How to Use Weebly Developer Platform?

Weebly introduced a developer platform helping individual developers and companies to sell their products officially on Weebly’s marketplace called App Center. The products offered through App Center needs to be connected to individual site by the user and can be disconnected any time if the user does not want to use further.

Weebly Marketplace Products

At this moment there are three types of apps that can be sold through Weebly marketplace:

1. Backend services – products which will integrate with Weebly’s default platform such as enhancements in ecommerce function or providing site scanning app.
2. Elements – this is an individual widget similar to Weebly elements. It can be dragged and dropped and configured as per the user’s need. For example, pricing table app.
3. Theme – a packaged theme.

Creating Developer Account

At this moment it is free to create a developer account with Weebly. What you need is to first create a normal Weebly account from weebly.com. Then go to dev.weebly.com and create your developer account by clicking on “Admin Login” button. Fill out the account profile information like developer contact email and brief description. Below is how the developer platform dashboard will look like:

Creating a Weebly App

Once you have a developer account click on the “Create New App” button. Provide app name, category and save the app to be shown in the dashboard. You can upload a zip file as an app and fill out the details required for the app card.

Click on the “Save Draft” button to save the draft version of you app. You can upload many versions till the time of final version and test it on any of the sites available under your Weebly account. Once the final version of the app is ready, click on the “Submit for Review” button to submit it for the review process.

Weebly App Review Process

Weebly will review the submitted app in two steps – functional and product review. The functional review team at Weebly checks the functionality of your app is working as intended on all browsers and the testing site you have submitted. Once the app passes functional review then it will go through a product review where the quality and user experience are checked. It may take 1-2 weeks for functional review and additional 1-2 weeks for product review.

After passing both the reviews, you will get an email and the “Submit for Review” button will be changed to “Release”. Now your app is ready for publishing in App Center and can be seen by all Weebly users.

Revenue Sharing Process

Weebly opened the App Center to developer on a revenue sharing basis. If you are selling paid apps through Weebly App Center then be aware of the complete payment process.

• The payment cycle is based on monthly basis.
• You as a developer will get 70% and Weebly will get 30% from the app sales.
• The ceiling for the revenue sharing is $2000 on monthly basis. Any sales lower than $2000 on monthly basis need not to be shared with Weebly.
• You will get the full amount from the users and need to pay 30% to Weebly.

Improvements

We have noticed certain issues or not clear on some points regarding the concept.

• Weebly mentioned all apps are public at this point of time and private apps (only accessible to the defined users by the developer) will be considered in further release. This is an important factor since private apps may not be required to go through the multilevel approval process like public apps.
• The app is to be purchased and connected to an individual site. This means adding an app worth $5 on all your 10 sites will cost you $50. It may not be worth purchasing the app for such a high cost and in certain cases the cost the apps may exceed Weebly’s premium plans.
• As we tested, the existing content is still showing up on the published site even after disconnecting the app. We expected it to work like a pro element where the element will not appear after the expiration of the plan. In such scenario we are not clear how the paid subscription apps may work.

Conclusion

Weebly App Center marketplace is definitely a good initiative for developers to sell or showcase their products on a common platform. It may take certain time for getting more variety of products on App Center and we also hope Weebly make things more easier in the coming time.