I believe that the major advantage of using this over a LMS, is the no-cost nature of it. The most distinct advantage other than the financial aspect is the ease of use. It is simple create and manage sites on Weebly and opportunities for customization are endless. There are a lot of disadvantages to using this source as opposed to a fee-based LMS. The confidentiality of coursework is a major drawback. Weebly is open to the public to view, so information is not private. Another disadvantage is the ease of collaboration and communication between students and teachers as well as between students. There needs to be a separate email account associated with a Weebly account, so it is not necessarily a “one-stop-shop” as a learning platform. Weebly does not allow an option for a gradebook or a dropbox for students to submit work in, which contribute to its disadvantages as well.
With the world of online learning quickly evolving, I think that Weebly is an amazing free resource for creating web pages, but if a teacher actually wanted to create content to use in their classroom to guide student learning, then a LMS would need to be utilized. There are free Learning Management Systems such as Moodle and Edmoto that are likely better options than this Web 2.0 Tool.