WordPress vs Weebly: A Comparison

WordPress and Weebly are popular website-building platforms that allow you to create websites with virtually no knowledge of HTML, JavaScript, or CSS. On both platforms, the method of creating pages is similar, but not identical. In this article, we will show you the differences between them so you can choose the best solution for your website. Read the full article to learn what distinguishes WordPress from Weebly.

WordPress

WordPress is a content management system (CMS) used for creating and managing websites. It is an open-source platform, completely free to download and use. WordPress is hugely popular, holding over 64% of the CMS market. The second CMS on the podium is Shopify, which has just 5.6%.

In 2025 Weebly holds a 0.7% market share of all the websites that use CMS. Weebly is used by 0.5% of all websites. Weebly is presently used on 508,756 websites. Most of the Weebly-powered websites (specifically, 380,849) are registered in the US.

One of the biggest advantages of WordPress is its flexibility: you can use it to create a simple personal website, a comprehensive corporate site, an online shop, a blog, or a forum. There are thousands of free and paid extensions, plugins, and themes available for WordPress, which allow the user to customise both the appearance and functionality of the site. As the most popular CMS in the world, WordPress has a large and active community of users, so you can count on extensive support if you encounter problems.

However, WordPress sometimes requires a certain amount of technical knowledge to be used effectively. You won’t need any coding experience to create a simple website, but to build a large site with an online shop perfectly tailored to your needs, you will need at least a basic knowledge of HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and PHP.

There are two versions of WordPress available: WordPress.org, which is available for download but requires separate hosting and a domain that you will have to arrange on your own, and WordPress.com, which provides both hosting and a domain for your site. Depending on the disk space, availability of technical support, and available extensions, there are many pricing options.

WordPress – Key Features

WordPress is a powerful and feature-rich content management system. Here are its key features:

• Customisation: You have enormous possibilities to tailor your site to your needs. If a certain functionality is missing, you can download free and paid plugins that extend the site’s capabilities and help customise its appearance.
• Content Creation and Management: With WordPress, you can easily create and edit blog posts, pages, media files, and much more. A huge convenience is the history of changes on your site, where you can restore the page to a version before an edit in case of problems.
• SEO and Marketing: WordPress includes a range of built-in features that facilitate search engine optimisation (SEO) and marketing activities, such as fully configurable URLs, the ability to add meta-tags and descriptions, and integration with social media and email marketing platforms.
• User Management: WordPress allows for the creation of multiple user accounts with assigned roles and permissions, which facilitates management and enables collaboration among many people in creating the website.
• E-commerce: WordPress can be successfully used to create a professional online shop using e-commerce plugins like WooCommerce. These plugins offer payment gateway integration, allowing customers on your site to pay by card, PayPal, or many other payment systems. You will also be able to manage inventory and shipping.
• Multi-language Support: WordPress supports the creation of multilingual websites through plugins. For example, the popular WPML plugin allows for the translation of content into many languages, thereby reaching a wide audience.

WordPress – Support

WordPress is an open-source platform with a huge and active user community, which means it’s easy to get the help you need if you have problems with your site. You have several options for getting help with WordPress:

• WordPress.org Support Forum: The WordPress.org support forum is a good place to start looking for help with a problem on your site. You will find not only users of this CMS but also the people who create WordPress, so you can count on professional help.
• WordPress.org Documentation: Many of your site’s problems have probably already been solved and described. Just check the documentation to solve the problem quickly and efficiently. If you haven’t had previous contact with WordPress, be sure to start with the provided guides.
• WordPress.com Support: If you use the paid version hosted on WordPress.com, you can get help through the Support Centre, where you will find a knowledge base, tutorials, and a community forum.
• Professional Support: If you need support to solve more serious problems or to extend the functionality of WordPress, you can hire a professional WordPress developer. You will certainly find someone trustworthy in your area, and if not, most of the work can be done remotely.
• Local WordPress Community: If you live in a larger city, you might find a local group of WordPress enthusiasts who promote the system. Such groups can be an invaluable help in solving problems with WordPress.

WordPress Pricing

There are two versions of WordPress: WordPress.org, which is completely free but requires you to purchase a domain and hosting separately, and WordPress.com, which has one free plan and four paid ones.

WordPress.org

• You can download, install, and use WordPress.org for free. However, you will need to purchase your own domain and hosting, which is where your site’s files will be stored, and this involves additional costs.
• Hosting costs can vary greatly, starting from around £7-£10 per year for shared hosting, up to £60-£70 per year or more for a virtual private server (VPS).
• Domain prices can also vary significantly depending on the extension and registrar, but typically a standard .co.uk or .com domain costs from a few to several pounds per year.

WordPress.com

• WordPress.com offers several paid pricing plans and one free plan with limited disk space, limited features, and no option to choose a custom domain.
• The free plan includes a https://www.google.com/search?q=yourname.wordpress.com subdomain, 1GB of file space, and basic options sufficient for creating a simple site.
• Paid plans start from £3 per month and, in addition to more disk space, also offer greater functionality. You can see the differences between the free and paid packages on the wordpress.com website.

The final cost of maintaining your website will depend on your specific needs and the version of the platform you choose. If you choose the free WordPress.org version, you will have to add the costs of hosting and a domain. If you choose the free WordPress.com version, you will not incur any costs, but you must be aware of limitations, the inability to choose your own domain, and ads on the site. If you choose a paid WordPress.com plan, you must consider the monthly subscription costs.

WordPress Customisation

WordPress (apart from the free WordPress.com version) provides enormous possibilities for changing the appearance and settings of the site. The possibilities are practically limitless. There are several different ways to change the look or function of WordPress:

• Themes: Also known as templates, these control the appearance and sometimes the functionality of your site. There are thousands of free and paid themes available. To install a new theme, simply go to the WordPress dashboard and click: Appearance > Themes.
• Plugins: This is software that adds various functionalities to your site. You can choose from thousands of free and paid plugins, ranging from simple add-ons to powerful tools that can turn your site into a professional online shop.
• Custom Code: If you can code, there is nothing to stop you from changing the HTML, CSS, and PHP code of WordPress yourself to personalise the site’s appearance.
• Widgets: These are small blocks of content that can be placed in various areas of your site.
• Menus: WordPress allows you to create custom menus that can be placed in the header, sidebar, footer, or on any page.

Using these options, you can create a unique site tailored to your needs.

WordPress Themes

Themes control the visual aspect of your website. They are essential for WordPress to function. In just a few clicks, you can completely change the site’s appearance, colours, fonts, and menus. There are thousands of free and paid themes available, tailored to different industries, professions, and specialities. Whether you’re a carpenter or a lawyer, there are dozens of templates available for you.

There are themes for business, blogging, hobbies, and themes adapted for online shops; everyone is sure to find something for themselves. Simply log in to the WordPress dashboard, click Appearance and Themes, then Add New Theme.

After installing a theme, you can, of course, customise it to your needs by choosing your favourite font, colour scheme, or site layout. Don’t be afraid to experiment with themes—changing a theme does not affect the data on the site, and you can always safely revert to the previous theme if the new one is not to your liking. However, remember to only install themes from trusted sites. Themes installed from suspicious sources may contain viruses and steal your data. It is crucial to follow best practices for WordPress security to protect your site.

WordPress Plugins

Plugins are software that adds new functionalities to our site. The huge number of plugins is a major advantage of WordPress. Thanks to plugins, we can improve site security, enhance our site’s position in Google search results, or turn our site into a professional online shop.

WordPress has its own plugin repository, which greatly simplifies searching for and installing them, but you can also find them on other websites, download them, and install them manually. In the repository, you will find plugins for contact forms, making backups, social media integration, and much more.

Installing plugins is incredibly simple. Just log in to the dashboard, click on Plugins, and Add New. After finding the plugin that interests you, just click Install. After installation, you must activate the plugin for it to start working, and some of them also require initial configuration. It is worth reading the text files provided by the plugin creator to learn how to use it, as different plugins are operated slightly differently.

Although plugins have many advantages, they should be installed with caution.

• An excessive number of plugins can result in slowing down your website.
• Some plugins from the same category can interfere with each other’s work and cause problems.
• Each plugin is additional code, and the more code, the greater the chance of a security breach and the possibility of your site being hacked.

WordPress and SEO

WordPress includes a number of built-in features that can help optimise our site for search engines. SEO is the process of optimising a website to achieve the best possible position in search results for specific phrases and attract more organic traffic. Here are a few ways WordPress can help you with SEO:

• Clean Code: WordPress builds pages according to standards that are easily read by search engine crawlers.
• Custom URLs: WordPress allows you to create custom URLs for pages and blog posts, which helps crawlers better categorise the pages of your site.
• Alt tags for images: You have the ability to add alternative descriptions to images so that browsers can better categorise subpages.
• Header tags: Thanks to header tags, search engine crawlers can instantly recognise the content of a page without having to scan the entire text.
• SEO Plugins: Basic SEO functionalities can be significantly expanded with additional plugins. Thanks to them, you can perform detailed keyword analysis, create meta-tags, generate XML sitemaps, and much more. Popular plugins include Yoast SEO and All in One SEO Pack.

By adhering to Google’s guidelines, we have a chance to improve our site’s visibility in search results and attract more visitors. Remember that maintaining high positions in Google results requires continuous effort, and a place in the top ten once gained can easily be lost.

Weebly

Weebly does not offer the option to install its product on a hosting of your choice. The only option is to install it on Weebly’s hosting, but in the paid plans, you have the option to choose your own domain. Weebly allows you to create a professional-looking website in an incredibly simple way, without needing any coding skills. Most of the work, apart from entering content, is done using the “drag and drop” method. You can, of course, add contact forms to the site, create a good-looking blog, and even set up an online shop. This is not surprising, as since 2018, Weebly has been owned by Square (now Block), which has long handled payment systems for a huge number of online stores.

Key Features of Weebly

• Incredibly easy to use: You build a site in Weebly by dragging elements from the menu to the appropriate places on the page. Absolutely anyone can handle it.
• Templates: Weebly offers a large selection of templates that will allow you to customise the look of your site to your individual needs.
• Customisable pages: You have the ability to create custom pages, like ‘Contact’ or ‘About’, and add text, photos, and even videos to them.
• E-commerce: In the more expensive plans, you get a package of features for building an online shop with an integrated card payment system, a shopping basket, and inventory management.
• Blog: Thanks to Weebly, you can easily create a blog page.
• SEO Tools: Weebly includes built-in tools that will help you optimise your site for search engines. You can, among other things, add keywords or meta descriptions.
• Mobile Optimisation: Weebly automatically optimises pages for mobile devices. Thanks to this, your site will look great not only on computer screens but also on tablets and smartphones.
• Customer Support: Even with the free version, you have access to technical support via chat, email, and a forum, and in the more expensive plans, additionally by phone.

Weebly Pricing

• Weebly offers one free plan and several paid plans that differ in price and functionality.
• Free: In the free plan, you can set up a site on a .weebly.com subdomain. You have access to the drag-and-drop site builder, templates, and basic features like contact forms and Google Analytics integration. However, you cannot launch an online shop or use your own chosen domain.
• Connect: In this plan, you can choose your own domain and have access to basic e-commerce functionality, such as a shopping basket and online payment processing.
• Pro: The Pro plan offers extended e-commerce features, such as abandoned basket recovery and the ability to offer discounts and coupons. It also includes more customisation options, like using custom fonts or password-protecting individual pages.
• Business: You get even more e-commerce capabilities, like advanced shipping options or the ability to create gift cards. There are also several features for business, such as membership-based websites and the ability to create custom reports.

You can get better prices with annual billing compared to monthly payments. You also have the option to test the packages during a 30-day trial period.

Weebly Customer Support

Weebly offers technical support through a forum, email, chat, and, in more expensive packages, also by phone. Additionally, there is access to a Knowledge Base, a blog with tips, and tutorials.

Weebly Customisation

Weebly allows users to customise their sites in various ways.

• Templates: Weebly offers many templates to choose from, which are fully configurable and can be easily modified using the drag-and-drop method.
• Custom domain: In paid packages, you have the option to use your own domain, but you must buy it yourself and connect it to Weebly.
• Custom fonts: In the Pro and Business plans, you can use custom fonts on your pages.
• Custom code: You can add custom HTML, CSS, and JavaScript code to your pages.
• Plugins: Weebly also offers a repository of plugins, but there are not as many as in WordPress.

Weebly and SEO

Weebly includes a range of tools that will help you optimise your site for search engines like Google or Bing. These tools can help you improve your site’s visibility in search results, which can lead to an increase in visits and potential customers.

• Meta tags: You have the ability to add meta tags, such as a title and description, to every page of your site.
• Image optimisation: You can add alternative text to images.
• SEO Tools: Weebly includes a built-in SEO builder that provides tips and recommendations for optimising your site for search engines.
• Mobile optimisation: Weebly automatically optimises websites for mobile devices, which is important because for some time now, Google has been using mobile-first indexing. This means that the mobile version will determine the site’s position in the search engine.
• Custom URLs: You can create custom addresses for each of your pages, which can improve the page’s position in search results.

By using the tools above and adhering to good SEO practices, you have a chance to achieve high rankings in Google results.

Summary

The final choice will depend on your specific needs and level of technical knowledge. If you don’t know JavaScript, CSS, or even HTML, it will be safer to choose Weebly. However, if you plan to expand your site in the future and add new functionalities, I would suggest choosing WordPress.

WordPress has a much, much larger selection of plugins that extend the site’s functionality. And even if a plugin you need for specific tasks doesn’t exist, you can ultimately hire a developer to create such a plugin for you. With Weebly, it’s different—if a certain functionality is not available and a plugin that could fix it doesn’t exist, you have to accept that you won’t be able to implement that feature on the site. In that case, the only option left is to change platforms, which can be time-consuming and costly.