The global pandemic has helped website builders and web hosting providers worldwide acquire new business and grow significantly as millions found themselves either without work or furloughed, looking for new opportunities as freelancers or self-employed amidst the biggest recession in a generation.
Weebly, the Square-owned ecommerce platform that offers amongst other things, a free website builder, has emerged as the biggest web hosting company in August.
This is despite a significant drop in traffic since May 2020, when it reached 87m unique users, far ahead of its two biggest competitors, Wix and Godaddy.
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Weebly win
While Wix wins when it comes to direct traffic, Weebly dwarfs its rivals when it comes to organic search, which brings in the most desirable form of traffic for an ecommerce website, an audience with intent.
Weebly was acquired by Square back in May 2018 for a cool $365 million and back then had more than 625,000 paying customers. The acquisition brought added features to Square, whose main business is about managed payment solutions, offline and online.
To date, 50 million people have started a site on Weebly, mostly using its free website builder, with a staggering 325 million unique users doing so. The free version gives you only 500MB storage, free SSL security and domain with Weebly branding as well as lead capture and contact forms.
Square has a market capitalization of more than $64 billion with its share prices quadrupling since the end of March 2020 despite early concerns that a prolonged lockdown might affect sales.
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