BEST WEEBLY ALTERNATIVE

As someone who creates portfolio sites for a living, I initially went with Weebly due to its intuitive website builder, which was perfect for easily designing sites for someone lacking coding skills like me.

However, as I got more experienced and started taking on more challenging projects, I began noticing the restrictions imposed by this website builder and free website hosting provider, which is why I started looking into Weebly alternatives.

I researched a variety of highly rated options to ensure I could pick the best replacement for Weebly in terms of functionality, user-friendliness, and pricing.

❌ Unresponsive mobile versions. Even though Weebly promotes its templates to be mobile-responsive, real-life testing has shown that it’s not the case in most situations. Webpages can be displayed distorted or misaligned, which is unacceptable when you’re trying to design a professional website.

❌ Dated templates. The dated theme library lacks modern, stylish options that most clients expect these days, making it harder to design an attention-grabbing, contemporary portfolio.

❌ Infrequent updates. After using Weebly for a long time, I have found that the developers rarely add any new noteworthy features. The editor is outdated, doesn’t have any AI-powered features, and is missing gridlines for making more precise adjustments as well.

❌ SEO restrictions. The fact that Weebly isn’t SEO-friendly made it more difficult for my clients to ensure their portfolios are easy to find on the web. For example, the inability to edit the robots.txt file or adjust the OpenGraph tags led to the website being less optimized for search engines and social networks.

❌ Limited blogging functionality. Blog posts can be essential for telling the stories behind a photo or an illustration. Sadly, the available tools and the absence of an integrated text editor and customizable headers made starting a photography blog and writing posts a lot more challenging and needlessly complicated, while also resulting in visually inconsistent post layouts.

Additionally, this platform is arguably too expensive compared to what Weebly alternatives are offering at similar price points and its client support feels underwhelming as well.

Probably the biggest benefit that Dreamweaver has is its support of coding in HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, which is missing in Weebly and most other Dreamweaver alternatives that restrict you to using premade templates. Moreover, its live and multi-screen preview modes simplify the task of optimizing layouts for PCs, tablets, and smartphones.

As someone who frequently employs Photoshop and Illustrator when working on portfolios for my customers, Dreamweaver’s intuitive integration with Adobe software has been extremely useful, allowing me to conveniently import and export images, clips, and other visual elements as I see fit.

Dreamweaver offers a robust feature kit while remaining pleasantly intuitive. It also has a split view that displays the code and website at the same time, allowing me to instantly see how each line of changed code translates to the final look of the portfolio, which is especially useful when trying out new techniques.

Pricing: Dreamweaver free trial, from $22.99/mo

After using Squarespace for a while, I have found it to be a fantastic alternative to Weebly if you want to create an eCommerce website. It’s also a great choice for blogs, online portfolios, and landing pages. Even though it’s primarily aimed at creatives, some of its templates can be used for other industries. Moreover, the point-and-click editor makes website customization extremely convenient.

This free web design software is highly flexible, enabling me to incorporate CSS and JavaScript code snippets to personalize my portfolio website and expand its functionality. While Weebly is capable of that too, Squarespace is more intuitive in this regard. Its SEO tools are also more expansive, supporting a wider range of custom codes.

In contrast to Weebly, Squarespace helped me personalize the mobile version layout of my site. It helped me examine and edit the design of my web pages to ensure they look professional on screens of any size. While the website you create using Squarespace is mobile-friendly by default, the ability to customize it even further is greatly appreciated.

Pricing: 14-day free trial, then from $16/mo (billed yearly)

Wix completely outclasses Weebly when it comes to customization. It offers a huge library of stylish templates, including the ones for portfolios, and an expansive feature set. This service also comes with an ADI (Artificial Design Intelligence), capable of designing a site for you. All those facts led me to believe that this portfolio website builder is probably the best choice for beginners.

Wix offers the most flexibility out of all the tools I’ve tried, providing over 1,000 design elements that I can conveniently add to my own website. If you feel overwhelmed by the huge selection of options, you can employ the Wix ADI to generate a unique site based on your answers to a couple of simple questions.

Wix’s template selection includes over 900 options, with a large portion of them being designed for eCommerce platforms and portfolios. Each template offers terrific responsiveness, and you can also visit the platform’s marketplace to browse more than 250 unique integrations that can expand your site’s functionality where it may be lacking.

Pricing: free plan, from $17/mo

One of the main reasons why I started looking for Weebly alternatives is to find an option that is easier to use and Hostinger represents just that. If you need to create a pro-quality portfolio website as fast as possible, this is a great option to try.

This website hosting for photographers comes with a wide selection of templates for different site types. You can find suitable options by simply clicking on a category that interests you. Additionally, unlike Weebly, Hostinger employs ADI to produce unique templates that are a perfect fit for the needs of specific clients without requiring hours of manual design work.

Moreover, whether I pick a template or employ ADI, the result can be customized to my liking. Hostinger also offers a variety of AI features, including a logo designer, heatmap, slogan generator, and several others. Lastly, you can integrate this platform with other free third-party solutions to expand its functionality even further.

Pricing: from $2.99/mo (if you get the two-year plan)

If you own a small business or a personal brand and don’t have any web design experience, I suggest using GoDaddy. It will guide you through the process of putting together a portfolio website even if you haven’t written a single line of code in your life. This user-friendly eCommerce website builder helped me produce a professional-looking portfolio that satisfied all the requirements of my client.

The main reason why this option is so beginner-friendly is its ADI editor. After I provided the answers to a couple of simple questions (industry, preferred style, etc.), the tool automatically generated an appropriate site in less than 30 seconds.

After the generation process was done, I could edit the layout of the site, its color palette and fonts, and the range of included interactive elements until I was satisfied with the result. The only downside here is the more limited customization compared to Wix or Squarespace.

Pricing: free plan, from $10.99/mo (billed yearly)

Site123 is among the most user-friendly and affordable website builders for photographers out there. It offers intuitive block-based and template-based controls that allow you to design websites very quickly.

This platform is a lot simpler to navigate and learn than Weebly. When working on my portfolio, I simply selected a block, specified its location, and waited for the result. I didn’t even have to drag and drop it manually while agonizing over its optimal placement. I can just edit the content of every block I add to the webpage as I see fit and publish the changes.

Site123 is also a fantastic blogging platform. It lets me customize all the parameters of my blog posts and comment section to ensure they reflect my brand identity and preferred visual style. It also comes with built-in AI (ChatGPT) functionality to help me create content for my blog.

Pricing: free plan, from $7.80/mo

Budget. Begin by determining your budget. Weebly is a rather affordable option, so if you want an even better deal, then you should consider a platform like Hostinger, which provides an impressive feature set for a low price.

Site type. Weebly primarily focuses on eCommerce platforms, so if your site needs to serve a different purpose, consider picking a more versatile option. For example, you can use Squarespace to design a professional landing page or a website for a business startup. On the other hand, if you just want a basic blog or personal website, then you can’t go wrong with SITE123.

Design and flexibility. If your goal is to design a unique, aesthetically stunning site, you need a Weebly alternative that offers a wider range of features. For example, Wix not only provides 900+ templates for you to choose from, but an array of other design elements as well.

Customization. If you want to control the tiniest detail of how your website looks, Adobe Dreamweaver should be at the top of your list. In contrast to other options, Dreamweaver lets you edit the code as you see fit, allowing you to fine-tune the layout and design of your website to your exact specifications.

Skills and time. The main purpose behind a site builder is that it’s aimed at users who can’t create a website on their own and need a more straightforward solution. That said, some platforms are more difficult to use than others. If you want to enjoy a smooth, streamlined workflow, you’ll be satisfied with a builder like GoDaddy that will guide you through each step of the process.