The Problem, and some background:
October 2020. Our website was beyond useless, and falling apart. No maintenance for years, and an editor best suited for children. An upgrade was many, many years overdue. After a great deal of research, the decision was made to switch to Weebly.
Weebly was, and is, a global behemoth. Over 50 million websites, and 625,000 customers. The customer service was OK, and the price reasonable.
Back In 2018, Weebley was purchased by Square. Since acquisition, Square has been building Square Online. Square encourages new users and e-commerce stores to use Square Online instead of Weebly. They do it all. From Point of Sale, to processing payments, banking, inventory, taxes, and countless other financial aspects. Their reach is huge.
I knew Square owned Weebly, but didn't care. We weren't processing payments, e-banking, credit card info, or any other financial transactions. All was well.
Sure, they were pushing everyone on Weebly to use Square for all things financial, but that was expected. What nobody knew at the time was that they were growing Square at the expense of Weebly. Weebly went into global Maintenance mode. Most of the Weebly employees were told to start working for Square. No new updates for system users. Web Industry people figured it out, but the average user wasn't aware. It wasn't a secret, but if you didn't follow the industry, you probably wouldn't know.
Eventually I realized that there were no new updates, but didn't care. It did everything we needed. I don't follow the web design industry and wasn't aware of the underlying issues.
The Square strategy:
The Weebly "upgrade freeze" was not a tightly guarded secret, but rather a "quiet" phase-out that frustrated users for years before becoming officially documented.
When Square acquired Weebly in 2018, they chose not to publicly announce that they were abandoning the core Weebly platform. Instead, they executed a silent transition that unfolded in distinct stages:
- The Silent Feature Freeze: Behind the scenes, Square shifted nearly all engineering and design resources away from the classic Weebly editor and onto Square Online. While they never issued a press release stating that Weebly development was permanently frozen, users began to notice that modern templates, feature requests, and major updates completely stopped rolling out.
- The Community Confirmations: For a long time, the "freeze" was an open secret discussed on forums and Reddit. It wasn't until around early 2025 that Square community moderators and support staff explicitly confirmed that the classic Weebly builder was effectively frozen and would only receive bare-minimum security patches.
- The Forced Migrations: The situation escalated from a simple "feature freeze" to a literal upgrade/publishing freeze. Square began pushing notifications about price hikes, moving account management entirely over to the Square Dashboard, and eventually shutting down the Weebly mobile app.
- The Current Global Wind-Down: In 2026, the strategy became completely transparent. Weebly officially announced it is winding down operations in 67 countries, restricting users from publishing new pages, and completely unpublishing legacy sites by late 2026. No countries in North or South America are included. Weebly says the shutdowns are due to "regulatory changes and simplified operations." It also says that "it has no immediate plans to completely discontinue the standalone Weebly website builder."
Ultimately, it wasn't a malicious secret, but rather corporate neglect. Square chose to let Weebly slowly wither away to force a natural migration over to Square Online, rather than maintaining two competing website builders. Both of which are owned by the same company.
Articulation:
Fast forward to early September of this year. I get an unsolicited email from a web company called Articulation. In it I learn several things of interest, which is what started this entire chain of events. Much research ensued.
The "Articulation" Website Builder Platform:
Was officially launched as an independent entity in November 2023.
The platform was built by Drew Richards and Dustin Doiron, former founding engineers of Weebly. They originally engineered the core technology over 15 years prior, which spent years under Square's ownership after an acquisition in 2018. In late 2023, they split off to build Articulation as a modern, standalone website builder.
They are marketing themselves to anyone, but especially Weebly users. To make it (almost) painless, they've got an interesting automated system. Enter your Weebly website, make a few choices, and it'll copy your site onto theirs. Very slick. We would also have to move our STWG domain name at the same time. This involves a few more steps but doesn't sound complicated. From comments by others, it works well. No website ever transfers 100%, but it should be close enough to get started. Also, Articulation appears to be frequently updated, with excellent customer response. I'd have a learning curve on the new editor, but that's OK. Always good to learn new software.
The Financial stuff:
We're on a two-year payment cycle with Weebly. Our last payment was $254.40. Our current billing period ends October 25, 2026. To stay at our current level, it appears that the next bill would include a price bump of about $100. To prevent the next auto-pay, I contacted them, and once I got past the annoying AI assistant, managed to talk to a very nice customer service guy. Auto-pay is gone. This is now our final, no messing around deadline. I could reinstate it if needed. but really don't want to go there.
Articulation has a different strategy. They bill once a year. $10 a month, billed annually. That's it. Quite a few goodies are included. I assume that auto-pay is required, but that's just a guess.
Sort of related to this, and just FYI. Our stwg.org domain expires on 8/26/2030. I don't remember what it costs, but I think it was reasonable. Domain name registrations are good for 10 years.
A financial comment, and a discussion for another day. I've been using my personal credit card for all of our on-line payments. (web site, and domain registration.) Always reimbursed, which is fine. No problem. However, this really isn't the correct way to do things. If we become an actual, legal organization, we may wish to pursue a no fee, low limit, credit card. Something to think about.
The future:
Gazing into my crystal ball, I think the future is obvious. Weebly will continue to maintain the current status quo. Web sites (except those in the 67 countries) will continue to work, but Weebly will never provide any system updates. Maybe they'll do another phased shutdown. Eventually, I'm guessing that Weebly will provide some type of global shut down plan. This'll take years. And that'll be it. The few remaining Weebly employees will now work for Square. Obviously, this is all speculation on my part, but it makes sense to me.
Everything here was verified as best I could from multiple sources. - Drew
October 2020. Our website was beyond useless, and falling apart. No maintenance for years, and an editor best suited for children. An upgrade was many, many years overdue. After a great deal of research, the decision was made to switch to Weebly.
Weebly was, and is, a global behemoth. Over 50 million websites, and 625,000 customers. The customer service was OK, and the price reasonable.
Back In 2018, Weebley was purchased by Square. Since acquisition, Square has been building Square Online. Square encourages new users and e-commerce stores to use Square Online instead of Weebly. They do it all. From Point of Sale, to processing payments, banking, inventory, taxes, and countless other financial aspects. Their reach is huge.
I knew Square owned Weebly, but didn't care. We weren't processing payments, e-banking, credit card info, or any other financial transactions. All was well.
Sure, they were pushing everyone on Weebly to use Square for all things financial, but that was expected. What nobody knew at the time was that they were growing Square at the expense of Weebly. Weebly went into global Maintenance mode. Most of the Weebly employees were told to start working for Square. No new updates for system users. Web Industry people figured it out, but the average user wasn't aware. It wasn't a secret, but if you didn't follow the industry, you probably wouldn't know.
Eventually I realized that there were no new updates, but didn't care. It did everything we needed. I don't follow the web design industry and wasn't aware of the underlying issues.
The Square strategy:
The Weebly "upgrade freeze" was not a tightly guarded secret, but rather a "quiet" phase-out that frustrated users for years before becoming officially documented.
When Square acquired Weebly in 2018, they chose not to publicly announce that they were abandoning the core Weebly platform. Instead, they executed a silent transition that unfolded in distinct stages:
- The Silent Feature Freeze: Behind the scenes, Square shifted nearly all engineering and design resources away from the classic Weebly editor and onto Square Online. While they never issued a press release stating that Weebly development was permanently frozen, users began to notice that modern templates, feature requests, and major updates completely stopped rolling out.
- The Community Confirmations: For a long time, the "freeze" was an open secret discussed on forums and Reddit. It wasn't until around early 2025 that Square community moderators and support staff explicitly confirmed that the classic Weebly builder was effectively frozen and would only receive bare-minimum security patches.
- The Forced Migrations: The situation escalated from a simple "feature freeze" to a literal upgrade/publishing freeze. Square began pushing notifications about price hikes, moving account management entirely over to the Square Dashboard, and eventually shutting down the Weebly mobile app.
- The Current Global Wind-Down: In 2026, the strategy became completely transparent. Weebly officially announced it is winding down operations in 67 countries, restricting users from publishing new pages, and completely unpublishing legacy sites by late 2026. No countries in North or South America are included. Weebly says the shutdowns are due to "regulatory changes and simplified operations." It also says that "it has no immediate plans to completely discontinue the standalone Weebly website builder."
Ultimately, it wasn't a malicious secret, but rather corporate neglect. Square chose to let Weebly slowly wither away to force a natural migration over to Square Online, rather than maintaining two competing website builders. Both of which are owned by the same company.
Articulation:
Fast forward to early September of this year. I get an unsolicited email from a web company called Articulation. In it I learn several things of interest, which is what started this entire chain of events. Much research ensued.
The "Articulation" Website Builder Platform:
Was officially launched as an independent entity in November 2023.
The platform was built by Drew Richards and Dustin Doiron, former founding engineers of Weebly. They originally engineered the core technology over 15 years prior, which spent years under Square's ownership after an acquisition in 2018. In late 2023, they split off to build Articulation as a modern, standalone website builder.
They are marketing themselves to anyone, but especially Weebly users. To make it (almost) painless, they've got an interesting automated system. Enter your Weebly website, make a few choices, and it'll copy your site onto theirs. Very slick. We would also have to move our STWG domain name at the same time. This involves a few more steps but doesn't sound complicated. From comments by others, it works well. No website ever transfers 100%, but it should be close enough to get started. Also, Articulation appears to be frequently updated, with excellent customer response. I'd have a learning curve on the new editor, but that's OK. Always good to learn new software.
The Financial stuff:
We're on a two-year payment cycle with Weebly. Our last payment was $254.40. Our current billing period ends October 25, 2026. To stay at our current level, it appears that the next bill would include a price bump of about $100. To prevent the next auto-pay, I contacted them, and once I got past the annoying AI assistant, managed to talk to a very nice customer service guy. Auto-pay is gone. This is now our final, no messing around deadline. I could reinstate it if needed. but really don't want to go there.
Articulation has a different strategy. They bill once a year. $10 a month, billed annually. That's it. Quite a few goodies are included. I assume that auto-pay is required, but that's just a guess.
Sort of related to this, and just FYI. Our stwg.org domain expires on 8/26/2030. I don't remember what it costs, but I think it was reasonable. Domain name registrations are good for 10 years.
A financial comment, and a discussion for another day. I've been using my personal credit card for all of our on-line payments. (web site, and domain registration.) Always reimbursed, which is fine. No problem. However, this really isn't the correct way to do things. If we become an actual, legal organization, we may wish to pursue a no fee, low limit, credit card. Something to think about.
The future:
Gazing into my crystal ball, I think the future is obvious. Weebly will continue to maintain the current status quo. Web sites (except those in the 67 countries) will continue to work, but Weebly will never provide any system updates. Maybe they'll do another phased shutdown. Eventually, I'm guessing that Weebly will provide some type of global shut down plan. This'll take years. And that'll be it. The few remaining Weebly employees will now work for Square. Obviously, this is all speculation on my part, but it makes sense to me.
Everything here was verified as best I could from multiple sources. - Drew