As a Weebly user you might have noticed the upgrade of the whole site building platform to a next generation version 3.0. Weebly named it as Carbon to indicate it as a third generation update by using the third letter “C” for the name. what we are going to discuss is not about the features of the updates but about how it was forced upon on the head of premium and free users without their consent.
Weebly Update Histories
Corporate Ethics
Earlier at the end of 2012 Weebly changed the pricing plans to be effective at individual site level from account level. This change was for new customers and the old customers were still able to continue with their existing plans at account level. This is still valid today that if you have a pro account renewed before the pricing change all 10 sites under your account will have pro features. Even today the old free accounts can connect to custom domain without starter plan. This was really awesome and an example of corporate ethics to give benefit and respect to the existing customers (who are ultimately a stack holders of a private company like Weebly).
Corporate Arrogance
If you are using Weebly for many years you might have noticed a change in pattern of Weebly’s updates on their platform in past few years. Here are some examples at least we encountered and we are sure that other customers might have faced additional issues:
- Free users are restricted to 5 or 6 pages per site – as far as we checked their blog there was no announcement that the restrictions are effective. And now at least we can see there is no restrictions again on number of pages.
- Number of product elements – the current limit is 5 for free, 10 for starter and 25 for pro accounts. There was no announcement on this and we really do not understand the limitation on pro users.
- Pricing plans – below is the comparison of pricing plans of Weebly when we logged into the account and as shown on the Weebly site.
It is utter confusion that when you refer your friends or create a new site for client the pricing plan will be completely different than what you have on your account. Again we noticed that the pricing plans were changed much ahead of Carbon update and there was no information on the change.
- Membership – even pro users are limited to only 100 members (which was extended from the initial 20 after many customer complaints) without the registration feature. Though this was announced on Weebly blog, it is a clear indication that Weebly is no more interested in supporting or continuing the platform for lower end users and the complete focus of all new features are for business plans.
Carbon Upgrade
The latest Carbon upgrade is a continuation of Weebly’s corporate arrogance and amateur implementation of change management. You can see the customer complaints on the blog announcement and the whole site builder is being shacked with their untested rollout of carbon. We are really surprised with Weebly’s arrogant and ignorant behavior ignoring even the premium customer’s voices. As some of the comments in the blog post indicates “was Weebly sold to some impotent people who really want the customers to run away to other platforms”.
- While all users cry that there was no indication of the upgrade we noticed that there was an announcement on Dribble on 10th of September by Jeff Broderick with a 404 link which was corrected subsequently.
- When there are more than enough reasons to worry about carbon update, below is the comment from Weebly’s CEO David Rusenko on a site called producthunt just 2 days back.
Surprisingly when we clicked on the title of this article, it takes you to Weebly carbon update page as a referral link. The CEO does not have time to respond to even the premium user complaints on their own Weebly blog but providing misleading information of “tons of goodies” on some affiliate site which clearly indicates they are arrogant and they are not ready to listen to customer complaints. The truth is that the carbon upgrade brought tons of bugs and unstable platform which Weebly does not want to respond.
- When we read the blog comments it is a clear indication that Weebly did not test the whole carbon and push this on customers due to some other commitment. If you see the response from Weebly employee mentioning that there is an option to revert back to the old site editor which is not possible actually. It makes the situation worst that the guys responding to the comments really do not have the complete idea of what this mess is.
- The new App center is undoubtedly a welcome step opening the platform for third parties. But none of the new elements offered are working as mentioned in the usage article which make us worried that whether any one tested or will be testing the app center apps in future. When people can able to inject malicious code in Apple’s app store we hope (rather wish) Weebly to get success in this direction with this kind of testing in place.
Directions Going Forward
Though we love Weebly and offer (will continue to offer as well) many tips for using Weebly site builder we do not see throwing some garbage on customers is acceptable in any standard. One thing very clear for us is that Weebly is going more commercial than the traditional easy to use website builder. The carbon update opens the door for developer to make apps and themes for Weebly and sell through their platform. This will really help users to get the features what they want instead of looking for code change every time. But there are concerns Weebly should clarify:
- How the app center apps will be supported? If this is going to be with third parties then the platform will become more complex forcing the users who looks for easy site builder to quit.
- We can see many customers openly mention they are quitting to Wix, even then there is no response from the management of Weebly is making things worst. Users may think that tomorrow if their whole site is lost for some reason Weebly will not help in any manner even for a business plan user.
Conclusion
We look at our own article of “drawbacks of Weebly” which was written more than a year back and found that Weebly did not improve any of those points mentioned. For example, uploading the archive backup to site again, blog articles backup, editor keeps on loading, page management, etc. are the major issues even today. It does not make sense to dream for multistory building when the foundation is very weak. We really hope that Weebly first make the platform stronger and reliable before too much of commercialization and provide better user experience which is the first factor for users choosing Weebly.
From the change management perspective, Weebly better recruit some public relation executives to handle the communication part and rollout something with backward compatibility or with the option of going back to previous version for a defined period of time.
Note: This article was originally published on 18th October 2015. After so many years, the confusion in the pricing plans and features continue. After Square acquired Weebly in 2018, the situation becomes worser as users got confused with Square Online Builder and Weebly site builder. As of now, integration of user accounts with Square login did not happen and there are no commitment which site builder will be focused in the future. We have checked Weebly showcase sites on their blog and found most of them are moved to Wix and Shopify. Unless, they transparently announce the next steps, be away from Weebly – a good website builder spoiled by corporate mess.
Any recommendation on how to make a back up for the site?
I believe that saving the site as zip is quite useless as it cannot be re-uploaded to weebly (or any other platform in its entirety as blog posts cannot be saved…) any option to have a safety net?
I have been struggeling with Carbn as well since it came out and was forced to pay the pro account as some elements I added in html (favicon for exemple) just stopped working since the upgrade…
Long-time customer with very fond memories of Weebly prior to the upgrade. It wasn’t just easy, it was reliable. I used to recommend it to everyone. Then came Carbon (months ago) and the editor is still just so buggy. I’m writing this on Jan 25th. Formatting simple text or setting up theme fonts or adding alt text to images, and more — might work, might not. Yesterday the first text box I added disappeared when I deleted a different element; thank goodness the text was in my clipboard. And after trying a few background images and publishing, one of the earlier backgrounds showed up. Today the images on the home page slideshow were wrong– it was grabbing images from lower in the page. Half hour later it was correct again. Simple things like just highlighting text takes a few tries.
I sent bug reports and video screen captures when Carbon first came out. Finally stopped updating my website for weeks hoping things would improve given time. Support takes you through dumping history and cookies and ensuring you’re on latest browser (yes yes yes!) and can almost never duplicate your issue… And if they don’t see it they don’t believe it. I think customers have stopped complaining because they’ve resigned to this, or barely edit their site, or are going elsewhere.
I am trying to build a new website under a deadline and now I’m looking at trying to learn WordPress. No time for this! Just wishing for the old Weebly.
Well said and well explained. I do not like making changes to my Weebly sites for exactly that reason – everything feels unsafe and volatile. I cannot work on one particular site because all the elements are in html code despite using simple text boxes. The code doesn’t even resemble a normal html element it is totally something I’ve never seen before. The simplicity of Weebly has disappeared and I now use Blogger – at least they haven’t morphed into a nightmare.
I was a premium user with Weebly for 4 years. Not only did they foist this on me, but I couldn’t even get an answer as to an ETA for when things would get fixed. I talked to one live agent once who promised me fixes that never came. I was reduced to asking for them to speak to me on their damn blog, only for them to bypass my complicated questions and respond to easy ones, or the rare compliment.
I’ve never seen anything like it and it drove me over to Wix. One night with Wix and I saw the superiority in their platform instantly and am actually kind of glad Weebly did what they did. I would’ve probably left even if I never had to deal with Carbon, it’s that much better. I never would’ve looked if it wasn’t for this and discovered just how second rate Weebly is as a platform overall.
Good Lord what next will they do, Ive gone in this morning and everything ive made with the embed code is showing up as html, to actually see what is written I need to click on the Edit Custom HTML just to make sense of it.
Is it really not possible to revert back to old version of Weebly or not? I simply want to go back to peaceful site building experience…carbon is a nightmare…
No, it is not possible to revert back to the old Weebly editor. The option is available only to revert back to the old dashboard and not for the editor.
I have more than 5 sites using old themes and all those were broken and took lot of time to rebuild to the available responsive themes. Now that the old themes are also available and i am again busy in changing the site to fit the old themes. Frankly meaningless…..i am spending huge time for the mistake of Weebly folks :-(
It is just so interesting that the discussion response from David Rusenko in the webnots article states: “Would love to answer any questions”. Is this the same David Rusenko that extolled the virtues of Weebly Carbon on October 1sth in this blog post http://www.weebly.com/blog/carbon ? If so, why hasn’t he answered one of the 768 responses to his blog. Since he proclaims to be an avid traveler, my guess is that he has his head buried in the sand somewhere far away while his employees are taking advantage of the free snacks, ping pong and flexible work schedules. David should hurry home before the Weebly that wobbles will definitely fall down.
Yes, he is the same CEO and that’s what more hurting the loyal customers. More than 2 weeks later what Weebly doing is unethical by not responding to customers.
I am one of the old free users and at one time Weebly actually answered my support emails. I have not been happy with Weebly since they introduced the new column element but I eventually adjusted to it and moved on with simply loving Weebly. Pricing costs for clients has steered me away from Weebly and the Carbon introduction has left me with a bad taste in my mouth. I will do as you suggest and backup my sites. Even a screenshot of every page would suffice. Thanks WebNots.
Weebly always follow the suit of other site builders, especially Wix. Pricing plans and app center are some examples. Still app center is a welcome move but the way it was combined with the buggy rollout is the cause for concern. They think it is a Weebly style which the customers don’t like unfortunately.
I was a fan of Weebly editor till the time the columns element was replaced with spacer (no more possible of moving multiple elements). Every change or upgrade is a kind of downgrade in one or other sense making me frustrated.
Really looking for alternate solution – what about WordPress?
Thanks,
Victoria
I started a WordPress site and found it a whole new learning curve which I didn’t want to continue with. Now I’m thinking it might be a good alternative.