9 ms·
Weebly Valued at $455M Amid Website-Building Boom
- cm2012 12y agoThere were and are a lot of web building sites besides Weebly, but weebly is the cleanest for its price by far. When I talk with small business owners I always recommend Weebly (unless I think they can do a lot of e-Commerce, in which case I recommend shopify). Weebly is the least frustrating and out of the box prettiest of the free web options.
- ISL 12y agoI created a Weebly site for the first time this week. The website quality per unit-time invested has trumped any other source I've used. After a couple of hours of designing and tweaking, it's beyond minimum-viable status, and will probably persist almost unchanged for months. Thanks Weebly!
- themodelplumber 12y ago> will probably persist almost unchanged for months The real test of the service will be sites that require constant changing (due to SEO rewards for timely updates as much as upgrades or general content management). When I hear "probably persist almost unchanged for months" I assume you are not in a position to benefit from marketing communication.
- crystalmace 12y agoI update mine on a weekly basis and it works pretty well for that.
- pmorici 12y agoI switched to Weebly after trying out Shopify. My problem with Shopify is that they nickel and dime you for every little thing you might need and Weebly was a lot easier to get going with I thought. My perspective might change as I grow but to start out it was pretty much a no brainier.
- smokey_the_bear 12y agoWe made a basic weebly site for our small home daycare provider. Then she took it over, it was really easy for her and the site looks great. I'm very impressed with weebly.
- drusenko 12y agohey everyone, happy to answer any questions you have! worth pointing out that we've also launched a new home page (check out the video, pretty fun), we have a pretty kick-ass new eCommerce platform we launched last Nov, and we're also launching some pretty awesome new themes this week -- you can see two previews here: http://purplehazetheme.weebly.com/ http://purplehazetheme.weebly.com/ http://collectiontheme.weebly.com/ http://collectiontheme.weebly.com/
- seanlinehan 12y agoCongrats David. The new homepage looks super clean. Excited to see what the future has to offer for Weebly.
- yukichan 12y agoWhy is there a limit on password length for a Weebly account? How are you storing passwords?
- drusenko 12y agoPretty sure this is a vestige of times past. We should definitely allow longer passwords. We salt and hash all passwords using a variable-cost bcrypt implementation.
- thirsteh 12y agoWith bcrypt you should set a limit of 72 bytes to avoid fooling users into thinking the stuff beyond the 72nd byte matters (bcrypt truncates it.)
- rescripting 12y agoWhy should I have to choose a different, shorter password because of your implementation details? Seems like an unnecessary annoyance.
- deleted 12y ago
- asaddhamani 12y agoI built my first website with Weebly, way back in 2010. They are one of the only ones doing it right. The clean templates, drag-and-drop features, and no-nonsense hosting is amazing. When you don't want to code a website and want to build it quick, Weebly is somewhat better than even WordPress, as long as you don't need to use a lot of plugins.
- jonathanjaeger 12y agoI've never used a site like Weebly, Wix, or Shopify, though I have seen Squarespace's interface when someone was building a site one time and my dad used Weebly after I recommended it to him (seemed easy to use). I'm curious their main sources of customer acquisition. I assume a lot of its word-of-mouth and organic, but I'm curious how much marketing they do. Squarespace has been huge in the podcast space doing advertising and did that big Super Bowl ad splash. Wix seems to have been around for a while so I see many of their out-dated designed sites. Edit: I did just get retargeted via Facebook ads exchange after visiting Weebly's site, so they are doing at least some advertising :)
- josefresco 12y agoI run a small web shop and have dealt with Wix. Big warning to those considering it or recommending it to friends. Wix uses AJAX extensively and doesn't support 301 redirects. If you are moving a site to Wix there's no way to file 301 redirects (kiss your search engine placement goodbye). If you're moving from a Wix site, the hashbangs used in the file URL's make it almost impossible to create redirects to your new site's pages. Haven't checked out Weebly yet but I hope they took a "standards approach" to their sites/code and allow for proper redirects. Update: Very pleased to see this: http://kb.weebly.com/301-redirects.html http://kb.weebly.com/301-redirects.html
- cm2012 12y agoWix comes from a flash site only background where SEO/Standards are hard to make work.
- josefresco 12y agoThat explains it! I was shocked when my client called me in a panic because their site dropped off a cliff in regards to their rankings. Cost them in the neighborhood of tens-of-thousands of dollars in ad revenue and member goodwill.
- callmeed 12y agoI have a small, niche website business so I know a little about this (we aren't on the scale of these guys but do low 7-figures). Wix and Squarespace at least are spending a ton on PPC customer acquisition. One analysis we saw put their AdWords spend at $10-25K per day (though, I'm not sure how accurate that is). Also, both Wix and Squarespace advertise on terrestrial radio and television. Squarespace had a Super Bowl ad and I regularly see their ads on Shark Tank (ABC). I hear Wix ads quite often on AM radio. Squarespace was on Inc's 5000 list in 2011 with 2010 revenues of 11.7M. Wix went public recently. They had 2012 revenues of $43.68M with a loss of $15M [1]. In the "general purpose business website" space, I think all 3 (Wix, SS, Weebly) see it as a "winner take all / own the market" play (it probably is). So, they are all spending as much as possible to acquire customers. Wix clearly isn't profitable. I doubt SqaureSpace is. I think it's admirable that Weebly is ... but I almost wonder if they need to spend more to compete.
- mrfusion 12y agoDoes anyone know if there's a way to hire a person or company to build a custom weebly template? I think weebly offered this service themselves a few years ago but now I can't seem to find the option.
- memphisbelle 12y agoKris from Red Door Designs does this. http://www.reddoordesigns.com/ http://www.reddoordesigns.com/
- malanj 12y agoIt's interesting how some internet startup concepts seem to keep coming back. Website building tools have gone through a number of generations, but are still relevant now. Similarly Facebook was the second wave of social networking sites. I recently saw a "pets.com" clone launching in South Africa (they got funding from Google's local seed fund)! Marc Andreessen's aggressive stance is that the dot.com bubble was basically a "mistake". If that's correct, how would one decide that an "old" idea's time has come? http://blogs.wsj.com/venturecapital/2012/11/01/marc-andreessen-the-dot-com-bust-was-basically-a-mistake/ http://blogs.wsj.com/venturecapital/2012/11/01/marc-andreess...
- jdcryans 12y agoFrom the same article: “All the dot-com ideas were correct,” he said. “They were all too early. They are happening now.” The article's title is clickbait.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- knouse1344 12y agoSeems like the startup economy 'blue-screened', and has returned after a hard reset.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- adamio 12y agoThe concepts might have merit, but the challenge is many failed as sustainable and profitable businesses. Have that many underlying assumptions changed in 14 years? Probably not
- kawera 12y ago...now hosts more than 20 million sites that are seen by 175 million visitors every month. With all the caveats about average numbers, it seems that on average each site is visited by only 8 visitors per month. Are those numbers correct?
- mendicantB 12y agoIt's dangerous to assume an even spread. Numbers are reported like this because the distribution of site visits is usually confidential information. From experience, I'd guess it's something like 1 million sites holding ~70% of the visitors, with the rest spread along the tail.
- alceufc 12y agoThe distribution of links pointing to a Web site follows a power-law distribution (few sites get most of the links) [1]. It is very likely that the number of visits follow a similar power-law distribution. [1] http://www.sciencemag.org/content/287/5461/2115.full http://www.sciencemag.org/content/287/5461/2115.full
- mendicantB 12y agoI'm pretty sure this is exactly what I just said.
- kawera 12y agoThanks. I didn't assume they were evenly spread but even if we make it 175M x 70% / 1M we still have only ~120 visitors per month.
- funkyy 12y agoRemember that probably majority of those sites are either dead, not public and made when some people were learning how to make sites. You can put that number probably down to 10% active/public sites. If visitor number is 175m this might be unique visitors to the platform = one visitor might visit multiple sites.
- minhajuddin 12y agoI am trying to build a CMS which focuses on data architecture and powerful page generation using javascript on the server http://getsimplesite.com/ http://getsimplesite.com/ . It's still in beta though.
- pshin45 12y agoIt's refreshing to see a company like Weebly that is able to be successful and profitable without having to go down the "MULTI-BILLION DOLLAR UNICORN OR BUST" path that seems to be almost mandated by VCs nowadays. It's something the guys at 37Signals preach as well - Better to be a "lifestyle business" that's profitable, makes millions of dollars in profit per year, and may take a decade or two to reach a $1 billion valuation, than to have a multi-billion dollar valuation a few years in (via large growth funding rounds) but not make a cent of profit for the first decade of your existence, all the while having your ownership of the business reduced down to 5% or whatever.
- steve_benjamins 12y agoWhat Weebly understands (that many website builders don't) is that a "blank canvas" is not the correct metaphor for building a website. Instead a website needs structured sections (such as navigation, logo, footer etc.) as well as "blank canvas" areas (such as the body of the content). They always seem to nail this tension. Congratulations to David and Weebly- they consistently ship amazing features! PS - My background: I've written in-depth reviews of 40+ website builders.
- andrewljohnson 12y agoWeebly is the best marketing website builder on the planet for non-technical users, not surprised to see it's also growing quickly. I still use Wordpress (WPEngine) for my company, but it's really overkill for your average small or local business, unless the owner is into computers and the internet. I sometimes do pro bono websites for local businesses I run into. I used to do Google AppEngine sites, but then I switched to Weebly for the last one I did (for my daycare lady). It was super-easy both for me to set up, and then when I handed it off to her, she was able to edit it and make it really what she wanted. Between a Weebly site, and getting the existing customers to leave Yelp reviews, she ended up getting a lot of new kids from the online presence.
- primitivesuave 12y agoAwesome story. I did a similar pro-bono job for this sweet old couple that run a music school together, even with their very limited understanding of technology they were able to figure out weebly. If technologically-illiterate people can figure out how to use their interface, there is really no limit to the markets that they can target.
- architgupta 12y agoI really love using Weebly for helping friends and family who are non-technical. Getting a basic website up is simple. To contrast I tried other website builders and weebly was the most functional and intuitive for me. Great job David and team!
- lexcorvus 12y agoIt's amazing to realize that even a monster success like Weebly (which among other things has made each of its founders vastly wealthy) is basically a roundoff error on Dropbox + Airbnb ($455m/($10b + $10b) = 0.02275).
- argumentum 12y agoSome things grow (relatively) slow, some things grow faster. The important thing is to keep growing and not die.
- lexcorvus 12y ago> The important thing is to keep growing and not die. This statement only applies to the founders, employees, and customers of the company. My point is that it doesn't apply to the investors: from an investor perspective, it doesn't matter if almost every company dies as long as the Droboxes and Airbnbs survive and grow. Almost all the returns come from a tiny number of outrageous successes, to the point where even a big hit like Weebly is a drop in the bucket.
- argumentum 12y agodrusenko was the first speaker during my YC batch. He had one of the more profound startup slides I've seen: an exponential growth curve with minor "blips" that correlated to tech crunch articles, but never affected Weebly's trajectory. I didn't necessarily "get it" at first, but after 2 years of watching startups of my batch mates and friends succeed or fail, I see any focus on press as a negative signal. A good team builds a good product. A good product begets success. Success begets news coverage. These things don't work in reverse. And Weebly is a great product. A few years ago after coding a web app for a non-profit, I considered building a service to do that for small orgs. But then I chanced upon 1 year old weebly, and was like never mind. Anyway, congrats, and hope to see even more!