With the advancement of technology, different sectors are shifting from traditional business to digital or e-commerce. Each and every organization whether small or big wants to have their digital presence so that it can sell its goods online but making an e-commerce store or web application is a complex and time-consuming task which requires coding skills. Hence to solve this problem, many organizations have provided website building, content management and e-commerce store building platforms which make it easy to create web applications. Two such platforms are Shopify and Weebly which provides different services to build websites and online stores.
Weebly can be understood as a website building company which helps in building interactive web applications and e-commerce websites. The development credit for this platform goes to David Rusenko, Dan Veltri and Chris Fannin. It was initially launched in 2006. It was developed using two main programming languages which are PHP and JavaScript. It is free to use platform.
Advantages of Weebly
- It provides a simple interface with easy tools to build applications without HTML knowledge.
- It provides pre-built themes which can be customized easily.
- It has an auto-save feature which helps in saving data and progress in case of system crashes.
- It is an all in one platform for building online stores, web applications, blogs etc.
- It has an in-built payment option.
Disadvantages of Weebly
- It does not have good image editing options.
- It provides only 500 MB storage in connect plan.
- Blogging features are limited.
Shopify can be understood as an e-commerce platform which is used to provide customers services to sell their products online without creating their own store. It is a paid platform where users can make their accounts and choose from a number of templates and can build their e-commerce website to sell their products. Shopify provides all the necessary tools and equipment needed to build an online store.
Advantages of Shopify
- It provides an easy interface to build e-commerce stores.
- Set up and configuring Shopify is very easy and fast.
- It comes with robust tools for customizing templates according to the user’s needs.
- It has advanced SEO features which increase the indexing of the e-commerce store.
- It provides an in-built payment gateway.
Disadvantages of Shopify
- It does not provide free plans, everything is paid.
- It charges a transaction fee if used a payment gateway other than provided by Shopify.
Below is a table of differentiation between Shopify and Weebly:
| Weebly | Shopify | |
| 1. | It is a platform to create websites, e-commerce stores, blogging sites etc. | It is an e-commerce platform which provides services to make an online store to sell goods. |
| 2. | Weebly was founded by David Rusenko, Dan Veltri and Chris Fannin. | It was founded by Tobias Lutke, Daniel Weinand and Scott Lake. |
| 3. | It provides around 70 pre-built themes. | It provides only 17 pre-built free templates. |
| 4. | It is a free website creator and most of the services are free. | It is a paid platform and no free service is available. |
| 5. | It provides simple analytic tools for tracking business performance. | It provides more marketing and analytic tools for tracking business performance. |
| 6. | It provides SEO features with limited functionalities. | It provides better SEO functionalities than any other platform. |
| 7. | Its subscription plan starts at only $6 per month. | Its subscription plan starts at $29 per month. |
| 8. | Switching platforms is not allowed so you need to build the website again. | It allows the shifting of the website from any other platform to Shopify without any problem. |