Tag: Homepage Featured

Check out our definitive list of the best blogging platforms to use

That said, it’s important to look at how easy Jimdo is to use in comparison to other website builders out there.

We tested this by getting everyday people to build their own website using Jimdo, then asking them to score how easy they found certain tasks.

We then chatted to them after and compared their scores and quotes to all the other top website builders we’d tested.

Jimdo came out as very middle of the road in terms of ease of use. Some people found it straightforward, while others were left frustrated by Jimdo’s restrictive template design.

Here are some of their thoughts:

I liked the elements. You just pick the element you want and then just edit that, which makes it so much easier than frantically searching around.

I didn’t like how restrictive it was in terms of moving things around. It was very much like ‘this is the template and this is how it’s going to look’.

Although adding your own content to a template was very simple, trying to go against its preset layout is a problem.

Jimdo is an ‘out-of-the-box’ website builder. It gives you ready-made templates to put your own content into. Try and change the template’s design, though, and you may find yourself pulling your hair out!

Customer satisfaction

56% of Jimdo users we spoke to said they’d recommend it to a friend.

This stat in itself shows how divided people are on Jimdo. It’s simple and sleek, but limited and basic.

If you need a website builder without limits, your best bet is Wix. Wix offers total creative control in that you can drag anything, anywhere (read our review of Wix here).

Squarespace, meanwhile, has the best templates around, oozes class, and is perfect for creative types.

Want to know what else is out there?

Website Builder Comparison Chart – Click here to see our detailed comparison of the top website builders.

Top Rated Website Builders – Have a look at our interactive article to delve deeper into the best platforms out there.

Who is Jimdo Best For?

Jimdo is great for either personal or small business sites. You choose from its range of mobile responsive templates and populate it with all your own content. Nice and easy.

The problems come when you want something more bespoke, more individual to you.

Below we’ll get into exactly how well Jimdo works for certain types of websites…

Jimdo for blogging

Jimdo is a great platform to build a blog on. It allows you to track readers using analytics, split posts into categories, and set up an RSS feed.

Your site’s users can also comment on posts and social bookmark them. You can’t archive, though, so if that’s important to you, you may want to check out something like Weebly.

Interested in starting a blog?

How To Start A Blog – Learn how to make a blog from scratch with our top tips.

Jimdo for business

If you’re a small business that wants an online presence, Jimdo is perfect. You can get a professional-looking site up in a matter of hours to help advertise your brand.

There’s a good amount of features and lots of third party apps, which we’ll get into later. These can help you with anything from advanced analytics to running solid email marketing campaigns.

If you’re a large business, you may be better suited to something like WordPress.org. It’s a far more complex platform, but it’s also a lot more powerful.

Need an online presence for your business?

Best 5 Small Business Website Builders – Read about which platforms are best suited to building a small business website.

Jimdo for ecommerce

Jimdo currently allows you to sell products on its Business plan or higher. You get specific ecommerce templates, the ability to create coupons and discounts, and secure checkouts – in short, all the essentials for selling online.

We’d recommend you use Jimdo if selling products isn’t the main focus of your website.

If you owned a café for instance, Jimdo would be brilliant for advertising your menu, location and opening hours, and even for selling coffee beans or cookbooks on the side.

However, if you’re a clothing company and your main focus is to sell online, you’d be better off with a more powerful platform like Shopify or BigCommerce.

Jimdo for portfolio

You can create beautiful galleries on Jimdo, but its templates can look a little plain if you’re in an artistic industry.

Photographers, graphic designers and stylists should look at something like Squarespace. With templates tailor-made for creative types, Squarespace is perfect for any kind of online portfolio.

Jimdo for scalability

Jimdo has all you need to put together a lovely personal site, or one to advertise your business services.

If your company decides to branch out later down the line, there’s also room to scale by embedding more apps into your site.

Living up to its divisive reputation, though, there’s not much scope to grow in an ecommerce sense. If you start selling lots of different products, or even in bulk, Jimdo may struggle to keep up with you.

Jimdo's Tools and Features

Jimdo is bursting with features and apps to help bring your website to life.

In the editor, you can click ‘add element’ to see all the features you can embed:

jimdo features — There are loads of features you can embed into your website with just a couple of clicks!

This makes it super easy to add the feature you want into any page on your website.

If there’s something specific you need that Jimdo doesn’t cover, you can search for it through ‘POWr Plugins’. POWr are an independent company who partner with Jimdo to provide you with plugins for your website.

These plugins cover almost anything you can imagine. It’s worth noting, though, that some will require knowledge of coding to use.

Away from Jimdo’s features and apps, it has some pretty nifty tools that can both help and enhance your website. We’ve picked out the most important ones below.

Domains

Jimdo offers a free custom domain for one year on any of its premium plans.

You do get a sub-domain with Jimdo’s free plan, but you’ll have a tacky ‘.jimdofree.com’ hanging off the back of your URL – hardly professional if you ask us!

The annual cost of renewing a Jimdo custom domain after a year is $80 – the highest of any website builder we’ve tested.

If you already have an existing site, you can transfer your domain over to Jimdo. Currently, they accept domains ending in: .com, .net, .org, .biz, .info, .eu, .de, .at, .be, .co.uk, .ch .fr, .nl, .com.mx, .es, .it, .pl, .com, .pl, or .se.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

It’s no good building a beautiful website if no one can find it, right?

That’s where SEO comes in. The better your SEO, the more likely you are to rank highly on search engines like Google.

Jimdo comes with some handy tools to help give your website that rankings boost.

You can edit meta titles and descriptions, customize your URLs, and add alt text to images. Jimdo even supports third party apps that will help with your site’s SEO.

Help and Support

Jimdo offers support via email, social media, its knowledge base, and FAQ sections.

However, Jimdo doesn’t have phone or live chat, or a site restore option. But what you do get are answers that are clear, concise and to the point.

Its knowledge base in particular is useful. It comes with a mixture of text, images and videos to help solve your problems.

Try Jimdo for free today

Jimdo Pricing - is it Good Value for Money?

Jimdo has five different pricing plans, which range from free all the way up to $40 per month.

As you’d imagine, the more you pay, the more you get:

jimdo pricing — Jimdo’s plans are all billed annually. Above, you can see what that works out as per month, and what you get for your money.

The Free plan is a great way of getting started on Jimdo. You can test out the website builder and see if it’s for you. Beyond that, we’d recommend going for a premium plan.

The Free plan comes with Jimdo advertising in the footer of your website and a Jimdo sub-domain. It’s fine while you’re testing Jimdo out, but it will make any serious site look a little tacky!

Jimdo’s Business plan is its most popular, and it’s easy to see why. For starters, you get unlimited bandwidth and storage space. It’s also the cheapest price plan the platform offers that allows you to start selling online.

Overall, we’d always suggest you try before you buy, but once you’ve built your site – before putting it live – you should look at upgrading to one of Jimdo’s premium plans.

Take a look at Jimdo's plans

See plans

Jimdo Summary

Jimdo is a simple, clean and easy-to-use website builder.

It’s best for either personal or small business websites, and comes with a host of great features and apps.

Jimdo’s pricing plans are affordable, and with such a range of choice, you won’t have a problem finding one that works for you.

It isn’t for everyone, though, and medium to large businesses who need a powerful online store would be better off looking at Shopify. For creative industries, Squarespace is better.

If you’re looking for a nice, ‘out-of-the-box’ website, you could do a lot worse than Jimdo. Why not try it for free today and decide whether it’s right for you?

Try Jimdo for free today

Jimdo FAQs

Why doesn’t Jimdo let you drag-and-drop everything?

Unlike Wix, there are limits to where you can move things on each web page when editing. This is so your site keeps to ‘web design best practice’. Jimdo doesn’t want its users putting content in random places that may not be the best position, either aesthetically or logistically. With Jimdo, you edit within a structure: you have control, but not total control. For that, you’ll want to look at Wix.

What type of business should use Jimdo?

Jimdo is best for small businesses who operate in industries which are traditionally more relaxed. A café or gardener, for example, would be able to create their perfect website on Jimdo. Accountants or consultants, however, would be better off looking into 1&1 IONOS – a website builder designed for white-collar business.

Which is better out of Jimdo Creator and Jimdo Dolphin?

Both are designed for different types of people. One’s not really ‘better’ than the other, but there will be one that works best for you.

Jimdo Creator is better for people who want to design a website themselves, and have a little extra time on their hands to get it just the way they want it. Jimdo Dolphin is a faster, more restrictive option, which is great for getting a website up in a flash without worrying too much about editing it.

Found our Jimdo review helpful?

Did this guide help you decide whether to use Jimdo, then help to get you started building your website? If so (or if not!) leave a comment below.

Do you know anyone who can benefit from this article? Click the share buttons below to send them this page.

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Website Builder Expert aims to provide you with honest data. That’s why we conduct our own research and obtain direct, personal insight. Click here for further information.

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GoDaddy Website Builder Review | GoCentral 2019

Last updated on June 5, 2019 by Charlie Carmichael in Website Builders | Comments {178}

What are the Pros and Cons of GoDaddy?

Pros

You can create a website and get it live in a matter of minutes
It’s super easy to use
Its pricing plans are very cheap in comparison to some competitors

Cons

Not much creative freedom available
Lack of depth to some of its features
Sites aren’t as visually appealing as other website builders’

Overview

Below we’ll examine Godaddy’s website builder (GoCentral) in further detail and cover:

How easy GoDaddy is to use and whether their current customers are satisfied.

How suitable GoDaddy is for blogging, business, ecommerce, and personal use.

The quality of GoDaddy tools, such as its help and support, social media integration, and SEO/marketing.

GoDaddy’s pricing plans – do they provide value for money, and which plan is the best for your needs.

An overall summary of GoDaddy’s website builder, and a comprehensive list of FAQs

More Features

The above are only a few recent updates. See all features GoDaddy offers here

See All Features

In 2017, GoDaddy launched their new and improved website builder: GoCentral. It was a move away from their old drag-and-drop editor, and now really focuses on speed and simplicity.

All you have to do is enter the information you want on your website and, hey presto, it generates a unique site for you! Easy, right?

GoCentral supports over 1,500 business ideas (a massive upgrade on the 300 GoDaddy’s old website builder did!) across 19 different themes, and comes with inbuilt features relevant to the information you provide.

Though some of its features lack a little depth, GoDaddy’s GoCentral is a perfect solution for any individual or small business looking to get online without all the long-winded hassle and fuss.

Ever looked into using a website builder but thought it’s too difficult or time consuming?

Well fear not, GoDaddy’s new builder, GoCentral, has changed the game!

But before we get into that, for those of you who don’t know what a website builder is, let us explain.

A website builder is an online programme that allows you to create your own website with little to no technical knowhow.

If you’re familiar with website builders, you probably know a lot of them use a drag-and-drop editor, similar to PowerPoint. They allow you to edit your site and move content around the page.

These DIY builders are great, but they can take time to get your head around and, for some people, provide too many options. It can sometimes feel overwhelming.

So what’s the alternative?

Well, GoDaddy have actually taken a step back and put together a completely new website builder that does all of that complex design work for you! Good, right?

Here’s what GoDaddy’s general manager and senior vice president, Lauren Antonoff, had to say about their new product:

“Traditional DIY site builders got it wrong by forcing people to focus their time on tweaking page layout instead of generating results. We’re fundamentally changing the approach by creating a mobile-friendly experience that lets customers focus on achieving their goals, rather than worrying about site designs.”

Sounds amazing, but here at Website Builder Expert, we’re always keen to dig a little deeper and really put together a thorough GoDaddy website builder review.

We want to give you the best possible insight, not only from our dedicated team of experts, but by conducting thorough research and talking to people just like you!

How Easy Is GoDaddy To Use?

Ease of Use

How do we tell how easy a website builder is to use? We test them with regular, everyday people! We got participants of varying technical abilities to create sites using them.

We asked them to complete a list of tasks using GoDaddy and then caught up with them about how easy (or hard) they found the builder to use.

The results matched our own review that GoDaddy’s website builder is incredibly easy to use. 76% of participants said they would recommend GoDaddy to a friend who’s looking to get online.

It’s no surprise really, considering nearly all of the leg-work is done for you by the builder itself!

The only issues some had was when they wanted more creative control. They didn’t like GoDaddy’s rigid design and so editing what was already in place became a little frustrating.

Here are just a couple of their opinions:

“What I really like was how it guided you to add things. It kind of felt like cheating because it was so well done.”

“It’s very fast. In less than an hour I have a site that looks good. It’s easy to use for basic functionality, but if you wanted to dig a bit deeper and personalize it more, then I think it’s a bit trickier.”

Customer Satisfaction

It’s all well and good getting people to test GoDaddy’s website builder, but what about people who actually have a site with them? Are they happy?

We surveyed 1,881 people about websites, and more specifically, if they’d used GoDaddy’s website builder to create their site.

Results showed that, of the people that had used GoDaddy’s website builder, 89% of them were satisfied with their website. Not bad.

Try GoDaddy for Free

Be satisfied or don’t pay a dime. GoDaddy’s recipe for achieving 89% satisfied customers!

Who Is GoDaddy Best For?

Blogging

Creating a blog on GoDaddy is, well, the same as doing most things on GoDaddy really, quick and simple.

You can add imagery, video and audio to accompany any blog posts, as well as allowing people to sign-up via an RSS feed and make use of analytical data supplied by Google.

GoDaddy’s downfall, however, is how limited it can be. Although GoDaddy have said it’s something they’re working on, you currently can’t archive or add comments to a post.

So, if blogging is a small section of your site, great! But if blogging is its sole purpose, you may be better off looking at our list of the seven best blogging platforms here.

Business

As we said, after you tell GoDaddy’s website builder what you want, it’ll generate a site for you.

It’s no different for businesses. You simply enter your information, and GoDaddy will create a unique site with relevant features specific to your company.

If there’s anything they’ve left out, you can just add it in after. Things such as analytics, bookings, listings and contact forms are all available.

GoDaddy is a great option for a small business looking to get online quickly without the all the fuss. It has everything you need and has the ability to pull any social media accounts you may have into one central hub.

eCommerce

Sold a few products on eBay, Etsy or other market places and now looking to take it to the next level with a website? GoDaddy’s website builder is a great choice.

You can add ecommerce functionality to your GoDaddy site in a matter of clicks.

For $29.99 per month, you can sell up to 1,500 products, include featured products, and add discounts/coupons.

To help you boost your sales, GoDaddy also offer SEO guidance (to help you rank on search engines like Google), an abandoned cart recovery function, and the ability to connect your site to your social media stores like Facebook.

After reviewing GoDaddy’s website builder, it’s clear all GoDaddy sites are mobile friendly and allow for credit and debit card payments, as well as the use of PayPal and Apple Pay via a trusted merchant service called Square.

GoDaddy’s eCommerce plan is ideal for individuals or small businesses looking to sell a variety of products. Due to its product cap, though, it isn’t the most scalable eCommerce builder on the market.

Best eCommerce Website Builders – check out our comparison chart to see the best options out there

Is GoDaddy Right for You?

Personal

While there are some quality features that are suitable for personal use, GoDaddy isn’t the best when it comes to things like photography or portfolio sites.

GoDaddy’s website builder has image galleries with a host of stock photos available, and you can embed video and audio from YouTube/Vimeo and SoundCloud respectively.

You can also change between any of the eight themes GoDaddy offer, and your content will automatically update to fit the new format, both on desktop and mobile/tablet devices.

In our honest opinion though, there’s better builders out there with a more comprehensive set of features and design flexibility if you’re looking for the best personal website around.

Scalability

GoDaddy’s scalability depends on what you’re looking to get out of your site.

If you’re a small business or individual we can safely say that, from our GoDaddy website builder review, it’s a product that has everything you need to grow your website.

It gives you numerous features, analytics tools, SEO guidance, and allows you to change your sites layout or general aesthetic whenever you please.

If your main aim is to sell online and you have ambitions of selling products on a mass scale, then you may want to consider a different builder (see our ecommerce comparison chart here).

GoDaddy caps its ecommerce product allowance at 1,500 products. It’s more than enough if your shop isn’t the main feature of your site, but if you’re serious about expanding your online store, we’d recommend taking a look at Shopify.

Are You One of the Above?

If you think GoDaddy is right for you, sign up and try it for free. You’ll know if it is right for you.

GoDaddy's Tools

Help & Support

GoDaddy offers a 24/7 phone line to deal with any issues you may have. There’s also a live chat feature that’s available Mon-Fri, 5am-6pm.

If you don’t want to wait around on the phone, or need help outside of those hours though, GoDaddy’s knowledge base and forum will be your go-to resource.

In all honesty, having tested and reviewed them, neither are fantastic.

General and broad questions are fine, but if you want to know something specific or niche on GoDaddy, chances are you’ll have to wait and speak to someone to get the answer.

For a website builders with better help and support, check out products like Wix or Squarespace.

Wix vs Squarespace 2018 | 4 Key Differences You Should Know – see our comparison as we pit Wix and Squarespace against each other

Social Media Integration

Social media is a prime example of where the feature is available on GoDaddy’s website builder, but upon review, its functionality is limited.

You can add icons to link out to various social pages and even connect your Facebook store, but at the moment, that’s as far as it goes.

You can’t embed a live social feed on your site nor can you get visitors to share your content via their social channels. To be fair though, this is something GoDaddy say they’re working on so stay tuned!

Analytics

GoDaddy uses Google Analytics to help you keep track of the visitors landing on your site.

This will allow you to track everything – from which pages get most views, to the amount of time users spend on your site in general.

Lots of website builders have their own analytical tools, but by outsourcing it to Google, GoDaddy have ensured that their users are getting brilliant, free analysis.

Is Analytics Important to You?

GoDaddy is likely to be a good choice. Sign up for free and take it for a test drive!

SEO & Marketing

GoDaddy’s SEO wizard is one of the best things about its new website builder.

It starts by asking you a few simple questions to understand what sort of targeting you’d like to do. GoDaddy then suggests the best keywords to include to optimize your site and rank higher on Google!

If you’re on the eCommerce plan, you’ll also have access to personal SEO guidance from an expert to help get your products seen.

In terms of marketing, GoDaddy allows you to run targeted email marketing campaigns directly through the builder itself.

You can sync your site with your Facebook store for cross-channel marketing purposes, and even give out coupons to make your users aware of any discount codes.

Domains

GoDaddy is one of the largest domain registrars in the world, and setting up a domain with them couldn’t be easier.

Pricing starts at $9.99 (VAT not included) to purchase a domain for 1 year but if you opt for 2 years or more, the 1st year only costs $0.01.

Already own a domain and want to transfer it over to GoDaddy? No problem.

Just follow the simple steps in this helpful guide and you’re good to go. It’s worth noting though that the transfer process may take between 7-10 days to complete.

Security

Unless you go with the Personal Plan, SSL (secure socket layers) security is included within all other GoDaddy packages.

Put simply, SSL security establishes a link between a web server and a browser to ensure all data passed between the two remains private and integral.

GoDaddy also offers a 99.9% uptime guarantee and full network redundancy.

Backups & Restores

GoDaddy’s website builder has a really useful auto-save feature that will backup your site, even if you forget to. This is a great feature to have just in case your site crashes or gets hacked.

Unlike some other website builders however, you can only restore your site from the last point it was saved.

This means if you make a mistake and it auto-saves, you’ll have to manually correct it rather then just restoring the site to a point before the mistake was made.

Never Do the Same Work Twice!

If you want to be sure your site is backed up and save GoDaddy has you covered!

GoDaddy's Pricing And Value For Money

When looking at a website builders’ pricing plans, we like to scratch beneath the surface and see how much you’re really going to get for your money.

So to start off, in comparison to other builders, GoDaddy have one of the lowest average pricing plans (Wix have the lowest – read review here).

It also offers a months free trial to let you really explore if it’s the right option for you before signing up.

Now, let’s crack on and find out what you get within each plan.

Found the Plan for You?

GoDaddy Website Builder Review – Summary

With over 1,500 business options, an intuitive interface, and cheap pricing plans, our GoDaddy website builder review has found this product definitely has a lot going for it.

It’s moved away from a drag-and-drop editor to bring users a quicker, simpler way to build their own website.

Through design assistance, all you have to do is enter your details, and GoDaddy will generate you a unique site tailored to your needs.

GoDaddy’s website builder offers a range of in-house features and is great for selling online in small quantities, making it ideal for small businesses who are time-conscious and need a site live ASAP.

However, if you want a personal website, or your business is in an artistic industry, it may not be your best bet.

The speed at which you can get online takes away your creative control, leaving you with site that can look a little ‘plain’ aesthetically speaking.

The features – bar the ecommerce ones – also lack a little quality, and could do with more depth to them (although GoDaddy do say this is something they’re working on!)

Overall, GoDaddy website builder is mainly for small businesses looking to get online effortlessly who may also want the option to sell online.

Try GoDaddy for Free

Be satisfied or don’t pay a dime. GoDaddie’s recipe for achieving 89% satisfied customers!

GoDaddy FAQs

Website Builder Expert aims to provide you with honest data. That’s why we conduct our own research and obtain direct, personal insight. Analyses and graphics in this article are based on authentic sources cross-validated by our in-house experts. We take great care to ensure the information we publish is reliable and accurate. However, WBE takes no responsibility for any inaccuracy in information supplied to us by users, research participants, or other entities.

Please note the insight contained within this article is for general information purposes only. We’re glad to answer any questions you may have about this article and its supporting research. For further information, please contact Website Builder Expert directly via email at info@websitebuilderexpert.com.

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7 Best Ecommerce Platforms | Build Your Store Today

Last updated on May 2, 2019 by Charlie Carmichael in Best, Ecommerce Website Builders | Comments {17}

If you’re looking for the best ecommerce platform for building your own online store, you’ve landed in the right place.

But before we dive into that, let’s define what an ecommerce “platform” actually is.

We’re guessing you’ve heard of website builders, right? Well, by providing tools that help you sell online, these builders don’t just create websites – they create online stores. These builders are what’s known as ecommerce platforms or ecommerce website builders.

There are so many ecommerce platforms available, choosing one can get pretty confusing pretty quickly – especially when they all claim to be the best.

In this guide, we’ll introduce you to seven of the best ecommerce platforms:

In order to come up with this list, we’ve conducted hundreds of hours of research and testing. It’s no good just trying a platform out and telling you which ones we liked the best – you deserve better.

We’ve taken an in-depth look at all the top ecommerce platforms on the market and, with your help, tested them thoroughly. We’re now in a great position to not only tell you which are the best platforms overall, but which ones are best for certain industries and areas.

Below we’ll run through our overall top seven ecommerce platforms before breaking them down by industry and our individual research areas. This will give you a detailed and expert look at each platform, and ultimately help you get started with the right one.

If you’re raring to go, you can see how our top ecommerce platforms rate on key features in our comparison chart below. We’ve even included links for you to try them out:

Still not sure which ecommerce platform is best for you? No problem, take our 4-question quiz and find your perfect builder!

What are the Best Online Store Builders?

What about more advanced ecommerce tools?

In this article, we’ll look at easy-to-use website builders that let you create and run an online store. Advanced users may be interested in ecommerce solutions like WordPress, which you can use to code an online store from scratch. To find out more, read our article on advanced ecommerce software.

Further Information

See the best ecommerce website builders ranked side by side. Read reviews, get star ratings, and compare each platform to find the best choice for you!

Best Ecommerce Platform Reviews

#1: Shopify

Best all-round ecommerce platform.

Start selling from $29.99 a month.

#2 – Wix

Best website builder with ecommerce functionality. Especially good for small businesses and getting started.

Start selling from $20 a month.

#3 – BigCommerce

Best for: large and fast-growing businesses, scaling your online store.

Start selling from $29.95 a month.

#4 – Squarespace

Best for: high quality templates and an aesthetic storefront.

Start selling from $18 a month.

#5 – Weebly

Best for: value for money.

Start selling from $8 a month.

#6 – Volusion

Best for: analytics features.

Start selling from $29 a month.

#7 – GoDaddy

Best for: beginners!

Start selling from $19.99 a month.

Best Ecommerce Platform by Product, Service and Industry

Use the expandable sections below to choose your product, service or industry and to see which ecommerce platform comes top.

Best Ecommerce Platform by Features

We’re extremely proud of our research. It’s what makes us stand out from the competition when rating and reviewing website builders and ecommerce platforms.

To keep reading about the areas we’ve investigated, to find out why they matter and which platforms were victorious in each category, click on the expandable links below:

Best Ecommerce Platform by Customer Score

Why it matters

Now, we said at the start that professional reviews matter more than personal opinions – but that’s not to say that Bob from down the road’s opinion doesn’t matter at all! Far from it. People who have used or experienced these platforms tend to provide good second opinions.

How we test this

After our ease of use testing, we sat down with people and interviewed them. We wanted to know their general thoughts on the platform. They may have found it complicated to begin with, but that doesn’t mean they thought the platform was useless.

We asked how likely they’d be to recommend the platform they tested to a friend, on a scale of one to five. Like with ease of use, these scores were then tallied up and gave each ecommerce website builder either a seal of approval or a warning sign.

Aside from that, we looked into how big the company was (smaller platforms can be more vulnerable to going bust!). We also took our value for money and user experience scores into account, giving us the final customer score rating.

Category winner: Shopify

The public have spoken: Shopify came out with the highest recommendation. It’s also a massive, successful company that’s helped over half a million merchants sell online. Oh, and it finished second for ease of use!

Read our detailed Shopify review here.

Or, find out which pricing plan you are best suited to with our Shopify pricing review.

More Ecommerce Platform Comparisons

Struggling to decide between two different ecommerce website builders? Fear not, we’ve got you covered. Alongside all our detailed reviews, we also have a whole host of comparison articles. These pit two or more platforms against each other and tell you the key differences.

Types of Platforms

Self-hosted (Open Source)

Self-hosted websites, like WordPress.org, are where you pay to put your website online. It comes at an extra cost but ultimately you own your own website and you can make customizations as you see fit. Should something go wrong however, it’ll be up to you to fix it.

Self-hosted Pros	Self-hosted Cons
Limitless customization More functionality and scalability	Added Cost You’re responsible for any issues

Hosted (Saas) (include pros and cons)

Hosted websites are all-in-one packages. They’re designed using website builders like Shopify, BigCommerce and Wix. The cost of hosting is included in your monthly fee and the platform will fix any issues that may arise. You don’t own your hosting space though, and you can only use the tools provided by the platform itself.

Hosted Pros	Hosted Cons
No extra cost Any issues are dealt with for you	Restricted to your platform’s capabilities Relying on your platform to keep up to date

Mixed (CaaS) (include pros and cons)

Mixed hosting is where you take a self-hosted platform and integrate elements of hosted platforms. For example, using Shopify’s plugin for WordPress. You still have total flexibility over your website, but you get access to some of Shopify’s built-in tools. It’s a great halfway house between self-hosted and hosted.

Mixed Pros	Mixed Cons
Customization with built-in features Can rely on the hosted platform to update its features	Expensive as you’re paying for self-hosting and the plugin You’re still responsible for any issues that may arise

How Much Do Ecommerce Platforms Cost?

The cost of ecommerce platforms vary massively. There’s a pricing plan for every need. With non-ecommerce specific platforms, like Wix, Weebly and Squarespace, you can sell for as little as $8/month. Of course, if you’re an enterprise-level business looking to grow, you’ll want one of Shopify or Bigcommerce top plans, priced at $299/month and $249.95/month respectively.

Do any of them offer free plans or trials?

Many of the top ecommerce platforms offer free trials which tend to be around 2 weeks long. Shopify, BigCommerce, Squarespace and Volusion all have free trials. Big Cartel is the only platforms that lets you sell online totally free of charge. Wix and Weebly have free plans, but they don’t include ecommerce.

More Pricing Information

What Can Ecommerce Platforms Do for You?

So what can the best ecommerce platforms do for you? Well, they’re a great way for you to sell online and make a few extra dollars. You don’t need to be a design expert and you don’t need to know code!

Say you want to make some money online. You want to build a store for your small business or start selling on a simple ecommerce site.

Does this sound like you?

You’re selling a handful of products and start by adding some beautiful product images and descriptions. You connect to a shopping cart (a web tool that allows your store to accept payments) and you’re off!

Next you promote your store using different marketing techniques and people start to visit. You’ve discovered that your visitors love what you have to offer, and they’re spending their money! You’re now in business!

Sounds exciting right?

But here’s the problem: if you’re not careful, you’ll use up all your time keeping your store up and running. You will have to:

Manage your sales channels (including social media accounts)
Create new marketing material
Respond to (sometimes angry) support emails
Manage your stock inventory
Analyze your sales reports
Handle taxes and do the dreaded paperwork

Throw this all together and you won’t have any time left to focus on growing your online store (we’ve been there and done that).

Don’t let this be you.

So what do you do?

This is where a top ecommerce platform can help you out.

Each of the best ecommerce platforms we feature in this guide will help you build and grow your online store.

You can choose between specialized ecommerce platforms, such as Shopify, and website builders with ecommerce functionality, such as Wix and Weebly. Not all website builders are great for ecommerce, which is why we did the research to bring you the best on the market.

They’re all ecommerce platforms. But which one you choose depends on your needs, the size of your business, and the type of store you’re running.

Some ecommerce website builders like Wix are better overall than specialized ecommerce platforms like Volusion. So it’s best to think about how many products you’re selling, how important creative control is to you, and how fast your business is growing.

“A good ecommerce platform is like a Lego set. You get the base to build on, then you can add new features to change the look, feel and functionality of your product. Also, if you decide you no longer like a block, you can remove it. Simple! You get great flexibility to build and grow the store you want.”

The best ecommerce platforms allow you to keep adding tools to your online store. Not only does this help your business grow, but it also frees up your time so you can focus on other more important things (both personal and professional).

What About Returns?

Don’t worry, we’ve got you covered. We created a new infographic which presents unique insights into the returns landscape, revealing the fussiest consumers and which products they’re most likely to return.

Ecommerce return rates have never been bigger, having grown by 95% over the past five years, while return deliveries are estimated to cost businesses $550 billion by 2020. We wanted to investigate this trend further, and paired our own research with data from Optoro (a returns optimisation platform), UPS, the Reverse Logistics Association, PostNord, and noted commerce sites like nasdaq.com and shopify.com.

Check out the infographic below to find out more about ecommerce returns and the statistics you need to know to future proof your business.

Our Top Resources For Online Sellers Like You:

How to Build An Online Store – Our Step-By-Step Guide – get selling online today with our easy to follow guide

Online Store Builders Comparison Chart – compare the leading ecommerce platforms in our chart

Compare the best ecommerce software – choose the right one for you today!

How Do You Choose the Best One?

So how do you choose from our top seven ecommerce platforms? To find the right platform, you need to think about things like ease of use, apps and extensions, and how far you want to grow your store.

In this section, we’ll cover what should you keep in mind when picking your ecommerce platform.

First and foremost, we based our choices on our own research and experience. After using several ecommerce platforms, we found that the key ways they help you run your online store are:

Mobile optimization
Ease of use
Scalability
Payment options
Apps and add-ons

Let’s go into a bit more detail.

Mobile Optimized

How many different devices can you browse the internet on in your household?

If you’re anything like the typical family, I imagine quite a few. This is also true for your potential customers.

Shopping on mobile phones is more popular than ever. In fact, by 2021, mobile could make up to 72.9% of ecommerce sales – up from just 11.6% in 2014.

Mobile optimization is a fancy way of describing how well your store adapts when people look at it on different devices (think smartphone, tablet, laptop) with different screen sizes.

Top ecommerce platforms make sure your store looks great no matter what device your customer is using.

On top of that, the best ecommerce platform editors make it easy to see what your store looks like on different devices. You can switch between previewing on phone and desktop at the click of a button.

A top ecommerce platform will even do a lot of the legwork for you. The themes (also called templates) you use to design your online store are built to look good on any device.

Shopify themes, for example, are generally optimized for use on both mobile and computer. Similarly, Wix will automatically reformat your store to look good on mobile devices. Squarespace, Weebly and BigCommerce also offer mobile-friendly stores.

The best thing is that adding these themes and previewing your site on mobile is easy. Which leads us on to…

Ease of use

Whether you’re just starting out selling online, or getting your bricks-and-mortar business online for the first time, ease of use is everything.

All of our top ecommerce platforms are different, but they have one crucial thing in common: you can get online and start selling without knowing how to code.

What’s the point in having all-powerful customization potential if you don’t know how to use it?

The best ecommerce platform dashboards are simple and intuitive to use. They also come with excellent customer support and setup wizards that guide you through building your online store.

Having quality support is like hiring a full-time business mentor. They’re in your corner all day and can point you in the right direction when things go wrong.

We’ve rated the top ecommerce platforms at least four stars out of five in our ecommerce comparison chart. You don’t need any coding knowledge to build a stylish online store. This is not true of more complex self-hosted ecommerce software like WordPress and Magento (if you want to find out more about these advanced tools, visit our guide on best ecommerce software).

If you find it difficult to create and run your online store, it’s going to cost you time and money. This is because you will have to spend a lot of your time working out how to do things, or a lot of your money hiring a designer to do the work for you.

Fortunately, ecommerce platforms have been designed with you in mind. They make it easy to add the features, colors, fonts and functionality that you want on your store.

They’re intuitive to use – this means that designing your store should feel natural; just point and click at the feature you want to add, remove or change.

And the best part?

Each of our top ecommerce platforms offer a free trial. You don’t have to take our word for it that they’re easy to use. Make sure you find using the platform easy, before you commit your hard-earned dollars, by signing up to a free trial.

Scalability

An ecommerce platform doesn’t just give you what you need right now – it gives you what you need to run a successful long-term business. After all, as you grow, you want to sell more products to more customers, right? You need to know if:

Your store can handle the extra number of shoppers without slowing down or crashing
You have the flexibility to make changes as your business goals change
If you can add more products as you expand your range
You can be confident your store has the right security certificates to sell online.

The best ecommerce platforms give you all this and more. For example, all Shopify plans come with unlimited bandwidth (the amount of data your store can handle before it breaks), unlimited file storage (so you can upload as many quality product pictures as you want), and unlimited products..

As your store grows, the things you’ll want are luxury add-ons, such as better analytics on your customers. Ecommerce platforms provide this by offering a range of plans that cater to businesses of different sizes. The bigger your store becomes, the more you will want to think about upgrading to a more advanced plan that comes with more features.

Ecommerce Platforms – Extensions and Apps

The best ecommerce platforms are like Swiss Army knives. They let you perform all the important functions of running an online store from the same place.

They do this by giving you access to apps and extensions you can add to your store.

Let us explain in a bit more depth.

The best ecommerce platforms, such as Shopify and BigCommerce, have marketplaces where you can pick and choose additional functions to “bolt on” to your online store.

There are a number of categories of functions that you can add to your online store, including:

Sales & Marketing
Shipping / Fulfillment
Inventory / Order Management
Customer Service
Accounting
Reporting / Analytics

If you want more detail on any of the above, head over to our in-depth platform reviews

Think of apps as problem-solvers. Most of the top ecommerce platforms in this guide all have a store that connects you to a comprehensive list of apps. There is only one of you, so selecting a solid ecommerce platform that gives you the tools necessary to grow with your business is so important.

Payment options

The best ecommerce platforms provide a range of payment options, including:

PayPal
Visa or Debit Card
Credit Card
Amazon Pay
Apple Pay
Cryptocurrency (such as Bitcoin)

It’s all about choice.

The more options you can give your shoppers, the more chance you have of making a sale.

Now you know the key ways an ecommerce platform can help you build and grow an online store. And you’ve read our list of the top seven ecommerce platforms too. So now it’s up to you to decide which one suits your business the best.

There’s no magical answer that’s right for everyone. It’ll depend on the size and growth of your business, your own level of tech confidence, how much creative control you want, or what types of products you’re going to sell. The right ecommerce platform for you may even change over time as your business grows or changes.

Further Information

See our ecommerce comparison chart and browse the leading ecommerce platforms side by side

Conclusion

In this guide, we’ve introduced you to the seven best ecommerce platforms. You’re now ready to pick one to build an online store and start selling online.

Let’s recap quickly.

Our top seven best ecommerce platforms are:

Shopify: Best all-round ecommerce platform.
Wix: Best website builder with ecommerce functionality. Best for small businesses starting out.
BigCommerce: Best for scaling large or fast-growing businesses.
Squarespace: Best for creatives, with a stylish storefront.
Weebly: Best value for money.
Volusion: Best for in-depth analytics reports.
GoDaddy: Best for beginners. Easiest to use ecommerce platform.

We may have ranked these ecommerce platforms, but the truth is the right one for you will depend on a number of different factors.

We hope we’ve explained how ecommerce platforms help you grow your online store by automating mundane tasks and freeing up your time to focus on other aspects of your business. It’s why choosing the best ecommerce platform – one that’s flexible and has the right tools – is really important.

Shopify and BigCommerce, for example, both have comprehensive marketplaces where you can pick and choose free and paid apps to add more functionality to your business. They are such powerful ecommerce platforms because they have the depth to grow with your business.

Wix and Weebly, meanwhile, will save you a load of time (and money) because they’re so easy to use. You’ll be able to pick them up as easily as riding a bike.

At some point, it’s all about gaining the right leverage to expand your business, without taking up more of your limited time. This is where ecommerce platforms can give you the right tools for success.

FAQs

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Weebly Pricing Review – Are Connect, Pro, Business & Business Plus Plans Worth It?

Last updated on June 7, 2019 by Jeremy in Website Builders, Weebly | Comments {179}

Weebly Pricing Review

Rating

See Weebly Pricing

Our Weebly pricing review explains the costs and features of each Weebly pricing plan.

We think that Weebly offers you great value for money. It’s easy to use and can help you build a good looking, functional website without having to worry about the technical side of things.

Review by Jeremy

Last Updated on June 7, 2019

“You may wonder about Weebly pricing plans and what you get if you subscribe to their paid packages (Weebly Connect, Weebly Pro, Weebly Business, and Weebly Business Plus plans).”

In general, people are conditioned to focus on price and price alone.

For instance, it’s very common for a person to see that a premium plan is $25 per month and start panicking at the idea that it will cost $300 a year!

We’ve been there ourselves so we fully understand this “knee-jerk” emotional reaction.

When actually, it’s a much better idea to pay more attention to what you receive in return for each of Weebly’s pricing plans.

What DO you get for $60 per year from their Connect plan?

What COULD you accomplish with $144 per year with their Pro plan?

And are they worth it to YOU?

This is what we’ll try to discuss in this pricing review.

Weebly Pricing Overview

Weebly has a free plan with basic features. There are four Weebly premium plans ranging from $5 – $38 a month (billed annually). All paid plans remove ads, give you unlimited storage and ecommerce functionality. The higher the plan, the more features you unlock.

Weebly Pricing Plan	Annual Upfront Cost	Monthly Equivalent
Connect	$60	$8
Pro	$144	$12
Business	$300	$25
Business Plus	$456	$38

The great variety of features combined with this range of price plans makes Weebly a popular choice. Of all the website builders we have reviewed, our research showed Weebly is the best for small businesses and portfolios in the market today.

Weebly is known as a very user-friendly website builder and they work really hard to keep things simple and uncomplicated (read our Weebly review here). They keep this in mind in everything they do, from the tools they give you to build websites, right down to their pricing structures.

We rate Weebly pricing as 4.1 stars, keep reading to find out why, and which plan is best for you. Start at the top, or click to jump to a section that interests you.

How Much Do Weebly Paid Plans Cost?

Wix vs Weebly Comparison Chart

Weebly has 4 premium plans to choose from. Their Connect plan is a very reasonable $5 a month. If you want to sell online, then you’ll want the Business plan at $25 or the Business Plus plan at $38 a month.

The table below shows you how much each plan costs and the savings you can make if paying upfront for a 1-year or 2-year plan:

Weebly Pricing Plans	1-Month ($/month)	1-Year ($/month)	Savings (%)	2-Years ($/month)	Savings (%)
Connect*	$8	$5	37%	$4	50%
Pro	$18	$12	33%	$9	50%
Business	$35	$25	28%	$21	40%
Business Plus	$46	$38	17%	$35	24%

As you can see above, if you’ve got the budget it really does make sense considering whether you can invest in a longer-term paid plan with Weebly.

More Information on Weebly

If you’re considering Weebly as a viable option for you after seeing this table, why not check out some of our other useful Weebly resources:

Weebly Review

Weebly Ecommerce Review

Or, head to our interactive article detailing the Best Website Builders to compare Weebly to what else the market has to offer.

Now, not everyone can invest over one hundred dollars on a 2-year plan just like that, but you’ll still see impressive savings even if paying for a year in advance.

You can also upgrade at any time with Weebly and the remaining balance of your subscription will be pro-rated onto the new plan.

This means that if you subscribe to a 1-year Connect plan for $60 and decide you want to upgrade to a Pro plan after 6 months, then the $30 left over from the Connect plan will be knocked off of the cost of the Pro plan – so you don’t pay twice!

But before you even start thinking about committing cash, you need to know what you’re going to get for your hard-earned money, right? Well, keep reading to find out…

Choose Your Weebly Plan Today

What You Get With Weebly Plans

Get Started With Weebly Today

So now you know how much Weebly’s plans cost (and the mega savings you can make by investing in a long-term plan).

As you can probably guess, the more you pay each month then the more you get. Just take a look at the benefits of upgrading from a free to a paid plan:

But aside from this, what do you actually get for your money?

Let’s find out!

In this section we’ll look at Weebly’s pricing plans from these angles:

Site Features
Ecommerce
Marketing
Support
Bonus Benefits

Site Features

The site features that you get with your Weebly paid plan are the bread and butter of your website.

They are the essential cogs that not only help you have a more enjoyable website building experience, but make your website a more attractive place to visit!

Your site features include things like whether Weebly adverts are displayed or not; the amount of storage you get for images + videos; how secure your site is for visitors; stats and tracking, as well as extra functionality (like video backgrounds).

The table below breaks down what you get with each Weebly paid plan.

	Connect (from $5/mo)	Pro (from $12/mo)	Business (from $25/mo)	Business Plus (from $38/mo)
Drag & Drop Builder	✔	✔	✔	✔
Remove Weebly Ads	✘	✔	✔	✔
Unlimited Storage	✘	✔	✔	✔
Connect Your Domain	✔	✔	✔	✔
SSL Security	✔	✔	✔	✔
Advanced Site Stats	✘	✔	✔	✔
Site Search	✘	✔	✔	✔
Password Protection	✘	✔	✔	✔
Video Backgrounds	✘	✔	✔	✔
HD Video + Audio	✘	✔	✔	✔
Number of Members	0	Up to 100	Unlimited	Unlimited
Membership Registration	✘	✘	✔	✔

Ecommerce

If you’re looking to start an online business with a Weebly website, then this section is specifically for YOU!

Why?

Because the ecommerce features you get with your paid Weebly plan will have a massive knock-on effect across your entire business.

Think about it – if you plan on selling goods online (aka ecommerce) then you’ll want to keep an eye on your stock levels, right?

But you can only do this with Weebly Business or Weebly Business Plus – so why would you consider any other plans?

Check the table below to see what ecommerce perks you get with each Weebly paid plan.

	Connect From $5/mo	Pro From $12/mo	Business From $25/mo	Business Plus From $38/mo
Weebly Transaction Fee	✘	3%	0%	0%
Number of Products	✘	up to 25	Unlimited	Unlimited
Checkout	✘	On Weebly	On Your Domain	On Your Domain
Sell Digital Goods	✘	✘	✔	✔
Inventory Management	✘	✘	✔	✔
Product Reviews	✘	✘	✔	✔
Shipping & Tax Calculator	✘	✘	✔	✔
Coupons	✘	✘	✔	✔
Real Time Shipping Rates	✘	✘	✘	✔
Abandoned Cart Emails	✘	✘	✘	✔
Gift Cards	✘	✘	✘	✔

Marketing

Marketing helps people find your website – it’s that simple!

One of the best ways of getting found online is to optimize your website for search engines – this is called SEO (or Search Engine Optimization). Think of it like sorting books by the Dewey Decimal system in a library – if the book is in the right place then you’re more likely to find it!

You can also add forms to capture leads if you’re looking to start a business.

	Connect From $5/mo	Pro From $12/mo	Business From $25/mo	Business Plus From $38/mo
SEO Options?	✔	✔	✔	✔
Lead Capture	✔	✔	✔	✔

Support

Knowing what support options are available to you is important because if you get stuck then you’re going to want to know where can turn to get help.

Not every Weebly paid plan comes with 360 degree support and the table below shows you what you’ll get for your money.

	Connect From $5/mo	Pro From $12/mo	Business From $25/mo	Business Plus From $38/mo
Community Forum	✔	✔	✔	✔
Chat & Email Support	✔	✔	✔	✔
Phone Support	✘	✔	✔	✔

Bonus Benefits

To make their paid plans even more enticing (and to give you even MORE value for money), each one of Weebly’s paid plans come with some cool bonuses that can be a real shot-in-the-arm for your website!

With every Weebly paid plan you will get:

A free domain for extra credibility (if you don’t have your own one already)
Complimentary $100 Google Adwords credit to help you promote your site – if you spend $25 (but only if you live in the US or Canada)

And, if you subscribe to the Business Plus plan you’ll get…

5 free email campaigns per month via Weebly Promote (which lets you promote your site to 500 contacts with each campaign)

These are pretty decent bonuses in my opinion, especially the complimentary domain name. This saves you the job of buying one elsewhere so can be a real timesaver.

However, the other bonuses – despite being pretty neat – are, in my opinion, only really useful if you’re interested in Weebly’s ecommerce-focused plans.

If you’re building a website for yourself or for a hobby, you probably won’t have much need for Google Adwords credit (especially if you have to buy $25 worth in the first place).

Likewise you probably won’t be sending out 500 emails every week either.

Long story short: free bonuses are nice – but they’re even better if you actually have a need for them!

Choose Your Weebly Plan Today

To understand more about what these features are all about, I’ve written an in-depth report about Weebly Pro features (and how you can get Weebly Pro risk-free), as well as Weebly eCommerce Features review (if you want to build an online store).

If you want to sell online, but aren’t sure Weebly is for you, why not compare it to other ecommerce platforms in our helpful guide.

Weebly Pricing Plans - What They Mean For You

Start Building Your Weebly Website

Upgrading a website to Weebly Business Pro, Weebly Business, Weebly Pro or Connect plans is relatively affordable (and good value – which I’ll explain in a minute).

Weebly offers you a discount if you sign up to their 1-year plan, and an even greater discount under the 2-year plan.

If you’re thinking long-term savings, then the 2-year plan gives you the best value. Think about it:

$5 per month for the Weebly Connect pricing plan is about 16 cents per day
$9 per month for the Weebly Pro pricing plan is about 40 cents per day
$25 per month for the Weebly Business pricing plan is about 83 cents per day (this allows you to run a fully functional online store – and just one sale a day will be more than enough to cover this investment! See our review under the “Pricing Comparison” section to compare Weebly Business against other e-Commerce builders)
$38 per month for the Weebly Business Plus pricing plan is about $1.27 per day. Considering that 68% of shoppers who added products to the shopping cart abandon it, the Abandoned Cart Recovery feature (which is only available on the Business Plus Plan) can save you a lot of money that might otherwise “leak” out of your pocket.

From that perspective and the perspective of everyday living costs (a cup of coffee, a bottle of soda, a chocolate bar), upgrading to any of Weebly’s paid plans is not too big a financial commitment when you consider how potentially expensive the cost of building websites can be.

weebly pricing comparison with everyday items — When you compare the price of Weebly to items that you and I buy regularly, it's really not a big financial investment!

Weebly pricing starts from as little as $5/month – a small price to pay for a stunning website that’s packed with lots of cool features.

What you get in return for your investment is a much more sophisticated and capable website builder.

Think of it like paying for a monthly gym membership. Yes, you can work out for free at home, but for a small monthly cost you can get access to much better equipment that enables you to achieve not only better results – but achieve them quicker too.

So if you’re serious about your website and you’re committed to it, investing between 10 cents and a $1.17 each day is almost a no-brainer.

Is Upgrading To A Weebly Pricing Plan Worth It?

“Weebly offers you tremendous value from my perspective when it comes to the cost of building your website.”

I understand that the majority of the people nowadays expect a lot of things on the internet for free, but if we take a step back, the idea of “you get what you pay for” is a timeless rule of thumb for consumers.

As a Weebly customer, it’s also helpful to remember where your money goes.

It’s not just about paying for access to better tools!

Weebly will most likely take a big part of your monthly fees to improve their website builder, build more cool features and tools, and provide even better customer support – all of which contribute to helping YOU build better websites.

For online store owners, although the Business or Business Plus plans require a higher investment, remember you will be able to build an actual business out of the advanced Weebly eCommerce tools. Considering how much you would need to invest if you wanted a physical store / business, then spending between 70 cents to $1.17 a day is a worthwhile investment.

I’m happy to pay for good stuff if it will benefit me in the long term, but that’s just a general guiding principle for me.

Things To Consider

One thing that’s important to note is if you pay for your domain externally, you will not be able to connect it to Weebly’s free plan.

Instead, you’ll have to use their Connect plan, which offers the same features as the Free plan, and starts at $5 per month.

Weebly will provide you a free domain for the first year to the value of $20. After that, the best solution is to purchase your domain externally and transfer it with an annual connection fee extension cost of $47.

Should you wish to make your website advertisement free, however, you’ll have to upgrade to Weebly’s Pro plan for $12 per month (when paid annually).

Weebly Pricing Review: Conclusion

Click to Try Weebly Risk-Free!

“In this review we’ve looked at Weebly’s paid plans, their costs and whether they offer value for money if you choose to invest your hard-earned cash.”

To recap – the pricing for Weebly’s paid plans are:

Weebly Business Plus – $38/mo (when paying annually)
Weebly Business – $25/mo (when paying annually)
Weebly Pro – $12/mo (when paying annually)
Weebly Connect – $5/mo (when paying annually)

Even if you want to test-drive Weebly first, the free service already provides tremendous value to you if you wanted to build a basic website.

But if you are serious about committing to your website, your business, online store, or your blog – all things considered – the investment to upgrading your Weebly account is definitely worthwhile considering.

With the upgraded features (especially Weebly Pro), you can really add a lot of cool features to your website to make it stand out.

Check out my other article if you’re interested in finding out more about Weebly Pro features and how to upgrade for free.

Try Weebly For Free

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Weebly Pro Plan Features Review – Worth the Upgrade?

Last updated on May 18, 2019 by Jeremy in Website Builders, Weebly | Comments {127}

Weebly Features Review

Rating

See Weebly Features

Weebly is very user-friendly and even though their tools are minimalistic, they give you pretty advanced functions.

Review by Jeremy

Last Updated on May 18, 2019

Weebly offers you a broad range of website building features that can help you build a website without knowing how to code. Our review will go over these tools and assess how they can actually help you build a better website.
In general, Weebly is very user-friendly and even though their tools are minimalistic, they give you pretty advanced functions. This is why Weebly, in our view, is one of the better website builders in the market today.

While Weebly is free for all to use, to get access to more advanced website building tools, you can upgrade to Weebly’s premium plans such as the Weebly Pro and Weebly Business plans.

For a small monthly fee, you get (1) new website building features that are previously not available with their free service, and (2) enhanced / improved elements that are not available to their free service users.

It’s important to note that Weebly Pro and Weebly Business plans include all the free features under their free service, so if you sign up with Weebly’s premium packages, you will get more features, and better features.

(Read this article to see detailed breakdown and our opinion about Weebly’s Pricing)

If you are a business, photographer or just anyone looking to build a professional looking website, Weebly Pro and Starter can be especially helpful for you. I will explain why in this article.

Before I give you my opinion about if Weebly’s premium plans are worth it, let’s take a look at the Pro features that you get when you sign up.

We will go over in more details including what they are, and how they can benefit you:

weebly review pricing — Click to see Weebly’s pricing plans in detail

Premium Weebly Features

1) Site search

The site search element is a recent addition to the family of Weebly elements and is a very useful one. Note that this tool is only available to Weebly Pro users. It allows your visitors to quickly and easily find relevant and useful information on your website.

This element can be inserted into your Weebly website just like how you would normally insert elements. Just drag and drop it from the element toolbar at the top into any drag and drop area (such as in the main body area or in the footer area).

Another neat feature is that you can control search results, so if you don’t want a particular page to show up, you can hide it by going to the Page Settings and click on “Hide this page from search engine”.

This is a nice tool to have especially if you are a business website, or if you have a website that has a lot of information and features. This will make life a lot easier for your visitors, and can bring you more business.

2) Header slideshows

This Weebly Pro feature can make your website a lot more interactive and professional.

Normally, if you are using Weebly’s free service, you can only insert a static image into the header section of your website. However, if you subscribe to Weebly Pro, you can transform the entire header area into a slideshow.

You can also insert text captions into the header slideshow, and hyperlink them to other web pages. Weebly allows you to configure the following features in the header slideshow:

Transition style (choose between slide, fade, mosaic, slide or fold effects)
Slide delay – here you control how fast your slides will transition to the next slide
Navigation style – you can configure how your visitors can control the slideshow by using arrows, dots, or nothing
Edit image – you can use Weebly’s ImagePerfect editor to actually edit the images that you insert into the slideshow. You can crop, rotate, or add all sorts of effects into your images.

This Pro feature is particularly useful if you have products you want to showcase, if you are a photographer, or you just have different messages you want to present to your visitors.

3) HD Video Player

If you have videos to display, and want your website to remain professional and project the feeling of high quality, the HD video element is a must have (only available to Weebly Pro users).

If you are using Weebly’s free service, you can insert YouTube videos into your website. However, the video player will be branded as YouTube and some of you may want an option to have an unbranded video player to keep your website professional.

Weebly’s HD video player element allows you to insert an unbranded, HD video player into your website. It supports M4V, MPG, MOV, WMV and most other standard video formats and you can upload as many videos as you wish, as long as each video is under 1 gigabyte in size.

You can configure the video player so that it provides full HD playback on desktop, mobile, and iPad browsers.

4) Customizable footer area & Removing Weebly footer link

If you upgrade to Weebly Pro, you can insert your own information into the footer area of your Weebly website, including removing the Weebly footer link that exists for all free service websites (if you are not using Weebly Pro).

In the footer section, simply drag and drop any Weebly elements into the footer. The most commonly inserted items include contact forms, social media icons, “About Us” information or even location map.

Some other Weebly users also like to insert important links which are also very effective, so you can guide your visitors to important parts of your website, or even to your other websites if you wish.

Removing the Weebly footer link is important, especially if you have a business website, or you just want your website to look more professional. Granted, the footer link isn’t big or too prominent, but it’s still more professional to be able to get rid of it.

5) Premium Weebly Support

According to our own experiences and from what we hear from many other Weebly users, Weebly responds to all questions when you email them – which is awesome.

However, if you subscribe to a Weebly Pro or Business plan, Weebly will place your support email ahead of free users so you get your questions answered sooner, which is nice especially if you are under time constraints. This is only fair as you are a paying premium user!!

6) Password Protected Pages

Once you subscribe to Weebly Pro, you can password protect individual web pages or your entire website. You can control which specific web page you want to password protect, simply by going to the Page Settings control panel.

This is especially useful if you are building a new web page (although you can also Hide the web page until it is ready), or if you only want limited people with your password to access that particular page (in which case you can use BOTH the password protection and hide functions), so only those who know about the page can find it, and can access it with your password.

One downside about this feature is that you can only set one single password for your entire site. So you can not have individual passwords for each web page.

It would be nice to have this feature in the feature to give you more administrative control. One simple workaround is to use the “Editor” function so that you can invite other people to only edit very specific pages. This is particularly useful if you are working within a team environment, or if you have hired contractors to help you.

7) Audio Player

If you are a Weebly Pro user, their audio player element allows you to easily add music, podcasts, or other audio files directly to your website. Just drag & drop the audio player element into your website and upload your audio files with 1 click.

Just note that Weebly’s audio player can only accept MP3 files, so ensure your that your music files are MP3 file format before uploading.

8) Your Own Favicon

If you have a Weebly Pro or Weebly Business account, you can add a Favicon to your website. A favicon is a small icon that appears next to your browser’s address bar or the description tab.

Even though this might seem like a small feature, it does add a lot of professionalism to your website, since all major websites have this feature. It just looks a bit weird if you don’t have one as a lot of people expect it as a standard feature.

9) Expanded Traffic Statistics

Weebly only provides 30 days worth of visitors page views information for free Weebly accounts. If you upgrade to Weebly Pro or Business plans, you will also get information such as the most viewed pages, search terms your visitors used to find your website, or what websites referred the visitors to you.

Although this is useful data, we’ve heard from many users that the data may not be very accurate. It is best to use Google Analytics to help track visitors information. Google Analytics is free and quick to set up, and can provide you with a lot of important information about how your website visitors are using your website.

10) Unlimited Uploads

Weebly’s free accounts provide you with up to 500MB in storage space, but you can’t upload files that are larger than 10 MB in size. This can be restrictive especially if you have large video, audio, documents or download files.

If you subscribe to Weebly Pro, you can then upload file sizes that are up to 250 MB in size. You can even upload up to 1 GB video files.

This is useful if you have larger videos that you want to upload, or if you are a business website and you have a large document or pamphlet that you would like your visitors to download.

11) Membership Creation

With the Weebly Pro plan, you can invite up to 20 people to join your site as members.

You can restrict certain pages that only your members can access. This is really helpful if you want to create a private club, or just want to restrict certain content from the public.

Weebly’s Connect and free plans doesn’t have this feature, so you will need to upgrade to at least their Pro plan to have access to their membership creation function.

Is Weebly Pro or Starter Worth it?

If you are a business or if you just want to position your website to be more professional and well put together, I think upgrading to a Weebly’s Premium Plan is definitely worth it.

Although not all premium features are created equally (meaning that some are more useful than others), just the Site Search, Customizable Footer Area (including removing Weebly’s footer link) and the Header Slideshow are key features that could be very valuable to you.

Just these 3 Pro features can really upgrade and transform your website from an amateur one to a very professional looking one. This is especially important as it will provide a much better experience for your visitors, which will likely encourage them to stay longer on your website, and potentially increase your sales if you are a business.

How Much Do Weebly Paid Plans Cost?

Currently, upgrading your Weebly website to Pro is not too expensive. Weebly also offers you discounts if you sign up to their 1-year plan, and even a greater discount under the 2-year plan – so definitely take advantage of these discounts.

The 2-year plan gives you by far the best value and if you think about it, $9 per month for the Weebly Pro plan is only about 30 cents per day.

That’s not too bad if you compare it to your everyday expenses. So if you are serious about your website, all business or living expenses considered, signing up for 2 years is not a heavy investment to have your website be more professional in front of your visitors and customers.

Weebly’s Promise: 30-Day Money Back Guarantee

According to Weebly’s Terms of Service, if you sign up for a Weebly Pro or Starter account, and if you are dissatisfied with their services for any reason, they have a 30-day money back guarantee policy.

So there really isn’t any risk to you for trying out Weebly premium plans. They are so confident that you will be satisfied with their services that they are offering you this service without any financial risks to you.

Review Conclusion

Given all the enhanced and additional features that you can receive from Weebly Pro or Business plans, especially the header image slider, the site search and flexible footer function, I definitely think Weebly is great value for their low monthly fees.

Upgrading to a Weebly Pro or Business plan is really one of the most valuable ways to create a professional looking website.

And why not, they have a 30-day money back guarantee so if you don’t like it in any way, no harm will be done to you.

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Wix eCommerce Review 2019: Key Things to Know Before You Build a Wix Store

Last updated on June 5, 2019 by Lucy Carney in Ecommerce Website Builders | Comments {199}

What Are the Pros and Cons of Wix eCommerce?

Pros

Never edit blindly – the Wix editor shows you how your edits are impacting the design of your storefront
Beginner friendly – the interface is easy to use, with a drag-and-drop editor and mobile responsive templates
Brand first, products second – strong focus on creating a developed and attractive brand to sell products through
Eye-catching designs – add product videos to give customers a better shopping experience
Advanced ecommerce tools – including abandoned cart recovery to catch customers who have left items in their checkout
Multilingual sites – grow your business globally by creating multiple sites for different countries

Cons

No social media integration – doesn’t let you sell across multiple channels, such as Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest
Too much creative freedom – total creative freedom can get in the way of ecommerce design best practices

Start building your online store for free with Wix eCommerce.

Try Wix eCommerce Today

Further Information

Make sure you’re choosing the best for your store – see our Comparison Cahrt of the Best Ecommerce Website Builders of 2019
Read our article on the Best Ecommerce Platforms to find out which software you should use to sell online

Overview of Wix eCommerce

You’ve probably already heard of Wix. You might have even seen the adverts, where people build websites quickly, easily, and without ever touching a line of code. But did you know that Wix can also help you set up an online store?

Wix eCommerce uses the same easy and intuitive drag-and-drop editor you see in those adverts, allowing you to build your very own ecommerce website. No need for coding, hosting, or stressing – simply pick your template, customize it by dragging and dropping elements like text boxes and images around your pages, and then hit publish!

All of Wix’s ecommerce plans come with a range of great sales tools built-in. You can see them in action on Wix sites such as https://www.vintique-watch.com/, which uses the builder to show off its watch collections.

Wix is the best website builder with ecommerce functionality on the market. It’s not a dedicated ecommerce platform like Shopify or BigCommerce – rather, it’s a website builder which lets you add ecommerce functions to your website.

How do we know Wix is the best ecommerce website builder, beating other brands such as Weebly and Squarespace? We’re not just guessing – we tested them all, and got everyday people to test them too.

While Wix was the best website builder with ecommerce functionality, in the overall ratings it came second overall, with the dedicated ecommerce platform Shopify pulling ahead to take first place.

We looked at all the important areas, from features and pricing to ease of use. This article will take you through what we found, and tell you once and for all if you should choose Wix eCommerce to build your online store.

We’re not going to draw it out – here’s an overview of how Wix scored in our testing:

Further Information

See how Wix compares to top competitors in our Comparison Chart of the Best Online Store Builders
See the list of the Best Ecommerce Website Builders of 2019 for an overview of the top brands

How Easy is Wix eCommerce to Use?

What use is a builder if you’re fighting to complete simple tasks every step of the way? Adding products, processing payments, customizing your storefront; none of these things should have you tearing your hair out.

Luckily, Wix is known for its beginner-friendly design and simple processes. It uses a drag-and-drop editor, so you can just drag elements like text boxes and videos to wherever you want them on your pages.

Customizing your storefront is also really easy. Wix is a What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) website builder, so when you edit your pages, you can see exactly how your site will look once it’s live.

wix editor easy to use — Wix’s editor is easy to use, whether changing backgrounds or adding text. Simply drag and drop items you want onto your pages.

If you drag a text box across your screen in the Wix editor, you know precisely where it will appear on the live version. This is different to other builders where you have to make all your changes in the backend, and only see the results when you preview your site.

The best part, though, is that you don’t need to know a single line of code. Wix helps you create a professional website for your business, without ever even thinking about the dreaded HTML or CSS.

If you need a site up quickly, why not try out Wix ADI? This uses Artificial Design Intelligence to create a personalized website for you, in just a few minutes. You just answer some simple questions, pick the designs you like, and then edit to your heart’s content until it looks just how you want it.

Got an international audience? No problem. With Wix Multilingual, you can create different versions of the same page with different languages.

After you’ve created your site, you can translate text, images, links, SEO settings, and more in just a few clicks. Et voila! You’ll have a multilingual website.

Because of all the features needed to run an online store, ecommerce platforms can often be complex to use and take a while to get to grips with. Wix, however, combines ease of use with a good range of ecommerce tools, as well as great customization for your storefront.

Think Wix eCommerce could be the perfect builder to start your online store? Take a look at its website to expore its features and start a free trial.

Start Your Store With Wix Today

Further Information

Just getting started? Read our guide on How to Build an Online Store to follow our 11 easy steps
If you’re torn between Wix ADI and the traditional Wix Editor, check out our Wix Editor vs Wix ADI comparison to find out which you should choose

Wix eCommerce Customer Satisfaction

One of the greatest tests of any builder is whether it can keep its users satisfied. That’s why we not only test each platform ourselves, but also get other people to use them and give us their feedback.

That’s how we know that Wix doesn’t just look the part – it leaves happy customers in its wake. When asked how likely they were to recommend Wix, our users scored the platform an impressive 4/5 overall!

Here are some of the things our users had to say about Wix eCommerce:

“Creating categories and adding products was really easy, putting in a size variant was really easy, editing the text boxes and images to represent the brand – all super easy.”

“It looks really professional, even after adding a couple of buttons on to the home page. It’s very clean – you can easily identify where things are, and how it would appear once published.”

The main thing our users fed back to us was how easy it was to use Wix to build their store. From adding ecommerce features such as products and size variants, to customizing the store’s branding, Wix received positive comments on its simple and flexible design.

Some found the level of creative control to be more of a hindrance, wishing for greater structure and a larger, more powerful set of ecommerce tools. However, they did admire the potential for creating a strong and unique brand with Wix, and enjoyed adding features such as product videos.

Overall, our users recommended Wix for small businesses who are keen to establish a strong and attractive brand. It has a good range of ecommerce tools, but is unsuitable for anyone looking to set up an ecommerce empire.

Head over to Wix’s website to become a happy customer yourself! Try building your own online store for free and let us know your thoughts.

Wix eCommerce Sales Tools and Features

Wix has all the tools you need to get physical and digital products flying off your virtual shelves.

Attractive product pages are all well and good, but you need to keep things organized behind the scenes. Wix has a number of in-house features that mean your stores can function and thrive.

Product Types

Whether you’re selling handmade goods or digital downloads, Wix won’t stand in your way. You can set up your store to sell physical and digital products, from music to ebooks to hand-knitted scarves.

If your business relies on accepting bookings and people paying for classes, Wix has options for you too. You can accept payments for bookings through the Wix Bookings app, although you can’t list and sell these services as actual products.

Unlike selling platforms such as Etsy, where you can only sell handmade or vintage goods, there are no rules about the types of products you can sell through Wix. The online marketplace is your oyster – and yes, you can even sell those too!

Product Presentation

You don’t buy something online if it doesn’t look good. Only one product image, taken from an unhelpful angle? Distracting layout or annoying lack of product zoom? Say goodbye to a sale, because most customers will be looking elsewhere.

Thankfully, this is one of Wix’s main strengths. Its templates provide an attractive design for you to base your store on, with user experience and branding clearly important factors. Product zoom comes built-in, and gives the customer a much better idea of what it is you’re offering.

wix ecommerce product galleries — Wix provides attractive template designs to really show off your products and catch the customer’s eye

Don’t leave your customers in the dark about what they’re buying. Wix lets you add up to 15 product images for each product you upload, which should be more than enough to make your visitors reach for their wallets.

You can also add product videos to really show off your goods and provide an even better customer experience. These aren’t built-in to the templates, but are easy to add to your store using Wix’s drag-and-drop editor.

Payment Options and Fees

Wix offers all the traditional payments gateways, including PayPal, Stripe, and Square. There are over 15 different payment options in total, so there should be something for everyone. Wix doesn’t support Amazon or Apple Pay, but there should be enough other options to make up for this.

All Wix sites come with an SSL certificate, which just needs to be activated to secure your site. SSL stands for Secure Sockets Layer, and encrypts your visitors’ information – this makes it essential for online stores, as it makes it safe to process payments.

Inventory Management

Wix’s inventory is not the most powerful on the market, but you can sell unlimited products with no problem and you can mass import products and their variants using a CSV (Comma Separated Values) file from a spreadsheet. Easy stuff!

However, Wix does support product management. With the Wix Stores app, you can choose how to manage your inventory, track product numbers and stock levels, and automatically mark items as out of stock.

Shipping Options

Shipping can be difficult to manage, especially if you’re delivering to areas with different rules and prices. Wix allows you to track orders from its dashboard, as well as set shipping and tax rules for your products. That’s pretty handy!

Abandoned Cart Recovery

With Wix’s abandoned cart recovery feature, you can automatically email customers who’ve left items in their cart and then left the site before completing their checkout. A staggering 69% of online carts are abandoned by users; that’s a lot of lost revenue that could easily be scooped up using this clever feature.

Multichannel Selling

Multichannel selling is an important aspect of running an ecommerce business. Selling across social channels such as Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, and Amazon is a great way of getting exposure for your business and appealing to a wider audience.

Unfortunately, Wix doesn’t support multichannel selling. If you want to venture into multichannel selling, you’ll need to use a third-party app such as Ecwid, which integrates with your Wix site and adds extra functions.

Wix Ascend

An all-in-one marketing solution, Wix Ascend lets you connect with your customers, promote your brand, and automate your work flow in one place. It makes marketing more manageable.

Wix Ascend is available as a separate subscription with three different price plans, giving you access to more tools and features the higher the plan you choose. These plans range from just $9 to $45 per month.

App Market

The Wix Stores app is the beating heart of Wix eCommerce. You don’t need to download it or go searching for it, as it comes built-in to all Wix eCommerce templates. With Wix Stores, you can…

Sell unlimited products
Create product galleries to showcase your stock
Create discount codes
Get an optimized mobile store
Accept numerous types of payment, including credit cards and offline payments
Get access to online payment processors including PayPal, Stripe, and Square
Send automatic email notifications to your customers
Create newsletters – tell your customers about promos and new products using Wix ShoutOut and Lightbox
Get premium order management tools
Ensure top-level security with SSL encryption
Keep all your profits – Wix charges NO transaction fees

… and much more. That’s an impressive list! You can see all the latest Wix Stores features on Wix’s website, but if that’s still not enough tools for you, don’t worry – you’ll find a huge supply of additional resources in the Wix App Market.

Here you’ll find a mix of free and paid apps – some made by Wix, others by third parties – offering advanced tools to add to your site. There are over 200 apps in total, with over 50 in the “Online Store” category.

Using the Wix App Market, you can find tools to customize your storefront, add live chats and coupons to engage customers, and even integrate with other ecommerce platforms such as Shopify and Ecwid.

SEO

Search Engine Optimization, more commonly known as SEO, is an artform for some and a mystery to others. All it refers to is making your website as ready and easy as possible for Google and other search engines to find it.

Wix has built-in SEO tools to make life as easy as possible. All Wix sites are mobile optimized, and come with customizable options ranging from alt text to setting keywords for your pages.

wix ecommerce seo tools — Wix gives you the tools and guidance needed to optimize your site and give it the best chance of ranking highly in Google search results

You can easily get to grips with SEO by following Wix’s SEO Wiz. This asks you a few simple questions, such as the name of your website and its keywords, and uses your answers to create a personalized plan. There is also an SEO Guide to follow as your site progresses.

Could your store benefit from any of Wix’s sales tools and features? Start building on Wix’s free plan to try them out yourself.

Try Out Wix's Sales Tools

Further Information

Do you need more sales tools than this? Check out our Wix vs Shopify comparison to determine which is best for selling online
Read our Wix vs BigCommerce comparison to find out which has the best features for your store
Not sure if Wix has the SEO tools for you? Read our Website Builder SEO vs WordPress SEO comparison to decide on the best option for you
If you’re not sure where to start with multi-channel selling, we can help. Learn How to Set Up a Facebook Store with our guide, or find out How to Make Money on Instagram and start your ecommerce empire today
App-solutely intrigued by Wix’s App Market? Read our Wix App Market Review to find out more about this great feature

Bonus: 9 Wix eCommerce Tips to help You Sell Online

If you want extra insight into how you can set up your online store with Wix, you’re in luck. Our Wix eCommerce Tips video gives you detailed, yet down to earth advice on how to build your Wix store, and how to make it a success!

Use these tips to help you build your own online store with Wix eCommerce – visit Wix’s website to get started.

Try Wix eCommerce Today

How Good are Wix eCommerce’s Template Designs?

Despite its great ecommerce features and impressive app store, Wix really shines in its template designs and customization.

Wix has over 500 templates in total, and over 80 of those can be found in the “Online Store” category. You can even choose a blank template if you want to start from scratch – but with designs as professional as Wix’s, that seems like unnecessary work!

wix ecommerce templates — Wix has a wide range of professional, feature-packed templates for building online stores

All Wix templates are free of charge, so you don’t need to worry about any sneaky hidden fees. However,, if you want to make use of all the features included in Wix’s ecommerce templates, you will need to be on an ecommerce plan.

To select a template, simply browse through the selection (either by category or by using the search feature), click preview to see if you like the design, make your choice, and begin editing. Your credit card can stay in your wallet!

Previewing your template and making sure you’re happy with the design is especially important with Wix, because you can’t switch your template once you’ve published your site. If you do feel like a change, you’ll have to build a new site and re-enter your content again – and when time is money, this is less than ideal.

All Wix templates are mobile responsive and come with a dedicated mobile editor, so you can make sure your website looks great on all devices.

Design Customization

While Wix’s templates do look stunning, you’ll still want to put your own stamp on your site’s design. You don’t need to spend hours coding or learning tech skills to do this – simply add images, delete sections, create new pages, drag text boxes to new positions, and add any new features you like, anywhere on your site.

Creating your own brand and customizing your design is super easy with Wix. Its drag-and-drop editor means anyone who can click a mouse can create a totally unique online store.

wix ecommerce design tools — Wix gives you tons of customization options, so you can edit your design as much as you like. This is perfect for creating a strong online brand for your business.

This means your product pages will reflect your business brand, and make your website as recognizable as the products you sell. Customization on the checkout page is more limited, but you can still add your business name and logo.

If you want an even deeper level of customization, you can use Wix Code. Before the tech-phobes amongst you go running for the hills, Wix Code doesn’t actually mean you need to do any coding!

That may sound confusing, but Wix Code lets you create a database of information to help you create a more complex site, without the complexity of learning new tech skills – or the cost of hiring a developer.

Overall, Wix has got it covered on all fronts. It has a large selection of stylish, feature-packed templates and offers tons of creative freedom, with both beginner-friendly and more advanced customization tools. With all that creative control, though, just make sure you’re always designing with your customers in mind.

Make sure you choose the perfect theme for your online store – browse Wix’s templates and pick the best one for you!

Find the Perfect Wix Design for Your Store

Further Information

Does design mean everything to you? Take a quick peek at our Squarespace Ecommerce Review and see what this design-oriented builder has to offer
Want to sell art through your ecommerce website? You need our guide on How to Sell Art Online!

Wix eCommerce Help and Support

When you get on an aeroplane, you probably don’t take much notice of the safety briefing or the emergency features. However, if they weren’t there, we doubt you’d get on the plane at all.

Signing up to a website builder with no customer support may not be as disastrous as boarding a plane without any safety equipment, but it could still cause you hours of frustration – and even money – if things did go wrong.

Wix won’t leave you free-falling if your website crashes, or if you have trouble finding your way around. It offers multiple support options, including:

Phone support
Social media support
Community forum
Email support
Video tutorials
24/7 on-page editor support
In-depth knowledge base

Whether you want to talk to a real person on the phone, or prefer losing yourself in detailed help articles, Wix has something for everyone. It doesn’t offer a live chat option, but between its incredibly in-depth knowledge base and social media support, this shouldn’t be a problem.

wix help center — Wix’s Help Center has tons of support resources for you to browse. You can search for your specific query, or look through the different help categories.

If you sign up to the most expensive ecommerce plan, Business VIP, you get priority response to any tickets you submit. You are also eligible for VIP Support, which gives you priority phone support.

Wix eCommerce Pricing - Is It Good Value for Money?

With all these features, you’re probably wondering: how much does Wix cost?

Wix’s free plan is unusually generous. It gives you as much time as you want to build your online store and prepare it for launch. It’s also a great chance to try Wix out and decide for yourself whether it’s the right fit for you.

However, if you want to collect payments and make money – which we assume you do – then you’ll need to upgrade.

There are three Wix eCommerce plans to choose from:

Business Basic: $20 per month
Business Unlimited: $25 per month
Business VIP: $35 per month

All of these allow you to accept online payments, sell without paying any commission, connect your own domain name, remove Wix adverts, and use Google Analytics. All three come with unlimited bandwidth, while you also get $300 in Ad Vouchers and unlock the Site Booster and Form Builder apps.

wix ecommerce price plans — Wix has three ecommerce plans to choose from, ranging from $20 to $35 per month (billed annually)

Take a look at some of the key features of each plan in the comparison table below:

Feature	Business Basic $20/month	Business Unlimited $25/month	Business VIP $35/month
Video Hours	5 hours	10 hours	Unlimited hours
Remove Wix Ads	✔️	✔️	✔️
Connect Domain	✔️	✔️	✔️
Bandwidth	Unlimited	Unlimited	Unlimited
Storage	20GB	35GB	50GB
Priority Response	❌	❌	✔️

Business Basic plan ($20/month)

The Business Basic plan is your best-value option. It’s the cheapest ecommerce plan, and the best option if you’re just starting out. $20 per month is a very competitive price, and while Shopify is the superior service, Wix is the best value for money if you’re brand new to website building.

For just $20 a month, you get:

Wix Stores ecommerce platform, with all the features explored above
20GB storage space for all your site’s assets, such as product galleries
Unlimited bandwidth, so you can attract as many customers as you want – your site won’t go down if you go viral!
Free custom domain name for one year, so you can get rid of the Wix branding in your web address and choose your own
No Wix ads on any of your site’s pages
Five video hours
Ad vouchers worth $300, so you can advertise your site on Google and Bing
Site Booster app (normally $60) to push your online store up the Google rankings
Form Builder app (normally $48) to create high quality booking and contact forms
Google Analytics for world class data on what your customers are doing, and how you can deliver what they want.

That $20 figure is the monthly price if you pay annually. The Business Basic plan costs even less if you pay for two ($17.50) or three ($16.50) years up front.

This plan is best for small ecommerce businesses that are finding their feet and just getting started with an online store.

Business Unlimited plan ($25/month)

The Business Unlimited plan is the most popular of Wix’s ecommerce plans. It’s best for growing businesses, and has the extra features to prove it. It’s still cheaper than Shopify’s lowest plan, and for your $25 per month, you get:

Everything from the Business Basic plan
35GB storage
10 video hours
Wix Logo Maker (worth $50), so you can create your very own professional logo
Social Media Logo files – get over 40 different sizes of your logo, ready to share across social media

If you’re looking to grow your business, the Business Unlimited Plan offers great value for money.

Business VIP plan ($35/month)

Wix’s most expensive plan is perfect for the well-developed business which needs more advanced tools. For $35 per month, you get:

Everything from the Business Unlimited plan
50GB storage
Unlimited video hours
Priority response
VIP support

This extra level of service is perfect for businesses who need the full package, and can’t afford to be at the back of the queue when it comes to waiting for support. This makes the Business VIP plan best for established businesses.

You can’t sell for free with Wix eCommerce, so you need to choose the right price plan – compare and sign up on Wix’s pricing page!

Pick Your Perfect Wix eCommerce Plan Today

Value for Money

You can build your store using Wix’s free plan, but to really put these features through their paces, you’ll need to sign up to one of these three ecommerce plans. Instead of a free trial, Wix offers a 14-day money back guarantee, so if you aren’t 100% happy, you can get your money back with no questions asked.

Wix is a great place to start for smaller businesses on a budget, because it’s much cheaper than other ecommerce platforms. It does offer less advanced features than dedicated ecommerce builders, but this also makes it a more budget-friendly option for small businesses.

So how does Wix compare to its competitors? Shopify’s prices start at $29 per month and range up to $299 per month. BigCommerce ranges from $29.95 per month up to $224.95 per month. Squarespace’s ecommerce plans vary, from $26 to a more reasonable $40 per month.

In our research, Wix scored higher overall than BigCommerce and Squarespace, so you can be sure you’re getting a top quality service at great value.

Overall, Wix averages out at cheaper than its competitors – especially if you’re looking at the long-term cost of scaling up your business.

Further Information

Read our Wix Pricing Review for a more detailed breakdown of its plans and prices
Are you after free trials, or even free plans? Check out our article on the Best Free Ecommerce Platforms
Compare the Best Online Store Builders

Wix eCommerce Review: The Verdict

This article has examined the ins and outs of what makes Wix eCommerce tick.

Wix is a great choice for building your first online store, and then taking it to the next level.

Its drag-and-drop website builder and integrated ecommerce features make it easy for beginners, while its extensive app market make it powerful enough to achieve your ambitions.

As you may know from our ecommerce comparison chart, Wix isn’t quite top of the ecommerce league. That honor goes to Shopify, which offers a few features Wix doesn’t.

But that’s because Shopify is an ecommerce specialist. It only lets you build online stores. Wix is an all-rounder, with a strong focus on creating a professional brand as well as selling products.

Wix’s impressive customization and beginner-friendly processes is where it really holds it own against platforms like Shopify. It also has the bonus of a free plan, and budget-friendly prices for those just starting out.

Wix is the best website builder with ecommerce functionality. If you’re setting up your ecommerce business and don’t have tons of products to sell (yet), Wix is the perfect place to get started, make money, and build your brand image.

Are you ready to start building your online store? Begin building for free, then sign up to a paid plan to make money through your site! Head to Wix and get started today.

Start Building Your Store

Wix eCommerce: FAQs

Can you use Wix eCommerce for free?

No – you can’t sell through your Wix website without signing up to a premium plan. However, you can build your store and get it ready to go using the free plan, before then upgrading to an ecommerce plan. When you upgrade, you’ll unlock built-in ecommerce features, and be able to accept payments through your website.

Is Wix better than Shopify?

While Wix certainly does its best to give Shopify a run for its money, Shopify is still the best all-around ecommerce platform. It has much more powerful ecommerce features than Wix, and reasonable price plans. However, Wix is better for total beginners and small-scale sellers because of its easy to use and creative editor, not to mention its budget-friendly prices.

Can you integrate Wix eCommerce with other platforms, like Shopify?

If you have accounts with both Shopify and Wix, you can use the Shopify Buy Button to add ecommerce to your Wix website. This is really aimed at adding Shopify’s selling tools to a non-ecommerce Wix website, and does involve coding. But it is a way of combining these two leading brands if you want to make use of them both!

You can also integrate other platforms such as Etsy, Amazon, and eBay with your Wix store using apps.

Does Wix eCommerce have any hidden costs?

No it doesn’t! Wix doesn’t charge any transaction fees, unlike other ecommerce platforms, so you won’t get caught out by any unexpected selling fees. Apps come as both free and premium, so you don’t have to pay if you can find free ones you’re happy with (and there are plenty out there)!

If you get a free domain name with your ecommerce plan, just remember it’s only free for the first year, and will renew at its usual rate after that time is up.

What size business is Wix eCommerce best for?

Wix has three eCommerce plans, so there’s plenty of room to scale up. We recommend Wix for first-time sellers, and for small businesses who are looking to set up and start growing!

Wix is perfect for establishing your brand and expanding your business, but it doesn’t have the same powerful tools as ecommerce specific platforms. For a more developed platform, take a look at Shopify, which helps businesses of all sizes to grow. If your business is already large and well established, and you’re looking for more extreme growth, check out BigCommerce.

Found our Wix eCommerce review helpful?

Did this guide help you decide whether to use Wix eCommerce, then help to get you started building your online store? If so (or if not!) leave a comment below.

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Squarespace Pricing | 4 Key Things You Should Know

Last updated on June 10, 2019 by Lucy Carney in Squarespace, Website Builders | Comments {118}

Squarespace Pricing Review

Rating

See Squarespace Pricing

Squarespace’s pricing plans offer you good value as its platform offers you an easy and code-free way to build a website. Squarespace manages all the technical aspects of your website, and its 24/7 support team is available around the clock.

Squarespace can save you a lot of time and money compared to using other more complex web builders.

Review by Lucy Carney

Last Updated on June 10, 2019

This article will explore and explain Squarespace’s pricing plans, so you can choose the best plan for you.

Squarespace is a website builder which lets you create your very own, professional looking website yourself, without needing any coding or tech skills.

You’ve probably seen Squarespace’s ads on TV, but can it live up to its own hype? We wanted to find out, so we took a close up look. In our research, Squarespace performed extremely well.

Squarespace is perfect for creatives – it has the best quality features and the best template designs on the market.

If you want a website that looks like it was built by a developer, then Squarespace is your top choice. But is there a catch? Do you have to pay through the nose for Squarespace’s high quality services? How many price plans does it have – and which is best for you?

These are common questions, and we’re going to answer them all in this review. Let’s answer the most important question first, with a quick look at Squarespace’s four price plans.

Squarespace Pricing Plans

Squarespace has four price plans to choose from – two website builder plans, and two online store plans. Which one you choose depends on your needs.

Personal Plan: $12/month
Business Plan: $18/month
Basic: $26/month
Advanced: $40/month

It can be hard choosing the best price plan, or know whether you’re getting good value for your money.

We can help – by using our in-depth research we can give you the down-low on everything from pricing breakdowns, to additional costs, comparing competitor prices, and beyond. With our seven sections below, we’ll help you decide which Squarespace plan is the best one for you.

Further Information

Squarespace Review – Take a more wholesome look at Squarespace with our overall review of the platform.
Best Website Builders – See how Squarespace stacks up against the best of the best.
Website Builder Comparison Chart – Compare the top-rated website builders side-by-side.
Cheapest Website Builders – Hunting for a bargain? Check out the best deals here.

How Much Does Squarespace Cost?

Get Your Exclusive Squarespace Offer Code

Squarespace’s four pricing plans range from $12 to $40 per month (paid annually), and include two website plans and two online store plans. The more you pay, the more advanced features you unlock.

squarespace pricing — Squarespace’s offers four pricing plans, each intended for a different need.

Who Is Each Squarespace Plan For?

Squarespace’s cheapest plan is the Personal plan ($12/month) which, unsurprisingly, is designed for personal websites. You can’t sell online, but you do get to use most other Squarespace features. You’ll use the same editor, get the same selection of templates, and still receive a free custom domain, SSL security, and 24/7 support.

Upgrade to the Business plan ($18/month) and you can start selling online. This is more suitable to businesses who just have the odd product to sell, and want ecommerce functionality. There is a 3% transaction charge on all sales, though, so it’s not recommended for site’s whose sole purpose is to sell products.

The Basic plan ($26/month) is for fully-fledged online stores. You’ll get specific tools to help you manage your store – like mobile-optimized checkouts, integrated accounting, and customer accounts – and can sell directly on Instagram too.

The Advanced plan’s ($40/month) main focus is to boost your sales. Abandoned cart recovery, gift cards, and flexible discounts are all features designed to entice more customers into purchasing from you. These, coupled with advanced tools for shipping, help make up Squarespace’s most complete package.

Squarespace Comparison: Monthly vs Annual Plans

Squarespace Pricing Plans	Monthly Plan ($/month)	Annual Plan ($/month)	Savings (%)
Personal	$16	$12	25%
Business	$26	$18	31%
Basic	$30	$26	13%
Advanced	$46	$40	13%

You can sign up for monthly or annual plans with Squarespace. While monthly plans can be appealing because of their flexibility, you save much more money by signing up to an annual plan.

Not only can you save up to 31% by choosing a longer subscription, you also get a free domain for one year with all annual plans – so that saves you even more money!

Every Squarespace plan starts with a 14-day free trial, so you can try it out fully before reaching for your credit card.

Exclusive Squarespace Offer Code

Once your 14-day free trial is up, you can choose to leave Squarespace, or upgrade to a paid plan to continue using its services and go on to publish your very own website. If this is your first time signing up to Squarespace, then you can use our exclusive offer code!

This offer code will save you 10% on any Squarespace plan.

This means you could save up to $48 for the whole year – when you look at it that way, it’s a hard deal to resist. Simply sign up to a free trial, then enter our offer code when it’s time to upgrade – what are you waiting for?

Which Pricing Plan is Right for You?

Try Squarespace For Free Today

Squarespace Website Pricing

If you want to build a website (rather than an online store, for example), then Squarespace has two plans designed just for you: the Personal plan and the Business plan.

squarespace pricing website builder plans — Squarespace has two website builder plans, the Personal and Business plans

Personal ($12/month)

This plan is perfect for building simple, stylish websites, and gives you all the basics you could need for a well-rounded website. The features you get on this plan include:

Unlimited bandwidth and storage
Free custom domain
SSL security
Two contributors
Website metrics
Mobile-optimized sites
24/7 support

The Personal plan is best for those just starting out, who want a small but beautifully formed website.

Business ($18/month)

The Business plan comes with more advanced features than the Personal plan, including:

Unlimited contributors
Advanced website metrics
Professional email from Google
$100 Google Ads credit
Promotional pop-ups
Ecommerce
Complete customization
Announcement bar
Premium blocks and integrations

Although this isn’t a full-blown online store plan, you can sell on the Business plan. You can accept donations and sell unlimited products, but there is a 3% transaction fee on all sales.

It’s no surprise the Business plan is best for small businesses. It has professional features, and comes with the option of selling through your website.

Squarespace Ecommerce Pricing

If selling online is your main focus, then you’re better off with one of Squarespace’s ecommerce plans – either the Basic plan or the Advanced plan. They’re more expensive, but that’s because they come packed with tons more fancy features!

Basic ($26/month)

The Basic plan costs $26 per month, and gives you all the tools you need to set up a simple but successful online store. It comes with everything from the Business plan, plus loads of extras:

Sell unlimited products
No transaction fees
Powerful commerce metrics
Inventory, orders, tax, and coupons
Label printing
Checkout on your domain
Customer accounts
List products on Instagram
Integrated accounting
Mobile optimized checkout

This Basic plan promises everything you need to get your business of the ground, making it perfect for first-time online stores.

Advanced ($40/month)

The Advanced plan comes with everything included on the Basic plan, but gives you specialized features to take your online store to the next level:

Subscriptions
Abandoned cart autorecovery
Advanced shipping
Flexible discounts
Gift cards
Orders API

These advanced features are designed to power growth in your business. Abandoned cart autorecovery sends automatic emails to customers who leave products in their carts at checkout, and discounts and gift cards are great rewards for loyal customers. Advanced shipping lets you calculate real-time shipping rates.

The Advanced plan is best for online stores looking for growth.

Additional Squarespace Costs

Squarespace has fixed monthly costs, with no hidden surprises – but, there are certain things you might want to pay a bit extra for when setting up your website. While you don’t have to, we strongly recommend investing in a few basic features to set your site up for success. These include:

Domain name
Email marketing
Ecommerce

We’ll explore the other features in more depth below.

Domain Names

Domain names are important – this is your website’s address, and it’s how people find and remember your site. Our domain is www.websitebuilderexpert.com – every domain name is unique, just like a fingerprint or phone number.

You need your own custom domain name for your website because it gives you a credible, recognizable, and professional image with your visitors. When you first build your Squarespace site, your domain will look like this: www.yoursite.squarespace.com – but this isn’t memorable or professional!

squarespace pricing domain services — You can choose your very own personalized domain and buy it through Squarespace, hassle-free.

Email Marketing

If you want your site to be found, visited, and returned to time and time again, then you need email marketing. Sending emails is a great way of engaging visitors and growing your site’s audience, whether you’re promoting a sale, releasing new products, or sharing blog posts.

Squarespace has multiple options for your marketing campaigns. When you sign up to the $18 per month Business plan, you get one professional Gmail and G Suite account free for one year.

Squarespace also offers an all-in-one email marketing platform called Squarespace Email Campaigns. This lets you create custom emails straight from your website, meaning your marketing integrates seamlessly with your site’s branding.

squarespace pricing email campaigns — Squarespace offers an all-in-one email marketing platform called Email Campaigns, which lets you create beautifully crafted emails.

Squarespace Payment Fees

For anyone running an ecommerce store, it’s important to think about any extra fees that come with selling online. Squarespace doesn’t charge any transaction fees on its two online store plans, but it does charge a 3% transaction fee if you’re selling on the $18 per month Business plan.

A transaction fee is a percentage of the order total, including shipping fees, so Squarespace will take 3% of each sale you make.

The Business plan is only designed for small stores, so Squarespace charges this fee to cover the cost of processing those transactions. The ecommerce plans cost more, meaning all transaction fees are waived by Squarespace.

squarespace pricing ecommerce checkout — Squarespace has ecommerce plans to let you sell through your website. These come with a range of features, including a secure checkout.

Squarespace Pricing vs Competitor Pricing

Squarespace is one of the top website builders on the market – but as you’ve already seen, it’s not the cheapest choice out there. Popular builders like Wix and Weebly offer a wider range of prices – not to mention free plans!

Pricing Comparison

Pricing Comparison	Basic	Personal	Standard	Ecommerce	Advanced
Squarespace	–	$12	$18	$26	$40
Wix	$0	$11	$14	$20	$35
Weebly	$0	$5	$12	$25	$49

As you can see, Squarespace’s starting price is higher than its competitors, and has a smaller range of plans. This is because Squarespace’s cheapest plan is the most advanced out of all these builders!

Squarespace’s Personal plan costs $12 per month, and gives you everything you need, from unlimited storage and bandwidth, to an ad-free website. Compare this to Wix and Weebly’s cheapest plans, and you can see what you’re paying for!

Weebly’s $5 per month Connect plan only gives you 500MB storage, and still displays Weebly adverts on your site. Wix’s $11 per month Combo plan gives you more features, such as video minutes and ad vouchers, but only provides 2GB bandwidth and 3GB storage.

Squarespace also offers a 14-day free trial on all its plans, so you can try before you buy! You don’t need to enter any card details unless you choose to actually sign up to a paid plan once the trial is over.

Further Information

Read our Wix Pricing Review for full details on its pricing plans
Read our Weebly Pricing Review to find out more
Take a look at our comparison of Wix vs Weebly vs Squarespace to see which is best for you

Squarespace Pricing: Summary

Try Squarespace For Free Today

Squarespace is a popular and high quality website builder, and its prices reflect the service you get when you sign up.

While its prices may seem a little high to start with, we’ve broken Squarespace down to find out how much value you get for your money. We’ve explored just what its plans cost, what you get with each, and how they compare in terms of features and price, so you know exactly what you’re paying for.

By now you know which plan is best for you, and any additional costs which might benefit your site, such as a domain name. We also compared Squarespace with its competitors Wix and Weebly, so you have a good idea of which would suit your budget best.

Squarespace Pricing Plans

Personal plan: $12/month
Business plan: $18/month
Basic plan (ecommerce): $26/month
Advanced plan (ecommerce): $40/month

If you value design, and don’t mind paying for quality, then Squarespace is the perfect investment for your site.

You’ll be rewarded with stunning designs, top notch features, and professional services. When you look at it that way, Squarespace is worth every dollar you put in.

Squarespace Pricing: FAQs