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Comparing Jimdo to SiteKreator, Webnode, Weebly and WordPress

Still looking for ways to make your business visible? Here’s another option.

Following my website editor comparison, I got an email from Matthias Henze at Jimdo, asking me to take a look. They’ve got a compelling offering overall, with some really interesting features.

Jimdo website editor

Here’s the quick overview:

  • Jimdo’s clearly the work of a team outside the US. On the positive side, you can work in one of four languages (German, English, Chinese and French) and Matthias tells me “…others to follow soon.” You can also set which of dozens of languages your site content is in, presumably to aid with local search. These are nice touches that I haven’t seen elsewhere.
  • Jimdo offers 500 MB storage for free and 5 GB at the paid level.
  • Business owners can easily embed code for Google Analytics, meta tags and meta description.
  • Excellent support for accessiblity. While this is a more advanced area, it will help you with SEO and in support of disabled users. It also might be a legal requirement depending on your business.
  • Jimdo offers multiple layouts including direct access to the HTML, CSS and images for full-featured editing. I’m not a fan of their default designs, personally, and it might require more design work than the others reviewed. On the other hand, if you have your own design, moving it into Jimdo looks dead simple.
  • On free sites, Jimdo inserts AdSense ads of its choosing. Not ideal for many small businesses, but many not be an issue for all. The big concern is whether those ads display competitors and how Jimdo accounts for that. I’ve got a message out to Matthias Renze to see
  • No email account at the free level. May not be an issue for everyone, but it’s something to consider
  • Jimdo has a somewhat quirky interface, to my tastes, but it’s very simple once you spend a minute with it.
  • You can add a personal domain, email address and eliminate the ads for $6/mo. I like this business model, personally. Coupled with their ad strategy, they should be able to succeed financially, assuming they get enough users.

So, how does it stack up compared with Weebly and WordPress, my favorites of the bunch? Very favorably. The folks at Jimdo have done a good job of covering the basics for their customers, with some really sophisticated options for those who need them. And if you’re in Europe or Asia and need an edtor that supports your language, Jimdo might just be the best solution for you. As with other solutions, I couldn’t find an easy way to get content out, so that’s worth investigating further. In either case I’d recommend upgrading to their Pro offering to eliminate the ads on the site, gain access to an email address and host your own domain. For $72 a year, it’s well worth the added brand value.

As before, the options available to small business owners to have a site that meets their needs blow my mind. We’ve come a long way from the days of FrontPage or hand-coded HTML. If you don’t have a website today, Jimdo, or its competitors will likely meet your needs. Given these options, why is your small business still invisible?

Are you getting enough value out of your small business website? Want to make sure your business makes the most of the mobile, social, local web? thinks helps you understand how to grow your business via the web, every day. Get more than just news. Get understanding. Add thinks to your feed reader today. Or subscribe via email.

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Tim Peter is the founder and president of Tim Peter & Associates. You can learn more about our company's strategy and digital marketing consulting services here or about Tim here.

This Post Has 29 Comments

  7. You wouldnt believe how long ive been looking for something like this. Through 9 pages of Yahoo results without finding anything. One search on Bing. There you are!…. Really have to start using it more often!

  8. Jimdo is great. It gives easy access to all the blogs Jimdo offer some very good blogs on SEO tips also you find great response to your blog if you posted here. It directly helps to boost page rank in Google.

  9. Yes, that’s all good, but seriously, how long would it take to implement this? Do you have to be a professional webmaster or can I just do it as a newbie and actually succeed? How should I get started?

    AskiKa.com

  11. My time at Jimdo was fine until I had to leave. They have hijacked my domain name and will not allow me to transfer it 3 months after my obligations with them were over. Worse, for the past 12 days I have used every possible way to contact them, email, forum, Jimdo Pro’s direct support and for 12 days I have received zero response. If U need a service that U will never ever EVER need customer support than Jimdo is ur ticket. But if U ever do need it, good luck.

    1. Hi Craig,

      That’s really disappointing to hear. I’ve forwarded your comments to my contact at Jimdo. I’ll let you know if they respond. Thanks for the comment.

    2. Hi Craig,

      The folks at Jimdo seem to have tried to contact you, as did I following their response, but it looks like you’re not getting the emails. Here’s the response I got from the Jimdo team:

      We’re sorry that Craig had a bad experience with Jimdo’s support. We looked into Craig’s issues in detail because we want to make sure we’re top-notch in this area. Our team members team do respond to all emails individually and promptly. As it turns out, technical issues on one end or the other (in this case, with receiving our email responses) can cause problems. Our apologies to Craig, and I hope his domain transfer authcode has been received at the email address where he can get our emails.

      One of the great things about social media is the voice it provides customers. It looks like Jimdo is willing to work with you to resolve the problem. Please, Craig, let us all know if you got everything you needed.

  12. Hola, mi experiencia con jimdo es, de momento muy positiva. He conseguido hacer mi propia web, me sale mucho más económica que la que antes tenía y, además, puedo hacer cualquier cambio en el momento que desee sin tener que esperar a que me lo haga un informático.
    Con jimdo pro me responden en uno o dos días, siempre, y además de forma muy cortés.
    Se puede aprender mucho en el blog y en el foro. Tal vez al principio, en algunas cosas y según tu nivel, necesites de alguien que conozcas que te pueda ayudar en algo concreto, pero en general es muy sencillo, el panel de control también. Para quien quiera hacer una web con amplias opciones y que sea económica, se lo recomiendo. Con jimdo pro tienes dominio propio, amplio hosting, apoyo tecnico via email con respuesta en 48 horas y tienda online limitada a 10 productos por 60 euros al año.

  13. I have used both Cloversites and Sitekreator.com. Sitekreator.com wins by a mile – better templates, more design flexibility, more add-ons and widgets, and MUCH LOWER price – Cloversites charges a $1000 initial fee, Sitekreator.com charges $0.

    1. Hi Jeff,

      Thanks for adding your voice to the conversation. Cloversites uses a very different model, and while $1,000 (really $1,240 for the first year and $240 for each year after), may seem like a lot, their builder and tools might make sense for some businesses. I’ll look to do a detailed review of Cloversites at some point (or you could join our guest bloggers and write it for Thinks). In either case, thanks for the comment and I look forward to hearing more from you.

  14. There is an incredible war on the net, to produce and market the most successful online web page builder.
    It is an incredible challenge in a weird market.
    We are all working hard to conceive the easiest idiot proof interface to allow anyone to present their content on the web … it is mainly a big lie…
    Once technology becomes so easy to use that it is transparent, when you achieved a really incredibly easy tool to organize content into interlinked pages … You still leave users with the most important aspect of creating a website:
    Actually producing and organizing the content…

    It seems to me that this is the real challenge. Some kind of simple “web-note-page-pad” with a result that is easily browsable by the most inexperienced reader and on all (mobile) devices with a single site.
    Our contribution to this equation : http://www.simple-different.com

    Yorick

  17. Tim,

    Does Jimdo offer blank templates? I’ve been trying to figure that out using their help section but not getting very far, you seem to know your stuff. I like to have the option to choose a layout (nav menu/buttons etc) and it seems as though once you choose a template there are certain background images that can’t be edited/deleted.

    Thanks,
    Mo

  18. This is a nice article Tim. I am currently using Jimdo Pro but on free trial and I was just weighing the pros and cons of it and so far it has been pretty user-friendly. Perhaps I would continue my purchase after the free trial.

  19. Hi Tim,

    I am looking around the many website builders to build my first website with online store. I am looking at Weebly, Webs, Webstart and Jimdo. All have their pros and cons. I am looking at one which I could also integrate with Google Adsense, SiteMap, good Order Management System, Email Marketing and reliable payment gateway.

    Can you advise which among the top would be the best. I have also heard about Yola, CityMax and Doodlekit. It is just too many out there and I have no clue which is the best to start my first Website with Webstore.

    Looking forward to your advice please.

    Thanks & best rgds
    Felicia

  20. SEO is that the follow of improving and promoting a web web site so as to increase the amount of visitors the site receives from search engines. There are many aspects to SEO, from the words on your page to the manner other sites link to you on the web. Sometimes SEO is simply a matter of making positive your site is structured in a very manner that search engines perceive.

    Search Engine Optimization is not just concerning “engines.” It’s about creating your site higher for folks too.

  21. The first basic truth you wish to grasp to learn SEO is that search engines don’t seem to be humans. While this would possibly be obvious for everybody, the variations between how humans and search engines view web pages are not. Unlike humans, search engines are text-driven. Although technology advances rapidly, search engines are far from intelligent creatures that may feel the beauty of a cool design or fancy the sounds and movement in movies. Instead, search engines crawl the Net, looking at specific site items (mainly text) to induce an plan what a web site is about.

  23. It is ok to create your own website in Jomdo. But as far as ecommerce goes, or anybody wanting a serious website that attracts serious business, a company needs a professional webmaster. A professional is required to build a website that can attract high levels of traffic. I would doubt very much that there are many e-commerce sites out there built in Jimdo by a non-web designer, that have had success. And as a designer/programmer, I would not use Jimdo as it is way too restrictive – it is far easier, quicker and more efficient to work with a powerful ecommerce solution such as magento or prestashop.

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