HBSA

Weebly is an up-and-coming website-building platform.  I’ve heard mixed reviews, and so I wanted to put out a list of the pro’s and con’s of this particular platform so that you have a good idea of what you’re getting.

Here’s a video showing a back-office tour of Weebly:

Weebly Overview

Back in the olden-days, you had to know html, css, and have a host of other technical skills in order to create a website.  However, that’s all changing.  The growing popularity of “drag and drop” solutions has touched multiple industries, and now Weebly is bringing it to the world of web development.

They are the first to create a drag and drop interface for building websites that is really simple, and easy to use.  For a newer company, they have integrated some really intelligent features that are important to note.

Drag And Drop Interface

Weebly does it up right with an interface that is truly simple to use.  In fact, it’s so simple even a child could put out something that looks professionally designed.  You just click on an element, drag it into your site, and start using it.  Easy.

Free Hosting (With No Advertising!)

Some hosting providers will give away hosting for free, but stuff tons of ads on your page.   Pretty lame, in our humble opinions.  But Weebly doesn’t do that – in fact, they allow YOU to put Adsense ads on YOUR site, so that you can monetize it and make money off the traffic that gets to your website.  This is a huge advantage when building a website, as they have eliminated one of the expenses of overhead for website creation.

Professional Templates (Plus The Ability To Customize Your Own)

Not sure how to create a sharp looking website?  No worries – you can borrow one of their 70 professionally-designed templates to use, and still customize every word on the site to reflect exactly what you want to say.

Audio/Video/ Blog Integrated

You can upgrade to a pro account, and integrate audio or video clips on to your website.  Even the free accounts allow you to utilize the power of a blog on your site at no additional expense.  You have full moderation controls to keep comments in check, or allow open /closed commenting.  It’s totally up to you.

Use Your Own Domain

If you already have a domain, you can still host on Weebly for free.  You can also purchase domains through them for very reasonable rates, but the fact that they will let you use their platform, use their hosting…all for free…it’s pretty amazing.

Webmaster Tools

They have a suite of webmaster tools included to allow you to properly track and SEO the pages on your website.  Again, no real technical expertise is needed to leverage these tools – they’re all “point/click”.

Customization

Add pictures, create online yearbooks, customize favicons…you can do all this and more without website design knowledge.  Drag, drop, and done.

We have a lot that we like about Weebly, but there is one thing that we don’t like about it.  If you opt for the “freebie” version, they put a footer link on the very bottom of your page that says “create a free website with Weebly”.  Honestly, we can understand why – they are giving so much away for free, that we can forgive this one small blip.  They are a company that needs to make money to provide good service, so that one small bit of promotion is OK with us

Is Weebly A Scam?!?

Unfortunately, some skeptics have chosen to take the low road, and assert that Weebly couldn’t POSSIBLY give away all the great services that they do for free.  While they do have paid options and paid services, they certainly aren’t scammy about it.  They give away a superior product to what many web developers could produce, at a cost that is remarkable.

So while there is no free lunch, this is pretty darn close

You can check it out, and see that while others may charge thousands (or tens of thousands) for an inferior solution, Weebly is keepin’ it real and givin’ it away for free (that’s right, FREE son).

If you’d like to get more information, you can visit their website:  Weebly.com.

If you have experience with Weebly, please share below!