Overview
What is Square Online?
Square Online (formerly Weebly) is a basic content management system with blogging and eCommerce features. It can be utilized for building standard websites or specialized webpages for online stores.
TrustRadius Insights
An easy drop and drag option for your business website
A Website Software that Makes Sense for Real People
If you need a website, blog, eComm site, or want to establish yourself/your company online... this is worth your time to check out.
Generate a web presence quickly, cheaply and LOVE the site you create!
Create stylish looking websites without writing even a single line of code
Get Your Students Writing with Weebly
Weebly is a great choice for small businesses and their websites
Stupid Simple Website Builder
Been Great - Easy for Novice & Helpful for Niche Market
My web designing tool
Easiest to Use and Robust for Creating Brochure-ware Sites with a Few Quirks
Convenient website builder for small businesses
Your website easy to create.
Good for First-Timers
Awards
Products that are considered exceptional by their customers based on a variety of criteria win TrustRadius awards. Learn more about the types of TrustRadius awards to make the best purchase decision. More about TrustRadius Awards
Popular Features
- Mobile optimization / responsive design (39)9.090%
- Code quality / cleanliness (36)9.090%
- Page templates (40)2.020%
- Library of website themes (40)2.020%
Reviewer Pros & Cons
Pricing
Personal
$9.00
Professional
$16.00
Performance
$29.00
Entry-level set up fee?
- No setup fee
Offerings
- Free Trial
- Free/Freemium Version
- Premium Consulting/Integration Services
Starting price (does not include set up fee)
- $6 per month
Features
Security
This component helps a company minimize the security risks by controlling access to the software and its data, and encouraging best practices among users.
- 7Role-based user permissions(28) Ratings
Permissions to perform actions or access or modify data are assigned to roles, which are then assigned to users, reducing complexity of administration.
Platform & Infrastructure
Features related to platform-wide settings and structure, such as permissions, languages, integrations, customizations, etc.
- 6API(14) Ratings
An API (application programming interface) provides a standard programming interface for connecting third-party systems to the software for data creation, access, updating and/or deletion.
- 9.9Internationalization / multi-language(15) Ratings
The software supports multiple languages, countries, currencies, etc.
Web Content Creation
Features that support the creation of website content.
- 9WYSIWYG editor(33) Ratings
What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get editing tool allows users to build pages without writing code.
- 9Code quality / cleanliness(36) Ratings
Code generated by WYSIWYG editor is clean and validates according to W3C standards.
- 9.7Admin section(36) Ratings
The admin page is easy to navigate and use.
- 2Page templates(40) Ratings
The CMS has standard webpage templates or types of web pages (e.g. homepage, article page, interior page, blog page, etc.); users can also build custom templates.
- 2Library of website themes(40) Ratings
A library of website frameworks or themes is available as a starting point for building a website.
- 9Mobile optimization / responsive design(39) Ratings
The CMS helps users build webpages that work well on mobile devices – whether m-dot pages or responsively designed pages.
- 7Publishing workflow(32) Ratings
The software allows users to set up a custom workflow for updating the website, including approval processes.
- 9Form generator(33) Ratings
Users can build website forms for visitors to fill out.
Web Content Management
Features for managing website content
- 7.1Content taxonomy(23) Ratings
Users can create multiple levels and types of content categories including tags.
- 4SEO support(33) Ratings
The CMS helps users create the right website infrastructure (pagination, page headers, titles, meta tags, url structure, etc.) to increase the site’s visibility in search engine results.
- 4Bulk management(18) Ratings
Users can change an attribute on a group of documents or sites all at once through features such as global search and replace, making bulk changes easier.
- 9Availability / breadth of extensions(30) Ratings
There is a broad library of extensions, plug-ins, modules or add-ons that allow users to easily customize their websites without building custom code.
- 9Community / comment management(27) Ratings
Users can put post/page comments through an approval process, auto-approve commenters based on their email addresses, block commenters by IP address, delete comments, etc.
Product Details
- About
- Tech Details
- FAQs
What is Square Online?
Pricing ranges from free to $25/month. All offerings include email and chat support; Pro and Business include phone support, as well as a site search, video & audio, and password protected pages. Paid subscriptions include a domain name (free for one year), and remove the Weebly link from the website.
Square Online is available in 11 languages (English, French, Portuguese, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Japanese, Chinese, Turkish, Dutch, and German).
Square Online Video
Square Online Technical Details
Deployment Types | Software as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based |
---|---|
Operating Systems | Unspecified |
Mobile Application | No |
Frequently Asked Questions
Comparisons
Compare with
Reviews and Ratings
(124)Community Insights
- Business Problems Solved
- Pros
- Cons
Weebly is a versatile website builder that has been used by various individuals and organizations to create professional-looking websites without the need for coding skills. Users have praised Weebly for its effectiveness, usability, and capability in creating customizable and visually appealing websites. It has been utilized by small businesses, educational programs, non-profit organizations, and marketing teams to build and maintain their websites to reach a wider audience and provide information online. Weebly's drag-and-drop interface and extensive features make it suitable for novice users as well as those with different levels of web design knowledge. It has also been used for social marketing purposes, allowing users to communicate and share reviews easily. Weebly's intuitive platform enables quick website updates, making it a time-saving solution for organizations and individuals alike. Additionally, Weebly offers an e-commerce platform that allows businesses to sell products online effortlessly. With its user-friendly interface and customizable templates, Weebly offers a flexible solution for creating websites for various purposes, from personal portfolios to small business websites.
User-Friendly Navigation: Many users have found Weebly to have a user-friendly navigation, making it easy for them to find what they were looking for. The intuitive interface and well-organized layout with buttons on the left-hand side allow for quick and convenient navigation between pages.
Drag and Drop Website Builder: Reviewers greatly appreciated the drag and drop website builder feature of Weebly. This powerful tool allows users to easily create web pages and blog posts by simply dragging elements onto the page without any coding or technical knowledge required. Users can spend more time on writing and gathering information rather than learning how to put a website together.
Professional Look and Feel: Users praised Weebly's professional look and feel, which helps their sites stand out from the competition. With the option to upload custom background or banner images, users can quickly create a polished and professional appearance in just minutes. The availability of a wide variety of beautiful templates further enhances the overall aesthetic appeal of websites created with Weebly.
Limited template options: Users have expressed disappointment with the limited selection of templates available on Weebly. Some reviewers feel that the templates are not up to date with today's website trends and do not offer visually appealing designs.
Lack of advanced SEO features: Several users have mentioned that they find the SEO functionality on Weebly to be elementary and lacking in custom options. They advise those who focus on SEO to avoid using Weebly as a platform.
Difficulty in migrating content: Users have found it complicated and challenging to migrate their websites from Weebly to another content management system. This can pose a problem for those who want to switch platforms or expand their website capabilities beyond what Weebly offers.
Attribute Ratings
Reviews
(1-15 of 15)A Website Software that Makes Sense for Real People
- Easy customization.
- Integration with other apps and add ons.
- Intuitive and easy to use.
- Affordable.
- Constantly improving and adding new features.
- Meets standards for security and cookies.
- Has an auto-save function so your work doesn't get lost.
- Many template options to use as a starting point.
- Offers a strong support community to solve problems and find ideas.
- SEO settings are easy to implement and update.
- Sometimes the platform can be glitchy and needs a refresh.
- Some formatting and placement options are not customizable and this may be frustrating to some users (especially those coming over from WordPress).
- When you are uploading photos, you have to wait for the upload to finish before working on another part of your site or your work won't save (I lack patience so this bothers me).
- Detailed customization in the HTML is possible but may create over-confidence in users - especially those that don't have coding experience.
If you need a website, blog, eComm site, or want to establish yourself/your company online... this is worth your time to check out.
- Drag and drop website building.
- A plethora of templates to choose from.
- Ease of setup for a website or eCommerce platform.
- Limited customization options - the drag and drop is awesome, but it does limit what you can customize to some degree.
- SEO functionality is limited.
- The plug-ins are limited.
This platform might not be ideal if you're a mid-sized organization or an organization that makes a lot of online sales.
Get Your Students Writing with Weebly
- Great drag and drop website or blog builder which lets students spend more time writing and gathering information than learning how to put a website together.
- Professional look and feel with a modern touch. Students can upload a background or banner image and really make a basic site or blog look professional in minutes.
- Love the option for students to decipher between building a full blown website or a blog. Often, if students are blogging, they don't need the whole gamut of site pages, etc. This lets them target their audience and style.
- They offer a free version which is great for education and student made sites.
- The embed code option is great for teachers creating a website so that they can embed other apps they use daily like padlet, thinglink, flipgrid, etc.
- Wish there was a way to track website revision history when making changes/reversions.
- Data and analytics features, which are great resources when teaching students about blogging and their effect to a wider audience is limited. Something more closely resembling what WordPress offers would be great. This hurts using Weebly as a blogging app.
- The program is simple to use. Sometimes customization seems limited because of it.
Been Great - Easy for Novice & Helpful for Niche Market
- Easy for anyone, no computer expertise necessary. Even inserting code to make things specific has been really easy.
- Immediate support. When I have added to or re-designed the site, I need frequent support and I receive it usually within 24 hours (if it is by email) or instantly if by phone.
- Options to add an online store.
- I do not recommend their marketing feature yet.
- Marketing feature does not have a way to sync opt-ins to MailChimp and every email has to be put in by hand.
- At one point my mass emails were limited to 500 people. I ended up never using this feature since I have more than this but found this limiting.
- Drag and drop interface makes it very easy to add all types of content, including images, text, video (and YouTube videos), embeddable applications and more.
- It's very easy to set up navigation features like cascading menus and sticky navigation (where the menu stays put - may depend on the template chosen though).
- A technical backend is fairly straight-forward for setting up a fav icon, 301 redirects, SEO, Google Analytics, etc.
- I wouldn't recommend using Weebly for extensive e-commerce functionality. There are better tools out there.
- If you're seriously considering creating a blog as the core of your business, WordPress does a much better job.
- Templates and overall design of the templates are somewhat limited. If you're looking for more design-appeal, Squarespace is a better option, although you sacrifice some of the ease-of-use (not much though once you get used to it).
- The Designer Platform for agencies haven't you in years, and there's no information from Weebly about when it will be upgraded.
Convenient website builder for small businesses
- Weebly is easy to use. It's not hard to create web pages/blog posts and edit them with a convenient drag and drop builder.
- Weebly templates are responsive and mobile friendly, so you don't have to worry about your site's appearance on a phone or tablet.
- Weebly has e-commerce capabilities and is great for small companies just starting out in e-commerce.
- Weebly doesn't have a lot of templates to choose from, so if you don't have any experience with CSS or HTML, it's hard to customize your site to an extent.
- Weebly isn't fully SEO friendly. They don't allow you to add H1 tags to pages out of the box.
- You can't create folder structures when it comes to web page URLs. You can put web pages under a main menu dropdown, but they don't allow you to put all sub-menu items in a structured folder (like site.com/folder/page-1 and site.com/folder/page-2).
Weebly
- User-friendly; simple interface
- Awesome free templates to get students started quickly.
- Allows for customizing
- Pre-made template banners are hard to customize. Before the update, you could hover over a banner, obtain the pixel dimensions and recreate a customized banner on your own. Now, that feature has been taken away.
- Greater selection of free images for educational use.
A Great Tool for Training Designers
- It allows building a site visually, without requiring deep knowledge of HTML, CSS and similar skills.
- It has a wide range of media widgets like YouTube, maps, search boxes, social media and other tools, nicely integrated.
- It provides the site creation and the hosting, all in one package.
- Some parts of the layout are a bit rigid, making it difficult to design pages less structured. Despite this can be seen as kind of protection against visual inconsistency, some users could find it a bit constrained.
- Weebly has a collection of photos (free and paid) that can be inserted in the site, but they must be found through keyword search. Other ways of searching (collections, tags, suggestions, etc.) would improve this function.
- The user must be aware that the site created in Weebly must stay in Weebly's servers to keep its editing functionalities. It is possible to get the files (code, images and so on) and move them to a new host provider, but they would not work without some fixing made by a web designer.
Small entrepreneurs who don't need complex websites and don't want to hire a professional web designer.
Artists who want to present their work to the world.
Weebly is a Winner for Website Building
- Easy to customize. I love the many options Weebly offers to create customized pages.
- I love the ease-of-use Weebly has. It is super easy to navigate and find what you are looking for. They even offer starter templates that you can customize.
- I also appreciate that Weebly offers a free and paid version. The fact that I can use their free web-hosting and then buy a permanent link address is a great feature that I appreciate.
- I love all the options Weebly has to offer, however, many of these options are stagnate in the sense that they cannot be manipulated. Some templates have fonts I would prefer to change and manipulate but Weebly doesn't allow it. I wish there was more freedom with font editing.
- Editing shapes and placement of objects could be improved. Much like font, it is limited and would be amazing if there was a bit more freedom.
- I wish there was a better variety of stock photos that don't look like stock photos for free. Sometimes the photos are just too cheesy to use and not everyone is a photographer.
Easy-to-use, affordable, great choice.
- Weebly is easy-to-use. Really the definition of intuitive.
- Weebly doesn't restrict you to their ecosystem. Many drag n drop builders make their real money off strong arming you into using the rest of their tools by actively restricting the implementation of third party solutions (think scheduling tools, chat, etc). Weebly doesn't do this.
- The responsiveness is really good for a drag n drop builder.
- Reasonably priced. Weebly is affordable for anyone.
- At times, you can't quite do what you envision. While it's drag n drop, there is a grid system that must be maintained. Every once in awhile you'll get a bit irritated and revert to plan B. Being able to freestyle just a bit more would be nice.
- You're very limited in what types of rotating content pieces (like quote sliders) you can create without a third party plug in. Slideshow images are solid, but image + text or text only, not so much.
- I think the blogging capabilities are a little weak. I wish there was a better way to create different templates for the blog. It feels a little restricting and I find it harder to use than the rest of the product.
Weebly Allows for Creativity
- Customizable, allows for creativity and expression.
- Secure hosting, data and analytics are very helpful tools as well.
- Free hosting also is a huge draw.
- Weebly's web development integration could be smoother.
- An educational license would be a nice improvement.
- Getting started tutorials could be implemented.
My experience with Weebly
- Chance to test the service/tools available before signing it to check how easy it is. It is possible to sign it only after trying it out.
- Variety of templates and guidelines. No need to write one single code line. I deployed the whole site only using the setup tools, assistants, etc.
- It is very easy and fast to deploy (it was made in 2 days!).
- Variety of add-ons and applications that may be attached to the website. Example: the multi-language app that made possible to publish the second language version in just one day.
- I believe that the model based on templates may limit some users who desire to create something really different or more personalized.
- I think that the basic reporting could be a bit more complete, providing more useful information.
- The multi-language app is a bit confusing at the start. I believe it may become an issue in case of projects that demand 3 or 4 languages translations. After a while, it becomes easier to understand how it works, but its operation demands attention to avoid basic mistakes such as forgetting to translate one single page.
- When you don't like Weebly, they refund the money with no questions asked, as long as you cancel the paid account within the specified time range.
- Figuring out how to build a website may be faster with Weebly than other platforms.
- Customer service was prompt and very available.
- Templates are not up to date to today's website trend. Not great looking.
- It requires so much coding skills just to alter background colors and such.
- There was something very wrong with footer layout. Footer area gets hidden no matter how the site is made. Footer should be visible at all times especially when there is not too much content on the page. It requires scrolling down just to see the footer. I find it very strange.
- Templates needed so many things being fixed and it required me to go into the files and do the coding... I really hated it. Templates should be ready to use as is.
Weebly Worth It's Weight
- Easy to use templates
- Drag and Drop Webpage Creation
- Clean Design with Several Customizations
- Make changes offline
- More integrated apps
Weebly gets it done well
- The greatest strength of Weebly is the split design interface. The primary design method is graphical, drag-and-drop. The secondary design method is direct hands-on management of the CSS. This combination means we can get to launch far faster, without sacrificing customization.
- One feature Weebly had which no competitors could match was enabling SSL for ecommerce sites. Where most competitors give a 'shared' SSL which exposes the platform's URL during the checkout stage, Weebly enables site-specific SSL, so your customers never leave your site.
- Weebly's ease of management is less unique, but should be mentioned. Every object is managed in context, so the learning curve for clients who wish to self-manage is incredibly short. We are able to hand off the site confidently with just one or two brief training sessions.
- Weebly's pricing structure leaves plenty of room for improvement. Their Pro and Business tiers should be combined, as the overlap is significant and often confuses clients.
- The inability to expand my account to handle all 18 client sites under one account is frustrating. We are forced to have two separate logins and set both accounts as editors for all sites on each account, instead of just paying double the annual fee and getting all the sites together.
- The inability to shift a client's site from 'white label' to group management is terribly irritating.
- The default themes are fairly limited in style and do not always directly follow modern design trends, making matching client desires more difficult.
For future extensibility, advanced functionality, or complex site builds, I do not use Weebly.