| Weebly | |
| Founded: | (Beta) |
| Parent: | Block, Inc. |
| Type: | Web hosting service |
Weebly is an American web hosting and web development company headquartered in San Francisco, California, and is a subsidiary of Block, Inc. The company was founded in 2006 by Chief Executive Officer David Rusenko, Chief Technology Officer Chris Fanini, and former Chief Product Officer Dan Veltri.
The company was established to simplify the process of building personal websites. Development of the platform began in January 2006. By June 2006, an invitational beta version was introduced, followed by the official launch of a private beta in September 2006. Weebly has received funding from a range of investors, including angel investors and venture capital firms. In 2018, co-founder Dan Veltri departed from the company.
In March 2007, Weebly re-launched with its "WYSIWYG" editing interface,[1] "Pro" accounts and Google AdSense monetization features, as well as compatibility with Google Chrome and Safari.[2] In 2010, the company added French, Italian, Spanish, and Chinese languages[3] followed by integrated JotForm software into its services.[4] On October 1, 2015, Weebly Carbon was released to allow plugin integration among other features. In 2016, Weebly began focusing on its e-commerce offerings with the release of Weebly 4 and Weebly Promote, an integrated marketing tool.[5]
As more sellers began using the company, the company created features for doing taxes, integrations with Shippo, a Facebook Ad creator, email marketing and lead capture, abandoned cart features, the release of Mobile 5.0 to help sellers run their store from anywhere, and deep integrations with Square payment processing.
Weebly initially faced criticism for its lack of CSS/HTML editing support, but this functionality was added in 2009.
The company expanded its offices, including a 36,000 square feet warehouse in San Francisco, to accommodate its growing team. Additionally, Weebly opened a Berlin office in 2015/2016 to offer European-based support and marketing.
In 2018, Weebly was acquired by Square, Inc. (now known as Block, Inc.[6]) for approximately $365 million in cash and stock. At the time of the acquisition on June 4, 2018.,[7] Weebly had millions of customers and over 625,000 paid subscribers.
Weebly's website creator operates in a web browser, using a widget-based site builder with drag-and-drop[8] [9] functionality. Storage is unlimited, but the service restricts individual file sizes.[10] It automatically generates a mobile version of each website, supports blogging and e-commerce. Users can have various domain endings, including .weebly.com, .com, .net, .org, .co, .info, or .us.
Weebly also provides Android and iPhone apps for monitoring website traffic, updating blog posts, managing e-Commerce stores, and more.[11] [12] Users can incorporate advertisements on their websites and track visitor statistics through Weebly's tracking tool or Google Analytics. The platform also offers integrated newsletter marketing features and supports multiple languages: English, French, Spanish, Italian, German, Portuguese, Polish, Norwegian, Dutch, Danish, Swedish, Chinese, Japanese, Russian, and Turkish (as of 2020).[13]
Weebly has received recognition for its contributions to web development, including being listed among TIME'S 50 Best Websites of 2007 and receiving mentions in Forbes and Business Insider.[8] [14] However, it has faced censorship in some countries and has implemented geo-blocking in several regions.
In December 2014, the Indian government blocked Weebly in India, due to fears that ISIS propaganda was being spread through the site.[15] On December 31, the site was again made available throughout India.[16]
Weebly also applies censorship to its availability with a wide selection of geo-blocked countries where Weebly is unavailable to internet users. Site owners are unable to log in from these geo-blocked locations to administer the site just as internet users cannot reach the site. According to Weebly's official support forum, the exact list of blocked countries is secret, but the employees confirmed the blocking of Côte d'Ivoire, Iran, Russia, Turkey, Ukraine, as well as much of the Middle East, West and Central Africa.[17]