With the announcement of Designer Platform, Weebly joins the league of Hosts offering reseller programs.

Success of the reseller programs vastly depends on the value proposition to the reseller. Resellers are normally offered a 30% discounted price over the regular pricing on the products and services.

This saves the manufacturer from 1) Marketing expenses 2) Sales expenses 3) Liabilities 4) Customer Management 5) Support. At the same time, gives the manufacturer the opportunity to reach into a customer segment where they have no marketing presence or viable means of selling and supporting.

Successful reseller programs have two important traits:

1. A high degree of quality of the product being resold
2. A significant commission on what is being resold.

If either of the two falters, the reseller program could fall flat.

Note that SiteKreator, which used to offer free sites once upon a time, does not offer free sites any more. Weebly still offers free sites which makes the Weebly Reseller Program a hard sell.

In reality, Weebly’s reseller program is competing with Weebly more than any one else. Take a look at the Weebly Pricing Comparison and you will see that Weebly Reseller Program is 50 times more expensive than Weebly-Pro pricing.

Some thing really really valuable needs to be added to make the Weebly Designer Platform attractive. Until then, it will be a rocket with no fuel. Following is a comparison of SiteKreator Reseller Program .vs. Weebly Reseller Program (or, the Weebly Designer Platform). Please check below the table for a little more details on the features.

[Update: Feb 6, 2013: Weebly Designer Platform Price dropped to $7.95]

Feature	SiteKreator	Weebly
1. Price per Site (2GB)	$14 (12+2)	$15
2. Number of Pages Per Site	Unlimited	40
3. White-Label Email & Live-Chat Support	$2/month/site	No White Label Support
4. Design Editor (Style Sheet Editor)	$2/mont/site	Included
5. Domain Registrations	$10/year	$40/year
6. Theme and Template Quality Score	8 out of 10	5 out of 10
7. Number of Themes	Over 300 Editable high quality themes including premium themes	Over 100 themes
8. Private IP Address	$2/month	No Private IP Option
9. Payment Gateway Setup	$100 one time fee	No payement gateway Option
10. SSL Certificate Installation	$90 one time fee	No SSL option
11. Members only Areas for sites	Included	Not Available
12. Forums	Included / Unlimited	$5/month/site
13. File Management	Included	Not Available
14. Blogs	Included	Included
15. Forms	Included	Included
16. Mailing List Subscription	Included / Unlimited	(Not Included) Use Third party Paid Service
17. E-mail Marketing & News Letters Distribution	Included / Unlimited	(Not included) Use Third party Paid service
18. User Management	Included	Not Available
19. Independent Page Publishing	Included	Not Available
20. Facebook Tabs Automatic Site Integration	Included	Not Available
21. Access Controlled Pages	Independent Page Password Protection (or) By Member Group (or) By Mailing List	Not Available
22. Collapsible Panel	Included	Not Available
23. Customizing Design, Background, Colours, Logos and other non-Style Sheet Editing options	Included	Not Available. Changing Style Sheet is the only choice.
24. Quality of Support	High	Low
25. Appointment Scheduler	Included	(Not Included) Use Third party Paid Service
26. News & Events Announcements	Included	Not Available
27. Choice of Navigation Styles	Included	Not Available
28. Sitewide Access Control	Included (Password or Mailing List or Group)	Included (Password only)
29. Google Analytics Integration with site	Included	Not Available
30. Facebook Connect (integrated)	Soon to be Available	Not Available
31. Facebook Comments (integrated)	Included	Not Available
32. Facebook Buttons, Stream, Recommendations	Included	Not Available
33. Polls	Included	(Not Included) Use Third party Paid Service
34. Twitter Integration	Included	Not Available
35. Independent text styling	Included	Not Available
36. Multiple editing options like Anchor points	Included	Basic
37. Track News Letter Click-Through Rate	Included	Not Available
38. Email Auto Responders for Form Submissions	Included	Not Available
39. Additional Languages Supported	5	None

1. Price Per Site: Weebly has a 500MB option at $8/month which lets you create only 10 pages. Weebly third plan is 10GB at $25/month for unlimited number of pages. SiteKreator does not limit the number of pages but give 1GB for $12 and every additional 1GB is $2. With SiteKreator you can choose how much space you need and pay only for that. We chose 2GB plan for comparison which brings the price closer to be compared and 2GB is also more practical and fits most of the needs.
2. Number of Pages Per Site: We like SiteKreators way of not restricting the number of pages and just using the space as a measure. Weebly puts a restriction of pages as well as space.
3. White-Label Support: You can choose SiteKreator to support your clients directly. SiteKreator provides email and Live-Chat support for $2 a month for every site. A support from SiteKreator for $2 a month is very critical to win premium clients, unless you plan to build your own support network. Weebly does not have a white label support. With Weebly reseller program, you must plan your own support personnel and infrastructure.
4. Design Editor / CSS Editor: SiteKreator charges $2/month/site if you need access to CSS editor to make changes to the style sheet. Weebly includes it in the plan. Note that SiteKreator includes Extended Customization options for no extra fee, and you can do a lot of customizations without needing to change style sheet. Weebly does not have much of customization options to make any sort of changes to themes, which leaves you no choice but edit CSS for any needs.
5. Domain Registrations: SiteKreator lets you register domains directly at bargain price of $10 per domain per year. It is a nice convenience. Weebly charges $40/year for domain and E-Mail, which is quite a bit and you will have to use third party like GoDaddy for domain registrations to get the $10/domain/year pricing.
6. Themes and Templates: SiteKreator includes all premium templates in the reseller pricing. SiteKreator’s themes are very decent and appealing. Weebly themes are functional and meets the purpose.
7. Number of Themes: SiteKreator offers about 300 themes, 200 of which are suitable for extended customization. Even though SiteKreator offer 300 themes, treat it as 200 because some of them are so close that they look like duplicates. Weebly offer about 100 themes but only 20 of them are worth counting.
8. Private IP Address: SiteKreator offers the option to assign a private IP address. Most of the clients who pay you $30 a month will be needing it. Apart from SSL, private IPs are very important for not having your site blocked and your emails to be considered real. Shared hosting shares the same ip address for all sites hosted on the server. If one of those sites misbehaves, all sites sharing that ip could end up being blocked.
9. Payment Gateway Setup: SiteKreator provides option to configure payment gateway required for e-Commerce. Weebly does not provide a choice.
10. SSL: SiteKreator provides option to add SSL for secure communication between visitors and the site. This is critical when your client’s site collects important data from visitors like login/password. Weebly does not allow SSL.
11. Members only areas: SiteKreator includes facility to restrict access to certain pages to specified members or to the groups or based on mailing lists. Weebly has no access restrictions based on logins.
12. Forums: SiteKreator includes built-in forums with no restrictions. Weebly has no built-in forums and hence have to use a third party embed which could cost about $5 a month.
13. File Management: SiteKreator has a built-in file management functionality. Weebly does not have a file manager and hence require you to upload the same file multiple times if you need to post the image or file at more than one place in the site. This is important when your site does not include unlimited storage space.
14. Blogs: Both SiteKreator and Weebly provide Blogs.
15. Forms: SiteKreator and Weebly offer Forms
16. Mailing List Subscriptions: SiteKreator includes built-in mailing list subscriptions for every site and lets you maintain a local database of users’ emails. Weebly does not have such feature. This is a feature that almost all clients would want and with Weebly, you have to use a third party solution as embed and it could be very expensive.
17. E-Mail Marketing and News Letter Distribution: SiteKreator includes a e-mail marketing and news letter distribution platform. Weebly does not have such provision and hence need to use a third party solution.
18. User Management: SiteKreator includes subscriber management with unique logins that can help build community for your client. Weebly has no user management functionality.
19. Independent Page Publishing: SiteKreator lets you publish selected pages while you are working on other pages which are not yet ready to be published. It is very important for updating some pages with urgent information while other pages and functionality is still in draft mode and not yet ready for publishing. Weebly has no such option and you have to either publish the entire site or wait until all your changes are ready to be published.
20. Automatic Facebook Tabs: SiteKreator includes a built in method that automatically creates a Facebook Tabs corresponding to the pages which not only keeps the facebook pages in same style but also syncs them too without any effort. Weebly has no such option.
21. Access Controlled pages: SiteKreator includes a way to control access to each and every page independently through different passwords to different pages or different member permissions to different pages or different mailing list or groups to different pages. Weebly has no independent access control for pages. Weebly can only restrict the entire site with one single password.
22. Collapsible Panel: SiteKreator includes the element to Expand/Collapse sections of pages on click. This is a very useful feature that greatly enhances usability and visitor experience. Example usage is in FAQ where clicking a question expands the answer. Weebly does not have such an option.
23. Design Customization: SiteKreator includes expanded site customization options which allows to change theme colours, backgrounds, fonts etc to a great extent without the need to open CSS. Weebly has no design customization options. With Weebly, you need to edit CSS for any of the changes.
24. Quality of Support: SiteKreator has a live-chat support. Weebly’s support is not anywhere close to adequate for serious clients.
25. Appointment Scheduler: SiteKreator includes a built-in appointment scheduler for all sites. Weebly has no scheduler and have to use a third party solution which could cost quite a bit.
26. News & Events Announcements: SiteKreator includes the application to make timely announcements on your site about news or special events and even send broadcast mail to mailing lists. Weebly has no provision for special announcements.
27. Choice of Navigation Styles: SiteKreator lets you choose your own Menu Navigation style from the multiple choices. Weebly provides no such choice. Navigation convenience is an important aspect of visitor experience.
28. Site wide access control: Both Weebly and SiteKreator provide the option to choose single password for the site.
29. Google Analytics  Integration: SiteKreator integrates Google Analytics with the site and hence all stats can be accessed without leaving the site. Weebly has no integration. Stats provided by Weebly on site are basic but you can setup weebly to track google analytics and check stats at google instead of checking them on site.
30. Facebook Connect: SiteKreator is working on enabling Facebook Connect and should be available soon. Weebly has no facebook connect as of now either.
31. Facebook Comments: SiteKreator has integrated Facebook Comments Social Plugin so that facebook users can comment on your site using their facebook ids. Weebly has no such option and you will have to implement it your self.
32. Facebook Buttons, Streams: SiteKreator has all possible Facebook buttons, streams, boxes etc integrated. With Weebly, you will have to get the embed code from Facebook and use the html-embed element to add it to the site.
33. Polls: SiteKreator has Polls included. Weebly does not have polls.
34. Twitter Integration: Just like Facebook integration, SiteKreator has integrated Twitter buttons too. Weebly has no Twitter integration and you need to use html-embed and get the embed code from Twitter.
35. Independent Text Styling: SiteKreator lets you stylize any portion of text the way you want. Weebly limits all the text to one style and if you need to add a different style you will have to edit the style sheet. Weebly backend does not handle independent style control.
36. Multiple Editing options: SiteKreator provides more editing options like adding Anchor points just like you add links, which makes it very quick and easy for editing. With Weebly, you need to use custom-html, a little more cumbersome.
37. Track Newsletter Click-Through Rate: SiteKreator includes an on-site tracking for measuring the effectiveness of yoru newsletters. Weebly has no built-in news-letter option.
38. Auto Responder for Form Submission: SiteKreator includes a method to send an auto email response to form submissions. Weebly does not have this option, but you can refresh the screen with a message after the form is submitted. An email response is often considered a more responsible response.
39. Additional Languages Supported: SiteKreator includes the ability to create a site in 5 additional languages at no extra cost. Weebly Designer Platform does not have such a choice.