Squarespace vs Weebly

Website builders are meant to be beginner-friendly and typically don’t need a discussion on the “setup process.”

Squarespace doesn’t: Signing up with Squarespace is straightforward, plus it has a great onboarding sequence to help you create your first website.

Unlike Squarespace, Weebly’s setup process requires you to be alert. Ever since Square acquired Weebly, they have been trying to get everyone (including the existing Weebly users) to use Square Online, a separate website builder. That try starts with the setup process itself.

To start, you’ll obviously click the “Sign Up” button on Weebly.com.

Oddly, you will be directed to a Squareup URL and asked to create a Square account to sign up with Weebly, which can be confusing, especially if you’re unfamiliar with the acquisition.

Then comes the main part. You’ll have two options: either choose Square Online if you want to add business or ecommerce features to your website, or choose Weebly for simple personal sites.

Again, if you are unfamiliar with Square Online and Weebly, you may not be aware that both are separate website builders with distinct editors, templates, and other features.

Additionally, from the onboarding page, it appears that you won’t have any ecommerce features if you choose Weebly. However, there were ecommerce options within Weebly during my tests (more on this in the Ecommerce section below).

If you somehow end up using Square Online, there’s no way to use Weebly from that account in my experience. Moreover, the Weebly login system seems broken in general—here’s me trying to log in to my test account, and Weebly keeps looping me back to the login page:

You won’t face any such problems with Squarespace!

Squarespace is known for its clean, modern, mobile-friendly templates. In fact, Squarespace offers the best templates among all DIY website builders.

There are over 180 free Squarespace templates included with all plans, as well as hundreds more premium templates from third-party designers.

In contrast, Weebly’s templates are from before the acquisition. For pre-2018, they were fresh and modern, but they feel outdated in 2025.

Moreover, Weebly themes are not regularly updated or maintained. When I tried to preview a few themes, some returned a 404 error page:

Additionally, I was unable to edit the mobile version of the Weebly theme I tested—more on it in the next section.

Overall, both the quality and quantity of Squarespace templates are superior to those of Weebly.

Squarespace is the easiest website builder among those offering a similar sophistication. Its structured drag-and-drop editor, Fluid Engine, plays a significant role in making it easy to use.

Squarespace’s Fluid Engine is a visual, intuitive, drag-and-drop editor that’s highly customizable while maintaining an inherent and sensible structure. To use it, you drag elements (called Content Blocks) into rows and columns of a section, and you add these sections to make a page.

This structured approach also helps automatically create a solid mobile version of the page. If needed, you can further edit it using the same editor (just switch to mobile view).

Using the Squarespace Editor

Weebly’s editor used to be our top recommendation for ease of use. It still stands the test of time and remains as intuitive as ever, which is obvious given it hasn’t changed for over a decade.

Weebly's editor.

I’m not sure how well-maintained the Weebly editor is, though. I saw ecommerce options on it, which shouldn’t be there, given that they pretty much force people to use Square Online for their ecommerce needs. I also saw the option to add Flash player, which has been discontinued since the end of 2020.

Additionally, I couldn’t edit the mobile version of the Weebly site I was building because, as you can see on the right side, I was using a responsive theme and therefore couldn’t access mobile options. However, notice the mobile version of my test site; it clearly needs editing, particularly spacing adjustments.

Note: Squarespace also has an AI Website Editor. Weebly doesn’t and likely never will.

Weebly has a wider range of apps than Squarespace (350+ for Weebly vs less than 50 for Squarespace). However, Weebly’s app store seems sidelined by Weebly as well as the app developers.

The last app on the Weebly App Center was seemingly added in 2020, and I also doubt that the existing apps have been updated since then.

Printful is one of the popular Weebly add-ons, with the latest reviews dating back to 2022.

This is one of the most popular apps for Weebly, and most of the latest reviews are 1-star. The same is true for many apps on the Weebly App Center.

I scrolled through many apps on the Weebly App Center and hardly saw developer replies to reviews and feedback from the past few years.

This section needs two comparisons. First, of the topic at hand: Squarespace’s Ecommerce vs Weebly’s Ecommerce. And the second of Squarespace’s Ecommerce vs Square Online, the tool Weebly directs you to for ecommerce needs.

Squarespace vs Weebly

I saw that Weebly’s ecommerce features were intact when I landed on the platform. However, if you recall the setup process, it was implied that there is no ecommerce functionality inside Weebly, and I should choose Square Online instead for ecommerce. So I’m not sure how well Weebly’s ecommerce features are now.

However, here’s an excerpt from when we last reviewed Weebly’s ecommerce platform (which hasn’t had any changes since then):

When it comes to ecommerce, Weebly does almost everything right. The only problem worth mentioning is that its limited theme customization drawback crops up again occasionally. For instance, you’re unable to modify the checkout page.

• Gift cards
• Customer accounts
• Abandoned shopping cart emails
• In-store pickup shipping option
• Digital downloads
• … And many more.

But the best part of Weebly’s ecommerce suite is the same attribute found throughout its site editor— it makes it easy to conduct difficult tasks.

If I were to still compare Squarespace to Weebly, Squarespace still comes out as a superior ecommerce platform due to its advanced customization options.

The More Logical Comparison: Squarespace vs Square Online

We have compared Square Online and Squarespace in detail and concluded:

For restaurants and retail store owners using Square’s POS system and/or other Square commerce solutions, Square Online is a good option for basic ecommerce. Squarespace is an overall superior ecommerce platform because it has better inventory management, product editor, and sales channels.

Squarespace offers four all-inclusive plans that range from $16 to $99 per month (when paid annually).

Each plan includes hosting, templates, and domain registration (when purchased annually). The more expensive plans also include advanced ecommerce and business features.

Weebly’s plans are significantly cheaper than Squarespace’s, and there’s also a free plan available. The paid plans start at $10/month and go up to $26/month (when paid annually). However, many Weebly users have reported that their plan renewal cost has increased up to three times(!) and even more for some.

All plans include ecommerce features as per pricing, but the company’s onboarding page says it doesn’t have any ecommerce. I know I am repeating myself, but that’s just weird!

We used to love Weebly before 2020, but we can no longer recommend it in 2025.

In fact, when we last reviewed it in 2024, we noted something Weebly officially wrote, “We have no plans to discontinue the Weebly website builder and we will maintain support through at least July 2025.” This seemed like a very indirect announcement of sunsetting Weebly.

However, the same page now reads: “Although Weebly has been a part of Square as of 2018, we have no plans to discontinue the Weebly website builder at this time.” They add: “We have no plans to discontinue the Weebly site builder at this time. However, we encourage new sites to be built with Square Online, a robust, mobile-optimized eCommerce solution.”

All in all, Square seems unsure of what to do with Weebly and its existing users. Plus, they have long abandoned the platform. Therefore…

If you want to choose between Weebly and Squarespace, choose Squarespace!