Weebly

Weebly is a beginner-friendly website builder, now owned by Square, used to create simple websites, blogs and small online stores with drag-and-drop ease. It's popular for getting a basic site or shop online quickly and cheaply, with payments handled through Square's checkout.

Wix is more powerful and modern, with many more templates, features and design freedom. Weebly is simpler and has a clean free plan, but its development has slowed since Square acquired it. For most new sites Wix is the better long-term choice; Weebly suits very simple needs on a tight budget.

Fewer and less modern templates than rivals, slower feature development under Square, Weebly branding on the free plan, and less design flexibility than Wix or Squarespace. It's still easy and cheap, but it has clearly fallen behind the leading builders.

Yes. Weebly is a long-established, legitimate platform owned by Square (Block, Inc.), used by millions of small sites and stores. It's safe and reliable for building a website; the main caveats are its dated feel and slower development, not trust or security.

No. Weebly is owned by Square (now part of Block, Inc.), which acquired it in 2018. It has never been owned by Google.

Yes — Weebly is legitimate, owned by Block (formerly Square) since 2018, and hosts millions of sites with free SSL. The real question isn't safety but momentum: development has largely moved to Square Online, leaving classic Weebly in maintenance mode. Safe and stable, just no longer actively growing.

Yes — genuinely free forever: you can build and publish a working site with SSL at no cost, on a weebly.com subdomain with Weebly branding. Connecting your own domain and dropping the branding needs a paid plan, from US$13/mo. Among free tiers it's still one of the most usable around.

Stalled development — Block's focus is Square Online, not classic Weebly — plus dated templates next to Wix and Squarespace, limited design flexibility, thinner SEO tools and no mobile editing app. Its ecommerce is basic and carries a transaction fee on the entry store tier. The counterweights are real, though: genuine ease of use and one of the best free plans anywhere, which is precisely the niche it still owns. For a simple free or low-cost site it holds up; for anything ambitious it shows its age.

Adequate for a casual blog: posts, categories, comments and RSS are all built in, wrapped in Weebly's easy editor. Serious bloggers hit its ceilings quickly, though — limited SEO control, dated themes and none of the modern content workflows you'd get elsewhere. For blogging as a hobby attached to a simple site, it's fine; as a main pursuit where reach and presentation matter, WordPress or Squarespace will serve you noticeably better. Weebly's strength is simplicity, not publishing power.

Yes — Weebly still runs and existing sites keep working, but it's effectively in maintenance mode. Since Block (formerly Square) acquired it in 2018, development has shifted to Square Online, which is built on Weebly's underlying technology. New features and investment go there, not into classic Weebly, so the product hasn't changed much in years. It remains a perfectly usable builder today — its free plan in particular is still one of the better ones around — but treat it as a stable, mature tool rather than one that's going to grow new capabilities.

Yes — Weebly's free plan is genuinely free forever: you can build and publish a working site, with SSL included, at no cost. The trade-offs are a weebly.com subdomain, Square/Weebly branding on the site, and a capped set of features. To connect your own domain, remove the branding and unlock the fuller toolset, you'll need a paid plan, which starts at US$13/mo. For a simple hobby or placeholder page the free tier is fine; for anything business-facing, the paid step-up is worth it.

Yes — Weebly is arguably the easiest editor in this whole comparison: a straightforward drag-and-drop builder with far fewer options to get lost in than Wix. Paired with a real free plan, that makes it a genuinely good first website for someone who's never built one. The catch is that the ceiling arrives quickly — as your project grows you'll bump into its limits on design, ecommerce and marketing, and most people outgrow it within a year or two, moving to Wix, Squarespace or, for a store, Shopify. As a place to learn the ropes with no cost or risk, though, it's hard to beat.

Weebly's standard free plan is open to anyone, students included — you get a working site with SSL on a weebly.com subdomain at no cost. Separately, a dedicated 'Weebly for Education' platform with classroom-management tools still exists for schools and teachers. For a student portfolio, a class project or a personal page, the free Weebly plan remains one of the simplest ways to get something online without spending a cent.

Slowly, in effect. Since Block (the company formerly called Square) acquired it in 2018, development has shifted toward Square Online, which is built on Weebly's underlying technology. Classic Weebly still runs and existing sites keep working normally, but new features and investment now land on the Square side. It's perfectly fine for what it does today — just don't expect it to keep evolving.

Log in at weebly.com using the email address you originally signed up with — run a password reset first if it's been a while. Your sites should appear in the dashboard once you're in. If you've lost access to the account email, Weebly support can help you recover it with proof of ownership. Sites that were unpublished due to inactivity can usually be republished straight from the dashboard.

The big one is stalled development — Block's attention is on Square Online, so Weebly itself sees little new investment. Its templates look dated next to Wix and Squarespace, design flexibility is limited, and its SEO tooling is thinner than the leaders offer. There's no native multilingual support either. The counterweights are real, though: genuine ease of use for beginners and one of the most usable free plans anywhere, which is why people still reach for it.