Squarespace vs Weebly: Capability Comparison, and Weebly's Shutdown Status

Before comparing features: Weebly's own support site confirms it is unpublishing sites in 67 named countries on September 27, 2026, and ending account access on December 26, 2026, while Squarespace has made no comparable announcement. If your account is in one of those 67 countries, this comparison doesn't matter yet - you need to move, not pick between plans. If it isn't, here's how the two actually compare on ownership, ecommerce, AI editing, and pricing, sourced from each vendor's own pages, checked September 2026.

Is the Weebly shutdown relevant to me?

Only if your account is registered in one of the affected countries. Weebly's regional notice states: "We have made the difficult decision to wind down Weebly services in 67 countries by 2026-09-20 due to changes in regulation and to simplify our global operations." For accounts in those countries, affected sites will be "unpublished on 2026-09-27," and account login continues "until 2026-12-26 to enable you to move your site, domains, and data to another service" (Weebly Support, "Upcoming Changes to Weebly's Global Operations", checked September 2026). The United States, Canada, the UK, Australia, and most of Western Europe are not named on that list. For the full list and what to do before each date, see our Weebly pricing guide, which covers the shutdown and current Weebly plan costs together.

How do the two compare at a glance?

How does export actually compare?

Neither platform hands you a portable, self-hostable copy of the finished site - the real difference is in what content each one lets you take with you at all.

Squarespace's export tool is built for one destination and one content type: "You can export certain content from your Squarespace site into an .xml file. This is useful for importing content to WordPress" (Squarespace, "Exporting your site", checked September 2026). It covers layout pages plus a single blog page's posts, text blocks, and image blocks - and explicitly excludes "album pages, cover pages, index pages, info pages, calendar pages, portfolio pages, and store pages," along with drafts and style settings. If your site's real content lives in a store or portfolio rather than a blog, this export has nothing for you.

Weebly's own backup guide describes a site archive you "can save... as an offline backup of your website for safe-keeping or to recreate the site at another host" - but the same page excludes blog and store pages from that archive because they "rely directly on our database" rather than existing as static files (Weebly Support, "Back Up Your Site", checked September 2026). Store data comes out separately as a product CSV instead. Neither company's export tool is a general-purpose way to leave with everything intact - both require you to plan for a manual rebuild of at least part of the site.

How does pricing compare?

Squarespace's current pricing page lists four plans, shown here in USD as the page displayed to this session (Squarespace, Pricing, checked September 2026):

Weebly's pricing page, also shown in USD to this session, lists a permanently free tier alongside three paid ones (weebly.com/pricing, checked September 2026):

Both companies serve their pricing pages by region and may show different figures or currencies depending on where you're browsing from, so confirm the numbers shown to your own account before you buy rather than relying on the tables above. The structural difference is more durable than the exact numbers: Squarespace's cheapest option is a 14-day trial with no permanently free tier behind it, while Weebly publishes a Free plan indefinitely - though outside the 67 affected countries, not inside them, where "permanently" no longer applies before the account-login cutoff.

For a deeper breakdown of what each Squarespace plan unlocks beyond the price, see our Squarespace pricing guide; for the same on Weebly plus the shutdown details, see our Weebly pricing guide.

How does AI editing compare?

Squarespace documents its own AI tools directly, including Blueprint AI Builder for starting a new site and Clarkson AI chat for editing an existing one: text, images, products and discounts. Squarespace notes that it is "rolling out Clarkson to sites in waves, so it may not be available on your site yet" (Squarespace, "Using Squarespace AI"). Our dedicated guide to using AI with a Squarespace site covers what Clarkson and Blueprint each do, and what an outside tool like ChatGPT or Claude can and can't do through a browser instead - it isn't repeated here.

Weebly's own help pages don't document a comparable AI website-generation feature, editing assistant, or developer-facing agent protocol. Per our Weebly vs Wix comparison, that's an absence in what Weebly publishes, not a statement from Weebly that no such feature exists.

Who is each one not for?

Squarespace is not a fit if a permanently free plan matters to you, or if you want to sell digital content without a fee until you're on the Advanced plan - the Digital Product fee only reaches 0% at the top tier.

Weebly is not a fit right now if your account is in one of the 67 affected countries - see the shutdown section above before anything else. Even outside those countries, Weebly is not the choice if you want documented AI editing tools or a dedicated SEO help hub with the depth Squarespace's SEO/AI Visibility panel offers.

What if I decide to leave either one?

Both are manual rebuilds on the other end, not one-click imports. If you're leaving Weebly specifically, the destination-by-destination move guide covers WordPress, Squarespace, and Wix as landing spots, including what actually carries over from a Weebly export. If you're comparing Squarespace against other options more broadly, Squarespace vs WordPress and Squarespace vs Wix cover those specific pairs.

Where does Figment fit in?

Nowhere directly for this decision. Figment publishes a website from a Figma design through its Figma plugin; it has no blog, store, or content collection system, and it isn't a CMS to weigh against either Squarespace or Weebly. If a growing blog, store, or content library is what you actually need, this comparison - not Figment - is the one that matters.

Bottom line: Weebly's shutdown status in 67 countries is the fact to check before any feature comparison. Outside those countries, Squarespace documents deeper SEO tools, its own rolling-out AI editing assistant, and a tiered ecommerce fee structure with no free plan behind it; Weebly keeps a permanently free tier and bundles ecommerce into every plan including Free, but documents no AI editing and a thinner SEO help hub. Neither export tool gets you a fully portable copy of the finished site.