When discussing starting an online business, the best thing a business owner can invest in is the eCommerce platform and the right tools. And in today’s very dynamic business world, it is essential to have a store that keeps the audience hooked instead of merely focusing on sales, marketing, etc.
The best news for online business owners is that many eCommerce platforms offer extensive features that help care for all your business-related needs.
And when one talks about eCommerce platforms, one must take advantage of Shopify and Weebly. Shopify and Weebly are popular platforms to host your eCommerce platforms that help take care of all your online business-related needs.
None of these platforms offers exceptional features for beginners, enabling you to cater to all your business-related needs with minimal or no requirement for coding.
And if you are keen on opting for either of these eCommerce platforms, you have landed at the perfect spot. This guide will compare Shopify and Weebly to help you make an educated choice.
Let us take a closer look at it as we proceed.
Weebly vs Shopify: Pros and Cons
Weebly Pros:
– Suitable for small businesses that need robust marketing tools.
– Professional, chic, customisable templates that are free.
– Feature-rich eCommerce platform that has excellent in-built tools to boost your functionality.
Weebly Cons:
– The Drag and Drop Customisation feature is limited.
– Weebly cannot automatically create a tailored site for you as it does not have an API.
– A limited number of advanced tools.
Shopify Pros:
– Endless themes available for customisation, both paid and free.
– Equips you with an endless variety of app extensions.
– Has an excellent inventory management system that can handle large and complex inventories.
Shopify Cons:
– Shopify is suitable for online businesses only.
– Unlike Weebly, Shopify also charges a transaction fee.
Pricing And Value For Money
In our comparison, Weebly is much cheaper than Shopify. It also offers a free plan. When billed annually, Weebly’s most affordable plan comes for as cheap as $6 per month. Shopify’s cheapest plan starts at $29 per month.
| Weebly | Shopify | |
| Free Plan | Yes | No |
| Cheapest Plan | $9 per month | $29 per month |
| Mid-Tier Plan | $16 per month | $79 per month |
| Expensive Plan | $29 per month | $299 per month |
Weebly Pricing
Weebly offers four different pricing plans:
- Free Plans: $0 per month
- Personal Plan: $9 per month
- Professional Plan: $16 per month
- Performance Plan: $29 per month
These prices might drop-down further if you opt for their annual plans.
Here’s what you get on each plan:
| Free | Personal | Professional | Performance | |
| Ads Free | No | No | Yes | Yes |
| Free Domain | No | No | Yes | Yes |
| Unlimited Storage | No | No | Yes | Yes |
| eCommerce Features | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| SEO | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Pop-Up Notifications | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
We recommend opting for the Professional plan as it is the cheapest plan that offers you value for money. With the professional plan, you get no ads, unlimited storage, a free domain name, site analytics, and phone support.
Shopify Pricing:
Shopify offers three specific plans and a 14-day free trial to help you out. The plans are:
- Basic Shopify: $29 per month
- Shopify: $79 per month
- Advanced Shopify: $299 per month
If you want to save some money in the long run, you can save 10 per cent on an annual and 20 per cent on a two-year plan.
Here are the key features of Shopify:
| Basic Shopify | Shopify | Advanced Shopify | |
| No Ads | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Free Custom Domain | No | No | No |
| Unlimited Bandwidth | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Abandoned Cart Recovery | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Sell Unlimited Products | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Multichannel Selling | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Third Part Calculated Shipping Rates | No | No | Yes |
Our experts recommend opting for Shopify Basic plan, which covers everything you want for your small online business. And as we all know, Shopify is designed to cater to online business owners, and their plans support your eCommerce businesses.
Ease Of Use:
Onboarding:
Shopify’s onboarding is much better than Weebly’s. The reason being Shopify has a better guide as compared to Weebly when it comes to building an online store.
We surely do not mean to imply that Weebly is inadequate in onboarding. It leads the user through the process but is less elaborate than Shopify. Read more about smart export import expedition business guidance for all entrepreneurs dvcodes
Building And Running An eCommerce Business:
In our test, Weebly and Shopify were decent when discussing the ease of use. Both these platforms were manageable and did not require any technical know-how to get started.
However, Weebly won brownie points as its easy drag-and-drop, and customisation tools make it much easier to use than Shopify. But again, Shopify’s complex setup makes the overall running of your online store seamless as you can keep track of your inventory and orders in the backend, along with managing your store design.
Weebly is a decent website platform, but Shopify is an excellent choice for an online store as its website builder is tailored to make your life as easy as possible.
Website Design:
Template Choice:
There are around 50 different template options that Weebly equips you with. These templates cover multiple industries, such as blogs, businesses, portfolios, etc. And all of these designs are free of cost, whether you are using the free plan or the paid one.
Our experts did like Weebly’s designs but wanted more from them. They are professional, stylish, and neat, but something other than what would blow someone’s mind off.
Compared to Weebly, Shopify did impress us. With more than 70 design templates and multiple design options, you can design a website that is as stylish as you are. You can also see information bout each theme, including
- Features included in your design template,
- User ratings and feedback,
- Style Previews.
Shopify’s design themes are designed to fit well for your online stores. Some might even feature a blog, but they are well-suited for selling products.
Shopify has nine free and 65 paid themes, including premium designs ranging from $100 to $180.
Customisation:
Weebly uses a drag-and-drop editing feature that is extremely easy to use. All you need to do is click on the elements, like the texts box, that you would want to add or move and then drop them wherever you want on your page. The backend and front ends of your website are the same.
And when we talk about Shopify, it is very different from Weebly. In Shopify, you will need to enter information in the backend, which will be displayed on your storefront. You, for sure, can customise your storefront, but it is less seamless compared to Weebly.
Marketing Features:
When discussing marketing features, Weebly is a clear winner. We were blown by their beginner-friendly SEO 52av blogs, all-inclusive blogging tools, in-built email marketing suite, and so on.
Shopify also has extensive marketing integrations and international selling options, but they are somewhat advanced compared to Weebly.
| Weebly | Shopify | |
| Blogging Tools | Great | Average |
| SEO | Great | Great |
| Email Marketing | Great | Great |
| Third Party Marketing Apps | 56 | 1307 |
Shopify has more third-party marketing apps to help you create an excellent marketing strategy. However, Weebly has superior blogging features that you might not find with Shopify, like
- Archive Feature,
- Search Feature,
- Social Bookmarking
Additionally, Weebly offers unlimited storage for a much lower price and equips users with free domain names on their Professional Plan and above.
Ecommerce Features:
When starting an online store, you need the best eCommerce features; for that, Shopify is the thing for you. Also, in this segment, we will talk about Square Online, not Weebly, as Square Online acquired Weebly in 2018.
Square Online equips easy e-commerce features suitable for sellers hoping to run their online business quickly. A few of the finest features include text alerts and easy integration with Square POS.
Even though the rundown of features that Weebly or Square Online has to offer, it still needs to beat Shopify. A few features include:
- Multichannel Integrations
- Multiple Payment Options
- Customisable Checkout Page
- Abandoned Cart Recovery
- Dropshipping
- Invoice
Shopify’s advanced inventory system is easy to navigate even though it is designed to support many products. The blend of power and usability was a win-win.
Square Online is a suitable option for small business owners looking for an online store that can be synced with their POS system. If you wish to have a powerful online business with long-term goals and an extensive product catalogue, Shopify is the thing for you.
Applications And Integrations:
Even though Weebly has a massive app store, we are leaning towards Shopify as it is much superior in terms of apps and integrations. However, keep the budget in check while you are at it.
And while Weebly might win the apps and integrations round compared with other platforms as it is well-equipped with around 400 apps, when it comes to Shopify, Weebly is a total knock-out. The reason is that Shopify’s app store has more than 5,000 apps.
With that being said, you can be certain that whatever you are looking for, Shopify might have an app that fits your requirement.
Weebly offers only 60 free apps, while Shopify offers around 3,000 free apps. While Shopify’s app store might sound very appealing, there is something else that you should know. Weebly’s apps tend to be on the cheaper side in comparison to Shopify.
Weebly’s apps are priced somewhere between $3 to $300 per month. At the same time, Shopify’s premium apps are priced.
Performance And Security:
When we talked about performance and security, it was a cut-throat competition between these two. Both of these platforms run regular updates and take ample security measures. Hence, you can handle your website becoming obsolete.
Moreover, Weebly and Shopify offer free SSL certificates on all their plans. Therefore, data exchanged between you and your visitors, like credentials or payment details, stays encrypted.
Not just that, both Shopify and Weebly enable you to create password-protected pages through which only authorised visitors can access your website.
While website builders are usually cagey about their security measures so that no one can break through their security, and for that, Shopify and Weebly offer you protection against DDoS attacks.
Moreover, our tests also found that Weebly’s performance (uptime) was 99.61 per cent in the last 90 days. And while Shopify has not provided any such data, we found that it did maintain an uptime of 99.99 per cent in the past 90 days.
Switching Process:
With Shopify, moving your site from your current platform to Shopify is easy. It provides you with a migrating option, an app called Store Importer. However, with Weebly, your only option is to start building your website from scratch.
Weebly does not have an effective way of migrating a website, which can be a hassle for existing website holders.
Again, Shopify also has well-detailed guides on migrating from different platforms like
- WooCommerce
- Etsy
- BigCommerce
- PrestaShop
- Squarespace,
- BigCartel
Help And Support:
In our comparison, we found that Shopify offers better customer support than Weebly. We did not like Weebly in this aspect because the support options are limited on the cheaper plans.
Weebly offers phone support on professional plans and above. Whereas, with Shopify, regardless of your plans, you get great support.
| Weebly | Shopify | |
| 24/7 Support | Yes | Yes |
| Help Support | Yes | Yes |
| Phone | 6 AM to 6 PM PST | 24/7 |
| Live Chat | Yes | Yes |
| Social Media | Yes | Yes |
| Specialist Support | No | For Shopify Plus Users Only |
Weebly vs Shopify: Winner
Now that we have talked about Weebly and Shopify in detail, now is the time to pick a winner. And in our comparison, we found that Shopify is the clear winner.
| Features | Weebly | Shopify |
| Pricing And Value For Money
Winner: Weebly |
Weebly is affordable compared to Shopify. Weebly’s plans start from $6 per month and go up to $12 per month when billed annually. | Shopify is a bit more expensive than Weebly, and the starting plans begin from $29 per month. |
| Ease Of Use
Winner: Shopify |
Weebly is a basic website builder but is not as easy as Shopify when we talk about the onboarding process. | Even though we all know that building a website is hard on Shopify, the onboarding process on Shopify is super easy. |
| Website Design
Winner: Weebly |
In our opinion, Weebly has better designs that look simple and elegant. Moreover, they are all free of cost. | Shopify has more design as compared to Weebly but they are not available for free. |
| Marketing And Website Features
Winner: Weebly |
Weebly’s blogging and SEO tools are great for anyone hoping to build an excellent website. | Shopify’s blogging tools are not as amazing as Weebly’s. The email marketing tool is pretty mediocre as well. |
| Ecommerce Features
Winner: Shopify |
Weebly uses Square Online for its online stores. It has some basic features that work for small businesses and not for big online businesses. | Shopify has a lot of great tools to support stores of all sizes and can easily manage large inventory systems. |
| Apps And Integrations
Winner: Shopify |
Weebly has somewhere around 400 apps. | With more than 5,000 apps in the app store, Shopify is the clear winner here. |
| Performance And Security
Winner: Both |
Weebly offers free SSL on all plans and DDoS protection. | Shopify includes free SSL security and DDoS protection too. |
| Switching Process (Migration)
Winner: Shopify |
If you have an existing website, Weebly is not the one you can opt for, as you will have to rebuild your site. | If you have an existing website, you can use Shopify’s Store Importer app to migrate the website. |
| Help And Support
Winner: Shopify |
Weebly offers multiple support channels like phone, email, live chat, etc. | Shopify offers 24/7 customer support. |
You can opt for Weebly if:
- You do not have a lot of products
- You wish to start a blog or a portfolio
- You are on a tight budget.
You can opt for Shopify if:
- You are building an online store
- You wish to migrate from one platform to another
- You need more support options
- You have an extensive product range; and with that, we have now come to an end to our guide on Weebly vs Shopify. However, if you wish to get your hands ion an eCommerce platform that is not Shopify or Weebly, Fynd Platform is the thing for you.
Fynd Platform is one of the finest eCommerce platforms that equips you with all the features you need for your online store.
