Weebly targets Europe with localized support and services for its drag-and-drop website builder

Weebly, a website-builder and web-hosting service based in San Francisco, has announced a major localization program for Europe that will see the company cater specifically to businesses in the U.K., France, and Germany.

Above: Weebly Android App

Founded in 2006, Y Combinator alum Weebly has built a solid reputation in the web-building realm, with a drag-and-drop interface that lets anyone create and edit websites across mobile and desktop. Today it counts more than 30 million users in 170 countries, and it has raised north of $35 million to date, the bulk of which came in April 2014 in a round led by Sequoia Capital and Tencent Holdings.

Though Weebly first internationalized way back in 2010 with the launch of localized languages, today’s news sees the company go a few stages further.

While it already allowed merchants to accept payments from their customers in multiple currencies, Weebly itself has hitherto only accepted payments in U.S. dollars from its own customers — now, it will accept euros and U.K. pounds as well.

And there will also be a dedicated local support team based in Berlin who will deal with queries and problems via live chat and email for France, Germany, and the U.K. Phone support will be added in early 2016, and a local team will be built out in London in the future.

Though the main operational hub is in Germany for now, the U.K. is a key market for the company, with two million customers and a 40 percent rise in the last year alone. “I truly believe it has never been easier for someone to take their idea and bring it to life online,” said Weebly CEO David Rusenko. “It’s inspiring to help entrepreneurs build an online store and immediately reach consumers across the globe, bring their website to the world and subsequently change their lives. The boring 9-5 is dead. It’s time to do what you love.”

Given that web hosting is a core part of Weebly’s offering, the company is also now offering localized domain names. Before now, it offered only .com, .net, and .org domains; moving forward it will offer .co.uk (U.K.), .de (Germany), .nl (Netherlands), .fr (France), .es (Spain), .eu (Europe), .us (U.S.), .ca (Canada), and .info.

It’s also worth noting that Weebly will be accommodating the so-called E.U. Cookie Directive by letting users add a notification to tell visitors about the use of cookies on their website.