How to Choose Better App from Weebly App Center?

Weebly introduced app center marketplace with the intention of making the platform more open ended. This also opened the door for third party developers to sell their products on an official Weebly platform on revenue sharing basis. There are hundreds of free and paid apps available on the app center and here is how you can choose the best app for your Weebly site.

How to Choose Better App from Weebly App Center?

Though app center is a good idea the quality of the apps are not pleasing the users. This can be clearly seen from the public comments and review and indicate the clear need of Weebly to work on improving the quality of apps approved for app center. For example, none of the Weebly apps work without bugs (only Code Block is the exception as far as we tested). The very good apps like Accordion, FAQ, Simple Table, etc. are useless with lots and lots of bugs. Surprisingly it has been more than 8 months and Weebly is not willing to fix the bugs of their own apps.

So we highly recommend having some guidelines before choosing any apps from the app center which may adversely impact your whole site. Learn more on how to connect App Center app to Weebly site.

• The simple and easy way is to test the apps on your testing site before deploying it on the live site.
• Read the comments and reviews before connecting any app.
• Consider using alternatives instead of relying on single developer to get support. For example, social sharing icons can easily be added with many popular services instead using an app.

Apps to Avoid

We believe there is no need of trying out apps in certain category due to the availability of easy alternatives.

• Apps for analytics are definitely not required when it is easy to integrate Google Analytics on Weebly site.
• Social sharing apps can be avoided and the free alternatives like AddThis and ShareThis can be used. The reason is very simple that third party services provide exclusive analytics of data sharing and do not depend on Weebly updates.
• Avoid newsletter apps – Weebly offers default newsletter form and popular services like MailChimp allows integrating their forms on any platforms.
• Most of the apps are offered on payment or subscription basis. For a business plan user paying $25 per month, it will be big cost to pay another $5 per month for subscribing to an app. So consider before buying an app whether it is really required for you in long run.
• Most of the apps show an unnoticeable message that the developer will use the username and email. This means you are basically registering on third party site using your Weebly credentials. Some third party sites do not even have an option to delete your account. This means even you disconnect the app you will continue to receive promotional emails unless you unsubscribe.

Good Examples

Besides lot of bad examples there are also good apps like “Color Block” offered completely free by a third party. This app allows you to place elements inside a color box. You can drag and drop any of the elements inside the color box and customize the color, paddings and corners of the box. Learn more about adding color text box without any app.

Weebly also offers free apps like accordion, FAQ, simple table, price chart, etc. Unfortunately the only one app from Weebly in a usable condition is Code Block. Add any raw code snippet on the site using Code Block app. It has simple customization options to choose the code language, header and the light / dark style.

Conclusion

Weebly app center is the way to connect developers and users directly thus allowing to have many new features. Though the idea is good as of now the execution of the idea is not much effective. We highly recommend users to test the apps on a testing site before connecting to the live site.