8.0 Out Of 10
Services | Website Builder & eCommerce |
Support | Email, Chat & Knowledge Base |
Best for | Individuals and businesses who need a simple website |
Strengths | Easy-to-use |
Weaknesses | Comparable to competitors, higher pricing |
Promotion | Let’s get started. Free. |
Jimdo is a simple website builder for those with little to no programming knowledge.
There are three options available for website owners: A DIY website builder allows you to choose a Jimdo template, customize it and create your own logo, or an AI logo creator which will create a brand and logo from scratch.
Jimdo was recommended to me by a friend. Before I dive into my Jimdo review and the pros and cons, let’s take a look at their tools for building a website.
There are many things to consider when selecting a website builder. And there are many ways to achieve what you desire in terms of functionality and pricing. It doesn’t matter if you are building a website for personal use or for business purposes, your choice of site builder can have major consequences.
It can affect your flexibility, functionality, and brand in the long-term. It can cause headaches in the short-term. However, it is not possible to choose the best or most desirable physical home or office. It’s all about your experience, goals, and circumstances.
What is Jimdo?
Jimdo offers a comprehensive website builder that covers all aspects of building websites. This contrasts with solutions that allow you to buy, install and manage each “piece” of your website individually (e.g., a domain and website hosting as well as website software).
Jimdo works in the same way as leasing an apartment in a luxurious development and personalizing it. While you retain control over decor, cleaning, and other aspects of your daily life, the property owner is responsible for the building, plumbing, security and infrastructure. This is crucial because convenience and control are often in direct conflict.
Jimdo is a great website builder that can make everything work together, but it may not be exactly what you are looking for.
Jimdo is in direct competition with all-inclusive site builders such as:
- Weebly
- Wix
- Squarespace
- WordPress.com
They focus on using AI to create ready-made templates and designs, so that you can concentrate on filling in your content and getting things moving quickly.
For those with more experience, they also offer a traditional drag-and drop builder. This makes Jimdo appealing to those who don’t have any design or development skills (think DIY-ers who need a website built quickly). for those who already have some website knowledge but want to customize it more.
Jimdo Pricing
Jimdo offers four levels of website plans. One is a free one. You also have three eCommerce plans options.
Plan | Play | Start | Grow | Unlimitable |
Price | $0.00/mo. | $9.00/mo. | $15.00/mo. | $39.00/mo. |
Storage | 1 GB | 5 GB | 15 GB | Unlimited |
Bandwidth/month | 2 GB | 10 GB | 20 GB | Unmetered |
Email accounts | – | 1 | 5 | 18 |
Domain Name Design | ||||
No cost domain name | – | – | – | – |
SSL Free | ||||
Display ads | ||||
Analytics |
Get started with Jimdo for free
Play / Free Plan
Jimdo lets anyone sign up for a Jimdo plan at no cost. Access to the Jimdo website builder, including editing via the Jimdo app from your mobile device, themes and SSL certificates for HTTPS encryption, is included.
These are the primary limitations:
- There is no support available, so you will have to place ads.
- you are limited to a Jimdo subdomain on a username.jimdosite.com instead of a custom domain.
- You can only store 500MB.
Start planning
Jimdo’s Start Plan premium plan is the cheapest. Jimdo’s Start Plan gives you full access to all features, but only 10 websites can be accessed, 5GB storage and 10GB bandwidth.
Grow Plan
Jimdo’s Grow Plan has 50 pages, but more storage space than the Start Plan. It also offers support options and more support options.
Unlimited Plan
Jimdo’s Unlimited Plan offers unlimited storage, pages and bandwidth along with a few bundle add-ons.
Basic Plan
Jimdo’s Basic Plan permits for an easy online store with a maximum of 10 pages.
Business Plan
Jimdo’s business plan offers more eCommerce features, particularly for social media marketing. However, the maximum number of pages is 50.
VIP Plan
Jimdo’s VIP Plan offers a complete range of eCommerce features including unlimited storage, unlimited bandwidth and pages.
Jimdo Alternatives
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The Best Website Builder
Jimdo Pros
Here are the benefits of Jimdo, not only in comparison to other popular website builders such as Wix or Weebly but also as a general website solution.
Straightforward Sign up process
Jimdo’s greatest feature is it’s speed to get up and running. It is easy to sign up for the platform. You will need to create an account, verify your details using your email and then choose which website builder that you would like.
You can even choose the type of website that you want to build so it can add pages and blocks automatically.
It will also walk you through a style selector, which will automatically choose your color palette as well as your typography.
The AI web designer may be the best choice if you want to make your website as easy and hands-off as possible. After answering a few questions, the AI web designer creates your website. It also provides a step-by-step guide on how to customize your template. This tutorial is perfect for beginners who want to build a website.
Simplicity
Jimdo is extremely easy to use. This makes it difficult to make mistakes on your website design. After you select a template or have one made for you by the AI builder, you are locked in to the provided layout.
Drag and drop is the best way to build a website. However, you cannot add new elements to the page outside the structure that you have already created.
You can also use the AI builder to create more structure. However, there are limitations. But we’ll get there. This option allows you to use less drag-and drop and has more options. Although you can modify the style of the page (like colors and fonts), you cannot add widgets, blocks, or sections to the page.
It’s like painting with numbers.
While there are some obvious drawbacks to this arrangement, it is an advantage to have limited, but easily accessible design options.
Site Builder Options
Jimdo is unique because they offer two design options. You can either use their AI website maker, which gathers information about you and creates a template based on your answers. Jimdo will guide you through a step by step tutorial to customize your website template.
You can also opt for the DIY approach. This approach allows you to select your industry, and then you are presented with a variety of Jimdo’s templates. You can then customize the template using Jimdo editor by drag and drop editing. This is a slightly more complex method, but it’s still simple enough to be understood by beginners.
It is important to remember that the industry you choose doesn’t really matter if your DIY project goes this route. The same templates were available to me, regardless of whether I selected healthcare or business.
Some product integration
Jimdo’s product integrations are another benefit. Jimdo offers more than hosting and DNS services. They also offer eCommerce functionality as part of their paid plan. (One thing to remember — eCommerce functionality requires you to select between the two higher-priced plans.
We’ll be talking more about pricing shortly, but you should know that you can get the same functionality (or better) elsewhere.
European Presence
This is not a problem for U.S. users. However, it’s a major advantage for EU users who see Jimdo as a strong competitor.
Jimdo, a German company, operates data centers across Europe. This means Jimdo’s privacy and data protection standards are stronger as a European company thanks to the EU’s new privacy laws.
Jimdo also makes it easier for US companies to create EU microsites for their EU customers than other website builders that are focused on the US market.
Cons of Jimdo
Of course, no review is complete without looking at the negatives. Jimdo is not the only software that has problems. Let’s take a look at three cons that I discovered.
Plans + Pricing
Jimdo’s pricing/plan structure can be confusing. Signing up for Jimdo is easy. You will see that the paid plans start at $9/month, paid annually. This includes your domain and free hosting with a limit of 10 pages.
If you decide to upgrade from a free plan, however, the pricing options will be different.
Apart from the confusing information, the pricing structure and competitiveness of the plans leaves much to be desired.
Jimdo is more costly than other competitors such as Wix and Gator. Jimdo also has more restrictions than those of competitors like Weebly.
The free plan does not offer mobile-friendly website design, which is a fairly standard feature in today’s design world. You can only get basic Search Engine Optimization features with their mid-tier plans. Even mid-tier Grow plans have strict limits on page count and bandwidth usage, which to me seems like a double limit. While I am all for exceeding expectations and providing support, the options are severely lacking.
You can’t pay monthly so your subscription is locked in for one year.
Jimdo will cost you more than a competitor, and it will be more difficult to use due to its design and technical limitations.
Design – Limited Feature Set
There is always a compromise between convenience and control when using technology products (think Android vs. iOS).
This is the trade-off that Jimbdo’s website builder makes. Their design layout is very easy. It is simple, quick, and not at all confusing. You can focus on getting your content onto the template and then adding elements to the template that could enhance your design/user experience.
Jimdo is limited in its ability to allow you to do more than the basic design elements. You can modify the color, font, and overall ‘feel’ of your website using the DIY builder. There are a variety of templates that you can choose from, with different navigation styles.
You can add and delete sections, move them around and make changes to pages. However, you cannot add a new page to the navigation unless it is added. While you can modify the layout, you cannot alter the CSS or add other elements to it.
You’re even more limited if you use the AI website builder. You can create sections and elements from pre-built blocks as I have mentioned, but that’s it.
It can be described as a “paint-by numbers” setup. You can have the basics but you will need to add or modify things.
The design limitations of a website can make it difficult to grow or become a larger part of your business. Jimdo is not like other website builders who attempt to fix this problem through extensions or apps or access to the HTML code.
Technical Feature Set Limited
Design limitations can also be reflected in technical limitations.
Technical limitations are features you don’t want until they’re actually needed. Then you realize you can’t have them.
These include integrations with Facebook and Pinterest, Twitter, Google Ads. Social sharing options, blogging and a host of every intermediate up to advanced marketing tools available on the internet. Jimdo offers some connections, such as eCommerce and DNS/hosting. Jimdo does not offer many technical features or they have very limited options.
Let’s take, for example, Jimdo’s SEO capabilities. You can edit page titles and descriptions for individual pages. I can also assign noindex, zero follow or noarchive settings. Apart from that, I am pretty limited in what I can do with the HTML on the page. Sitemaps, Schema and Open Graph settings are not available. These options are much more limited.
The additional products available are very limited. Marketing your site is not difficult, except for adding code to Google Analytics or Facebook Analytics.
Jimdo is lacking in product integrations and other technical features that will help you market your website better.
Conclusion
Jimdo makes website creation simple, especially if it’s something already done for you. You will find a simple user interface throughout your Jimdo account, as well as an editor/customizer that makes it easy to get your content online.
Jimdo’s current plans and pricing
Jimdo customers must consider the trade-offs, including functionality, customization, control, and security. Jimdo is not as comprehensive as other website builders. Jimdo is not as flexible in terms of technical integrations and features. This means that if you want to create a website using a basic template, but with some customizations and functionality, Jimdo might not be the right choice.