Help me understand please I’m confused, $300/year ...

TWWD · ‎06-27-2019

Please, Anyone correct me if I’m wrong. From what I can put together looking at the new price setup for the weebly for web designers is that they said the first year of USING the platform “Which by the way as we all know has always been 100% FREE.” Now, all of a sudden has a ($300) value that they are generously going to give us free for the first year. After that it will be $300.00 per year OR $30.00 a month. Then if You have your own online store website, it will be another $30-ish per month?

SO JUST TO CLARIFY, here is my Scenario: I am using weebly for web designers and I build MYSELF an online store, now we all know stores require constant changes and maintenance, so I would have to use the platform to make these changes and on top of that 300.00/or 30.00 per month fee, they are asking ANOTHER 30.00 bucks a month for my monthly store fee? What the frig? $30.00 x 12 months for my store = $360.00 *P L U S* an ADDITIONAL $300 just to USE the platform leaves me looking at $660.00 per year Just in USAGE fees?!? I am praying somebody will respond to this post and tell me I have completely misunderstood this new transformation. I do not know ANY other ecommerce “website builder” that charges this type of fee!

Are they expecting a % per sale fee ON TOP of this as well? Like Paypal? e.g 2.9% + .30 cents per sale, if so, this is just going to break the bank for us. We are small potatoes and this is REALLY EXPENSIVE.

In all honesty, As far as everything I have read about the Great new improved WEEBLY/SQUARE/WEEBLY, The ONLY THING They kept repeating was “WE ARE SO EXCITED FOR YOU TO SEE OUR NEW APP STORE” and more client access! That really means nothing to many of us. Especially if you can code. APPS just cost even more money! PLEASE forgive me if I sound rude. Im truly not trying to be mean, I am just trying to wrap my head around these astronomical new “2 TIER PLAN” price deal.

I also need to note that if this is NOT a glitch...then it’s scary because I have an active PRO site and some pages ARE password protected. Weebly has had this for years. BUT Here’s the issue as of now, You will never have to worry about forgetting your password. Obviously you can see it in your settings - BUT SQUARE just made it easier for me and the world to see my password AND YOURS TOO by simply clicking VIEW SOURCE on that page! Thumbs up and knuckle bumps! If it’s not broke - don’t fix it. We have also been denied full code access changes like we had before. It’s completely different, quite confusing and FRUSTRATING for us!

SO IN CLOSING: I beg all of you Old Faithful Weebly(ers) out there to respond to this post and HONESTLY tell me I’m wrong about my understanding of this whole new WEEBLY gone SQUARE take over we are being forced into and having to learn from scratch. I also empathize with all the NON coders and beginners who were posting about the themes and their disappearing magic acts. If a theme shows a layout, then THAT layout should be there when you choose it! It should NOT disappear! Hence the name THE WORLDS EASIEST DRAG AND DROP WEBSITE BUILDER WITH AMAZING TEMPLATES... That disappear.

I keep seeing see a SQUARE/WEEBLY manager named “Adam” responding to many posts as well, I actually cannot understand his incomplete answers. When a company asks thousands of faithful customers to get out those wallets and get ready to pay more money, then you CANNOT do the dilly dally tippy toe dance around everyone’s complaints and issues, Adam, if you read this, No matter what - any company should always be 100% transparent and brutally honest with their clients about everything they do and are planning on doing. From what I have read in this community feedback so far, there seems to be more downfalls to this “upgrade” than benefits. I have been with weebly For at least 7 Years now that I can remember, probably longer. I hope things start to heal soon and get better ASAP.

Written with Care and Respect

-Ella and Tori

Bernadette3 · ‎06-29-2019

Thanks for reaching out, Ella and Tori. We appreciate you voicing your opinion and will make sure to forward this to the appropriate team. You would have had to pay for your individual sites (in the site tab) before this migration happened so that part doesn't change. Here is a list of the features that you will now have access to:

App Center Access: add more design functionality and widgets to enhance client sites
Performance Plan: utilize advanced Ecommerce features including product reviews, product badges, and gift cards
Improved User Interface: intuitive dashboard for you to effectively manage your sites. With the new UI, you can view the development status of websites, see when they were last updated, easily change site plans,
Site Templates: Build out templates as a pre-built starting point for your websites. This helps you scale your designer business and design beautiful sites more quickly.
Unlimited Client Accounts: on Designer Platform you were limited to one client login per site. With this new Weebly for Web Designers update, you can add as many clients as you want per site and control their permission levels.
Site Dashboard: gives a high level overview of your client’s website success. Your clients can view their insights and analytics into their site’s performance. They also have the ability to view their e-commerce store sales if they have a store setup through their Weebly site. Additional functionality includes managing blog comments and exporting contact form entries.

For someone with a large amount of clients, you'll actually save money with the Web Pro plan over the Lite plan. If you have a smaller number of client sites, then you'll pay less with the Lite plan over the Web Pro plan even though the per-site costs are higher.

I understand this is a big change and is not easy to accept right away, but you do have a full year to decide if the cost is enough to justify the features. How many clients do you have right now and which plans are they using?

TWWD · ‎06-30-2019

Hi Bernadette.
Thank you for responding, unfortunately we are still left quite perplexed. I understand paying the 28-30ish dollars a month for an online store and I am aware of the sites updated features < “long overdue” as 90% of all the other builders already have them. Here are my main concerns that were not addressed:

#1. So is it just costing us the approx 360.00 dollars a year OR $660..00 per year?

#2. Are there addition percentage “per sales” fees added on top of the fees listed in #1. ?

#3. Why do our website password protected pages show our password in the view source code? That’s a major problem

#4. Why did they totally Take away our access to the main CSS file? This is really, really bad. 😞
We look forward to hearing from you. Thanks again.

Ella and Tori

Adam7 · ‎07-01-2019

1. There are two parts to charges for WWD. One is the platform fee, which we only charge once a year for the Web Pro plan since it gives access to features not included with the Lite plan. The other part is the monthly designer charge based on the number of published clients, which is very similar to how it worked before. The difference is that what you pay per site each month changes depending on which plan you are on. Let's say you have 10 client sites that are all on the Pro plan. With the Lite plan you will pay $150/month for those sites. On the Web Pro plan you will pay $300 once year and only $80/month. You actually end up spending less money over the course of the year on Web Pro than with Lite (Lite is $1800 combined for all 12 months and no platform fee, Web Pro is $1260 combined and includes the once a year $300 platform fee).

2. Any checkout provider you use will have their own transaction fees, though we only add our own on top of that for sites using Pro. If a client site is on Business or Performance then we waive that fee. This applies whether your WWD account is on the Lite plan or WebPro plan.

3. Can you provide me an example page where you are seeing that? You can send it to me through a private message if you want, so it's not listed publicly here.

4. There should have been no changes to CSS editing after the move. What are you seeing when you try to edit CSS?

Help me understand please I’m confused, $300/year just to use the platform and many other questions.