Some thoughts on Weebly and DNS registration

If you don't know, I use Weebly to manage this site. I love that it's drop and drag and I don't really have to know how to write code.

However, Weebly is bug ridden. I've mentioned the bogs and they blame my choice of browser. I use Mozilla most days, but when I use explore, I get the same bugs. The most serious bug I had, almost cause my entire site to crash. This was before I could download a copy of my site. Their response of course was to blame my browser and "There is nothing we can do." To be clear, this issue has been address by allowing users to back up their site on their hard drive. However Weebly still doesn't allow users to archive pages. Once you delete a page it's gone forever. Yahoo and other providers are leagues ahead of Weebly, offering ability to archive as well.

Weebly is on the pricier side and a bit trixy when it comes to pricing. I'm not sure where they get their "ave X% on competition from. Domain registry with other sites like Go Daddy is about $9.00 a year and Weebly is $25.00 a year.

Domain registry is just the tip of the iceberg, when it comes to website services. All it does is give you an address. You don't have a house until you build the site.

And that's were Weebly stands out. It's perhaps the easiest to use website builder out there. However, just because they set a new standard, doesn't mean another company won't surpass them in the future. You can easily import your domain through Go Daddy into Weebly and get access to all the features I have for free.  In case this isn't clear:

Register a domain with Weebly:
-- $25.00 a year
-- free use of standard features
-- add pro for $25.00 a year
Total yearly cost: $50.00

Register a domain with Go Daddy:
-- $9.00 a year
-- Free use of Weebly standard features after you import your domain
-- ad pro features for $25.00 a year.
Total yearly cost: $34.00

Go Daddy offers design programs at a steep additional price and they're mostly for professional designers. This is one reason why many people forward their domain. The other reason is that domain registration is a lot like how phone companies used to be with phone numbers. You could forward your number to a new number, but you couldn't take it with you.

When you register a domain, you're pretty much stuck with that registry service until you die... unless you want to lose the domain. Again, this might be confusing.  So let me use a hypothetical. Lets say Yahoo has a new, improved page builder that makes Weebly look hard. I want to use Yahoo to renovate my site.

- I grant Yahoo access to my domain.
- I pay Weebly $25.00 a year to maintain my domain name.
- I pay Yahoo $9.99 a month to have access to their web builder.
Total yearly cost: $145.00

However, let's pretend I registered my domain with Go Daddy, but have been using Weebly to construct my house.

- I terminate my contract with Weebly
- I grant Yahoo access to my domain.
- I pay still pay Go Daddy $9.00 a year to maintain my domain name.
- I pay Yahoo $9.99 a month to have access to their web builder.
Total yearly cost: $130.00

I hope this paints a clearer picture between website registration and website design I didn't understand how this worked, nor could I find an explanation of this anywhere. When I bought my first domain thorugh Go Daddy, I thought I was buying design tools too. It took me forever to figure out why my site wouldn't work. I had to pay extra for access to a program that would let me build the site.  A lot extra.

Now, Yahoo charges something like $9.99 a month for small business and this includes a program to build pages. The program is pretty easy to use, but not as easy as Weebly.

But remember with Weebly you get the exact same features with a domain registration as you do with a free site. Pro features cost extra. Still, compared to other sites, there may be value here. Except, for example, with Yahoo, you get domain emails with your monthly fee. I think Go Daddy provides free email as well as free sub domain registry.

Weebly does not provide email.

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Do not be fooled by this. The box says "Set up email to send and receive emails from your own domain."  If you add this service, you will not get email accounts. You will get a forwarding service. You can set up your emails trough Gmail... this was free but may cost $5.00  per email/per month now. (Yahoo gives I think ten emails, which would cost $600.00 through google.) Finally, you can use gmail's service with any company.

On a side note: if you are using gmail to manage your domain addresses, Weebly's forwarding service will interrupt your company accounts. YIKES.

So, while Weebly makes site design easy, after all the add-ons, direct and indirect, may make Weebly the most expensive choice. I suggest you consider all your needs before upgrading your free account.

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