IMHO what is missing in the analysis is hosting. Sure, a good tool to create HTML/CSS is important, but you also need a server to put that on. The author is just glossing over that fact in their analysis for Weebly/WiX/Squarespace.
These sites used to be scattered all over the web. No need to use other servers. wix, et al came much, much later and was never as free (as in beer and libre).
Those ISPs used to give step by step guides on how to get FP to upload your site.
The magic came when you changed ISPs and you had a different url to upload to... Suddenly your site was in two places (because ISPs then rarely removed old sites)
