Shopify vs Weebly: Which Platform is Best for Your Online Store?

In the booming e-commerce landscape, selecting the right platform for your online store is crucial to achieving long-term success. At this time, Shopify vs Weebly emerged as two "giants" possessing many outstanding strengths, but there are also points to note. In this article, let's learn about these two platforms with NextSky, the most optimal solution for your online business.

Shopify vs Weebly overview

What is Weebly?

Weebly started as a simple drag-and-drop website builder that allowed anyone to create a beautiful and functional website quickly. In 2018, the platform was acquired by Square and later integrated into Square Online, with a stronger focus on e-commerce. However, in 2024, Square announced that it would no longer release major updates for Weebly, resulting in a gradual decline in users, from over 1 million to approximately 800,000.

What is Shopify?

Shopify was launched in 2006 and has grown into a comprehensive e-commerce platform with a modern, user-friendly interface, a rich app ecosystem, and powerful multi-channel selling capabilities. Today, it powers over 5 million stores in 175 countries, serving everyone from small startups to multi-million-dollar enterprises, making it the top choice for those who want to start and scale an online business.

Weebly vs Shopify: Pros and Cons

1. Best pricing

Weebly

Weebly offers 4 plans, including a free tier and very reasonable paid options:

• Free: 500 MB storage, Weebly subdomain, and no product sales.
• Personal ($10/month): Connect custom domain, sell digital products, basic e-commerce tools.
• Professional ($12/month): Remove ads, free domain for 1 year, site stats, password-protected pages, phone support.
• Performance ($26/month): Product reviews, abandoned cart emails, PayPal payments, shipping labels & rates, advanced e-commerce analytics, priority support.

Shopify

Shopify has four main plans tailored to different growth stages:

• Basic ($29/month): 10 inventory locations, up to 77% shipping discount, point-of-sale support, 24/7 chat.
• Grow ($79/month): 5 staff accounts, up to 88% shipping discount, lower transaction fees.
• Advanced ($299/month): International storefronts, third-party calculated shipping rates, and the lowest payment processing fees among main plans.
• Plus ($2,300/month – 3-year contract): 200 inventory locations, dedicated priority phone support, fully customizable enterprise features.

Verdict: Weebly is clearly the more budget-friendly option, ideal for beginners and small projects. Shopify is a smarter long-term investment for those who want to build a professional, scalable online store.

Read more: Shopify Pricing: Find the Right Plan for Your Business

2. Ease of Use – A Tie

Weebly

Weebly offers a gentle onboarding experience, but there’s one thing that can confuse new users. Right after signing up, you have to choose the type of site:

• Website → takes you to the classic Weebly editor
• Online Store → redirects you to the Square Online page builder

This split can feel disjointed for users expecting a single, unified platform. Once inside the main editor, however, the dashboard is clean and minimal, with a helpful 7-step setup guide (choose theme → customize pages → publish). Following the steps, you can have a complete site ready in minutes.

Shopify

Shopify streamlines the signup process, no credit card required for the 3-day free trial. You enter your email, answer a few quick questions, and you’re dropped straight into the dashboard. The interface is clean, modern, and heavily business-oriented. All core features (products, orders, customers, marketing, etc.) are neatly organized in the left-hand menu. Shopify also provides a ready-made setup checklist directly on the home screen, allowing you to complete your store step by step.

Verdict: Both Weebly and Shopify are incredibly user-friendly, allowing users to set up and manage a store with minimal time and technical expertise.

Read more: Shopify vs. eBay: Which Is The Best Platform To Sell Your Products?

3. Design and Templates

A good template is an ideal starting point for building an online store, especially for beginners. Here’s how Weebly and Shopify compare in terms of design and templates.

Weebly

Weebly offers about 70 free templates suitable for online stores, businesses, portfolios, personal websites, events, or blogs. All templates are modern, minimalist, and fully responsive, looking especially great when you use high-quality images of your own.

Shopify

Shopify provides around 960 themes, but most are paid (starting from $100–$350). The free themes are still modern and sales-optimized, but because there are only a handful of free options, many stores end up looking quite similar. For a truly unique look, you can purchase premium themes or opt for third-party theme developers within the community (often at a significantly lower cost).

Verdict: Shopify offers a far greater variety and is more e-commerce-focused than Weebly, albeit at a higher cost. Weebly is more budget-friendly, but the limited selection may not meet everyone’s needs.

Read more: Shopify vs PrestaShop: Which Is Better for Your Store?

4. Integrated applications – Shopify

Weebly

If you use the classic Weebly editor, you get access to the Weebly App Center with over 350 apps (both free and paid) covering e-commerce, marketing, social media, and more. Additionally, you can use the Square App Marketplace, which has even more apps, but you need to create a free Square account first.

Shopify

Shopify far surpasses Weebly with over 13,000 free and paid apps in the Shopify App Store. You can find virtually any tool you need from dropshipping, live chat, countdown timers, to loyalty programs. Despite the vast number, the App Store is easy to navigate and intelligently recommends apps based on your business needs.

Verdict: Weebly has a decent app library, but Shopify clearly dominates in both quantity and quality of integrations, offering far more options. However, costs can add up quickly, so be sure to budget carefully when browsing the Shopify App Store.

5. E-commerce features – Shopify

Product management

• Weebly: Offers basic product listings with limited variants and editing options. The interface is simple and easy to use, making it perfect for small stores or uncomplicated product catalogues.
• Shopify: Offers comprehensive product management, supporting unlimited products, numerous variants, and bulk editing tools. This allows you to organize and customize products exactly as needed—ideal for growing or large-scale stores.

Order management

• Weebly: Simple dashboard with basic tools for tracking and fulfilling orders, seamlessly integrated with Square.
• Shopify: Detailed order tracking, automated fulfillment workflows, built-in returns management, and direct shipping label printing. The system saves time and minimizes errors.

Payment gateways

• Shopify: Shopify Payments supports 10 major currencies with fees ranging from 2.4% + 30¢ to 2.9% + 30¢. Over 100 additional gateways (including PayPal and Stripe) are available; however, using third-party gateways incurs an extra 0.5–2% fee if Shopify Payments isn’t available in your country.
• Weebly: Supports Stripe, Square, and PayPal Express—all at 2.9% + 30¢. Stripe is great for global sales, PayPal Express works well for donations, and Square offers convenient POS integration.

Shipping discounts

• Weebly: Up to 55% discount with UPS, but limited to U.S.-based carriers.
• Shopify: Up to 88% off with major carriers (USPS, UPS, DHL), real-time carrier-calculated rates, and automated shipping workflows.

Read more: How to Create Shopify Automatic Discounts Guide

Analytics & reporting

• Weebly: Basic reports on sales, traffic, and abandoned carts. More advanced analytics require upgrading within Square.
• Shopify: Full-featured analytics dashboard with marketing reports, sales trends, customer insights, and easy app integrations for deeper data.

Abandoned cart recovery emails

• Weebly: Only available on the highest-tier plan; sends automatic reminder emails after a set period.
• Shopify: Built-in on all plans, powered by Shopify’s payment history for higher recovery rates.

Verdict: Shopify stands out with robust, scalable e-commerce tools, diverse payment options, and deep analytics. Weebly (via Square Online) is better suited for basic, small-scale selling.

Note: Since Square acquired Weebly in 2018, all e-commerce functionality has been moved to Square Online. When you create an “online store” on Weebly today, you’re actually using the Square Online builder and feature set.

6. Marketing features – Weebly

SEO

• Weebly: Offers powerful built-in SEO tools that are very beginner-friendly. You can edit meta titles, descriptions, custom URLs, and image alt text without any apps or code. Full HTML/CSS access also lets you add header tags, schema markup, or third-party tracking scripts.
• Shopify: Includes solid, basic SEO features (editable meta titles/descriptions, clean URLs, automatic 301 redirects, and mobile-optimized themes) plus AI tools like Shopify Magic, which auto-generate SEO-friendly product descriptions.

Marketing

• Weebly: Built-in tools like lead-capture pop-ups, social media integrations, and a strong blog platform make content marketing easy—perfect for small sites or blogs.
• Shopify: Offers basic built-in features (discount codes, email campaigns, customer engagement tools), but advanced marketing (retargeting ads, Google Shopping feeds, complex email flows) requires third-party apps.

Blogging tools

• Weebly: Robust built-in blogging with archives, social bookmarking, and on-site search, excellent for content-driven sites.
• Shopify: Basic blog functionality (images, tags, SEO optimization), but lacks some of the advanced built-in features Weebly provides.

Email marketing

• Weebly: Weebly Promote is a fully integrated email marketing suite—easy to use, no extra apps needed—for newsletters, automated campaigns, and lead nurturing.
• Shopify: Basic email marketing is included (transactional emails, simple campaigns), but advanced automation, segmentation, and flows require third-party apps.

Verdict: Weebly edges out Shopify with stronger built-in blogging, SEO, and email marketing tools that are ready to use out of the box and very beginner-friendly. Shopify relies more on third-party apps for advanced marketing capabilities.

Read more: Lightspeed vs Shopify: Which POS System Is Best?

7. Performance and security – A Tie

Weebly

Weebly handles all updates and security automatically, ensuring your site remains stable without requiring manual intervention. Every plan includes free SSL certificates, encryption for sensitive data (logins and payments), password-protected pages, and DDoS protection. Recent statistics show Weebly has maintained an average uptime of 99.61% over the past 90 days—proof of high reliability and consistent performance.

Shopify

Shopify also takes full responsibility for updates and security. It provides free SSL, data encryption, password-protected pages, and strong DDoS protection on all plans. The platform consistently delivers an impressive 99.99% uptime, ensuring a fast, stable, and seamless experience for you and your customers.

Verdict: Both Weebly and Shopify automatically manage updates and security at a very high level, eliminating the outdated-site and plugin-vulnerability headaches common with self-hosted platforms like WordPress. This one is a clear tie.

8. Customer support – Shopify

Weebly

Weebly offers support via live chat, email, and an extensive help library. Phone support, however, is reserved only for the Professional and Performance plans. Although the documentation remains beginner-friendly, many users report that the quality of support has noticeably declined in recent years. Response times are often slow, and issues are not always resolved efficiently because Weebly is no longer a development priority after the Square acquisition.

Shopify

Shopify stands out with proper 24/7 support available through live chat, email, and phone on every plan. In addition, it boasts one of the most comprehensive help centers in the industry, an extremely active community, thousands of video tutorials, and even built-in AI assistance (Shopify Sidekick & help chat) that quickly answers questions and suggests solutions. The overall support experience is fast, reliable, and consistently of high quality.

Verdict: Weebly loses points because its lower-tier plans have limited direct support options, and the quality of responses has declined. Shopify delivers full, round-the-clock support across all plans and a vastly superior help ecosystem—making it the clear winner in this category.

Read more: Shopify vs Ecwid: Which E-commerce Tool Is Right for You?

Shopify vs Weebly: Which Is Best for Your Business?

When deciding between Shopify and Weebly (Square Online) for your business, it boils down to several key factors:

Shopify is best for:

• Businesses need advanced e-commerce features, scalability, and extensive customization options.
• Medium to large-scale operations requiring robust support and security measures.
• Integration with multiple sales channels and extensive third-party apps.

Weebly (Square Online) is ideal for:

• Beginners and smaller businesses looking for a user-friendly interface with simple drag-and-drop tools.
• Integration with Square’s POS system, advantageous for businesses needing physical store integration.
• Budget-conscious businesses seeking competitive pricing and basic e-commerce functionality.

Ultimately, your choice should align with your business size, growth goals, technical requirements, and budget considerations