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Owlstown

Owlstown vs. Weebly


Weebly is a general-purpose website builder used by a lot of small businesses, bloggers, and artists. Owlstown is an alternative that is designed expressly for academics, researchers, and professors. It has special features to showcase your publications, research projects, courses, and academic achievements.

Primary Audience

Owlstown is a platform primarily designed for academics, researchers, and professors. It offers features tailored to this audience, such as publication listings, project showcases, and academic-focused layouts.
Weebly is a general-purpose website builder suitable for a variety of users, including small businesses, personal blogs, artists, etc. It doesn't cater specifically to any one group.

Ease of Use

Owlstown is designed to make it easy for academics to list and showcase their work without the need for any coding skills. It provides templates that are specific to academics, so you don't have to tweak generic templates to fit your needs. You can focus on sharing your research content rather than fiddling with templates.
Weebly: Known for its drag-and-drop interface, Weebly is user-friendly and allows users to easily create and customize websites. It's suitable for those with little to no technical background.

Features

Owlstown has features that are tailored for academics like listing publications, sharing your CV, course teaching sections, and a dedicated area for projects or research interests.
Weebly: Offers a variety of tools such as e-commerce capabilities, blogging, contact forms, galleries, and more. Their focus is more on general web presence and online sales.

Customization and Flexibility

Owlstown provides academic-specific templates that you can customize fonts and colors. Owlstown limits customizations compared to general-purpose website builders, so you can focus on your research content instead of tweaking layouts and graphics.
Weebly offers a wide range of templates and design flexibility, especially given the drag-and-drop nature of its editor. Users can also access and modify the site's HTML/CSS if they have the expertise.

Pricing

Owlstown: You can create a free academic website with Owlstown. And it doesn't contain any ads. It's a great way to grow your online presence and present your work professionally.

If you need more features, Pro plans start at $4/month. Owlstown offers discounts with the Owlstown Ace Awards.
Weebly offers a free version with basic functionality, but it has a prominent blue banner at the top that says "Powered by Weebly". With Owlstown, you get a banner-free website. This means your website will look professional and scholarly.

To remove the banner, you can get one of Weebly's paid plans which start at $10/month. You also get extra features for e-commerce and business.

Weebly cancelled their student discount program in August 2022, but Owlstown still has its discount program called Owlstown Ace Awards. With this program, you can receive 25% off an annual plan.

Integration and Extensions

Owlstown: Given its niche focus, the platform might not have as wide a range of third-party integrations as more general website builders. However, it might integrate well with academic tools or databases.
Weebly: Provides a variety of third-party integrations and apps in their App Center to enhance website functionality, ranging from e-commerce to marketing tools.

SEO and Marketing

Owlstown has SEO features that helps websites appear in search engines. Owlstown websites appear in the Academic Gallery, so other academics can find your website easily. 
Weebly: Comes with built-in SEO tools, and there are also additional apps or integrations available to help with website marketing and analytics.

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Owlstown was founded in 2017 by Ian Li with the mission to make a website builder for academics that is easy to use, beautiful, and free. The company is independent, self-funded and bootstrapped.
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