Weebly vs GoDaddy: Is There A Need For Speed?

Weebly has some beautiful templates that are easy to navigate. However, its blogging features are poor, and customization is limited when designing templates Overall, though, it’s an excellent platform.

With its ADI, GoDaddy offers the quickest way to get online. After just a couple of clicks, hey presto: a brand new website! You can also switch themes at any point, which GoDaddy will reformat for you – saving you time and hassle.

However, the features lack some depth, restricting what you can actually do with your site. On that note, it doesn’t provide much creative freedom overall.

Website builders are there to help people get online more easily. Of course, some are easier to use than others, so we tested both Weebly and GoDaddy to find out which is the most user-friendly.

Weebly uses drag-and-drop for its template customization. This makes it really easy to personalize your website. Weebly also gives you access to thousands of apps, which can be installed with one click.

One of the people we tested found Weebly super easy to navigate:

The editing screen is laid out quite nicely. It’s a good introductory-level web builder.

Using its ‘GoCentral’ ADI, GoDaddy can create a website in a matter of minutes, which users can then customize to their liking. The whole editing process usually takes less than an hour, so it’s a really quick, painless experience.

During our user testing, one user was impressed with the speed and ease of GoDaddy:

It’s very easy to put together a site using the interface that they provide.

Ease of use – Verdict: GoDaddy

GoDaddy is just that little bit easier to use than Weebly. Using GoCentral requires absolutely minimal effort, with just a few clicks and questions needed to build your site. Weebly is also very easy to use, but it can’t match the simplicity of GoDaddy’s user journey.

We’ve discussed how easy each builder is to use, which leads on nicely to our next comparison – just how flexible is each platform with its design tools? In other words, which platform gives you the most creative control?

Weebly provides 35 templates, covering categories including business, portfolios, and online stores. Better still, every theme is mobile responsive, so they look beautiful on all screens. Weebly also provides the most apps of any platform.

A small issue is that you can’t search for a specific industry theme – instead, you’ll need to scroll through each category to find the perfect one. You won’t be able to preview what each template looks like on a mobile or tablet, either.

GoDaddy uses ADI to help design your website. It asks a few questions about what type of website you need –  a portfolio, business etc – and then gives you a website that’s ready to go. GoDaddy’s themes are also mobile responsive.

After this, you have some level of creative control, but it’s limited. You can edit the theme and update text boxes, but that’s about it. Overall, GoDaddy and its ADI are for people looking to get online quickly, rather than design lovers.

Design Flexibility – Verdict: Weebly

Weebly is the better option for design. It offers 35 templates that you can easily personalize, and provides access to thousands of apps to help customize your site. GoDaddy is happy to prioritize speed over looks, making it quick to get online while restricting your creative control.

A good website builder needs to offer more than just a smooth design experience – it should also provide a bunch of handy features, apps, and tools to streamline your website or online store. So, which platform has the bigger and better toolbox?

Ecommerce

In our testing, Weebly came out as the best value for money for building an online store. Its clear interface makes it easy to start selling online, but it lacks big data tools like managing stock inventory. Overall, it’s for small businesses who want an easy and enjoyable user journey.

Thanks to its ADI, GoDaddy is the quickest way of building an online store. However, it doesn’t let you sell digital products, and most of its ecommerce features lack the quality and depth found on other platforms.

Blogging

Weebly outshines GoDaddy in the blogging category. With Weebly, you can create and publish posts easily, while integrating a search feature, an RSS feed, social bookmarking, a comments section, and more.

While GoDaddy allows you to separate your blog into categories, track its performance, and embed an RSS feed, it won’t let you do much else.

Marketing

Weebly provides a really cool service named ‘Weebly Promote’, which helps you create effective email campaigns. It supports you with copy and templates, and can also schedule the emails you send

If you’re worried about costs, you shouldn’t be –  Weebly Promote offers a free trial, and only costs $10 per month after that.

While GoDaddy also lets you build email campaigns, without a specific tool to help you like Weebly has, it’s not as impressive when you compare the two.

Social Media Integration

Weebly wins here, too. While both let you embed social buttons, Weebly takes things further by allowing you to add social media feeds directly to your website. This means your visitors can see what you’re tweeting, posting, and sharing at all times.

App markets

Let’s put it this way: Weebly has the most apps of any builder, while GoDaddy doesn’t even have an app market. So, it’s pretty clear who the ‘appiest website builder is, but we’ll quickly go over some reasons why.

On Weebly, you can choose from thousands of third party apps, which can all be installed with one click. Some are free, while others come at a small cost. Apps are available covering all the key areas, including marketing, ecommerce, social media, and loads more to help improve your site’s performance.

Features – Verdict: Weebly

Weebly stands head and shoulders above GoDaddy when it comes to the depth of its features. It offers more comprehensive blogging tools, social media integration, and way more apps to choose from.

If you’re wondering what SEO is exactly, it’s the system which helps your website rank higher on search engines like Google. Essentially, it helps people find your site more easily.

Improving your website’s SEO can be done in a number of ways. For example, both Weebly and GoDaddy allow you to:

• Update meta titles and descriptions (the text you see on Google searches)
• Edit URLs (the text found after your website domain)
• Add alt text to images (the text describing an image to help Google identify it)
• Use mobile responsive themes (something Google likes to see)

All of these functions will help search engines index (find and categorize) your website. Both platforms offer great SEO tools, but Weebly has the app center to help you out even more. It also provides really helpful guides on keywords and coding.

SEO – Verdict: Weebly

It’s very close, but Google just about prefers Weebly to GoDaddy. Both platforms offer good tools for helping your website appear higher on search engines, but Weebly edges it with its wide range of SEO apps and helpful user guides, making things even easier.

As with all things tech, you’re bound to encounter certain issues that need resolving quickly. With this in mind, we looked at the levels of help and support provided by each builder.

When it comes to customer help, it’s a close one. Weebly provides email, phone, and live chat support – but only from 6 AM – 6 PM (PT).

On the other hand, GoDaddy provides 24/7 phone support, a live chat option, but no email support.

Help and support – Verdict: Weebly

Weebly gets the gold medal in this section. While both website builders offer live chat features, phone support and help centers, GoDaddy does not provide email support. On top of that, its help center is relatively confusing and hard to navigate compared to Weebly’s.

Website builders have changed the game in many ways. One of these is the money – you don’t need to spend hundreds of dollars on a web designer anymore.

If you’re a fan of frugality, you’ll love Weebly. It has some of the most affordable price plans on the market, and offers a free plan to boot. Its premium plans range from just $8 per month to $38 per month (see the image below for more detail).

The free plan lets you build a beautiful website at no cost (obviously), but it does come with a ‘.weebly’ subdomain. This doesn’t look very professional, and also means your website will be covered with Weebly ads. For just a few dollars a month, it’s definitely worth upgrading.

GoDaddy is also really cheap. There are four paid plans to choose from, starting from just $5.99 per month, up to $19.99 per month.

Each plan lets you customize with the same tools, but as the names suggest, you’ll need to be on the Business plan or higher if you’re looking to start a company website. With these higher plans, you get SSL Certificates and extra SEO help, too.

Looking to sell stuff online? You’ll need to pick the ‘Online Store’ plan, where you’ll get to play with all the ecommerce features we mentioned earlier in the article.

Pricing – Verdict: Weebly

Both platforms provide good value for money when you compare the features and price plans, but Weebly wins thanks to its free plan. GoDaddy is certainly a cheap option, but with Weebly, you can create a brilliant website for absolutely no cost – and get loads of free apps, too.

We’ve pitched Weebly and GoDaddy against each other in all the key areas for building a website. Using our expert knowledge and results from our user testing, we really got under the skin of each platform to find out what makes them tick.

Let’s quickly recap where each website builder excels…

After reading this article, you should have a good idea which platform is best suited for which type of user – and which is the right fit for you.

Weebly is for anyone who is looking to build a beautiful website with minimal effort, and who doesn’t want to break the bank while doing so.

With its ADI, GoDaddy is for people who want to create a website as quickly as possible, and who aren’t too fussed about the design process.

Who takes the crown, though? After a closely fought contest, we’ve given it to Weebly. It deserves the throne because of its impressive range of features, excellent value for money, and design flexibility.

GoDaddy is a good option, but overall, we’d say: go with Weebly.