Weebly offers many services like free hosting, free site builder, paid Google email app, domain purchase, etc. to help users to have a one-stop solution instead of buying and managing individual components from different service providers. One of the major need for webmasters is to buy a domain for their site to ensure independent branding instead of showing as a Weebly sub-domain. Nowadays having top-level domain is mandatory for displaying ads, doing online transactions and building reliable customer base.
How to Buy Domain from Weebly?
When you decided to build a site with Weebly or already having a free Weebly site then it’s a good time to search for a domain. Whenever you publish a site, Weebly offers the available domains for you to register.
If you have no site then you can directly search and register a new domain by going to domains section of Weebly site.
- Navigate to “Search Domains” section on Weebly home page.
- Enter the domain name which you are looking for.
- Choose the top-level domain.
- Ensure the green tick mark indicating the availability of the domain for registration.
- Click on “Continue” button to proceed to the payment page.
What is the Pricing of Weebly Domain?
Weebly is not a big domain registration company and the sole purpose of selling domains is to offer a package for customers to have hosting, site builder and domain in a single place for easy maintenance. Hence, the pricing of Weebly is high compared to other domain registrars like GoDaddy.
Weebly offer 1 year, 2 years, 5 years and 10 years plan with an additional option to add “private registration” to hide your personal details to public. It will cost around $75 for 5 years domain with private registration and the complete pricing options are shown below:
| Year | Price / Year | Savings |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | $19.95 | |
| 2 | $16.95 | 15% |
| 5 | $14.96 | 25% |
| 10 | $12.57 | 37% |
- Choose number of years you want to register a domain.
- Check if you need private registration.
- Check the total amount.
- Click on “Buy Now” button to pay and register your domain.
Domain Transfer
In addition to purchasing a domain, you can also transfer your existing domain to Weebly. This is a good idea for connecting your external domain with Weebly and you can manage all things at one place. However, we recommend to keep domain and hosting separately for cost effectiveness.
What Will You Get?
You will get the followings when you buy a domain from Weebly:
- Domain will be instantly assigned to an existing site. If you have more than one site then you can choose the site to assign your domain. You don’t need to upgrade to starter or pro for this.
- You don’t need to setup anything. Since your site is hosted on Weebly servers, the domain bought from Weebly will be assigned automatically. You can see all purchased domains under “Domains” tab and manage the settings.
- Full control of DNS editor with default free hosting and site builder included. This makes all activities possible with single Weebly account instead of logging into multiple companies account for maintenance. For example, you can verify site in Google Webmaster Tools account using DNS verification.
- Free Google AdWords advertising credit of $100 when you spend $25 (applicable for US users). This is applicable only for new AdWords customers residing in US and not applicable for other country’s customers.
Summary
Weebly offers domain registration as an add-on for its free hosting and free site builder. This helps site owners to manage all at one place. But with sale of only three TLDs, it makes difficult for all users to go for domain registration through Weebly. Cost of buying a domain from Weebly is almost double that of other competitors like GoDaddy. This means the cost of hosting and builder are covered with this domain purchase though assigning to a site is free without upgrade. If you are planning to strict to Weebly for life long time then buying domain is more useful to manage everything at one place or else you can look for other providers so that it is easy for you to switch things later without too much of cost incurred.
Pros
- The big advantage of buying domain from Weebly is to handle all at one place.
- Auto assignment of domain to your site. If you buy domain from other registrars then at least you need to upgrade to a starter plan to assign the domain to your site.
- Less cost of packaged solution with free hosting, free site builder and free site assignment.
- Easy to setup DNS records if you have email account or for any other purposes.
- Domain will be instantly online without the need of any setup.
Cons
- The major drawback is that Weebly only offer .com, .net and .org top-level domains for registration though all top-level domain and country specific domains can be assigned to a Weebly site. This means if you want a .info site then the only way is to buy from other registrar, upgrade to a starter plan and assign to your site with appropriate DNS setting. If you have GoDaddy domain then check out our article on connecting GoDaddy hosted domain to Weebly site.
- Cost of domain purchase is high when compared to other domain registrars. Though hosting is free, it is not recommended to use free hosting for various reasons.
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