There really isn't any good alternative to Weebly...

[ifly4fun2]

I use Weebly to build websites for customers through my Weebly Designers account. I make the site, I customize the theme, and then I hand it off to the client. The beauty of it is I can designate editable areas in the code, and the client can simply drag and drop to modify their website in any way they want. All my clients have had no issue using Weebly--it's so intuitive. 

In light of the whole Weebly-Square fiasco where Square isn't telling us what they're planning to do to our beloved Weebly editor, I have begun exploring alternatives. However, after weeks of experimentation, I still can't find a good website builder that rivals Weebly's ease of use, functionality, and flexibility. 

Squarespace - Yikes. I'll be honest I have no clue why this platform is so big. Yes, their themes are nice (albeit maybe too simple) but holy smokes this is a difficult builder to use. It's got this layered system in place which makes it so confusing to do anything. It's not really true drag-n-drop, you have to click on elements and then go to a new menu to actually edit text (??). When I was ready to deploy my website, I encountered a bug with responsiveness. But I couldn't figure out a way to fix it in code because Squarespace uses their own odd language and developer environment. It's a confusing mess. 

Shopify - I explored this one for my eCommerce clients. Shopify is not drag and drop either. You open up something called a "theme editor" and you have to edit content via a sidebar. I can't just click on text to edit it. I have to edit it through a field in a sidebar. This just makes it so much slower and more confusing to edit. On top of that--the whole theme situation is odd. Their premium themes are $180 - $250, whereas I've never seen a premium Weebly theme cost more than $99...The Shopify user interface oddly feels more outdated than Weebly, despite Weebly not seeing an update since 2016. The biggest issue--I can't drag elements around! Let's say I add a section with an image on left and text on right. I can't move that text to the other side! I have to do design via drop down options which is terrible. On the plus side, Shopify lets me edit code but they use their own language called Liquid which seems to be HTML with IF statements all over the place. 

Webflow - Webflow looks cool but there's no way in hell my customers will be able to learn to use Webflow. It's made for developers who are familiar with CSS grid, Flexbox, etc. Nor is it really drag and drop, it's more like visual coding. They have a "designer" (developer-facing) and an "editor" (client-facing). Cool--except the editor is only there to let my clients edit CMS such as a blog. If I wanted them to edit their own content, they'd have to use the Webflow designer which is extremely difficult if near impossible for your average user. I tried--one client ended up accidentally deleting ac class which ruined the entire site. Whoops. 

Wix - This seems more like a toy than a website builder. First, I can't edit the backend code. Second, you're restricted to the themes that Wix provides. They're decent but are all extremely niche specific and if your client is outside of the common niches, good luck. Their editor is a bit anarchic, yes it's drag and drop but nowhere near as intuitive as Weebly. They have a lot of features, but it's a bit messy. Speed scores and SEO aren't that great either. I heard their engine is quite poor when it comes to publishing websites, so you end with unoptimized code. It also gives users too much control to the point where containers are non-existent, so content is everywhere. Their "AI generation" tools are also a marketing gimmick. No way a serious business would want a site generated this way. 

Square - If you're building a generic eCommerce stores and use Square for in-person POS, yes it works. For anything else, forget about it. I still can't believe they're offering this editor alongside the Weebly editor--the Weebly editor scores way above this one. I know they're trying to improve it but the basic ideology of this editor is far too limited. It's like putting an elephant on a shopping trolley. 

Wordpress - I still don't understand to this day how a blogging platform became the de-facto choice for website building. To do anything in Wordpress, you need to install plugin after plugin. A builder, a theme, and a bunch of other plugins. It just seems too bloated. I know many do just fine with it but it's not for me. It's anarchy over there--you better hope that the 12+ companies that each develop your plugins respond to support and keep updating, or else it's a constant game of mix-and-match. I've spent too many hours troubleshooting Wordpress sites and their gazillion plugins. 

The beauty of the Weebly editor for me is:

• It's an extremely easy to use intuitive website builder with simple drag and drop. Clean, friendly interface and direct WYSIWYG preview. 
• Complete access to HTML/CSS/JS with an (oddly enough) fairly impressive in-browser code editor with a lovely mustache template usage (Want a drag and drop area? Easy. Just add {content}. Want editable text? Add {text}). Makes it so easy to design sites for clients. 
• Weebly Designers platform. 
• I can build a customer a website using a mix of drag and drop and code, and then hand it off to them letting them edit and play around with it as they please. 
• Ability to import custom themes, including ones you've made for other clients. 

But I honestly can't find an editor that provides these features. If someone has any suggestions, please let me know. 

I love Weebly but this uncertainty and ambiguity is driving me nuts. The last major Weebly update was Carbon back in 2016. Five years have passed, and while more updates are needed, it's a testament to the platform that it's still competitive with the big players. Look at any "top 10 website builder" review sites, Weebly typically still wins in the ease of use department. 

If Square came out tomorrow and told us their plans, I'd be satisfied. If they came out and said "look guys, we know you love the Weebly editor, we promise we'll continue providing maintenance for at least X number of years" I'd be happy. If they came out and said "we're stepping on the gas and allocating development resources to the Weebly website builder with new updates coming out soon" then I'd be overjoyed like a kid the night before Christmas. 

But all we get is silence. Which is a shame because this platform deserves better. 

Thoughts? Recommendations? Curious what you guys are planning to do. Are you waiting to see what happens to the Weebly editor, or are you taking early steps? I'm quite lost on what to do.

[PaulMathews]

@ifly4fun2 Very good overview of the most prominent Weebly alternatives. We had a similar discussion in this post:

https://community.weebly.com/t5/Lounge/SHOULD-YOU-STAY-IN-WEEBLY/td-p/228474

I fortunately tend to not have to hand sites over to clients to self-administer after deployment. Nearly all of my clients, don't want to do this, don't have the necessary knowledge to do this, and would be much, much slower than me in making updates to their sites.

I agree that Weebly is - or at least was - best in class for novices. But I don't really want to serve the low-end market of clients who want me to build a site in a tool designed precisely for novices like them solely so they can thereafter make updates on their own. That tends to be a low-end income model with a dead-end income stream.

Ultimately, you have to work in platforms where clients are going. Square has made it pretty clear by their actions that Weebly is essentially a dead platform. They're going to pour all of their resources into upgrading and enhancing their own limited site editor. Presumably, they intend for their currently less-than-capable editor to reach some form of feature-parity with Weebly in the coming years and perhaps will attempt to migrate Weebly sites to that future, more capable Square platform. But really, who knows? Square certainly isn't providing any clues and we should continue to expect nothing but silence from them about Weebly in the coming months and years.

For me, Webflow and Wix's Editor X both look like where the future of drag-and-drop site builders lies. You can even emulate this type of builder model in WordPress by using the Oxygen visual builder (incidentally, if you're installing a "gazillion" plugins in your WordPress sites, you're not using WordPress properly and, say what you will about WordPress, it still powers nearly 2/3 of all websites on the internet - Weebly and Square combined are barely a rounding error in comparison).

Over the years, I've built sites on multiple platforms including plenty of Weebly client sites. Indeed, Weebly was a favorite because it was quite easy to strip Weebly down to the studs and build a highly custom site with raw code and go well beyond the theme styling panel by using custom css (my Weebly client projects are all based on my own custom-built base templates which are heavily reworked versions of a set of Weebly themes). I'm now looking at both Webflow and Editor X as replacement platforms for future clients who I'd normally place on Weebly. I continue to use Squarespace but agree with your critique of that editor particularly since its v7.1 overhaul. However, it remains an obvious and popular alternative to Weebly and is potentially the best option if you need to hand the keys over to the client. I'll have to deal with whatever happens to Weebly for my Weebly client sites at that point in the future when Square deigns to actually provide some information about what they're going to do about the Weebly platform. Since Square continues to allow new Weebly sites to be created, it looks like the termination or migration notice is still a ways off.

[tnoskoguy]

@ifly4fun2 

I agree with everything you've said. I have been with Weebly since 2010. I have explored other options over the past year and have lost weeks in thinking I've found a good alternative only to come up against something insurmountable that makes me abandon it. I've started sites on Wix, Wordpress and even looked at Shopify, Bokun (Im in the travel industry) but nothing else does what I need. 
This year I re-built my site on Weebly as it was so old and filled with dead content, and added an Ecwid plug in for the ecommerce. 
I love Weebly and the uncertainty of not knowing the future is so frustrating. Even if they said, there'll be no updates but everything will remain the same for the next few years until a proper Weebly/square merger is possible with all the features of the current editor, I could live with that. As long as I wasn't going to lose what I have built and have to start again elsewhere on an inferior platform.