Labeled as an easy-to-use, ad-free website builder, Jimdo is the online platform that gives you the tools to build your own site without breaking the bank.
That being said, the tools it gives you aren’t exactly the best. Based on our most recent round of research, Jimdo’s overall score has fallen from 4 to 3.6 out of 5.
Why? Well, in recent years, what Jimdo offers for its low price just hasn’t been that appealing.
Similar to Wix and Squarespace, Jimdo doesn’t require any coding knowledge and is a great alternative to these two builders if you’re looking for a website builder that lets you stick to a more restricted budget. But unlike Wix and Squarespace, Jimdo hasn’t kept itself competitive with many amazing new features. For example, Wix and Squarespace both have added blogging-specific features, calendars for booking, as well surface-level design features such as parallax scrolling.
Like every platform, Jimdo has its fair share of pros and cons. We’ll look into how Jimdo performs in areas like ease of use, tools, features, and help and support – just a few key elements to consider when creating an online presence.
Let’s jump straight in!
We’re pretty proud of our research process because not many sites can say they’ve carried out such in-depth testing before making recommendations. Here’s how our in-house research team goes about finding the best website builders on the market.
Every single builder goes through our thorough research process. We investigate important areas such as:
- Ease of use
- Design flexibility
- Value for money
- Feature quality
- Help and support
- Customer satisfaction
This helps us rate and compare the builders fairly, focusing on important factors that users have told us matter most.
We even get groups of everyday people to test the builders out and give us feedback, which we then analyze. This helps us:
- Understand exactly how easy (or difficult) beginners find the builder
- Uncover any issues within the builder
- Judge customer satisfaction
We’ve applied this process to over 50 website builders so far – all so we can bring you the most accurate results and recommendations!
Still got questions? Read our report on How We Conduct Our Website Builder Research for a more detailed explanation.
What are the Pros and Cons of Jimdo?
Pros
ADI-based platform
✔️ Jimdo Dolphin is great for those who are less confident because the ADI functionality builds the site for you
Best cost per feature option
✔️ It’s not that great for features but it is really, really cheap!
Mobile Optimization
✔️ Optimizes for all mobile devices with its dedicated mobile editor view
Cons
Limited features and customization
❌ Offers no blogging or internal marketing capabilities, as well as limited editing
Not the best for SEO
❌ SEO is more limited than with other website builders (e.g. no alt tags)
Less suited for US market
❌ European-focused platform – so features like shipping and tax codes don’t align with the US
Slow help and support
❌ Restrictive help and support provided to non-premium plans (1-2 business day waiting time)
Who is Jimdo Best For?
Jimdo is best for those who already have an online presence, and need something simple and cheap to keep up appearances. Whether that’s portfolios, small online stores, or simple hobbyist sites, Jimdo is perfect for those wanting something sleek and basic – but the problem comes when you want a site that is more bespoke and individual to your online needs!
It’s number one draw is obviously its cheap prices. With plans starting at $0 and only going up to $14 a month for the most expensive, there aren’t many other builders who are as kind to your wallet as Jimdo. (For comparison, Wix’s lowest paid plan begins at $14/month!).
In that sense, it’s great for people on a budget, or for people who need a site for one specific thing, such as:
- Brick-and-mortar business owners needing a landing page
- Presentation site for weddings and other events
- Small online stores
While the features and customization will be limited (some of the most limited we’ve seen), you can be assured that you will be getting a good-looking and easy-to-navigate website.
Now that we’ve covered that, let’s take a deeper dive and see how it works for different types of people and how you can expect it to work for you.
Jimdo for personal blogging
So…Jimdo has no blogging capabilities. Its ADI software has still yet to add dedicated blogging capabilities, which is really quite disappointing. You still could still set up a personal blog through editing afterward, but you would be giving yourself a lot of extra work. In all honesty, it’s not worth it since there are many other builders that are specifically designed for blogging.
At Website Builder Expert, we’re proud of the research we conduct into different online industries, including the blogging space. And as far as blogging goes, Squarespace came out on top with its strong aesthetic abilities and ease of setup. It lets you easily link your blog posts to other social channels for marketing purposes, and get analytics to see how your posts are doing – a blogger’s dream!
Learn how to make a blog from scratch with our expert top tips.You can also check out our list of the best blogging platforms to work out the ideal choice for you!
Jimdo for small businesses
If you’re a small business that wants an online presence, Jimdo is perfect. You can get a professional-looking site up in a matter of hours to help advertise your brand.
There are a good amount of features and lots of third-party apps, which we’ll get into later. These can help you with anything from advanced analytics to running solid email marketing campaigns.
If you’re a large business, you may be better suited to something like Wix. With over 800 design templates, you have a huge amount of creative freedom to really make the site unique to your brand.
You can read about our Best Small Business Website Builders to see which platform best suits your needs.
Jimdo for ecommerce
If you’re looking to start selling online, Jimdo offers an array of ecommerce features to get your store off the ground. You’ll have access to a professional domain, plus the ability to add product galleries, and you can hook up worldwide payment methods such as PayPal or Visa.
Jimdo’s standout ecommerce feature is its “no commission fee” policy. Any sale you make, the platform doesn’t impose any sneaky fees – so you get to keep 100% of your hard-earned money!
However, we’d definitely recommend Jimdo for advertising products, rather than selling them. It’s a great platform if you own a cafe, for instance, because its category and product gallery elements let you display food menu items, locations, and opening hours really well.
Whereas, if you’re a retail company and your primary focus is to sell clothing online, you’d be better off with more powerful platforms like Shopify or BigCommerce.
Jimdo for portfolio
As we mentioned above, Jimdo is ideal for displaying images and creating beautiful galleries, but it’s good to note that the templates are limited for someone in the artistic industry.
Photographers, graphic designers, and stylists should look at something like Squarespace. With templates tailor-made for creative types, Squarespace is perfect for any kind of online portfolio.
Here you can find our Best Portfolio Website Builders to identify awesome ways to show off your work!
Creating Your Website
You might see the name “Jimdo Dolphin” swimming about (excuse the pun!), which is essentially Jimdo’s ADI (Artificial Design Intelligence) website builder. Dolphin uses ADI to create a website for you based on how you answer a series of questions. This way, your design process is more streamlined and specific to your needs!
With this in mind, Jimdo – and more specifically the Dolphin ADI product – is great for users with basic computer skills, or for those who don’t have a lot of time on their hands but still want to achieve an awesome online presence.
You may have heard of Jimdo Creator and Jimdo Dolphin referred to as separate entities. When we refer to Jimdo on Website Builder Expert, what we are referring to is Jimdo Dolphin, the company’s ADI platform.
You see, Jimdo does in fact have another builder, Jimdo Creator, which is more in line with traditional builders. However, we have seen it being phased out in current years in favor of its ADI platform, Jimdo Dolphin. So when we refer to Jimdo, we speak of Jimdo Dolphin, which is what Jimdo itself seems to be preferring. (Simple, right? Now say Jimdo 10x fast.)
How Does Jimdo Work?
When you sign up to Jimdo, you’ll be asked a series of questions such as:
- Who you’re creating a website for
- What the website is for – e.g. a personal project, event or established business
- What your website goals are – e.g. to promote content
- What your website is about, such as fashion or PR
- Which styles and colours you most prefer out of the given combinations
- Which pages you’d like to add
Jimdo gets you started with an easy question on the path to customization.
Jimdo offers varied choices for business category.
Jimdo asks you to consider the goals of your website, so it can help you design and build the right website for you.
Once you’ve answered these questions, Jimdo has a better insight into your online requirements and business goals, which allows it to design your perfect website accordingly.
It still gives you the option to add or delete blocks of content as you go along. This is super helpful if you want to continue customizing your site off the back of what Jimdo initially creates for you.
What’s great about this building process is that you can pull things from social media or existing websites onto your new site pretty instantly. The downside, however, is that the platform is pretty limited in terms of how much you can actually edit yourself.
Ease of Use
In terms of producing a ready-made website in just a few minutes, AI website builders are generally really easy to use. This is because they eliminate the time investment that comes with the “drag and drop” interface, taking the world of website building to a new level.
After you answer a few questions and select styles and colors, Jimdo will create your website in just a couple of clicks. If you choose to add more elements, you have the option to select “add block” and pick anything from text, images, and multiple-grid slideshows.With that said, we did put Jimdo to the test against other website builders out there to draw up some comparisons.
We tested this by getting everyday people to build their own website using Jimdo, before gathering feedback. We found that some users still felt as though they had the creative freedom to execute their ideas, but this was only the case at a basic, starter level.
Here’s what they had to say:
“I did enjoy using it and I liked how you had more control of the design despite it being an ADI platform.”
“Simple, they do it for you – loved it. But anything beyond the basic looks near impossible, and the lack of marketing was concerning.”
It’s clear from our research that Jimdo’s ADI platform was more helpful than restrictive for users, and still holds onto the “fun” of editing whilst doing a lot for you initially. Although it’s really easy to use, Jimdo is definitely a website builder that eliminates a lot of the creative processes behind designing a website because of the more structured format of the ADI tool.
If you still want to add your own touch to your site, we would recommend adding different blocks and elements to help jazz it up. Jimdo recently introduced Smart Apps, allowing users to embed content from a number of the web’s best-loved sites. From Calendly, Pinterest, Airbnb, and Twitter, you can include and customize these extras to suit your needs, giving you a great level of personal touch to your site.
Overall, Jimdo scored 3.4 out of 5 for ease of use during our in-house research. A middle-of-the-road score, it falls behind the likes of Wix, Squarespace, and GoDaddy, which all scored above a 4 out of 5.
Pricing
Pricing is Jimdo’s most competitive category, earning 4.8 out of 5 in our research! Jimdo plans happen to vary depending on region – and so do the price tags, for that matter. In the US, the platform offers two paid plans:
- Start Plan ($9 per month)
- Grow Plan ($14 per month)
Wix, for example, costs $16 per month for its lowest plan and so we awarded it a 3.4 out of 5 for its value of money. Sure, you get a lot more with Wix – it has the best features of any builder we’ve tested – but its higher price tag means a reduced value score when compared with Jimdo’s much cheaper plans.
Additionally, we want to mention Play – Jimdo’s free plan – which is a great way of getting started on the website builder. It’s really easy to test out for yourself and offers basic design templates to create a simple site for you in no time. Anything beyond that, we’d recommend going for a premium-paid plan.
The Play plan comes with Jimdo advertising in the footer of your website, and a not-so-attractive Jimdo subdomain. This isn’t something you’ll want when trying to achieve a professional site to showcase your best work – but the free plan is an option to consider if you just want to test out the platform.
It’s important to note that help and support features are a lot more restrictive on the free plan compared to Jimdo premium plans. You’ll be looking at a 1-2 business day turnaround when placing a help request – which isn’t the best when you need a quick fix to your problem.
It’s safe to say, you get what you pay for – or, in this case, what you don’t pay for!
To really get the most out of your website-building process, we’d suggest upgrading to one of the two premium plans that Jimdo offers.
If you choose to level up to Jimdo’s Start plan for $9 per month, you’ll get all your Play plan features, plus:
- Free domain
- Ad-free website
- Up to 10 website pages
- Access to image library
- Customer support within 1-2 business days
- Advanced SEO tools
- Mobile optimization
Jimdo seems pretty reasonable with its premium plan prices compared to other competitors on the market. Squarespace, for example, starts its pro plans at $14 per month but comes with a 14-day trial for users to explore.
Jimdo’s Grow business plan is its best-seller at $14 per month – you get access to all of the above Start plan features, and more, including:
- 50GB of storage
- 50 web pages
- 5 forwarding emails
- Help and support within 4 hours.
While a 4-hour support turnaround is better than waiting 1-2 business days, it’s not much of an improvement, especially in the help and support area. Builders like Wix and Squarespace can offer 24/7 support across all plans. In our research, Jimdo earnt a 2.5 out of 5 for its support.
Jimdo also has its ecommerce plans; the Business and VIP plans
- Business Plan ($18 per month)
- VIP Plan ($24 per month)
The Business Plan is much like the Grow Plan, except with a larger focus on the ecommerce side. The VIP Plan is Jimdo’s most feature-heavy plan, offering unlimited bandwidth, web pages, and customer support within the hour plus being added to the Business Listings, helping visitors across the web find your site.
Overall, we’d always suggest you try before you buy, but once you’ve built your site – before putting it live – we recommend you consider upgrading to one of Jimdo’s premium plans.
User Reviews
Opinions definitely varied across the board. The majority of Jimdo users enjoy how much the platform does for you with its virtual assistant, but it still remains limited and basic in terms of personalization.
We reached out to various Jimdo users to get an insight into their own experience of using the website builder to grow their online presence.
User Review
If you’re looking for a website builder that offers you more creative control, Wix is your best bet. Its handy drag-and-drop editor lets you place any element you want, anywhere on the page – read our Wix review here.Alternatively, Squarespace has the best template designs on offer, and is well optimized for both desktops and mobile devices. You can find out more on our recently updated Squarespace review.
Templates
Jimdo used to have over 100 templates but has since cut back to a much more manageable 19 (plus a blank template). This is likely due to the swap to an ADI-based builder. Each template lines up to a specific sector with the ADI making adjustments based on the user’s answers.
The good news is that each of Jimdo’s templates looks tremendous! All of the designs are slick in their own way and provide a good range of different styles and aesthetics.
What’s even better is Jimdo’s integrated Mobile Editor. All of Jimdo’s templates are mobile-ready, meaning it scales seamlessly whether on a desktop or mobile (both portrait and landscape).
Being viewable on mobile is increasingly crucial as more and more online traffic is being done from the comforts of our mobile devices, so Jimdo’s got a slight edge on the competition with this feature.
While all of this sounds great, the truth of the matter is that Jimdo doesn’t particularly hand over too much control over the templates it provides you. In our research, we could only give Jimdo a 3.1 out of 5 for design. The lack of true design freedom reinforces the belief that the ADI should be the solution to all your problems.
If you’re just looking for something that looks nice and does the job, then Jimdo is a very viable option. But if you want more control over how your site looks and want to stand out from the crowd, we recommend a more design-focused builder like Squarespace.
Tools & Features
When testing out Jimdo’s free website builder, we were impressed to see how easy it was to add block elements such as slideshows and banners, and change up the design as we went along.
We created a demo site for the Real Estate industry, named “Zara Living,” to put Jimdo tools and features to the test. You can see below how the building process unfolded.
The block design tool on the left hand side gives you the ability to change the layout of your page as you go along.
Our demo website end result!
Here you can see that Jimdo lets you use a range of images from either social media, your personal library or the Jimdo media gallery
Using the free editor, you’re able to add block elements to build a page format as you go along. Jimdo offers access to slideshows, banners and various column layouts to give you creative control over the design process.
When you upgrade to Jimdo’s bestseller business plan, Grow, you’ll receive a free custom domain, SEO tools, social marketing, and personalized support within four hours of sending a help request through.
If you don’t see a specific feature that you need, you can always search for it through an independent company called POWr Plugins. It partners up with Jimdo to provide plugins with your site.
There may be some plugins that require coding knowledge, so make sure to double check which ones you’re adding to your site before doing so!
Here you can check out our free demo site created with Jimdo with the help of its ADI editor.
Domains
Jimdo offers a free custom domain for one year on any of its premium plans.
You do get a subdomain with Jimdo’s free plan, but you’ll have a tacky “.jimdofree.com” hanging off the back of your URL – hardly professional if you ask us!
It’s always worth getting a custom domain if you’re looking to enhance your online presence. Not only does it inspire trust in your brand, but it just looks pretty awesome, too.
It’s also possible to transfer over an existing custom domain if you already have one. You’ll just need the authorization code, or auth code, from your previous domain host to transfer it over in the Jimdo editor. Jimdo offers a full breakdown of how to transfer a domain in case you get stuck during the process. The domain transfer itself usually takes 1-5 days to complete.
The annual cost of renewing a Jimdo custom domain after a year is $80 – the highest of any website builder we’ve tested.
Make sure to back up the contents of any email accounts that may be connected to your custom domain when transferring it over!
SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
There’s no point in building a beautiful website if no one can find it, right?
That’s where SEO comes in. The better your SEO, the more likely you are to rank highly on search engines like Google.
With the Start and Grow premium plans, you can get your hands on advanced SEO tools to ensure your site is getting seen far and wide.
Jimdo uses smart technology to fill in a lot of your SEO settings for you, from meta titles and descriptions to image alt text. This means you don’t have to worry about these fiddly parts of the building process, and you can stay focussed on the creative side of things!
While Jimdo is pretty competent at SEO, there are still some issues. There’s currently no way to add alt tags, which is a big miss as far as SEO is concerned. Alt tags not only allow your site to be more accessible, they directly help search engines scroll and index your site, allowing them to be higher up the results page.
Additionally, Jimdo doesn’t have any dedicated internal marketing capabilities. If you are wanting to get involved with the marketing side of your website, we’d suggest another builder which has a better marketing framework, like Wix or Squarespace.
Help and Support
Jimdo got a disappointing 2.5 out of 5 for Help and Support in our research. Jimdo offers support via social media, a knowledge base, and FAQ sections but doesn’t offer phone, email, live chat support or a site restore option.
But what you do get are answers that are clear, concise, and to the point. Its knowledge base in particular is useful – it comes with a mixture of text, images, and videos to help solve your problems.
The Help Center is located in the top right-hand corner of the editor. Straight away, it opens up to a range of questions that users often need answers to. This is a huge time saver when you don’t want to go through the process of writing a big chunk of text and explaining the issues you’re having!
What stood out was the impressive, in-depth articles that appear when you click on any of the FAQs. You get a step-by-step breakdown of how to solve your specific problem, written in a way that is super easy to follow – plus a clear indication as to where to find all of the elements it mentions!
This form of support is ideal for users who want a quick fix to any website issues, and want to avoid waiting up to an hour for an expert response.
The only downside is that the articles are only limited to Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs), so more complex, extensive issues will require getting in touch via Jimdo’s contact form.
Contact Form
Alternatively, Jimdo offers you a small contact form to fill in with text and attachments, and an expert is expected to get back to you within a four-hour time frame (and within one hour if you upgrade to its premium plans). It’s pretty disappointing to see that Jimdo prioritizes its help and support center for customers that pay more per month, because this poses a struggle for the platform’s free plan users.
Summary
Jimdo is a simple, clean, and easy-to-use website builder.
It’s best for either personal or small business websites and comes with a host of great features and apps.
Jimdo’s pricing plans are affordable ($9 per month or $15 per month), and with such a range of choices, you won’t have a problem finding one that works for you.
It isn’t for everyone, though, and medium to large businesses who need a powerful online store would be better off looking at Shopify. For creative industries, Squarespace is better.
If you’re looking for a nice, “out-of-the-box” website, you could do a lot worse than Jimdo.
Found our Jimdo review helpful?
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