Jimdo Review: It’s Simple & Fast, So What’s the Catch? [2024]

Jimdo vs The World: Can It Hold Its Ground?

Jimdo is a site builder that aims to compete at the highest level of site building. It’s simple, it’s fast, and the tutorial wizard that pops up when you first create a website can do a lot of the work for you. Not all of it, but a lot.

So, what’s not to love?

Jimdo’s biggest problem is that it’s competing against quite a number of strong alternatives: Wix with its design flexibility, Squarespace with its sleek experience, Zyro with its myriad AI tools. How does Jimdo hold up against these industry giants?

Well, it mostly doesn’t. I’ll tell you right now: Jimdo struggles to keep up with the rest in terms of features.

On the other hand, it has a solid free plan, and does not lack for polish. If you don’t need any of the features it doesn’t have, it might just be right for your business. Read on to find out.

Jimdo Sites Look Good, but They’re Not Too Customizable

With over 100 templates to choose from, it’s easy to make your site look fancy with Jimdo. Some of the templates stick to the classic minimalism that’s usually associated with site builders, but others pop off the page with a heavier use of bright colors and vibrant imagery.

I did find, however, that you can’t really just pick and choose a template. The site startup wizard (which I will talk about more below) will choose a couple for you to start from, and then you can change the basic style later.

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Jimdo very much belongs to the “we do it so you don’t have to” school of thought, and this is a double-edged sword.

On the one hand, Jimdo makes it easier to build a website. But at the same time, the page editor is not particularly flexible in terms of layout or customization. You can change your site’s color scheme, and pick from a few different color combinations, but that’s about it.

All sections of content must be chosen from pre-created mini-layouts, and the content is confined to the pre-set mini-layouts you choose. Thankfully, there are several on offer.

Don’t get me wrong: the site editor is fine. That comparative lack of control works for people who just want to build a site and go. You can still put in your text and images, upload a video, and even throw in a slideshow. The theme customization gives you just enough to generally meet your branding guidelines…

But I wouldn’t try to meet any super-specific branding guidelines.

Jimdo Does Some Things Right, and Doesn’t Do Others At All

I once remarked that Jimdo sounds like someone’s nickname, and honestly, I still wonder where that name came from. Well, odd name aside, Jimdo makes me think of the kind of guy who’s friendly, and has his life together, but has apparently never heard of blogging.

No, that’s not a silly analogy. Jimdo is — in its current iteration — flat-out missing a blog feature. Where most site builders treat blogging as something of an afterthought, Jimdo doesn’t think about it at all.

And in fact, it’s missing quite a lot of features that we’ve found in almost every other site builder that we compared it to.

On the other hand, Jimdo does come with some nice extras here and there. For example, while buying domains through Jimdo is nothing special, it’s not often that a site builder will handle your emails for you. Jimdo can do that.

In addition, the things that Jimdo actually does, it mostly does well. Here are a few examples:

There’s A Pretty Solid Free Plan

You get 5 pages, 2GB of bandwidth and 500MB of storage, which you can use indefinitely. However, your site is limited to a Jimdo subdomain, and there’s a Jimdo ad on every page.

Now, 5 pages doesn’t sound like a lot, but most brochure-style business sites don’t really need more.

If you want to get started building your own first website, and want an experience that doesn’t feel overly limited in terms of features, Jimdo’s free plan might just do that for you. If nothing else, it’s a decent place to put your business’ contact information until you’re ready to invest in a bigger site.

There Are E-commerce Features Galore

You have to pay extra for the store plans, but they give you just that: a big old store to sell things on. There are a ton of features to this, which I will list below, but this is my favorite bit: you can edit product pages like just about any other page, with much of the same functionality.

Here’s a sample product I made, with dummy text… and a screenshot I took in Cyberpunk 2077.

Once you’ve got some products up, you can accept payments from PayPal, Stripe, and (through those services) all major credit cards.

There’s A Strong Focus On SEO & Marketing

Jimdo wants your website to grow in popularity. You know, so you’ll stay on Jimdo. To that end, the company has implemented a bunch of SEO and stat-tracking features, so you can decide how best to expand your online operations.

SEO features include:

• SEO homepage descriptions
• Homepage title
• SEO subpages descriptions
• Subpage title
• Custom Page URLs

And there are other marketing tools as well, such as:

• RankingCoach Add-On (optional)
• Google Preview
• Google Indexing
• XML Sitemap
• Robot Meta Tags
• URL Redirects
• Mention statistics

Addons & Apps

There isn’t a huge marketplace full of addons, but there are a couple of extra useful tools. For example, the Business Listings (which costs a bit extra on most plans) will automatically submit your site to listings sites all over the web, to help you drum up more business elsewhere.

The Legal Text Generator can partially assist you in safeguarding your interests by creating a fundamental Terms of Service document and Privacy Policy. However, it’s important to note that no algorithm can replace the expertise of a local lawyer who is familiar with your jurisdiction’s laws. It’s advisable to consider upgrading to professional legal counsel sooner for optimal protection.

Jimdo Is Easy To Use, but Not Always Self-Explanatory

The basic site editor is easy stuff, once you learn how to access all of the relevant menus and settings. It doesn’t have the most traditional interface, but it works. It’s that initial learning curve that might trip up new users, especially those who’ve never used a site builder before.

And when you don’t know what to do, there is a pretty good knowledge base designed to teach you all about Jimdo.

The Site Creation Wizard Does a Fair Bit of Work for You 

No, really. It goes beyond picking a business category and a template. The wizard will actually change the sample text in the website, depending on whether you’re making a website for a business or an individual.

It will guide you through all the necessary steps to define your website’s goals and purpose. Only after that, it will present you with options for colors, fonts, and templates.

My only issue is that this creation wizard only offers around two template choices at a time. And if you want to see more, you have to go through the wizard again. It’s an oddly unintuitive choice for what is otherwise a very intuitive tool.

Easy Social Media Integration

There are a number of tools designed to make it easier for you to share bits of your site directly on social media, sell your products on Facebook and Instagram (as mentioned above), and generally reach an audience beyond your immediate website.

Good stuff all around.

Professional Design Analysis

Yep, you can hire a designer directly from Jimdo to look through your site, and show you how to make it better. It’s always good to have an extra set of eyes on any project, and experts in the tools you’re using don’t hurt either.

The Support (at Least for Free SItes) Is Helpful, but Slow

Where Jimdo’s site editor is like a good fast-food restaurant — decent and quick — the support team seems to have opted for the gourmet experience. You get good answers to your question, but they take a long while to show up. Specifically, every response I got took until at least the next day.

That’s how it is on the free plan anyway. Paying for the Grow plan or higher will get you guaranteed support within 4 hours. But I’ll be honest: that should be the offer for every paying customer, so this policy is going to cost Jimdo a few points.

And even then, 4 hours is not great in an emergency, and many of Jimdo’s competitors do better. Like, a lot better. I’m talking minutes.

Also, the only way to get support that I have found is to click that little question mark at the bottom right of the site editor itself. That opens up a form which lets you leave a ticket/email for the support team.

Technically, support is available 24/7… though that doesn’t mean much on anything lower than the Grow plan.

On my initial request, I inquired if I could control my subdomains from Jimdo and point them to another site, such as a blog or membership site. The representative responded to me with tips on how to acquire and link a domain from a different place, allowing me to control subdomains as I wanted. They also proposed a temporary solution for the absence of blogging and membership features.

I’ll say this: the support agents do work hard.

Next up, I asked if I could embed GIFs and videos in my web page. The short answer? Videos, yes. GIFs, no.

Lastly, I asked if it was possible to sell subscriptions via the online store. It’s not, but again, the agent outlined some possible workarounds. I appreciate that sort of thing.

If you like to really do things for yourself, you can search the aforementioned knowledge base for solutions to problems, or check out Jimdo’s blog. Yeah, they have a blog, despite not having one in the site builder. GO figure.

Jimdo’s Prices Are… Okay

Honestly, they’d be pretty good, if not for some arbitrary page count limits put on your site.

The cheapest paid plan starts at $9.00 per month, which isn’t bad at all. It gives you access to all the basic site builder features. However, you’re limited to an incredibly arbitrary 10 pages. That’s just… silly. I’m sorry, but it is.

More expensive plans will get you access to more SEO features, the e-commerce features, social media integrations, and more. But even then, there are page limits. The most you can have on any plan is 50 pages.

Cancellations & Refunds

You can cancel at any time, but you only get your money back if you cancel within the first 14 days. I’d prefer 30, but you can demo the basic features of Jimdo for as long as you want on the free plan, so it’s not too bad.

You can even demo the e-commerce features on the free plan, though you have to upgrade your plan to actually accept payments.