When you’re just starting out in your business, you’re always looking ways to save money in business. One of the biggest ways you can save money is DIY things – your logo, your website, etc. Wix and Weebly are what many beginners use because the companies market their products towards beginners. But, is that what you should really use for your website when starting a business?
Are Wix and Weebly good website platforms?
Let’s look at the facts.
Wix and Weebly target their products towards beginners:
- Drag and drop
- No coding needed
- Free plans
As I’ve said several times throughout my blogs, your website is often the first impression that people have of your brand. I totally get it if you can’t afford to hire a designer to build your website. But, there are better platforms, and plenty of tutorials + courses to help you build your own site on these platforms.
Here are a few problems with these two platforms:
Free website
If you take a quick look around either platform, you’ll notice they promote having a ‘stunning’ website for FREE! This is a classic example of getting what you pay for. While these sites are free, there are some feature limitations, the biggest one being your domain. I don’t know about you, but I sure do not want to hand out business cards with mydomain.wix.com. No, siree. That’s about as bad as putting mybiz123@yahoo.com on a billboard. (IF you pay for your website, then obviously, you can connect your own domain.)
Mobile-responsive…ish
Think about how much you and your clients use phones to look up things online. If your site isn’t responsive – meaning it’s easy to read everything on the site without having to pinch and zoom on the screen – you could be losing clients. Now, Wix DOES have a mobile editor, but that means having to tweak your website twice, and who has time for that?! Weebly does have responsive themes as of last year, but it seems they’re a tad glitchy.
Wix doesn’t like change
This is a particularly alarming note about using Wix. If you want to change themes on Wix? Completely start over. If you want to export your site and move to a new platform? No export feature. Wix doesn’t like change, so if you use them there’s a lot of work in the future if/when you need to overhaul the design or move elsewhere.
Look at the pros
This point alone should convince you. Let’s take a look at who uses Wix and Weebly. Do you know any professionals who use it? I’m not talking professionals in terms of other entrepreneurs (though we are professionals!), I’m talking like… the BIG guys.
Who uses WordPress? TechCrunch, Sony Music, MTV News, Beyonce.
Who uses Squarespace? Lyft, Fast Company, Refinery29, Contently.
Who uses Wix or Weebly? …uhhh…
Compare Wix and Squarespace here in this video.
Why not save yourself time, and start on the right platform where all the other pros are at?
SEO
This is maybe one of the biggest arguments people have against Wix and Weebly. Taking a brief look at both of these platforms, it seems they do have some basic SEO options within the back-end. Though, there was that big kerfuffle about Wix sites being de-indexed by Google in 2015 (though that appears to have been resolved). Regardless, industry experts (a.k.a. those much smarter than me!) do not recommend Wix or Weebly if you want to build up SEO.
Squarespace gets a lot of flack for “supposed” bad SEO as well, but I use Squarespace and am on the first page of my Google for my keywords in a huge city and over-saturated market. (Grab my ebook to do the same!) People are correct that WordPress has more in-depth SEO options/features, but Squarespace is a great alternative if WordPress intimidates you.
Your article is geared towards the Free plans. I’m interested in how you feel about Weebly’s paid plans.
Just the part about the ‘free’ site is geared towards the Free plans. I still don’t recommend the paid plans of Weebly, because of points 2 and 4 🙂
I have not done a lot of research into websites when I developed mine, but I am so glad it’s neither of these platforms right now! Thanks so much!
That’s great! 🙂
Yes! Oh my, I know so many people who need to watch your video and read this post! I had a potential client say to me once – "learning to use wix will be good for you – you’ll have other clients who will want websites in wix" and I was like..um…no!
Hahaha!
You should add Go Daddy to the list. A month ago I had a client I was doing graphic design work for (I don’t do web design) ask me to help her with her online store. I wanted to pull my hair out.
Oh, absolutely! It’s horrible. Not QUITE as many people use it, thankfully.
my wix site is my business name. http://www.herbsbeesandyummiteas.net so I am not sure what to think. I wouldn’t have continued to use it if it didn’t have my name in it. I built my site and still am and I pay 24 a month for eCommerce. Thanks for the information. Pamela
You can transfer your domain to another site!
I wish I had known this a year ago. I went with WIX and it’s user friendly but like you said, no many options for using different templates and on top of that you have to pay extra for every little thing. I would not recommend it 🙁
You should move to Squarespace!
I took your test WordPress vs squarespace and it said I should use squarespace. I’m very unhappy with WordPress and wanted to ask you one question. Can i use adsense, Amazon, and ads or links? Thank you for your honest article and help.
Michelle
Yep! There is an embed and code block that allows you to use those things 🙂
I didn’t like Weebly at all and just gave up on it. I used Wix for 28 posts and pretty site but the drag and drop is not that easy as it often flies around the page and I spent countless hours dragging and dropping pictures etc. into correct place. Very difficult to get help too!
Wow, I have not set up my website yet (I like to do ALOT of research before committing that much time and effort to something) and I am SO glad I stumbled upon this article( on Pinterest)!!!! That 4 letter word “FREE” unfortunately always sucks me in, but you are totally correct, “You get what you PAY for”. Thank you so much for this information, I will continue my research and gear away from Wix and Weebly.
Unfortunately, I have found that Wix is the only hosting site that offers month to month plans, verses paying all up front for one year, plus all the add ons. I attempted to start mine with Bluehost and it was going to be over $230 to get started. Wow! I don’t have that kind of extra money to spend on starting a blog. So for those of us like myself, that have to do the month to month gig- we are very limited on options. I wish more hosts offered month to month. Building a website with Wix is a lot of work because you are starting from scratch. There isn’t any layouts- at least that I know of. And I am that person switching between, making sure it looks good on a phone and computer. It is frustrating.
Squarespace offers month to month 🙂