposes, including blogging and online stores. While its design flexibility might not match Squarespace’s, it’s cost-effective and caters to different needs.

Squarespace

Squarespace is now more beginner-friendly and visually stunning. It’s ideal for creatives, bloggers, and online stores that value captivating designs. Its user-friendly interface, exceptional design templates, and ecommerce capabilities set it apart. Despite a minor dip in customer support, its knowledge center remains valuable.

The Verdict: Weebly is the winner

Choosing between Weebly and Squarespace depends on priorities. Weebly offers affordability and versatility, suitable for those seeking comprehensive features. Squarespace excels in design, catering to creative industries. Both have strengths, so choose based on your goals and preferences.

Weebly vs Squarespace: Which Platform Is For You?

If you’re trying to decide between Squarespace and Weebly for building your website, our recommendation leans heavily toward Squarespace. There are three key reasons why Squarespace stands out as the superior choice:

• Stunning and Professional Designs: Squarespace’s design templates are simply exceptional. They exude sophistication and professionalism, making arguing for any other platform difficult. These designs are visually appealing and mobile-friendly, ensuring your website looks great and functions seamlessly across all devices.
• Continuous User Experience Improvements: Squarespace is committed to enhancing its user experience consistently. This dedication to improvement translates into a platform that is easy to use and navigate. Its intuitive user interface makes it a favorable option for users of all levels.

On top of that, Squarespace offers a rich array of features that empower you to create a comprehensive and feature-rich website.

• Robust Marketing and SEO Tools: Beyond just offering aesthetically pleasing designs, Squarespace equips you with powerful tools for marketing and search engine optimization (SEO). These tools are essential for growing your online presence and expanding your business. With Squarespace, you’re not just getting a pretty website – you’re gaining access to the tools enabling your business to flourish more effectively than Weebly.

While Weebly may be more budget-friendly, especially for beginners entering the world of website building, Squarespace’s modernity and the high quality of its features make it the better value for your money. In website builders, you truly get what you pay for. Squarespace’s higher cost is justified by the superior design options, continuous improvement in user experience, and the comprehensive suite of marketing and SEO tools it provides.

Ultimately, if you’re looking for a website that looks impressive and has the potential to drive growth for your business, Squarespace is the clear winner. Its stunning designs, user-friendly interface, and valuable marketing and SEO capabilities make it the ideal choice for creating a professional online presence that stands out.

Weebly vs Squarespace: FAQs

Bottom line

In conclusion, both Weebly and Squarespace offer unique strengths. Weebly is budget-friendly but needs updates. Squarespace excels in design and features, making it ideal for diverse website needs. Your choice depends on priorities and goals.