Squarespace vs Weebly: Comprehensive comparison guide for 2024

Final verdict

Squarespace and Weebly offer unique strengths, making them suitable for different user needs.

• 
  Squarespace (Overall Grade: 7.9/10)
  
  excels with its superior design functionalities, offering a wide variety of templates and a user-friendly interface that appeals to users seeking a visually appealing and professional online presence. It stands out for its marketing features, customer support, and security measures, making it a strong choice for users prioritizing design, advanced analytics, and a secure platform.
• 
  Weebly (Overall Grade: 7.3/10)
  
  , while slightly trailing behind in the overall score, shines with its product testing options, hosting quality, website speed optimization, and a broader range of plugins and integrations. It’s particularly appealing to users looking for a user-friendly platform with a free plan option, robust hosting services, and flexibility through third-party integrations.

Best for ecommerce

Verdict

: Squarespace slightly outperforms Weebly in ecommerce, offering more robust marketing tools and analytics for growing online stores.

• 
  Squarespace
  
  : With its intuitive interface and built-in marketing tools, Squarespace is designed for those who want a stylish and effective online store. It shines in SEO optimization and analytics, making it a strong choice for businesses focused on growth and visibility.
• 
  Weebly
  
  : Ideal for users prioritizing ease of use and unlimited product listings. While it offers a secure checkout and basic ecommerce functionalities, Weebly’s lack of advanced marketing tools and transaction fees on the free plan may limit its appeal to more ambitious ecommerce projects.

Best for informational & business websites

Verdict

: Squarespace edges out Weebly with its superior design capabilities and ease of use, making it the preferred choice for creating professional and visually appealing informational business websites.

• 
  Squarespace
  
  : With a score of 8.4, Squarespace shines for informational and business websites, thanks to its wide variety of templates and user-friendly design interface. It’s ideal for those seeking a polished and professional online presence without the need for extensive technical knowledge. Squarespace’s comprehensive support and learning resources further enhance the user experience, making it a top choice for businesses focused on design and usability.
• 
  Weebly
  
  : Scoring 7.9, Weebly remains a strong contender, especially for users prioritizing ease of hosting and website speed. It offers a user-friendly platform with a variety of themes and seamless integration with third-party apps. While it may not match Squarespace in design versatility, Weebly’s robust blogging platform and ecommerce features make it a versatile option for business websites.

Detailed comparison

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Winner:
Squarespace

. If you’re looking for a platform that offers a wide variety of templates and design, Squarespace is the preferred choice.

Squarespace boasts an impressive variety of website templates, offering over 120 pre-designed options to choose from. These templates cater to a wide range of needs and industries, from creative portfolios and sleek online stores to professional business websites and personal blogs.

Squarespace Themes

Compared to Squarespace, Weebly offers a curated selection of templates, numbering in the low hundreds, which is fewer than some competitors. However, the emphasis is on high-quality, professionally designed templates covering various categories such as business, ecommerce, portfolio, blog, personal, and events. Weebly’s templates are praised for their clean, modern, and responsive design, with easy customization options for colors, fonts, layout, images, and content.

Weebly Themes

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Winner: Squarespace

. With a score of 8.3, Squarespace edges out Weebly, which scored 8.1. Squarespace is known for its user-friendly interface and straightforward navigation, making it a great choice for those seeking a hassle-free website creation experience. Weebly, while also user-friendly, has a slightly steeper learning curve for its advanced features.

Learning Resources

🏆 Winner:
Squarespace

. Both platforms offer a variety of learning resources, but Squarespace’s comprehensive Help Center, clear video tutorials, live webinars, and active community forum provide a more varied and accessible learning experience.

Squarespace ecommerce features:

• Intuitive interface
• Secure payment processing
• Built-in marketing tools
• SEO optimization
• Website analytics

Weebly ecommerce features:

• Unlimited products
• Inventory management
• Product reviews and ratings (Paid plans)
• Secure checkout
• Shipping options
• Abandoned cart recovery (Paid plans)
• Basic analytics
• SEO tools
• Marketing integrations (Paid plans)

Ecommerce themes & templates

Squarespace provides a diverse selection of around 50 ecommerce templates, catering to various industries like fashion, beauty, home goods, and technology. These templates range from clean and minimalist to bold and colorful, accommodating different brand aesthetics and product types. Weebly, on the other hand, provides ecommerce-specific themes with a decent range of styles, but with less design flexibility and a smaller theme selection compared to Squarespace.

Product page customization

Squarespace offers options for layout, design, and interactive elements on product pages. However, customization options are limited with free templates and may require technical expertise for advanced options. Weebly allows a decent level of product page customization through its user-friendly interface, but limitations exist in design flexibility compared to dedicated platforms.

Payment processing

Squarespace provides flexible payment processing for online stores with integrated gateways like Stripe and PayPal, and includes security measures like PCI compliance and fraud prevention. Weebly seamlessly integrates with popular payment processors such as Square, Stripe, PayPal, and others, enabling secure and convenient online transactions for your store. However, transaction fees may apply depending on the plan and payment method with Squarespace, while Weebly charges transaction fees on the free plan.

Winner:
Squarespace

. With a score of 8.3, Squarespace’s user-friendly editor allows easy drag-and-drop website creation without coding. It offers visually appealing templates and customization options, catering to beginners and pros alike. The real-time editing experience ensures instant previews. Prioritizing content, it’s mobile-responsive and offers functional features like forms, social media integration, and online stores. Squarespace seamlessly integrates with tools for extended capabilities.

Weebly’s website editor, scoring 7.6, stands out for its drag-and-drop simplicity, catering to beginners with an intuitive interface and visual editing. The editor features a range of pre-designed templates, customization options, and content management tools, making it accessible for users without coding knowledge. While offering ease of use, it has some limitations in design flexibility and advanced features, with certain functionalities requiring a move to paid plans.

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Winner:
Squarespace

. Both Squarespace and Weebly offer mobile apps that allow users to manage and make basic edits to their websites on the go. However, both apps have limitations and do not offer the full range of functionalities available on desktop.

Squarespace’s mobile app enables content editing, website analytics, online store management, and social media scheduling. While it provides essential features, complex tasks such as advanced design customization or creating new page layouts require access to the desktop editor.

On the other hand, Weebly’s mobile app offers features like content management and basic design customization. However, it lacks advanced editing capabilities or extensive design flexibility, making it best suited for quick content updates rather than major design changes.

In summary, Squarespace’s mobile app offers a slightly better mobile editing experience, earning it a higher score in this category.

Overall Result

:

Weebly Wins


. Weebly scores 8.3 in product testing options, slightly higher than Squarespace’s 7.4. Weebly offers a free version and a 30-day money-back guarantee, allowing users to explore all the features of any paid plan and get a full refund if not satisfied. Squarespace, on the other hand, offers a 14-day free trial and a full refund within 14 days for annual subscriptions. However, it does not allow testing of all premium features.

Squarespace and Weebly have similar pricing structures, but Squarespace offers more advanced features in their higher-tier plans.

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Winner: Weebly



. Both Squarespace and Weebly offer reliable hosting services with a 99.9% uptime guarantee. However, Weebly edges out with its diverse hosting options, including shared, cloud-based, and managed hosting. While Squarespace has data centers across North America, Europe, and Asia, Weebly leverages a global network of data centers, although the specific locations are not disclosed due to security reasons.

🏆 Winner: Weebly


Both Squarespace and Weebly prioritize website performance and page speed, but Weebly has a slight edge due to its higher average PageSpeed score and shorter load times.

Weebly has significantly enhanced its Core Web Vitals performance by implementing measures such as automatic image optimization, lazy loading for content, code minification, and caching. These improvements, along with streamlined JavaScript usage and an enhanced server infrastructure, aim to boost website loading speed and responsiveness. Weebly’s load times range from 2s to 4s, with an average PageSpeed score of 80+/100.

Squarespace, on the other hand, focuses on responsive design, image optimization, CDN, code minification, and lazy loading of images to optimize website speed. Its load times range from 0.7s to 9.1s, with an average of 2.9s. The PageSpeed scores range from 20/100 to 93/100, with an average of 62.7/100. Squarespace also emphasizes improvements in LCP, FID, and CLS for Core Web Vitals.

🏆 Winner:
Weebly.

With a score of 7.5, Weebly offers a more extensive range of plugins and integrations compared to Squarespace, which scores 6.8. Weebly’s App Center and the ability to inject custom code provide users with a wide range of functionalities to enhance their websites. Squarespace, while offering seamless functionality through its official partner integrations, lacks an official app store, which may limit its extendability.

Squarespace Applications

Weebly Applications

Overall Winner: Squarespace

. Squarespace edges out Weebly with a slightly higher score in marketing features. Both platforms offer a comprehensive set of tools, but Squarespace’s advanced analytics and reporting capabilities give it the upper hand.

🏆 Winner:
Squarespace

. Squarespace edges out Weebly in this category with a slightly higher customer support score. Squarespace offers a variety of support options, including live chat, email, a community forum, and a comprehensive help center. While live chat and phone support are available on weekdays, email support is available 24/7. Squarespace also provides language support in several languages across different support channels.

Weebly also offers a variety of support options, including an extensive online help center, a community forum, and email support. Live chat is available during limited hours, and phone support is offered to Pro and Business plan users in the US and Canada during specific hours. The online help center and community forum are accessible 24/7.

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Winner:
Squarespace

. Squarespace’s security measures are comprehensive, including secure server storage, encryption, strict access controls, compliance with regulations such as GDPR and CCPA, transparent privacy policies, and additional security measures like vulnerability scanning and malware detection. These measures collectively safeguard your website content and customer information.

Although it may not offer the same level of specialized ecommerce security features as Squarespace, Weebly is committed to maintaining a secure platform for all types of websites. This includes secure data storage in the United States, compliance with data privacy regulations like GDPR and CCPA, encryption, access controls, and regular backups. Users also benefit from strong password security, two-factor authentication, and the ability to manage their personal data. However, Squarespace’s higher security score indicates a slightly more robust security offering.

🏆 Winner:
Squarespace

. With a score of 7.5, Squarespace offers a variety of AI-powered features that assist in website creation, including AI-powered copywriting for product descriptions, SEO optimization guidance, and insights for personalized email marketing campaigns. On the other hand, Weebly, with a score of 1.8, does not offer a dedicated AI builder feature or any built-in AI-powered features specifically for ecommerce. However, it does allow for the integration of third-party AI-powered plugins.

🏆 Winner:
Squarespace

. Both Squarespace and Weebly offer different levels of user management based on the selected plan. However, Squarespace provides more flexibility with customizable access privileges for each user.

• Squarespace allows varying numbers of users with editing access depending on the plan. The Personal Plan allows one owner, Business and Commerce Plans permit 2 collaborators with different access levels, and the Enterprise Plan offers unlimited users, each with customizable access privileges.
• Weebly’s user access also varies with the plan. The Free Plan allows only one user, the Personal Plan accommodates two users, the Professional Plan permits up to 10 users, and the Business Plan offers unlimited user access.

Squarespace User Roles and Access Levels:

Weebly User Roles and Access Levels:

Additional Features

User Feedback

Squarespace is well-liked for its easy-to-use interface and versatile tools, making it ideal for those who aren’t tech-savvy. It offers various features like website creation, SEO, online selling, and more, catering to different users. Customers appreciate its good customer support and visually appealing templates, creating a professional online presence. However, some users find issues with domain transfer/setup, limited customization options, and consider the pricing slightly higher. There are also occasional concerns about customer service and technical limitations like template rigidity and missing features.

Square Online (formerly Weebly) receives positive reviews for its user-friendly drag-and-drop interface and quick website development features, making it suitable for small businesses. Users highlight its role in efficient appointment booking, saving time in coordination and scheduling. However, some express a desire for more advanced building tools and better pricing. The platform is recognized for streamlining website and payment operations, though opinions on customer service and design limitations are mixed. Overall, it is considered a good, affordable solution for small businesses.

FAQ