Review of Weebly Performance or Business Plus Plan

Weebly offers different pricing plans for different geographical locations. Performance plan is the highest plan for US based users while Business Plus is the highest level of plan for European users. Though there are few differences between Performance and Business Plus plans, they have similar features. Weebly markets for Business Plan for power sellers to increase their sales. Being said that, it is for business stores who want to sell products online and increase the revenue. If you are looking for purchasing Performance or Business Plus plan from Weebly, here is a review to check.

Through out this article, we will use Business Plan for the sake of ease.

Ecommerce Stores

The world of online ecommerce platforms is very competitive. On one hand, we have dedicated platforms like Shopify while on other hand we also have super popular plugins for WordPress like WooCommerce. We are using Weebly for more than a decade now. Earlier days, Weebly was focusing on content website owners by offering features like sliders, header videos and search box. However, in recent years especially after Square took over Weebly, ecommerce became the predominant selling point for Weebly rather than content building.

Weebly also changed the pricing plan name from Performance to Business Plus in order to target small business owners. This is a clear indication that the focus of Weebly is to offer integrated ecommerce solution with its drag and drop site builder along with the power of Square payment processor.

Weebly Pricing Plans

In total, Weebly offers five pricing plans for European users – Free, Connect, Pro, Business and Business Plus. The first three plans (Free, Connect and Pro) targets content site owners, remaining plans (Business and Business Plus) targets online sellers. However, US users will see four plans – Free, Personal, Professional and Performance. Below is the details of Weebly pricing plans in USA and the performance or Business Plus plan will cost you $26 or €30 per month when billed annually.

In our opinion, Weebly Business Plus plan pricing is very high when comparing with Magento, Shopify or WordPress. For example, you can pay less than $10 to have a decent WooCommerce online store with superior user management. However, you have to manage the store continuously for protecting from security hacks. From this perspective, Weebly is a good choice for a business owner managing multiple tasks. You can simply setup a store and focus on your business with less attention to site maintenance and security.

General Add-ons

All Weebly plans come with a free domain valid for one year after registration. After one year, you have to extend the domain with Weebly, which may cost higher compared to popular domain registrars like GoDaddy. Alternate option is to transfer the domain to GoDaddy and continue renewal there or buy a new domain from GoDaddy at the start ignoring free domain offer from Weebly.

Other than free domain, you will get $100 worth of coupon code for Google Ads (only for USA customers) and $96 value marketing with Weebly Promote. You can also choose online store themes from Weebly to start your store with the predefined templates.

Site Features

Customers need to trust your online store before deciding to purchase products. In addition, customers after landing on your store should get an impression that you are reliable. Weebly offers multiple site features to make your site reliable.

• As explained above, you can choose a good domain name for your store and assign the custom domain for your store. This is necessary instead of using Weebly subdomains like yourstore.weebly.com.
• Free SSL certificate is necessary to accept financial transaction on your store. Google Chrome and other browsers will show the site as “Not Secure” and warn users if you do not use HTTPS in the URL. Weebly offers free SSL certificate that you can use on your site to force HTTPS protocol.
• Business Plus plan allows you to have unlimited storage and bandwidth. You can store all your products and content on the server without any limitation on usage. However, remember not to use the site as a storage server to avoid violating Weebly terms of use.
• Free Weebly sites will show a banner on the footer with a message “Powered by Weebly” or “Powered by Square”. With Business Plus plan, you can remove free Weebly banner and add custom footer area for your store.
• Users can search the entire site with Weebly’s search box. You can place the search box on the header or footer or anywhere on the site.

With all these features, you can easily create a reliable online store. Users landing on your store will have a good first impression with custom domain, HTTPS and custom footer.

Store Features

Online store features are the highlight of Weebly’s Business Plus plan. In fact, if you are not a business owner there is no need to buy this plan and Weebly Pro and Connect plan would be sufficient. You can have the following online store features with Business Plus plan.

Products and Categories

With Business Plus plan, you can add unlimited products on your site. You can customize each product by adding images and group them into categories.

• Earlier Weebly had all store options in the site editor. Now, you can create products on the dashboard without editing the site. This is useful to quickly create and customize the products without going to slow editor. However, you still need to go to the editor to create product pages.
• Drag and drop “Products” and “Categories” element to display previously created products. You can also create products using the “Products” element, but this will go to the dashboard section outside the editor.
• Go to “Pages” menu in editor and add a new “Product Page”. Choose the product you want to insert on the page and you are done. You can also create product grouping using “Categories” element or display multiple products in grid or masonry layout.
• You can request product reviews from customers and post them on your site.

It is a confusion that Weebly offers similar options in the dashboard as well as inside the editor.  

Product Types

As it is evident, not all business owners sell physical products. If you are planning to sell digital goods like eBooks, music or videos then Business Plus plan covers you safely. When you are creating product, select the “Item Type” and fill up the required details. For example, you have to upload the file and setup download limits for digital products. Below are the item types Weebly allows to sell:

• Physical
• Digital
• Donation
• Membership
• Event
• Service
• Prepared food and beverage

Payment Processing

Business Plus plan allows accepting payments from different vendors and processing the payments on your own domain.

• Shopping cart that you can add in the site header. It will show you the items on the cart and allow you to checkout.
• Accept payments from PayPal, Square or Stripe.

Remember, you have to pay transaction fee for using payment processors on your site. Check out this article on the detail of transaction fee for each payment processors.

Inventory Management

You can manage physical products with stock data using inventory management. This will help you to tally physical and online goods; you can precisely show the current available stock to your customers.

In addition, you can use automatic tax calculation in the product pricing if you are located in United States.

Coupons and Gift Cards

Do you want to give coupons or sell gift cards to customers? Weebly Business Plus plan has options for that as well. You can create coupon codes to encourage returning customers to buy products with discount.

Square offers gift card that you can sell through your Weebly store. It is also possible to accept Square gift cards as a payment for your product. This will make your store unique and help you to stand from competitors selling similar products.

Shipping Features

Physical products have different selling process compared to digital downloads. In fact, Weebly is suitable for business owners who sell physical products.

• You can setup shipping calculations based on number of products and price or use a flat rate.
• If you are using Square, it is possible to print shipping labels from the Square dashboard.
• Setup discounts on transportation cost.

SEO and Marketing

You can add title and description for each product so that search engines like Google can show them properly on the search result pages. In addition, you will have the following marketing options:

• Add subscription form to collect emails from users. You can use the collected emails to send emails about new products, coupons and gifts.
• Analyze the site statistics to get the traffic data.
• Check the sales trend, product performance and coupon usage.
• Show pop-up notifications to customers.

Learn more SEO options for Weebly site.

Support

The best option for Business Plus users to get support is to call Weebly consultants. In addition, you can also raise your queries in the community forum, use online chat or send them email. In our experience, Weebly offers average support even for premium users. However, there will not be much need to contact them, as you will get everything as a package.

Business Vs Business Plus

In addition to Performance and Business Plans confusion, you will also be confused when comparing Weebly’s Business and Business Plus plans. Both plans offer same online store features. There are few additional benefits you will get with Plus plan.

• Sometimes users add products to the cart and then change the mind not to buy. In such cases, you can track the history of abandoned carts and trigger emails to the users. This may help to bring the user back and buy your product. You can also offer coupon of gift card to encourage them to buy your products with discount.
• Weebly Promote is a separate email marketing feature that helps to run marketing campaigns. You will get limited Weebly Promote access worth $96 in order to send emails to customers.
• You can use real-time shipping to assign accurate shipping price based on factors like carrier, destination and product’s weight.

Backup and Restore Data

Security is one of the biggest problems for hosted stored like WordPress or Shopify. Since Weebly does not allow you to access the server, it is unlikely that someone can hack your online store. This will help you to focus on the selling while Weebly takes care of secured hosting. However, the problem comes with backup and restoring of your products. It is not possible to backup Weebly product pages. Therefore, you have to completely rely on Weebly for protecting your data.

In addition, Weebly does not have trash bin option to keep deleted pages. If you have accidentally deleted product pages then the only option is to contact Weebly support for restoring. However, there is no guarantee Weebly guys will help you to restore the content since we do not see they have automated backup plans included in any pricing plans.