Weebly vs Format: Comprehensive comparison guide for 2024

Final verdict

Weebly and Format cater to different niches within the website builder market, with Weebly offering a more versatile platform and Format focusing on creative professionals.

• 
  Weebly (Overall Grade: 7.3/10)
  
  excels as a user-friendly website builder that appeals to a broad audience, including small businesses, bloggers, and online stores. Its strengths lie in its comprehensive ecommerce features, robust hosting quality, and a wide range of plugins and integrations. Weebly’s platform is designed to be accessible to beginners while still offering advanced features for growth and scalability.
• 
  Format (Overall Grade: 5.8/10)
  
  , while scoring lower overall, stands out for its niche appeal to creatives looking to showcase their work. It offers a range of customizable templates and features tailored for photographers, artists, and designers. Despite its ease of use and specific tools for creative professionals, Format’s limitations in ecommerce, hosting quality, and website speed optimization make it less versatile compared to Weebly.

Best for ecommerce

Verdict

: Weebly is the stronger choice for ecommerce, offering a broader range of features tailored for online stores, while Format caters more to creatives who need basic selling tools.

• 
  Weebly
  
  : With its user-friendly interface and comprehensive ecommerce capabilities, Weebly is well-suited for businesses looking to grow online. It offers unlimited product listings, advanced shipping options, and robust marketing tools, making it a versatile platform for a variety of ecommerce needs.
• 
  Format
  
  : While Format provides essential ecommerce features, it’s best suited for creatives looking to sell a limited number of products. Its focus on portfolio presentation means ecommerce is not the core strength, making it a secondary option for those prioritizing online sales.

Best for informational & business websites

Verdict

: Weebly is better suited for informational and business websites, offering a more versatile platform with a higher score in this category.

• 
  Weebly
  
  : With a score of 7.9, Weebly stands out for its user-friendly interface, diverse template selection, and comprehensive features that cater to a wide range of business needs. It’s particularly effective for creating informational websites that require robust functionality and flexibility.
• 
  Format
  
  : Scoring 7.2, Format is a strong platform for creative professionals looking to showcase their work. However, for broader informational and business website needs, it may not offer the same level of versatility and functionality as Weebly.

Detailed comparison

🏆

Winner: Weebly.

If you’re looking for a platform that offers more creative control and a wide array of design features, Weebly is the preferred choice.

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

Compared to Weebly, Format is a website builder specifically designed for creatives, offering nearly 100 customizable templates tailored for various artistic disciplines. It emphasizes high-quality imagery and mobile-friendly designs, ensuring portfolios look professional on any device. While it offers easy-to-use features and e-commerce tools for selling work directly, some users find its interface less intuitive and its feature set somewhat limited for broader website needs.

Format Themes

🏆 Winner: Format

. With a score of 8.3, Format edges out Weebly (8.1) in terms of ease of use. Format’s intuitive drag-and-drop interface and straightforward dashboard make it accessible for users without extensive technical skills, making it an attractive option for artists, photographers, and designers seeking an easy-to-use solution for creating professional websites.

Learning Resources

🏆 Winner: Weebly

. While both platforms offer solid learning resources, Weebly goes a step further with its Help Center, blog, video tutorials, webinars, and community forum, providing valuable guidance for users.

When it comes to ecommerce, Weebly offers a more comprehensive solution compared to Format. Weebly’s ecommerce features include unlimited product listings, secure checkout, customizable shipping options, and discount promotions. However, it’s worth noting that some advanced features are only available with paid plans, and transaction fees apply on the free plan. On the other hand, Format, which is primarily designed for portfolio websites, offers basic ecommerce functionalities for selling physical and digital products.

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)

Format ecommerce features:

• Inventory management and tracking
• Discounts
• Multiple currency options

Ecommerce themes & templates

Weebly provides ecommerce-specific themes with a decent range of styles, offering built-in features like product galleries and optimized checkout flows. While customization options include adjustments to colors and fonts, limitations exist compared to dedicated platforms, with a smaller theme selection and less design flexibility, potentially requiring additional costs for premium themes with advanced features. On the other hand, Format does not have ecommerce specific templates.

Product page customization

Weebly allows a decent level of product page customization through its user-friendly interface, offering options for layout, colors, fonts, backgrounds, and content. While not as extensive as dedicated ecommerce platforms, it enables personalized and visually appealing product pages. Advanced customization, including custom CSS and app integrations, is available with paid plans, but limitations exist in design flexibility compared to dedicated platforms. Format offers limited specific details on product page customization directly, but its e-commerce features suggest a focus on showcasing products through high-quality imagery and detailed descriptions.

Payment processing

Weebly seamlessly integrates with popular payment processors such as Square, Stripe, PayPal, and others, enabling secure and convenient online transactions for your store. Users can choose their preferred gateway, set up payment processing within Weebly’s settings, and benefit from features like secure checkout and, on paid plans, options for recurring payments and international transactions. The Format website builder offers integration with major payment gateways, including Paypal and Stripe. It charges a 15% commission on the Pro plan and 5% on the Pro Plus plan. However, the platform does not have built-in POS (Point of Sale) capabilities.

🏆

Winner: Weebly

. Weebly, with a score of 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.

Format’s website editor, scoring 7.5, offers a variety of features for creating online portfolios. It provides nearly 100 professionally designed templates and thousands of design variations without requiring any coding. Users can express creativity with custom pages, incorporating unique gallery layouts, colors, text formatting, and custom code embeds. The templates and pages are fully responsive, ensuring a mobile-first experience. Format also supports direct video hosting, high-quality image rendering, and easy template switching to give sites a new look. Additionally, it includes studio management tools, e-commerce capabilities, and SEO tools.

Mobile editor/app

🏆

Winner: Weebly

. Both Weebly and Format offer mobile editing capabilities, but they cater to different needs and skill levels. Weebly has a mobile app that allows users to manage and make basic edits to their websites on the go. While it offers features like content management and basic design customization, it has limitations, such as no advanced editing capabilities or extensive design flexibility, making it best suited for quick content updates rather than major design changes.

On the other hand, Format does not offer a dedicated app for editing on mobile devices. While it is possible to edit your website using a mobile browser, the interface presented is the same as the desktop version, making it difficult to use on a smartphone. Therefore, Weebly is the clear winner in this category due to its dedicated mobile app.

In summary, Weebly receives a higher rating due to its dedicated mobile app and ease of use, while Format is limited by its lack of a dedicated mobile app and a less user-friendly interface on mobile devices.

Overall Result

:

Tie

. Both Weebly and Format score 8.3, each with their unique advantages in product testing. Weebly offers a free version and a 30-day money back guarantee for all paid plans, allowing users to test the premium features. Format, on the other hand, provides a 14-day free trial during which users can test the premium features. Both platforms offer a 30-day money back guarantee.

Weebly offers a more affordable range of plans compared to Format, but Format provides more specialized features for creative professionals.

Winner: Weebly

Weebly offers a more comprehensive hosting service, with shared, cloud-based, and managed hosting options. It also guarantees an uptime of 99.95% and leverages a global network of data centers for reliable and efficient hosting. On the other hand, Format does not provide detailed information about its hosting services, including the type of hosting, uptime, and data centers, which makes it difficult to assess its hosting quality.

🏆 Winner: Weebly

Both Weebly and Format prioritize website performance and page speed, but Weebly has a higher score and more detailed strategies for speed optimization, making it the clear winner in this comparison.

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, and its average PageSpeed score is over 80/100.

On the other hand, Format’s strategies for speed optimization are less detailed, focusing mainly on image and video optimization. It does not provide specific load times and PageSpeed score ranges, and does not disclose any information on their Core Web Vitals improvements. Therefore, it is difficult to assess the effectiveness of Format’s speed optimization efforts.

🏆 Winner: Weebly.

With a score of 7.5, Weebly offers a more extensive range of plugins and integrations compared to Format, which scores 4.9. Weebly’s App Center provides a wide array of integrations for diverse needs, and its higher-tier plans even offer API access for added functionality. On the other hand, Format’s capabilities for expansion through plugins and integrations are notably limited, offering support for a few key integrations like Adobe Lightroom, Mailchimp, and Google Analytics.

Weebly Applications

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Overall Winner: Weebly

. Weebly stands out for its comprehensive set of marketing tools, including robust SEO features, third-party email marketing integrations, and a variety of social media integrations. Format, while offering basic marketing features, lacks the advanced capabilities of Weebly.

🏆 Winner: Weebly

. Weebly edges out Format with a slightly higher customer support score of 7.3 compared to Format’s 7.0. Weebly offers a variety of support options, including an extensive Online Help Center with articles and tutorials, a Community Forum for peer-to-peer assistance, and Email Support for submitting tickets. 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.

Format, on the other hand, offers 24/7 customer support, including email or live chat options. The tech support team is distributed across different countries to ensure round-the-clock availability. However, it does not offer specific support for enterprises, unlike Weebly, which provides a dedicated account manager, priority phone support, and enhanced onboarding and training resources for Business plan users.

🏆

Winner: Weebly

. Weebly scores higher in security with a score of 8.3 compared to Format’s 7.4. Weebly’s security measures are comprehensive, including secure data centers, routine system updates, encryption through SSL certificates, compliance with PCI standards for secure transactions, automatic malware scans, spam prevention measures, robust password protection, optional two-factor authentication, and user permission controls. These measures collectively ensure a secure and reliable environment for individuals and businesses utilizing Weebly for website creation.

Format, while not as comprehensive as Weebly, still emphasizes the security of user data through encrypted data storage, both in transit and at rest, and employs strict access controls to ensure that only authorized personnel can access sensitive information. The platform regularly updates its security measures to protect against new threats and complies with data protection regulations like GDPR. Users are also provided with resources to help secure their accounts, including strong password guidelines and two-factor authentication options. However, specific details about Format’s security measures were not directly mentioned, the website builder does offer SSL security across its plans, which is a fundamental security feature for any website.

🏆 Winner: Weebly

. Although both Weebly and Format lack native AI capabilities, Weebly has a slight edge due to its ability to integrate third-party AI-powered plugins. This allows users to enhance their content creation process with AI tools, even though these are not built into the platform itself. Format, on the other hand, does not offer any AI capabilities, either natively or through third-party integrations.

🏆 Winner: Weebly

. Weebly offers a more comprehensive user management system compared to Format.

• Weebly allows varying numbers of users to edit a website depending on the plan selected. The Free Plan allows only one user, suitable for personal or simple projects, while the Personal Plan accommodates two users, making it appropriate for small businesses or collaborative efforts. The Professional Plan permits up to 10 users, catering to growing businesses or teams with specific roles, and the Business Plan offers unlimited user access.
• Format, on the other hand, only allows one user to manage and edit websites, making it more suitable for individual creatives.

Weebly User Roles and Access Levels:

Format User Roles and Access Levels:

Format does not provide different user roles and access levels. It only allows one user to manage and edit websites.

Additional Features

User Feedback

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.

Users highly praise Format for its user-friendly website builder, particularly noting the ease of adding images and the effectiveness of customer service. Many reviewers appreciate the variety of modern templates and the platform’s suitability for users without technical expertise, especially photographers. Format’s mobile app and proofing section receive special mentions for their convenience and functionality. However, some users desire more customization options, particularly for mobile views, and mention minor limitations in template flexibility and SEO functionality. Overall, Format is celebrated for its ability to provide a professional online presence easily and efficiently, solving users’ needs for showcasing work and attracting new clients.

FAQ