With the advancement of technology, different sectors are shifting from traditional marketing to digital marketing. Each and every organization whether small or big wants to have a digital presence so they want to build their websites, portfolios, blogs etc. but making websites or web applications is a complex and time-consuming task which requires coding skills. Hence to solve this problem, many organizations have provided website building and content management platforms which make it easy to create web applications. Two such platforms are WooCommerce and Weebly which provides different services to build websites and web applications for personal or commercial use.
WooCommerce is defined as an online platform for e-commerce activities, it is designed on WordPress and provides highly customized features. It is an open-source platform and the company credited for the development of this platform is Automattic. It was first launched in 2011 and its stable version was released in 2022. The authors of this platform are Mike Jolley and James Koster.
Advantages of WooCommerce
- It is completely free which makes it the first choice for the customers who do not have enough budget.
- It provides a large number of pre-built store designs which can be easily customized.
- It has better response time on the front end as well as on the back end.
- It allows the user to have complete control of the flow of data and its features.
Disadvantages of WooCommerce
- It does not work with platforms other than hosted by WordPress.
- It requires payment for advanced features like using your own payment gateway.
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.
Below is a table of differentiation between WooCommerce and Weebly:
|
WooCommerce |
Weebly |
|
| 1. | It can be understood as an e-commerce plugin which provides e-commerce store building functionalities. | It is a platform to create websites, e-commerce stores, blogging sites etc. |
| 2. | It was founded by Mike Jolley and James Koster. | Weebly was founded by David Rusenko, Dan Veltri and Chris Fannin. |
| 3. | It provides free services to its customers. | Weebly provides 4 plans, Basic is free, Connect costs $5 per month, Pro costs $12 per month and the Business plan is $25 per month. |
| 4. | It is an open-source platform. | It is not an open-source platform. |
| 5. | It does not have any data analysis tools. | It provides analytic tools for tracking website performance. |
| 6. | It does not provide any support to its customers. | It provides dedicated 24×7 support for its customers. |
| 7. | It mainly supports English, for other languages third-party plugins can be used. | It supports Dutch, Polish, Turkish, and Swedish along with English. |
| 8. | It supports Windows and Mac operating systems and does not support Linux operating systems. | It supports Linux operating system along with Windows and Mac. |