Highly intuitive content editor
An extensive number of tools available with the free plan
The option of adding various apps and services via Jimdo Widgets
Inexpensive plans
Limited ecommerce capabilities
Jimdo makes creating a website easy, which is perfect for those who still haven’t entered the DIY website building world. There’s even the option of letting Jimdo create a website for you with the AI website builder – Jimdo Dolphin. Jimdo is also one of the few website builders that provide free users with so many tools for creating a website. The lack of live chat support is a minus for Jimdo, as well as somewhat limited ecommerce capabilities. As you’ll see in this Jimdo review, the choice of templates is not the most extensive one, but if you want to make a highly functional site for free, the website builder is up to the task.
Once upon a time launching a website was a complicated process that only the chosen few were able to handle. Today, however, you can set up a website in many different ways, which is why there are more than 1.7 billion active websites. From working with web designers and developers to using special ready-made builders, everybody can create a website these days.
The number of website builders is growing as we speak. That’s why it’s important for DIY website creators to choose the most productive ones, like the Jimdo builder. In this Jimdo review, we’re going to discuss the major features of this builder and present the results of our user experience with this tool.
When you get to the Jimdo website, the first thing you see is a well-organised homepage, dominated by blue and green pastel. After this soothing and eye-relaxing first impression, first-time visitors can sign up either with their Facebook or Google account. The next time you visit this website, you’ll just need to provide your Jimdo login information, and you can continue with your creative plan.
Now that you’ve registered with Jimdo, you can start creating your own website, launch an e-store, or start a blog. For the sake of this guide, we chose to create a website. However, if you have some time to play with the other two features, they also provide a fair number of options, especially the blog part.
After you’ve selected building a website, you can choose whether you’d like your website to be created via the AI assistant called Jimdo dolphin or if you’d like to do it on your own. This smart tool will ask you a certain number of questions and populate its website template to come up with a complete website. Here, you can choose between the Business and Professional website plans. The great thing about this tool is that once you enter the name of your business, it will automatically collect information about it online to generate as resourceful a website as possible.
If you opt for the regular website option, you’ll get to the Jimdo dashboard. It’s pretty straightforward so everybody can use it in a comfortable, intuitive way. You can either drag and drop your image to the page or insert a link to an online picture.
The image editor allows you to crop the image on your own. You can even choose the aspect ratio or simply lock the dimensions of the image. As for other adjustments, it’s possible to add different effects, colours, overlays, frames and other features to your image. Adding videos is also simple and user-friendly.
Also, one of the reasons the Jimdo rating is so high is the simplicity of its content editing. The content features are included in your Jimdo website without any difficulties. You just need to click on the field that you want to populate with your text, and it’s as simple as that.
When somebody with no design experience wants to build their own website from scratch, they need as simple and yet as functional a theme as possible. This is where Jimdo gets ahead of the curve when we’re talking about the best website builders. With more than 100 different templates for your website, this builder will meet all sorts of different website design requirements.
You can also edit your template as many times as you wish without affecting the content. Apart from that, it’s possible to access all the features of the Free package regardless of the template you use. This means that you can launch a website, a store or a blog using any single theme for free.
Of course, for the more advanced options you’ll have to pay for the premium packages. In the Jimdo vs WordPress template comparison, Jimdo is simpler for ordinary users. While you can customise themes on both platforms, WordPress customisation demands some advanced skills. On the other hand, this means that tech-savvy users will be able to do more with WordPress.
One thing that’s a bit outdated with Jimdo is the fact that it isn’t retina-friendly, which might affect image quality when your website is visited by gadgets. Since retina-friendly displays are only now becoming widely popular, the Jimdo team will probably add these features to their templates. Nonetheless, the templates used for Jimdo websites are all mobile-friendly, which will make your website adaptable to tablets, smartphones and all sorts of computer screens.
If you build your website with Jimdo, you can add a separate blog section to it. One of the great blog features here is the URL-ending customisation, which allows you to include the keywords in your blog posts’ URLs. In this Jimdo review, 2018, we are a big fan of this feature, since it will improve the SEO status of both your website and your blog.
Also, you can use the Disqus plug-in to improve the overall discussion experience in the comment section. For instance, this option enables you to post threaded responses to users’ comments and take part in conversations.
Another great advantage of the Jimdo blog is the option to use the same tags in several posts. That way, you’ll be able to easily navigate between posts marked with those tags. What’s more, it’s possible to make all your posts automatically shareable and comment-friendly. The title and date for each post published on your blog can easily be edited in the Posts section.
Also, when you add a custom image and summary to your blog post, they will be shown on your blog page. Closely related to that, the blog page on Jimdo will display all the blog pieces you publish. Each of them will be presented with the preview image you’ve chosen and a small excerpt.
It’s important to stress in this Jimdo review that the team behind this builder pays a lot of attention to security. In line with that, you can rest assured that your website will be safe and sound in the online environment thanks to the HTTPS encryption. With this special security add-on, you don’t have to worry about the pathways your data will be travelling through.
Website owners need to use its email system in a fast and simple way. Your Jimdo website can easily be integrated with your G Suite tools and account so that you can use the tools from both platforms to improve your website features.
Simple, user-friendly navigation is also important for new websites. Having looked at several Jimdo website examples, we concluded that most of them offer exactly that: smooth and efficient navigation. This might be the case due to the site plan option provided by this builder. This option allows you to plan your site step by step and try different navigation features. This is a bit of a slower lane, but the end goal will be more appropriate for your users – a fact you’ll see verified in additional Jimdo reviews.
In order to get information about and from your visitors, you can easily include a form field on your website. Just go to the Elements Menu and you’ll see the Form icon. You can add different features to this section, such as your own email address, the confirmation message, or the CAPTCHA field. It’s possible to change the layout of the form, as well.
When we were reading some older Jimdo reviews, to learn about the builder’s history, the Live Chat option was available through a third-party add-on. Today, there’s an original Jimdo Live Chat app that’s easily integrated with your website.
In this day and age, Jimdo is also a trendsetter with their ecommerce options. You can both build a dedicated ecommerce website or add a separate e-store section to your website builder. The products you add to your store can be placed in different categories. Also, you can add the description, image and price, as well as tags to each of your products. In a nutshell, Jimdo provides a wide range of ecommerce options.
No matter whether you want to develop only a website or add a Jimdo app to your design package, it’s important that the website builder loading speed is high. In line with that, we’ve tested the website loading speed with the Google Page Speed tool.
The desktop loading speed achieved during this test is 1.1 seconds FCP and 0.8 seconds DCL. Similarly, the mobile loading speed is 1.7 seconds FCP and 1.5 seconds DCL. Both of these results place a Jimdo website in the middle third of all websites. When we make a Jimdo vs Wix comparison in terms of the loading speed, the latter turns out to be slower, with both parameters indicating 2.2 seconds for the desktop loading speed and 1.8 seconds for its mobile counterpart.
You can also perform a large number of SEO features and analytics using just the ready-made SEO tools on the Jimdo website. From adding your homepage title and description to covering the basic SEO description for the entire website to the integrated Google Analytics section, doing SEO with Jimdo is as simple as it gets.
However, it’s important to stress in this Jimdo review that the free package doesn’t include as many SEO features as the Pro and Business options. These paid packages ensure full-scale search engine optimisation for the entire website, as well as the fine tuning of separate pages.
When compared to other website builders, Jimdo offers a vast array of free options. Those features can be perfectly used to build a portfolio, run a blog or even create a simple but informative business website. Getting all these for free already makes this building platform stand out from the crowd; however, you will have Jimdo ads on your free website.
Nevertheless, those users who need an in-depth website with a larger number of features will have to choose one of the paid versions. When it comes to Jimdo pricing offers, you can choose from two different packages.
The Pro package is $20 per month and billed annually. For a serious business owner who wants to automate numerous SEO options and get a free domain for the first year, this isn’t a large sum. Also, with this option you get detailed website stats. Moreover, the customer support crew will resolve your issues in the shortest time possible (they claim 1–2 hours upon receiving the request).
The cost of these Jimdo plans is incredibly reasonable, so if you want to move a step up from the free options, it won’t hurt your wallet – the Business plan is only $7.50 per month and is also paid once a year. It still includes lots of practical advanced SEO features, as well as detailed website stats. The customer support responsiveness in this package is 1–2 days. Still, if you don’t need these detailed and advanced features, the Jimdo free package is a fine choice that will serve your online needs.
What’s important to add here is that the two paid options include some additional security features, as well. It’s not that the free package is unprotected, but the Pro and the Business package have enhanced security, mostly because of the advanced ecommerce features they include. Finally, it’s possible to get a Jimdo discount code for 2018 online and land one of the paid packages at a discount.
Naturally, a business beginner who needs these options should start with the Business package and then upgrade to the Pro version. This is recommended not only because of the savings you’ll make that way but also because of the smooth upgrade process that this builder offers.
The customer support is easily found on the website. For less urgent issues, you can search through the categories in that section; the ease of this system is attested to by other Jimdo website reviews as well. There are eight categories with some common questions and solutions, from SEO and Blogging to Domains & Email and Store. Also, there’s an ample FAQ section.
However, if you don’t find the solution to your issue here, or you have a technical problem on your website, you should turn to the contact centre. What we’ve found out from some Jimdo user reviews is that you can’t get a direct line and speak to a call operator unless you choose one of the premium plans. So if you use the Free package, you can only contact the support team via email.
This website builder, like most other website builders, doesn’t have too many technical problems on the website itself. Even if there are some glitches in its functionality, their team of developers will sort them out before you even notice it.
We’ve compared these customer support features with user experiences from a Weebly review that we recently created. The conclusion is that such closed systems save their time and staff for improvements on the builder itself rather than on direct communication with Free package users. The instructions are explained in such a gradual and detailed way that you only need to pay attention to them and build your own website.
Putting together this Jimdo review required much on-site testing, as well as some online research. By using the features on the website and finding out a bit about other similar tools, we can say that Jimdo is a great choice for both individual and business users.
While the number of features isn’t the same in all the packages, this doesn’t mean you can’t produce a fully functional website for free. In addition to attractive design and eye-catching templates, the Free package is one of the main advantages of this website builder.
