As a business owner, you need to ensure that your website is modern, user-friendly, and easy to manage. If you’re facing these challenges or simply want to make sure that your website looks its best, then it’s time to consider using a website builder. 

Weebly is a popular and comprehensive site builder that can help you build your website quickly. Founded in 2007, Weebly is an excellent tool for creating an online store. Its App Center has hundreds of widgets for enhancing and integrating your site with other services, and the integrated web store enables selling any combination of physical products, digital downloads, and services.

What is Weebly?

Weebly is a free and paid website builder platform that allows individuals and businesses of all sizes to create a custom website or online store quickly and easily. 

It has a simple drag-and-drop interface that makes it easy for even those with no coding experience to create an attractive website without having to hire a web designer or learn HTML. 

With Weebly, you get access to hundreds of themes and templates optimized for mobile devices and other features such as analytics tracking, ecommerce tools, and more.  

Weebly features

I personally found it easy to customize the website I created. I was able to add ecommerce features such as shopping carts, product pages, and payment gateways. Also, I added Weebly’s branding tools to modify my ecommerce logo, color scheme, font, and more which gave my site a unique look and feel. Additionally, there are hundreds of professionally designed themes that can help you quickly get your site up and running. 

Weebly makes it incredibly simple for me to get a full overview of my test website performance and track its progress over time with its analytics tool. After logging in to my Weebly account, all I have to do is click on “Analytics” in the left sidebar and I am presented with an array of data points such as page views, unique visitors, average session duration, and more. This page also provides a graph that shows me how much traffic has been coming through each day so that I can identify any trends or changes in user behavior. 

For even more detailed information about how users are interacting with my site, Weebly provides filters that allow me to drill down into specific data points. For example, I can view which devices users are accessing from or what countries they are located in so that I can customize my content accordingly. Additionally, if there is ever any issue with a specific page on my website—such as an image not loading correctly - I can use the filter options to see what pages people visit when they run into this issue and adjust it accordingly.  

This platform’s features made it easy for me to upload photos directly onto my test website through its drag-and-drop interface. Also, all of Weebly's templates are built with responsive design in mind so it automatically resizes for different devices (phones, tablets, etc.). This ensures that my test website looked great regardless of the device I used to view it.

Weebly’s SEO & blogging features helped me to improve the visibility of my website in search engines like Google and Bing. The platform includes powerful SEO tools such as title tags, meta descriptions, keyword optimization, etc., all of which help ensure that my site is properly indexed by search engines. Additionally, with Weebly’s blogging capabilities, I was able to create content for my website. Another great feature of Weebly I like is the App Center which provides a directory of third-party app integrations that provide extra services such as email marketing campaigns or customer feedback surveys etc.

Is Weebly easy to use?

I found the Weebly signup process to be relatively straightforward. All you need is an email address and you can get started in no time. Once you enter your credentials, you will be taken to the Weebly dashboard where you can begin creating your site. The dashboard is organized in a way that makes it easy to customize different aspects of your site such as fonts, colors, templates, etc. 

With the drag and drop tool, I was able to create a beautiful website with ease. This intuitive site builder is designed to make it simple if you want to build a website without having any coding knowledge or experience. The builder also comes with a library full of professionally designed template tools that made it easy for me to create a beautiful website quickly and with the custom fonts tool, I customized my website's style and brand with unique fonts from across the web. With this tool, as a beginner, you can easily find custom fonts that match your preferred website’s aesthetic and tone. With Weebly’s parallax and reveal tool, I was able to make my test website professional-looking with advanced animation effects. These effects gave my website an extra layer of interactivity and engagement by adding movement to static pages, helping them come alive on desktop or mobile devices.  

I found Weebly’s image editor tool incredibly useful when it came time to spruce up my website design. For example, when adding photos from my blog posts onto my home page slider, I was able to use the cropping feature to make sure each image was perfectly centered and sized for optimal viewing on desktop and mobile devices alike. Another great thing about Weebly's image editing tool is that it allowed me to make my images look professional without having any graphic design experience or knowledge. With just a few clicks of the mouse, I was able to adjust colors, add text, apply filters, crop, and rotate images - all with amazing results! Plus, there were also tons of presets available that made customizing my images even easier. 

Weebly shipping tool makes sending products domestically or internationally easy by providing real-time shipping rates dynamically by carrier address weight and quantity. So no matter where your customers are located you can rest assured knowing that you have reliable shipping solutions in place.

I used Weebly’s customizable email templates tool to send email to my Google mail account. These email tools are customized according to each customer's needs including abandoned cart emails, welcome emails, promotional emails, etc. allowing an increase in sales, conversions, loyalty, and engagement.

Plans and pricing

Weebly offers plenty of plans to choose from. One of my favorites is the Weebly Connect plan. For just $10/month (when billed annually) or $13 per month, I got access to most of the features I needed and I was able to publish my site to a custom domain name - all without sacrificing quality.

If you want even more customization and control over your website, the Pro plan is ideal. The pro plan gives you access to listing up to 25 items for sale as well as phone support whenever you need help with your website. It's available for $12 per month billed annually or $18 month-to-month. If you're serious about taking your online business further, then the Business plan might be right for you. 

With this package, you have access to list unlimited items for sale as well as accept payments through PayPal - allowing you to easily monetize your website without any extra hassle or fees. The Business plan costs just $25 per month billed annually or $35 month-to-month. 

Finally, there's the Business plus plan - ideal if you need even more features in order to scale up your operations quickly and efficiently. With this package, you gain access to powerful features like abandoned cart emails that help recover lost sales - a great way to increase revenue without any extra effort. All of these features come at just $38 per month billed annually or $46 month-to-month.

Weebly security

Weebly offers one-click SSL certificates for free with all of its plans. SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) provides an encrypted connection between the server and the browser, so any information sent from the user's computer is kept secure. This encryption helps protect your private data from potential hackers or other malicious actors who might try to steal it. It also helps build trust between visitors and the website owner, as customers feel more confident providing their information when they know it’s encrypted. 

Weebly also provides DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) mitigation services. A DDoS attack occurs when multiple computers flood a server with requests in an attempt to overwhelm it and take it offline. By having DDoS protection in place, Weebly can help protect against these malicious attacks and keep any site available to its visitors no matter what kind of traffic is coming in. 

Blogging

Weebly's blogging component didn't immediately impress us. It's plain-looking, and doesn't come with any post templates, so you have to manually drag-and-drop titles, text blocks, images and so on, to suit your needs, in a same way you build your other pages, just without any templates to guide you.

Posts can be published immediately or scheduled for later. There are also per-post comment settings enable turning comments on or off (or have them require your approval).

Weebly help and support

Weebly has a robust library of articles and tutorials that provides help on how to understand and navigate the website-building tool. On the contact us page of this platform, I found a list of helpful articles on how to create a custom domain name or how to set up an ecommerce store. The articles are written in plain language and easy-to-understand steps, so even if technology isn’t your strong suit, you will be able to find the solutions you need. The knowledge base is an extensive database containing answers to commonly asked questions about using Weebly. This is a great resource for finding solutions quickly without having to wait for live assistance. To save time and effort, use keywords specific to your issue when searching through the Weebly knowledge base - you may find that someone else has already encountered the same problem as yours and found a solution. 

The Square Seller Community is an online forum where you can ask questions about Weebly and share advice. I’m able to connect with other people who are using Weebly tools. However, if none of these resources can provide what you’re looking for, then live chat support may be your best option. Just click the “Contact us” link on Weebly’s website, enter your contact information (including email address), and start chatting with one of its friendly customer service representatives. 

Is Weebly right for you? 

Weebly is an excellent choice for creating websites quickly and easily without having any coding knowledge or design experience. The platform offers plenty of features and customization capabilities as well as robust security. With its drag-and-drop interface and comprehensive help resources like tutorials and forums, Weebly makes it easy to create modern websites tailored specifically to any budget. So if you're looking for a reliable web-building platform with plenty of options available at an affordable price point, then look no further than Weebly.

Weebly FAQs

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Gator Website Builder bundles excellent web hosting from HostGator with a user-friendly website builder tool, which makes it easy to create a quality online presence.

 Gator offers an easy-to-use, drag-and-drop interface that makes creating your own website simple and straightforward. 

What is Gator website builder by HostGator?

Gator is a website builder created by HostGator that makes website building easier than ever before. It's designed to be intuitive, so even if you don't have any experience in web design, you can still create a great-looking website with ease. 

The drag-and-drop editor allows you to customize your site without having to write code. With Gator, you can choose from hundreds of templates and customize them with your own images, text, videos, and other content. 

Pricing: Is Gator good value for money? 

Gator offers three plans, each of which is tailored to meet the needs of different types of businesses. The Start plan is Gator’s most basic plan, but it still includes some great features such as intelligent site building, free hosting, unmetered bandwidth, a free domain, bookings capability, fast websites (CDN), and a free SSL certificate. Additionally, you can access Unsplash’s image library with the Start plan. However, this plan has a limit of only three products that can be sold through your website. This makes it ideal if you are just starting out with online sales or have fewer than three products to offer customers. The monthly cost of the Start plan is $3.84.            

The Site plan has all of the same features as the Start plan plus calendar management and a side-by-side view of staff calendars for email notifications. It also allows up to 10 products to be sold through your website. The price for the Site plan is $5.99/mo. This plan may be better suited for businesses that have more than three products and need additional functionality like calendar management or staff calendars for email notifications.      

If you need even more features than what is included in the Site plan then consider investing in Gator’s Store plan which includes everything in the Site plan plus unlimited product sales capabilities, priority support, and no transaction fees. This option costs $9.22/mo. The Store plan may be beneficial if your business sells multiple products or services that need to be managed through your website with unlimited product sales capabilities.

HostGator also offer you a 45-day money back guarantee on the hosting fee, should you not be satisfied with their service.

Setup

Signing up for Gator Website Builder is simple and straightforward. The interface is familiar, and generally easy to use. A left-hand sidebar enables managing key areas of your hosting (websites, domains), while the opening screen prompts you to create your website, and once you're up and running, gives you a few very basic stats (unique visitors, total visits, page views, bounce rate.)

Tapping the Create A Site link displays thumbnails of Gator's hundreds of templates. There’s a lot to explore, but you can use keywords to narrow down your search.

Features

The editing interface is familiar and straightforward. A left-hand sidebar enables adding various types of content to the site; a toolbar at the top of the screen has a range of essential functions (page navigation, undo/ redo, desktop or mobile views, Save, Preview and Publish options), and the rest of the screen is reserved for the content of your current page.

Gator's pages are initially built from predefined sections. These start with a header and a footer, but you can add others to display particular content types (text, images, videos, image galleries, schedule, a Features, Contact Us, Join My Mailing List section, and more.)

Each section comes in multiple templates, with their own layout and formatting. Sections like Images & Text, Video & Text and Text & Buttons allow you to include further content. Pick whatever most closely matches your needs, and you can add it to the page in a couple of clicks.

You’ll also find Elements which you can drag onto your pages - to help you further customise these templates, or create sections on your own from scratch. There are a good range of elements in most of the key areas, and include multiple button types, live feeds to Twitter and Instagram, various PayPal buttons (Buy Now, Add To Cart, Donate, and Check Out), and a range of social media features (social links, sharing icons, Like buttons, Follow buttons and more.)

Page layouts are generally very flexible. Existing section elements can be moved or resized, and new elements may be dropped onto the page with pixel-level precision.

Clicking any object within a section - a text block, an image, a menu, social media buttons - displays a floating toolbar above it, with actions you can perform. These start with a decent set of standard options, including the ability to add animations (have an image fly in from the left, for instance), use drop shadows, or have the element move with the page. But there are also a good number of more element-specific tweaks to explore. 

Add a video gallery, you can set up the number of items on a space, how they're positioned, the entrance and exit transitions, the transition timings, SEO information, and set up any custom element behaviours (display a pop-up image when an element is clicked, for instance.)

Although all sites are advertised as fully responsive, The Mobile Preview section feels pretty limited, only offering an illustration of what your site would look like on a phone in vertical orientation. You can’t appear to be able to rotate it, or even see what it would look like on a larger tablet.

Smart design keeps Gator easy to use. Key functions are available in a click or two, and most of the complicated stuff is tucked away where it won't baffle newbies. Overall, it's a well-balanced editor which has plenty to offer both first-timers and more demanding users.

Blogging

Adding a blog to your Gator site, and managing it afterwards, is quick and easy.

The process starts by selecting your preferred templates. New blog posts are created using a subset of the standard page editor. There are all the usual text formatting commands, but you don't get access to the main editing widgets, and the Add Element button only allows for the insertion of images, videos, lines, headings and paragraphs. If you want to add a map, or an image gallery, or any of the other components available in the main editor, you're out of luck.

There are plenty of ways to customise how your post looks and behaves on the blog page. You're able to set a title, a cover image, and a summary, as well as assigning tags to help users find related posts, and pin a post to the top of the blog.

There's no option to schedule posts, unfortunately. Blog comments are supported by the Facebook comments system only, which can't be controlled or configured in any way. The blog has one advanced feature in its optional RSS support, but otherwise it's very much about the basics only.

E-commerce

As mentioned above, all of  Gator Website Builder plans give you an option to extend your site with a simple web store, but only the high end one offers you all the bells and whistles.

The store supports both physical goods and digital products. You can make the digital download time-limited, or set a maximum number of times a customer can download the same product from a single purchase.

If you need to import a ready-made product catalog, Gator accepts various formats such as Excel, Google Sheets, ecwid, and CSV. If your needs are more modest and you only have a few products to sell, you can input the data manually as well.

There is very little control over how products will be structured and displayed however. Your time will mostly be spent entering product details and configuring key store data (address, preferred currency, and so on.)

Product descriptions are basic, but there is enough power here for many simple sites. You start by entering one or more images, along with some formatted text and a price. There's support for product variants (size, color) and organizing products into categories (shoes, accessories). Setting up and applying discounts should appeal to potential customers, and adding a weight allows the site to automatically calculate shipping rates.

None of this begins to compete in depth and power with specialist e-commerce providers like Shopify, but Gator is undeniably easy to use, and much cheaper. You could manually add three or four products in a few minutes. Shipping and tax calculations (with international support) are built in, PayPal integration enables taking payments right away, and creating a Stripe account gets you card support, too. There’s also an option for Cash on Delivery.

Experienced users won't be impressed, but Gator Website Designer could be a reasonable choice for creating a simple web store.

Final verdict 

Gator Website Builder's smartly-designed editor is a great way to quick create professional and good-looking websites. The integrated blog and web store are relatively basic, though, and are unlikely to satisfy demanding or experienced users, but could well be appealing to beginners.

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• Best website hosting

Backblaze started in 2007 to backup a friend’s computer online. Fast forward to the present, and it is in 175 countries, in excess of 50 billion files backed up, encompassing over two exabytes (that's two million terabytes in case you were wondering) of data stored. 

In other words, it is a serious contender for best cloud backup. Additionally, it has managed to build an efficient outreach program as it publishes every quarter a detailed analysis of the failure rates of hard disk drives and SSD that it uses.

Backblaze also operates another service called B2, which it describes as an "enterprise-grade, S3 compatible storage used to store and serve data while improving companies' cloud OpEx vs. Amazon S3 and others".

A major advantage of this service is that it offers no tiers, instead just providing a single unlimited data backup locker, so even as the amount of data you've got keeps on growing, you're still paying the same amount.

However, do be aware that Backblaze is a backup service-only, and that it's not a place to store and sync your files like an ordinary cloud storage service might provide.

Backblaze features

Backblaze does not bother you with the details of your backup plan, just that it is occurring: when you initially install the desktop client, it doesn’t require you to select files and folders, but rather just grabs all the files and folders it considers important and starts transferring them to your Backblaze cloud backup.

By default, Backblaze copies everything for an ISO, DMG (Mac disk image), a virtual drive, system files or executables. You have the option to exclude other file types if you wish, but unless exclusively told to ignore them, it will include all other file types. We find it very simple and straightforward, and you can rest easy that your entire computer can be recovered if needed.

We consider it a set-it-and-forget-it solution: Backblaze is there to help you recover data such as if your hard drive catastrophically fails or your laptop fails to boot. However, realize that Backblaze is not for syncing files between computers, or getting at your music and video files in the cloud. You can include external hard drives and (on a business plan) servers in your backups, but networked drives can't be included.

Backups can be continuous, once a day, or initiated manually. Some extra variety with those timescales would be nice, but we expect the majority of users will leave it set to continuous backup mode. It's worth noting that while you can backup an unlimited amount of data, you are restricted to one computer for each Backblaze account, and mobile devices aren't included.

As standard, unlimited versions of files are kept, though only for a period of 30 days. This can be somewhat limiting, especially as weeks can pass before you realize that you are missing an important document. Given the reasonable price for the standard plan, combined with the fact that an unlimited amount of storage could hold thousands of folders filled with documents, images and videos, we think the extra $2 per month (or $14 per year) for extended file history is a no-brainer. This extends it to one year.

While only one computer is supported per license, totally unlimited data storage with no file size limits means that BackBlaze should never be the restricting element to your backing-up needs, which makes this a hugely valuable tool that is also affordable compared to many of its key rivals such as Polar Backup, LiveDrive and Carbonite, all of which offering unlimited storage plans that are currently more expensive.

Because there are no subscription tiers, every account benefits from otherwise premium features. Uploading and downloading when using the desktop client is unthrottled, which means superquick backups up to the maximum speed of your ISP and router. In order to give users more control, manual throttling can limit the amount of bandwidth used by BackBlaze in order to prioritize other tasks. This can be useful for workers who often find themselves on video calls, as it allows backups to continue automatically in the background while providing optimal speeds for your workload.

Backblaze interface

The Backblaze desktop client targets simplicity over power or flash. The options of the Backblaze package are limited, so the software doesn't have to do much except focus on the job at hand- to make sure that your files are getting continuously backed up in the background.

There is an option to exclude certain files and folders from a Backblaze backup, but it could be more straightforward. Considering you get an unlimited amount of space in the cloud, it's easier to just let Backblaze backup everything, just in case. Transferring data from an entire computer to the web is potentially a lengthy process, but the speeds Backblaze managed were impressive. You can also choose to pause or throttle the upload process if you think Backblaze is taking up too much bandwidth to override the automatic throttling.

We like its integration within the operating system that helps to simplify the backup process - or at least, for those rare events that users need to modify controls. In this case, Backblaze sits neatly in System Preferences within macOS. 

Like the desktop client, the web interface is also cut down and minimal, letting you review backed up files and restore them if needed. There's also a mechanism for sharing stored files to others that is exclusive to the web interface. Unfortunately, in terms of web functionality, Backblaze falls short of Dropbox, Google Drive or iCloud when it comes to sharing files, however it is ultimately a different proposition so this comparison is unfair.

In the event of a system failure or loss, files can be downloaded for free, or Backblaze will put them on a USB hard drive for $189 and ship your data to your door. While it may not do much beyond suck up all the files on a computer and let you restore them, Backblaze does these core jobs very well. The almost $200 spent on backing up your files should be seen more as a holding fee for the value of the large hard drive (up to 8TB), as when the restore is complete you can return it by mail and receive a full refund.

Backups are limited to PCs and Macs, however alongside the web interface there are iOS and Android apps that allow you to access your data from anywhere. Backblaze Mobile 6.0 - released on December 20th - has a new feel to it with authentication improvements for both platforms plus a bunch of teaks and updates.

While Backblaze focuses on backups rather than cloud storage, backing up a file from your computer will allow you to use it for cloud storage in a rather ‘round about’ way.

Backblaze security

Backblaze gets high marks from a security perspective: not only can you enable two-step authentication on your account, but you can also rely on AES 128-bit encryption and an SSL connection to avoid your data being intercepted as it travels through the internet. While it's not full end-to-end encryption, it's certainly safe enough for most users.

There is also the option to set up a private encryption key, known only to you, which adds an extra layer of protection to your data, for those worried about Backblaze staff prying into their affairs. The downside of this is that Backblaze can’t help you if you forget the key, and you need to share it with Backblaze if you ever need to restore your data.

Also worth noting is that users can pick between EU and US data centers.

Backblaze pricing

You can try Backblaze for free for 15 days without giving up any payment card information, but there's no free tier (as you would expect, because you're getting unlimited cloud backup). Personal plans currently cost $7 per month, also payable annually ($70) or every two years ($130), which is an increase of $1 per month since last year. There is also the $2 monthly charge in order to upgrade file version history from 30 days to one year, which in our opinion is a must.

Business customers get the same pricing, although you can contact Backblaze directly for different quotes for backing up multiple computers and servers, and on putting more of your data in the cloud for long-term storage (to replace tape backups). It's refreshing to see this sort of flexible pricing, but it does make it more difficult to compare Backblaze against competing services.

Backblaze verdict

Backblaze has a large user base, and even some fans, and it's easy to see why – if you want to back up everything from one computer and its external drives, simply and securely, without spending too much, then it's hard to beat. We appreciate that there are no limits on file sizes and no limits on the amount of data you can send to the cloud.

Just be certain you know exactly what Backblaze is before you part with any cash: it's not for syncing files between computers or getting easy access to your files through a web browser. It's a comprehensive, set-it-and-forget it backup solution for protecting your data should the worst happen, and at that task it provides a great solution.

As such, Backblaze is our favorite backup service thanks to its unlimited storage at a reasonable cost, aided by its array of restoration methods and ease of use.

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