Weebly Ecommerce Review 2024 The Easiest Way to Sell?
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Please note: Weebly has switched gears recently, fully focusing on their ecommerce product Square. It's pretty much the same online store, however, it's missing the easy page-building features. With Square, you can only create a welcome page but not much more as the page builder is very limited.
Currently, it looks like the Weebly product won't be developed much further and that's why we moved their ranking down. See our top-ranked ecommerce builders here.
Weebly Ecommerce is made for small to medium-sized online stores that want to start selling online quickly. There’s no complicated setup or maintenance involved. Therefore, it’s perfect for beginners and users that don’t want to get lost in technical details.
The online store is part of any of the Weebly packages, meaning you can create an online store entirely for free! But don’t get too excited. If you want to get rid of the ads and use your own domain name (which you probably do), you have to purchase a plan. To learn more about each plan’s features, check out this detailed plan overview.
Next, let’s have a look at all the ins and outs of the Weebly online store. Optionally, feel free to jump directly to our conclusion.
Videos
- See the Online Shop in action
Weebly Ecommerce Screenshots
Weebly Online Store Prices
Free
Sell unlimited items (only available in the U.S.). Gives you access to most ecommerce features but only on a Weebly subdomain. Comes with ads.
Personal
Like Free but also allows you to use your own domain name.
Professional
Adds the shipping calculator and removes the Weebly advert.
Performance
All Professional features + advanced ecommerce features (e.g. abandoned cart emails) and Priority Support.
Monthly prices based on a 1-year contract. Free domain the first year. It renews at $19.95 per year. Check our pricing guide for more information.
Pros and Cons of Weebly
- Pros
- Cons
Pros
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Very easy to use
The online store integrates seamlessly into the website builder and couldn’t be more intuitive, Weebly is one of the most intuitive website makers.
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Supports physical goods, digital goods and services
No matter if you sell laptops, MP3s or coaching sessions, Weebly’s web store is able to accommodate it.
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SSL-encryption on your own domain
When checking out, your customers will still be seeing your URL and not a third party domain.
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Shipping and tax calculator
It’s all semi-automatic and saves you plenty of time.
Rating Details
What can I sell with Weebly?
Opening an online store with Weebly is a walk in the park. Thanks to the well-structured backend, adding products and categories is self-explanatory. You can sell three different types of articles:
- Products for shipping or pick-up (shoes, books, etc.)
- Digital items for download (videos, MP3s, ebooks, etc.)
- Services (consulting, travel trips, etc.)
Even though the shop is meant for small and mid-sized businesses, you can also add products by uploading a CSV Excel file, or transfer your articles directly from Shopify or Etsy.
Which payment methods can I offer with Weebly ecommerce?
You have two options: credit card and PayPal. Unfortunately, there aren’t any offline payment methods like cash or bank transfer available. This means if someone wants to pick up an order on site, they have to check out online to complete the order.
For credit card payments you can choose between Square and Stripe. Both can handle typical cards like Visa, Mastercard, Amex and Discover. On top of that, Stripe can deal with Apple Pay & Google Pay. Since Weebly got acquired by Square, we are surprised that they don’t offer better transaction fee rates. Both will charge the vendor 2.9% + 30 Cents per transaction.
It’s also important to know that you’ll need the Performance plan in order to offer PayPal payments.
What about shipping?
We have to say that Weebly comes with quite a lot of options here:
- Free shipping
- Flat rate
- Order weight
- Order total
- Item quantity
- Real time rates
Your shipping options can be set for specific countries. Can’t provide free shipping for countries abroad? No problem! Add a new rate for the destination.
Since every provider has different rates, shipping can become quite a headache. A cool feature that is included in the Performance plan is the real-time shipping carrier integration. You can connect your UPS, USPS, FedEX and DHL account with your online shop and offer shipping rates. This can even save you some money, because they may offer lower shipping rates. Note that this feature is only available in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico.
How do taxes work?
If your store is in the USA, you’re lucky: Weebly can add the correct tax rates automatically. Other countries need a manual setup. You pick a country, name the tax and the rate. One problem here is that every country (apart from the USA) only supports one rate. In some cases, you might want a second option for a lower rate, but that’s not possible.
Can I sell outside of my Weebly store?
Obviously, you can sell your products through the Weebly online store, but what about other marketplaces like Amazon and eBay? Unfortunately, there’s no direct integration available currently.
Also, if you were dreaming of starting a dropshipping business, that’s not possible with Weebly. The store can’t communicate with providers like AliExpress or Amazon Fulfilment Service.
Those are more advanced features and will require you to check out Shopify or WooCommerce.
Square offers a POS option in the US, UK and Canada. You purchase a card reader, and customers who come in your brick and mortar shop can buy items there. The inventory in your Weebly store will be synced.
But this doesn’t change the fact that when customers buy something online, they have to purchase it online with a credit card. Picking it up on site and paying in person is not possible.
Marketing and Promotion
A store with the best products and offers might still fail if people don’t know about it. That’s why a good marketing strategy is key to success. In the online world, you can choose from many different options:
- SEO: get found in Google through optimizing your content
- Social media: promote your products on platforms like Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, etc.
- Email-marketing: Send your latest shop entries and special promos to your customers.
- Paid ads: publish ads on Google and other platforms and pay for each click.
It’s not a problem to share links to your product pages, but a direct integration with Instagram or Facebook Stores where customers don’t have to leave the platform is not possible.
However, sending a newsletter with Weebly is fairly easy. Its own newsletter tool is called Weebly Promote. The cool thing here is that it knows your entire product inventory. With one click, you choose the article and it’s added to the newsletter. Click send and done! Easy like that.
Conclusion
So should you use Weebly for an online store? Well, it depends! When you want to start with a small online store, it’s definitely worth playing with the free version. Of course, some features like real-time shipping, coupons or item reviews require an upgrade, but you’ll get a basic idea of what the shop looks like.
Since the online store is directly integrated into the website builder, you’ll not only get a webshop but also website creator and blog. This is especially interesting when you want to build a landing page for a marketing campaign.
One thing you should keep in mind is that real-time shipping is only available for merchants in the U.S., Canada and Mexico. So if you want such a feature in your country, a solution like WooCommerce might suit better (it’s more complicated though; read our full WooCommerce review!).
Also, Weebly is not very flexible when it comes to payment. Only two options and that’s it. PayPal even requires the most expensive plan. Again, WooCommerce provides both on- and offline payments.
Overall, we think that Weebly’s ecommerce solution has a very fair price. The Professional plan, at $15 CAD a month, offers enough to be compared to dedicated solutions like Shopify or BigCommerce. Their entry plans start at $29/month. Read more about Shopify pricing and BigCommerce pricing.
Weebly Ecommerce Examples
FAQ
Yes. You can sell files with a max. size of 3GB. Perfect for large software or video files.
Yes, the Weebly app notifies you about new orders (via push notifications), and you can also process and fulfill them. And, of course, you can also edit your store and answer customer inquiries from within the app.
Weebly Ecommerce Alternatives
BigCommerce and Shopify are usually considered more suitable for larger stores. While Wix is more geared towards smaller stores. Why not read our BigCommerce review, our Shopify review, our Wix vs Weebly comparison, or even our Shopify vs BigCommerce comparison to find out more!
Not sure what ecommerce platform you should use? Let our smart finder help you with 5 easy questions.
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We keep our content up to date
21 Feb 2020 – Complete review overhaul based on the Square engine.
16 Dec 2019 – Pricing change.
13 Nov 2019 – Weebly abandoned the 3% transaction fee.
27 May 2019 – Weebly's Starter plan is no longer available.
09 Nov 2018 – Added pickup feature and customer logins.
05 Jul 2017 – Added filtered search and information about the mobile app.
04 Oct 2016 – Weebly 4 Update. Performance plan provides new features.
13 May 2016 – Free online store no more available / Product export function added
09 Feb 2016 – Small update in SSL encryption
07 Aug 2015 – Prices update
26 Nov 2014 – Added tax settings and information on product variants
28 Oct 2014 – Item limitations have changed.
20 Aug 2014 – Item limitations removed for Starter, Pro and Business
01 Apr. 2014 – Update: Weebly added an order export function, Google Analytics tracking and the possibility to leave a personal note for the seller.
03 Feb. 2014 – Coupons are available. Confirmation e-mails can be modified.
29 Nov. 2013 – Initial review of the Weebly online shop
THE BEHIND THE SCENES OF THIS REVIEW
This article has been written and researched following a precise methodology.
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