Plans and Prices
Wix and Weebly stand out among website builders because they both have a free tier, which isn't as commonplace as you'd think. So, you can sample their services and potentially walk away satisfied without committing to monthly payments. However, free tiers typically come with limitations that can only be alleviated by upgrading to a paid tier, which Wix and Weebly also offer.
Wix's free tier places ads on your site, has a scant 500MB of storage, and 1GB of monthly data transfers. With it, you cannot use e-commerce tools or custom URLs. However, Wix's entry-level paid plan, Light ($17 per month), provides 2GB of storage space, along with a free domain and marketing software. The $29-per-month Core plan increases storage to 50GB and includes e-commerce for monetizing pages. Finally, enterprise customers should consider Wix's Business or Business Elite tiers, which cost $36 per month and $159 per month, respectively. With them, you can leverage the service's business-focused analytics and marketing features, as well as unlimited storage. All paid plans include unlimited monthly data transfers, a nice added benefit.
(Credit: Weebly/PCMag)Weebly's free tier also puts ads on your site and limits storage to 500MB. That said, its starting paid tier, Personal, lets you use a custom domain and sell digital goods for $10 per month. For $12 per month, the Professional plan delivers unlimited storage, a free domain name, improved analytics, and increased security. Finally, for $26 per month, the Performance tier builds upon Professional by including enhanced e-commerce features, such as PayPal support and customer review capabilities. All Weebly plans include unlimited monthly data transfers, and all paid plans provide unlimited storage.
Site builders with free tiers naturally appeal to more frugal customers, so I appreciate that Weebly's free plan has unlimited monthly data transfers (Wix's free tier caps that at 1GB). Likewise, Weebly’s paid tiers are quite generous, thanks to unlimited storage and overall lower prices compared with Wix.
Winner: Weebly
Templates and Marketplace Apps
With more than 1,000 templates, chances are you'll find many Wix layouts that not only look attractive and responsive, but fit the specific style you envision. Note that you can't switch themes after choosing one, a common website builder limitation (you must rebuild your site for a fresh look). You can further customize your Wix-powered site by exploring the hundreds of third-party apps available in the Wix Marketplace, which includes software for email marketing, social media, and other functionality. Overall, Wix is a more intuitive website builder compared with Weebly, encouraging plenty of expression, thanks to its many excellent design tools.
(Credit: Wix/PCMag)Weebly only has about 50 templates. Although they look attractive, you can't preview them on mobile devices, which makes it riskier to commit to a design. There are other frustrating customization restrictions, such as the lack of a true Undo button and an editor that proves surprisingly inflexible when dragging elements onto a page. On the upside, Weebly is the rare website builder that lets you swap themes at any time, and it has an integrated email marketing tool called Promote. Additionally, a robust app store featuring hundreds of site enhancements lets you improve your website by adding social media buttons, e-commerce software, and other essential features.
Winner: Wix
Recommended by Our Editors
Blogging and Image Editing
Wix's rich toolset includes features for blogging and image editing. Its dedicated blogging tool lets you craft posts, format layouts, and moderate comments exactly how you want. Meanwhile, you can easily upload photos and save them to an online photo gallery where you can deploy them anywhere on your site. Wix even has an integrated photo editor that lets you do more than simply crop or resize an image: You can apply animations, customize borders, and arrange images in carousels.
Weebly has a blogging tool, but it's more of an extension of the regular site builder than a standalone feature. You can make posts, but there's no dedicated blog template. Weebly also lacks online photo and video galleries, and its image editing tools are basic, offering limited options such as contrast and saturation adjustments.
Winner: Wix
(Credit: Wix/PCMag)AI Tools
Wix has AI tools to help speed up site creation, while Weebly does not. With Wix, you can enter prompts to generate text blocks or interact with an AI chatbot to have it build your entire site based on a specific topic. You can tweak the results after the fact to help personalize the site design. While that is technically a point in Wix's favor, our recommendation is to avoid AI site-building features as they produce cookie-cutter sites and generic text.
Winner: Wix
Customer Service
If you ever run into trouble when making your website, both Wix and Weebly give you the helpful tools you need to find the answers you’re looking for. Wix lets free and paid users ask chatbots for advice, submit a ticket, or quickly talk with real customer support reps on the phone 24/7. Likewise, Weebly has 24/7 online chat and email support, as well as a vast knowledge base containing hundreds of articles. However, only paid Weebly users gain access to phone support. That gives Wix the advantage here.
Winner: Wix