Free website templates are advertised all over the internet, so how do you know which one(s) are reliable, don’t involve any hidden fees and are, most importantly, easy to maintain? Recently I’ve been experimenting with two sites that fit these exact criteria…free, reliable and easy. In an afternoon you can have a new website for your organization. Webnode and Weebly are two popular free website building tools. The sites are quick and easy to use because within hours the results are immediately live on your site, without having to upload and transfer files. Thanks to the use of WYSIWYG, you don’t have to have any previous website building knowledge to construct a professional looking website. Whether you’re looking for a website for your business, a nonprofit or to highlight your hobby, you can’t go wrong by choosing Webnode or Weebly.

Below I’ve listed the key features of both tools on separate charts, followed by my recommendations and finally, how a few experts have reviewed each website building tool.

Webnode’s Key Features

Pros and Cons:

Pros:

• Interested in social Networking? Blogs , YouTube and Flickr are also available to add under the widgets section
• Ecommerce- PayPal, Google Checkout and Wordplay (credit cards) are all options on Webnode.
• Need design ideas? Webnode provides a Projects page that categorizes and displays different sites built on Webnode.

Pro that turned into a Con:

Webnode provides demos on their site: introduction demo, photo gallery demo and a how to make a blog demo. Normally this would be great asset to the user, but at the time of publishing this article, the sound was not working on the videos, which defeats the purpose. You can still view them, but you have to have stellar eyesight to see the details. I’ve been checking back over the span of a few days to see if they fix this bug, but I’m not having any luck. I posted this concern on their forums bugs thread.

Con:

The Help feature is in the form of forums. – You aren’t guaranteed that someone will answer your question, let alone in a timely manner.

Weebly’s Key Features

Pros and Cons:

Pros:

They do offer online “How To” tutorial with screenshots to teach you how to add more content to your site which include the following:

• Make Money with Google AdSense
• Verify Your Site with Google
• Index Your Site with Search Engines
• Add Google Analytics
• Add a Music Player
• Add Games

• Add PayPal for Simple E-Commerce
• Add a Calendar
• Add a Guestbook
• Configure a Domain Already Registered
• Configure a Domain - GoDaddy

Pro or Con: You Decide:

Weebly has fewer options to choose from when compared to Webnode. That can be perceived as good or bad, depending on the vision you have of your website. The page designs are limited to a few page layouts, so it’s easier to make your decision, or on the other hand, it’s limited. Your selections are a two column content block or a page break. Other choices concern the style of your paragraphs. You must decide if you want your paragraph lead with a title, a picture or neither. That makes it quick and simple. The simplicity makes it quick to have a site up and running in no time.

Cool Tools on each site:

Weebly – Online Booking

“Through a partnership with HourTown, Weebly is able to offer your customers the ability to book appointments online. HourTown puts your business' open time slots on the web and attracts new customers to schedule with you.”

Webnode – Widgets Gallery

Add widgets from Google Gadgets, YourMinis Gadgets, SpringWidgets or your own source.

My Recommendation

To me it was an easy pick. Webnode just seemed easier to navigate and I liked having more options on the page layouts. The navigation menu includes all of your design elements listed in front of you at all times. You have more choices to customize your site, and I preferred their website design template options better than Weebly.

Weebly is simple to use, and it’s quicker to get a site up and running because it has less options to choose from, so you end up having less time invested in trial and error process and with experimenting.

My advice would be to try out each demo site to see which tool fits your comfort level. If you want a website that has more bells and whistles and one that can grow with your organization go with Webnode. In my opinion Webnode provides a more professional looking site. However, you can’t ignore the positive reviews that’s Weebly has received in the last year. In this week that they have added new templates and they’ve reached 1 million users. Weebly’s committed to earning their praise.

Compare the Key Feature charts and pay attention to product’s Premium Services. It’s important to vision how you want your site to look now, and to plan on how you want your site to evolve in the future. After careful consideration, decide now if a Premium Service package is in your future. Remember that websites must contain content that will continue to bring customers/viewers back to your site.

What Others are Saying

Webnode:

Here’s what TechCrunch says about Webnode:
“It’s a very clean and easy to use page creator which is much easier than blogs. Not as much functionality as something like Ning but there are lots of options to change the layout and general structure of the site. It’s more for building websites than social networks or blogs. Weirdly they are on a trend - two website creators have been financed in Germany, e.g. Jimdo and Homepage Baukasten. {The presentation was good}”

Read the entire article here.

Weebly:

Time Magazine voted Weebly on of their 50 Best Websites of 2007:

This clever WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) website building tool for non-techies offers a one-step process for adding content that's already somewhere else on the Web, such as Flickr photos, YouTube videos and Google maps. You can also add RSS feed readers that will display headlines that link back to the latest posts on your favorite blogs (just be sure to type in the site's feed URL, not the home page URL). When you click-and-drag a YouTube video onto your page, a flash player appears with it, and you can adjust the viewing screen size. (This is different than posting a link that takes you back to the source; you're literally copying the content and pulling it into your site.) Creating a blog is as easy as creating a new page and the page design templates let you hit the ground running; you can mouse over a particular layout to get a preview. Weebly also lets you use your own domain name, if you've got one, otherwise your site URL will be yourname.weebly.com.

Read the rest of the article here.