

Weebly (YC W07) Debuts an iPad App for Building and Managing Websites - dkasper
http://techcrunch.com/2014/10/09/weebly-ipad-app/

======
steve-benjamins
I've been writing about Weebly for a couple years now. They continue to
impress me. I haven't had my hands on the iPad app yet, but my bet is that
it'll be easy to use and thoughtfully made. They consistently ship excellent
software.

What's funny to me is that Weebly generally flies under the radar of the tech
press. And yet in terms of profitable YC companies, they have to be near the
top. David Rusenko has even talked about going public with Weebly (not
unprecedented for website builders: Wix did it earlier this year).

Weebly is a company worth taking a close look at.

------
66d8kk
We started using Weebly for projects where clients neither had the budget or
the technical requirement for anything beyond basic. We've done four in as
many weeks, it really is proving itself to be a resourceful little tool.

Even though I kind of hate dragging those component around, the reality is
that the little tool has made the company I work for upwards of £3k this month
at a time where the team are between more technical projects. Win, win....for
now!

~~~
nedwin
What are you charging a client to build a site for them on Weebly?

~~~
66d8kk
Anything between £600 - £1200 (so far). We have the process nailed. I'm sure
most will agree that the clients with lower budgets are generally more 'work'.

So what we do is have initial 2 hour project discovery meeting where we
literally go through every page they want, how many pictures/ paragraphs are
suitable for each page. We log all of this and send them the full content list
of what is needed.

Wonderfully, we schedule the 'Platform Training' meeting (where we sign it
over) exactly one week later and send them a content deadline for half-way
through that week. No surprises that not a single client has yet to send any
content through on time!, so (and we make this absolutely clear) we populate
with lorum ipsum and stock imagery proofs to the exact discussed
paragraph/image count per page.

We do the platform training with the dummy content, show them how to do
everything (2 hours) and send them on their way. Monthly hosting
(£12.00/month) to cover weebly fees.

We've found that with this 'package' we make no-bones about what they are
getting (a template driven site, chosen by us - no design 'sign-off' etc..).
They know the quality of our 'other work' (it's usually why they come to us)
except we crucially figure out their budget VERY early on and can 'channel'
into a specific category accordingly. It's nice having that other option.

It's going well so far, 4 clients that we would have turned away, £3.5k income
that we would have lost and gone to a bedroom dev or smaller agency. The hours
quoted have (amazingly) worked out to the hour for each of these projects
(£60/hr rate) - except the latest, which is 2 hours under ATM. I can't ever
remember a time where a £6,000+ site was ever on budget (we actually get our
hourly rate on these small sites!!).

------
ryanglasgow
Thanks for the positive feedback! For those who don't have an iPad here's a
video that previews how the app works:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cAuKRyuHQcc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cAuKRyuHQcc)

~~~
michaelvanham
When creating a new account on an ipad it took me three tries to pick a
password that wasn't "too long". It would be helpful if the error message
indicated the maximum allowable password length.

I enjoyed using the app. Easy to understand and super easy to get something
published. I sent it to my mom, who was just this weekend asking how hard it
would be to set up a website for her friend's small business.

------
kylelibra
People have been trying to build products to replace web developers for years,
will we ever actually get to that point? Every time a new product comes to
market it seems like it is a huge leap forward and yet web developers are
still highly employable.

~~~
JohnTHaller
Weebly, Wix, and Square replace low-end 'web designers' who will usually build
atop a WordPress core and stick it on a shared webhost, leaving it to be
hacked due to security vulnerabilities. Sure, they leave you semi-dependent on
a given web service. But, to the site owner, they're generally dependent on a
single developer anyway since that dev doesn't usually give them the FTP
credentials.

Weebly is pretty solid and the only major one that's free to use with your own
domain. It just has a small 'powered by weebly' at the bottom. And it
generates standard HTML and CSS that you can then move to another webhost
later if you want. It also does an htaccess for redirects if you're moving
from a previous host using different tech. The only downside is that you don't
get full control over the URLs.

~~~
steve-benjamins
One minor thing:

"the only major one that's free to use with your own domain". Nearly every
website builder lets you do this. Squarespace, Wix, Yola, Virb etc.

~~~
JohnTHaller
Incorrect. Squarespace charges you $8/mo for their base package to use your
domain. Wix requires their "Connect Domain" plan to use your own domain at
$4.08/mo with ads displayed. Yola requires $5.95/mo for your own domain. Virb
is $10/mo.

Weebly's base package is free and includes the ability to use your own domain.
It's the only one.

~~~
steve-benjamins
No, that's incorrect. Weebly does not include that in their free plan. Check
'compare plans' on their homepage.

~~~
JohnTHaller
Ah, they must have changed it recently. I have multiple friends with domains
connected to free plans on Weebly at present.

