Wix vs Weebly vs Squarespace vs Jimdo – Pros and Cons of Each

CONS OF SQUARESPACE

1. Squarespace separates the editing screen and the live preview screen, making it challenging for you to format your website layout.  What you see when you are in editing mode, is not what you will see when you publish the website.  Although you can take comfort that the website will be responsive so your visitor will see a “similar” version of what you want your layout format to be, it is a bit of a nuisance in terms of user experience when what you see as your website layout while in editing mode, is different from live mode.  We find that we have to preview our pages in “live” mode, then go back into editing mode and make adjustments, then preview live again, only to find our adjustments not being reflected the way we want it to be.
2. Adding, dragging and dropping Blocks in Squarespace were slightly buggy in our tests (Blocks are Squarespace’s basic website building components such as text, image, slideshows).  We had to try numerous times to add or re-arrange Blocks, which was slightly annoying. For example, we wanted to move an Image Block from the top of the screen down to the bottom, we expected to be able to click on the Block, drag it to the bottom of our screen and the page will automatically scroll down to the bottom so we can drop off the Block.  This didn’t happen, so at the time of our test, we had troubles re-arranging content.
3. Although Squarespace’s Style Editor gives you the ability to customize or style almost everything in the website without going into codes, this could be a bit overwhelming to the average joe.  This could be a case of paralysis from too many styling options.  It’s awesome if you have the patience, a designer-eye or high, specific design standards for your website.  However we feel that for the average person, this could potentially be a bit too much.  That does not mean you can’t create a beautiful website with Squarespace, because you definitely still can.

CONS OF WIX

1. Visibly large advertisements on the free version – Using Wix’s free website builder comes with noticeably large and prominent advertisement Wix logos on the side and at the bottom of the website after you publish.  All free website builders have their own advertisement credits (understandable since they’re providing services for free) but Wix’s are really quite prominent.  You will need to upgrade to remove the advertisements.
2. Once you pick a template, you can’t change it – Although Wix has plenty of pre-made designer templates for you to choose from, once you’ve picked one to use, you can’t switch to another template.  If you do, you will have to rebuild your website.  It’s a bit annoying, so you have to make sure you love it!
3. Not designed to manage complex e-commerce needs – If you want to build an online shop, Wix’s e-commerce tools are not advanced enough to help you fully manage your store.  But to be fair, they do have better e-commerce tools than most standard website builders, but they don’t include basic management tools such as sending out automatic confirmation emails to your customers after they pay, configure taxes and shipping costs, and just general management of orders such as marking orders as shipped or paid.   [UPDATE: Wix has since introduced more advanced e-commerce tools.  These include allowing you to configure your own shipping & handling fees based on shipping destinations and the product price range.  You can even set shipping & handling fees based on which state you are shipping to, allowing you to have more granular control over this.  You can also set up tax rates based on your shipping destination (you can set up different tax rates for different countries and states).  Once you have shipped your products, you can also mark each order as “complete”, allowing you to track which orders are still open and needs to be fulfilled.]

CONS OF WEEBLY

1. Not designed for complex e-commerce needs – If you want to build an online shop with a lot of products (such as 10 or more), Weebly’s e-commerce tools are not advanced enough yet to help you manage your online shop needs (such as multiple product displays, inventory tracking, item options, different payment option other than PayPal, customization of emails to confirm orders).  However, you can integrate third party shopping carts into a Weebly website to supplement this. [If you need advanced shopping cart functions, check out some dedicated e-commerce store builders here] [UPDATE – Weebly launched a brand new eCommerce solution in November 2013 which makes their eCommerce features some of the best amongst website builders (click here to see our detailed review)]
2. Limited number of designer-caliber templates – The quality of Weebly’s templates is average if compared to other website builders.  But the good thing is that they are releasing new templates on an ongoing basis and the templates are getting better.  There are also third party Weebly templates providers which really help.
3. Very basic blog functions – Weebly’s blogging function gives you the bare basics.  So if need to manage a large number of blog posts with a wide range of categories, this is where Weebly really falls behind as they don’t give you an efficient way to organize and manage articles.  Further, they only have the Twitter share and Facebook share buttons without options to include other major social media platforms such as Google Plus, Instagram or Pinterest.  Weebly could definitely improve with features such as “Most Popular Posts” or “Related Posts” as well. These would help readers quickly get to the most popular read articles, or allow visitors to see other related posts which might also interest them.

CONS OF JIMDO

1. Needs more professionally designed templates – The caliber of Jimdo’s templates is average when benchmarked against its competitors.  Using the free version of Jimdo gives you a certain number of templates to use, so to access even more templates, you will need to subscribe to their premium packages.  However, there are also third party Jimdo templates providers. [UPDATE  – Jimdo recently added more template choices to their collection.  They also added advanced features such as (1) full background slideshows with tools to customize different visual effects into the background image, and (2) full background video, which allows you to insert a video as the background to your website – pretty impressive!  As a this point, this is the first of its kind amongst website builders we review.  These updates show that Jimdo really focusing on improving their templates.  We’re looking forward to more impressive features.]
2. Jimdo advertisement on its free version is quite visible – If you are using Jimdo’s free website builder (so if you are not subscribing to their premium packages), it includes an advertisement logo on your website which is quite visible.  All free website builders have their own advertisement credits (understandable since they’re providing services for free) but Jimdo’s is a bit more prominent (but not the worst amongst all the website builders).  Upgrade to the paid platform to get more functions and also to remove the advertisement. [UPDATE – Jimdo has now significantly reduced the size of the advertisement, and moved it to the footer area – away from the main content area.  This is actually a very generous gesture from Jimdo, considering you are using their services for free!]
3. Not a true drag-and-drop user interface – Even though Jimdo’s website building tools are not drag and drop, don’t let this fool you into thinking that Jimdo isn’t easy to use.  Its functions and user-friendliness still gets the job done, although it would feel more interactive with drag and drop.