Weebly vs Squarespace: Main Pros & Cons in 2023

Suppose you wonder which of these two top-rated website builders is more suitable for your ecommerce business plan or your idea for a website. In that case, you can find out more about how the two compare in our head-to-head Weebly vs. Squarespace comparison.

Firstly, both Weebly and Squarespace are among the best and most popular website builders in the world. They are platforms that users who don’t have any coding skills or web building experience can use to build their own websites easily and quickly.

Weebly site builder is a leading ecommerce and website service, which is the basis of more than 50 million sites and millions of businesses around the world. It is best known for its excellent in-house ecommerce tools and features, its intuitive drag-and-drop user interface, professional templates, multiple apps, and excellent pricing plans.

Related: Weebly Websites Examples

Squarespace is a website builder that currently powers over 1 million sites. The company is best known for its fantastic design features. It is a strong competitor in this comparison, thanks to its gorgeous templates and design tools. In fact, some of the best-looking and best-working websites are built with the help of the Squarespace website builder.

Related: 25 Beautiful Examples of Squarespace Websites [2023]

Since we know how hard it can be to pick between these top-rated website builders, we have thoroughly reviewed each of their essential features and compared them in our Weebly vs. Squarespace review.

Weebly vs. Squarespace: Pros and Cons
Ease of Use
Design Flexibility
Features and Tools
SEO
Help and Support
Pricing and Value for Money
Weebly or Squarespace: Conclusion
Weebly vs. Squarespace: FAQs

1. Weebly vs. Squarespace: Pros and Cons

Weebly Pros and Cons

Weebly Pros:

An extensive choice of tools and apps
Excellent SEO

Weebly Cons:

You will need to contact customer support if you need to restore your website
The editor is easy to use but not as intuitive as some others

You can try Weebly completely free here.

Squarespace Pros and Cons

Squarespace Pros:

Some of the most beautiful templates on the market
High-quality functional features

Squarespace Cons:

Not as affordable as some of the other website builder platforms
There are no in-house apps, but there are third-party extensions available

You can try out Squarespace’s 14-day free trial here.

2. Ease of Use

The primary goal of these website builder platforms is to make the creation of a website as easy as possible, especially for people with no previous experience with website building or coding skills.

Both Squarespace and Weebly have easy-to-use interfaces, so the question is which one is the easier of the two.

Our personal tests and reviews of both platforms show that Weebly has a user-friendly interface, which is easy to navigate, and features drag-and-drop functionality. This means that you need to click on an element, image, or feature and drag it to the place on the template you want it to be situated and drop it there. Adding and editing the text and content on the website is quite easy too.

When it comes to ease of use, Squarespace also has a drag-and-drop website editor and a clean and easy-to-navigate but slightly more creative interface.

Overall, Weebly is easier for both website builder platforms because it has a more structured interface and offers access to a wide variety on its extensive Weebly App Center.

Weebly vs. Squarespace – Ease of Use: Verdict

The winner of this first round of the Weebly vs. Squarespace competition is Weebly. The website builder platform is easier to use, perfect for newbies and beginner website creators.

Squarespace has an amazing creative layout and features the nifty drag-and-drop feature for its website editor, but it is not as straightforward to navigate and use compared to Weebly.

So, if you are a beginner looking for a faster and easier option for setting up and running a website, then Weebly is the better option.

You can try Weebly for free here.

3. Design Flexibility

The design of any website (yours included) is essential for attracting visitors or customers and keeping them on your site instead of instantly bouncing off and heading to another site.

A well-designed website is more likely to build more traffic, increase sales, and improve its ranking and popularity.

Weebly offers its users access to more than 35 professionally designed themes divided into categories, including Featured, Online Store, Business, Portfolio, Personal, Event, and Blog.

Users can preview and test each theme before selecting the best one for their needs, but the platform lacks a preview for users to view how a particular theme will look on a smaller screen or mobile device. Then again, Weebly assures its customers that all of the themes are mobile responsive, so you don’t have to worry about whether your website visitors will be able to view and use your website once it is up and running online.

Related: 14 Beautiful Weebly Templates and Designs for Your Site

Also, since there is no search option, you will need to browse through all themes in any category to find an industry-specific one.

The themes on Weebly are straightforward to edit and customize via the drag-and-drop editor.

The templates offered by Squarespace are among the best, most beautiful, and high-end in the industry.

You can choose among the wide variety of categories and topics for themes available on Squarespace. The categories include Online Store, Portfolio, Launch Page and Blog, and the topics include Art, Photography, Personal, Fashion, Health and Beauty, Professional Services, Events, Food, Media and Podcasts, Travel, Events, Restaurants, Community, Local Businesses, Real Estate, Weddings and more.

Overall, the design templates offered by Squarespace are definitely the best offered by any of the many website builders in 2023.

All of the Squarespace themes are mobile responsive, and the platform allows users to preview them in all formats and screen sizes.

Our conclusion is that Squarespace is the perfect choice of templates for artists and creatives.

Both Weebly and Squarespace have easy-to-use editors, allowing non-tech-savvy users to easily move any element from one place to another for the perfect customization easily and quickly.

Weebly vs. Squarespace – Design: Verdict

Squarespace is the clear winner in the design round of this head-to-head competition between the Squarespace Weebly web builder giants. It has some of the best user reviews when it comes to design.

Weebly offers a good range of professionally designed themes, but the templates which the winner Squarespace provides are much more attractive and will give your website a high-end look and feel.

If you want to set up a website using one of Squarespace’s beautiful themes, you can do so for free here.

4. Features and Tools

The features and tools you have on your website determine its functionality and what you and your visitors can do on it.

Weebly offers one of the best collections of integrated and additional tools and features on the market.

The drag-and-drop functionality and the easy-to-navigate interface of the web builder will allow you to customize your website to meet your preferences and needs. Multiple content elements like maps, videos, text, and images you can move around and edit quickly and effortlessly.

Weebly also offers an option of adding video backgrounds and a library with free videos that you can upload to your website. Plus, you can create great-looking customer headers with dynamic content and videos to attract more visitors.

Also, users can customize the colors of each section’s backgrounds and add full-width images to their websites.

There is a comprehensive package of e-commerce tools integrated into the plans for online stores, as well as a mobile app for editing and managing the content of your website on the go.

Last but not least, Weebly has an impressive collection of apps on its App Store.

Squarespace has fewer features than Weebly, but the ones offered are highly functional and of high quality.

While Squarespace doesn’t have its own in-house apps or app store, or app market, you can add a wide range of third-party extensions you can use to improve your website’s functionality and looks on the Squarespace Extensions page.

Here are some of the features and tools offered by each of the two web builder platforms for key websites and areas:

Ecommerce

Both Weebly and Squarespace offer superb built-in and additional ecommerce tools and features.

Each platform offers its ecommerce customers special dedicated Ecommerce subscription plans, which allow for listing and selling unlimited numbers of products – both digital and physical.

Both platforms offer the following built-in ecommerce functionalities in their dedicated ecommerce plans:

The ability to create and offer customers discount codes
Sending emails to users who leave the page before checkout via abandoned cart recovery
Automated shipping calculation and management
A variety of payment processing options
No added transaction fees for the premium plans
Secure checkout
Inventory syncing and tracking

Squarespace provides some added ecommerce features to its ecommerce plans, including building mailing lists, subscription selling, map embedding, multi-channel integration with social media, integrated tax tools, and a mobile app for managing your online shop from your phone.

The Square payment processor company has recently acquired Weebly and, thus, has become even more focused on ecommerce. Some of the built-in ecommerce tools and features worth mentioning include a fully integrated shopping cart, a powerful filtered search, a complete mobile store, slideshows and videos for the products, and more. But unlike Squarespace, Weebly doesn’t offer built-in multi-channel sales and integration with social media.

Both platforms offer integration with Square payment, allowing for an easy online bank card or in-person payments.

Blogging

Each of the two website builder platforms has excellent features built-in, which will help bloggers build and manage their blogs easily and efficiently.

Here are the main blogging features which you will get on both Squarespace and Weebly:

Archiving of older blog posts
An option for dividing blogs into categories
Social bookmarking
Ability to set up RSS feeds
An option for allowing comments by visitors
A search option

Related: Best Blogging Platforms – 2023

Email Marketing

Both Squarespace and Weebly offer powerful email marketing tools to promote your brand, business, and products and stay in contact with your customers.

With the Squarespace Email Campaigns tool, users can customize the layouts of their emails to look as stunning as the designs of the themes offered by the platform. The editing of the emails is also easy, and consistency between the look and content of your website and emails will be ensured at all times. There is also built-in email marketing analytics in real-time and advanced email marketing tools like personalizing each mail, contact list management, automation, and more.

The Weebly, email marketing toolset, is known as Weebly Promote and includes professional layouts, smart email list building, email marketing statistics, scheduling, and more. You can try it out for free but then will have to pay to keep using it, starting at $10 per month.

Read further: 6 Best Free Email Marketing Services Compared (2023)

Social Media Integration

While users can embed social media buttons and the latest social media posts on their websites on both Squarespace and Weebly, Squarespace offers built-in syncing of the products and content on different social media platforms. At the same time, Weebly doesn’t have an integrated multi-channel sales function, so you will need to use an app instead.

Related: 7 Social Media Statistics You Need to Know in 2023

Analytics

Both Weebly and Squarespace offer built-in analytics tools, including real-time onsite tracking for monitoring the views, the bounce rate, the sales, and more data about your website. Both platforms can be integrated with Google Analytics too.

Weebly vs. Squarespace – Features: Verdict

When it comes to features and tools, the winner in the Squarespace vs. Weebly competition is Squarespace.

Even though Weebly has many more tools and apps, the ones integrated into Squarespace’s plans are of higher quality. Squarespace also has better eCommerce features built-in, including a multi-channel sales tool, which Weebly lacks.

You can try out the features and tools on Squarespace here.

5. SEO

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) can be a confusing term for newbies, but SEO is actually essential for increasing the website rank on Google, Bing, and other search engines, and thus boosting the traffic and sales.

Both Squarespace and Weebly have integrated SEO features that will help you tweak your site to enhance its performance and increase its ranking.

Both platforms offer their users to add and edit Metadata descriptions and titles, add Alt text to any images, and edit URL slug. With these slight tweaks, you will increase people’s chances of looking for things related to your website or online store to land on your site.

Weebly does provide access to a variety of SEO apps that can enhance your SEO website performance.

Related: The Best Website Builder for SEO in 2023?

Weebly vs. Squarespace – SEO: Verdict

The result of the Search Engine Optimization competition between Squarespace and Weebly is a win for Weebly. Both platforms offer the same integrated SEO tools, which will help you optimize your site to improve its search engine ranking, but Weebly has various SEO apps that can help further improve your SEO by using analytics, keyword support, and more.

You can try out Weebly and its SEO features for free here.

6. Help and Support

All website owners need access to timely and useful customer support and help to ensure that their websites or online stores are working seamlessly and that any bugs or problems are eliminated as quickly as possible.

Both Weebly and Squarespace offer a wide variety of customer help and support options.

Weebly has an extensive Support center that has a quick search option for any topic or issue, a wide variety of help articles, and a knowledge base. There is also a special Inspiration center and a community where you can discuss or search for support from other users.

Weebly also offers 24/7 email support for customers outside of the US and daily live chat and phone support for users in the USA.

Squarespace offers its clients live chat support from 4 am to 8 pm EST, as well as 24/7 email support. The platform also has a comprehensive Knowledge base that is searchable and which includes a wide variety of topics you can browse through.

Both web builder platforms rely heavily on their help and support centers, which are constantly updated and can be searched through easily by the users.

Weebly vs. Squarespace – Help and Support: Verdict

When it comes to help and support, the winner in the Squarespace vs. Weebly comparison is Squarespace. It offers 24/7 email support by a helpful team and has an easier-to-use knowledge base than Weebly.

Neither of the two platforms has 24/7 live chat or phone support, which may be a disappointment for users looking for quick access to real-time support at any time of the day or night.

7. Pricing and Value for Money

The price and value you get for your money are key to choosing the best website builder platform. These platforms are aimed at users who don’t have the resources to hire professional web designers and developers and prefer to set up and manage their websites by themselves.

Weebly is one of the most affordable of all website builder companies on the market. It has a completely free price plan for basic use. The paid plans are inexpensive and include a personal plan, which costs $6 per month when paid annually, or $9 per month. The Professional plan costs $12 per month for annual payments and $16 per month when paid every month. The Performance plan costs $26 monthly when billed annually and $29 per month when paid month to month.

With Weebly’s completely free plan, you will receive a free SSL certificate, an option to add third party embedded source code, and the ability to add unlimited products, shopping cart, quick shop, inventory management, automatic tax calculator, coupons, gift cards, and more for your Weebly website. In fact, Weebly’s Free plan is one of the best and most comprehensive free site and ecommerce plans on the market. The downside is that your domain name will be a subdomain to weebly.com, and there will be Weebly ads on each page. The good news is that you can upgrade to a paid plan whenever you want once you set up your free website, and receive your own custom domain name for free.

So, Weebly offers excellent value for money and even has a free plan allowing you to build a site and a fully functional online store.

Squarespace has four paid plans, which can be paid per month, or which you can pay once a year and save from 13% to 30% per year.

The plans include a Personal plan for $12 per month (when paid annually) and $16 when paid per month, a Business plan which costs $18 monthly when paid once a year, and $26 month to month. There are also Basic Commerce and Advanced Commerce plans. The Basic Commerce plan costs $26 per month when paid once a year, and the Advanced Commerce plan costs $40 per month when paid per annum.

Unlike Weebly, Squarespace doesn’t have a free plan. Still, users can take advantage of the Free 14-day trial to test the web builder before deciding whether you want to upgrade to a paid plan.

Overall, when it comes to pricing, Weebly is the least expensive option of the two. It is a cost-effective choice for small business owners or for a personal site.

But when it comes to the quality of design and features offered, Squarespace is a better choice, especially for those of you looking for the best web builder for a portfolio, a creative site, or similar artsy needs.

Weebly vs. Squarespace – Value for Money: Verdict

Weebly takes the win when choosing between Weebly or Squarespace for the pricing round. It has a completely free plan, and its premium plans are all very reasonably priced.

Still, Squarespace is well worth the extra money that they will have to pay for the high-end designs and features offered for creatives.

You can try Weebly 100% free here.

8. Weebly or Squarespace: Conclusion

As you may have noticed, the two web builder platforms are very similar to one another when it comes to quality, ease of use, features, and pricing. So, let’s quickly recap who wins what in this head-to-head Weebly and Squarespace comparison.

Ease of Use:

Weebly wins with its easier to use and more responsive interface and a drag-and-drop editor
Squarespace is a close runner-up, and it too has a user-friendly editor but has slightly more complicated features

Design:

Weebly has a variety of themes to choose from, all mobile responsive and highly customizable
Squarespace is the winner with its stunning and expensive-looking themes and templates and excellent features

Features:

Weebly has a much wider choice of features and apps to choose from
Squarespace is the winner because while it has fewer features and extensions, they are of higher quality overall

SEO:

Weebly is the winner thanks to the SEO apps available
Squarespace offers the exact same SEO tools integrated into its plans as Weebly, sans the SEO apps

Help and support:

Weebly relies on email, live chat, and phone support, but real-time support is not available 24/7 to all users
Squarespace is the winner with its 24/7 email support and live chat, and a more comprehensive and easier to navigate knowledge base

Value for money:

Weebly wins with its inexpensive plans for all needs and a 100% free plan
Squarespace has more expensive plans, but they are of excellent value, especially for arts, photography, portfolios, and others

So, Weebly and Squarespace are quite an even match based on the result of our research.

Squarespace is a tad more difficult to use and has a steeper learning curve as compared to Weebly. Then again, Squarespace has the best template designs on the market and higher quality features than Weebly.

Squarespace also has better ecommerce tools and features than Weebly.

When it comes to pricing and value for money, Weebly is the least expensive option, perfect for personal websites and small businesses. Weebly also offers a 100% free plan. Squarespace has more expensive plans, but the high-end designs and features are well worth paying for.

Both platforms offer very good customer support, but Squarespace had a slight edge over Weebly thanks to its comprehensive user knowledge base.

While the result of our Weebly vs. Squarespace comparison may be a draw, it is worth noting that each of these web builder platforms is a better option for certain types of users and websites and a not so suitable one for others.

Weebly is the better option for people and small businesses on tight budgets who want an easy and inexpensive (or free) way to get online as quickly as possible.

Squarespace is the best site builder for photographers, artists, musicians, and other creative people and companies. It will allow users to create professional and high-end-looking websites with the best designs on the internet.

You can try out Squarespace’s completely free trial here.

You can try Weebly completely free here.

9. Weebly vs. Squarespace: FAQs

Why shouldn’t I hire a web designer?

You should opt for a website building platform instead of hiring a web designer because of the service’s cost. Website builders are much more affordable than pro developers. Also, when creating a site by yourself, you will have complete control of how it looks and works and know what to edit and tweak.

What if I only want an online store?

You can use both Squarespace and Weebly to set up an online store, but neither of them is a dedicated ecommerce platform. If you want the best ecommerce platform, you should opt for dedicated ecommerce services like BigCommerce or Shopify.

What are the best alternatives to Weebly and Squarespace?

The best alternative to these two excellent website builders is Wix. It is one of the easiest to use, has a vast array of great-looking themes, and provides access to a multitude of apps and features.

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Weebly vs Squarespace: Main Pros & Cons in 2023