Jimdo Review

The site builder market has loads of solutions. In search of a budget-saving and easy-to-use platform, you can come across Jimdo. At a glance, the site builder is similar to its more renowned competitors, but its distinctive attribute is fairly affordable pricing.

Interestingly, over 30M websites are based on Jimdo. Will it suit your project? In my review, you’ll find both the advantages and disadvantages of the platform. I’ll describe my experience with Jimdo and observe its main aspects so that you can decide for or against the site builder.

Jimdo Quick Summary

Jimdo is a site builder developed by German founders and launched in 2007. The idea was to enable the creation of simple websites for users with absent coding skills. The whole process should be easy to do and should not take heavy investments.

This concept hasn’t changed much over time. Although Jimdo has evolved and extended its capabilities, it is still an affordable platform. Various businesses and individual entrepreneurs around the globe use it.

Thanks to AI tech, you, or rather the Jimdo site builder itself will create a website for you in no time. It can be a portfolio, an agency website, a coaching platform, an online store, etc.

This is not the feature-richest website builder. However, it can build fast-loading, visually appealing sites for simple commerce or businesses. Jimdo offers a number of affordable plans, one of which can let you create your online presence for $0.

Jimdo Pros & Cons

Pros:	Cons:
✔ AI-powered beginner-friendly editor; ✔ very affordable prices; ✔ mobile responsiveness.	✘ limited customizations; ✘ truly limited eCommerce; ✘ snail support.

Is Jimdo a good option for your project? Let’s go into detail.

Jimdo Price

An advantage of Jimdo is that it offers a broad choice of plans, including the free one. Let’s observe the five common website plans first.

• Play, €0/mo.;
• Start, €9/mo.;
• Grow, €15/mo.;
• Grow Legal, €20/mo. (not available in the US);
• Unlimited, €39/mo. (not available in the US).

If you opt for the free solution, you may not doubt that your website will cost you €0. But your project’s needs must be extremely moderate to be fully covered with the free plan. Be ready for Jimdo ads, a jimdosite.com subdomain, and a tiny choice of basic features.

I’d say that cheaper Jimdo plans are not much better. Although you can remove ads and connect a custom domain by upgrading to the Start plan, it will still be very limited in terms of features.

There are also three packages for online store websites:

• Basic, €15/mo. (not available in the US);
• Business, €19/mo.;
• VIP, €39/mo.

Compare the prices with any competitor, and you’ll see that Jimdo offers fantastically low prices. But don’t buy them too fast!

Even the most expensive plan won’t let you build a complex online shop. Its unlimited features include bandwidth, storage, and the number of available pages. Be ready that the plan misses eCommerce essentials necessary for proper product management, calculating taxes, and so on.

You can subscribe to any paid plan together with the Business Listing options (+€4). This will optimize your website’s visibility a bit. All Jimdo paid plans go with a 14-day money back.

It’s also great that Jimdo doesn’t apply any transaction fees. However, payment options are very limited here. So, it’s not a good choice for retailers and large online stores. The platform will only suit the simplest sellers.

Building a Website on Jimdo

It’s perfectly simple to create a website with the help of Jimdo. As soon as you get registered, you can choose the AI builder option. You’ll be asked a couple of questions about your project. The AI builder will do the best part of the job itself.

You’ll only need to fix the appearance of your website by adding content and customizing colors, fonts, etc. No coding at all. Your next step is to check if everything is OK (via the Preview option), and then you can publish your ready online site by clicking the corresponding button.

Jimdo Interface

Jimdo is as user-friendly as any online platform can be these days. Right from the signup to maintaining your Jimdo website, you can expect to run all the processes, hands down.

When a user joins Jimdo, they can sign up through their Facebook, Google, or Apple account, as well as use an email. Then, they will need to choose a site builder (AI-powered or Creator) to start the building process. Both editors are simple and can be used without touching the code.

The Jimdo Dashboard is convenient enough, mainly because the platform does not offer complex functionality or numerous integrations. I won’t call it perfectly clear, but even a total beginner can cope with it quickly.

It’s enough to log in and click the Dashboard icon in the upper right corner to enter the panel. Here, users can manage their websites (even the free plan will let them create five sites), edit pages, observe statistics, and update their profiles.

The platform enables easy upgrading from the free plan to a paid one. The best thing about the Jimdo interface is that it looks truly appealing and modern.

Jimdo Templates

It’s a weird fact, but you will only have a choice of two templates at the initial stage of creating your website. However, Jimdo offers about 40 of them! I’d rather call them ‘styles’ than ‘templates’. Yet, they will help you to make your website look original.
Jimdo offers a big choice of blocks you can add to your chosen template, including the following:

• an image box;
• a list;
• a slideshow;
• a music box;
• a banner;
• a menu;
• a button, and many more.

When you opt for Jimdo Creator, you can build your own template from ground zero. There’s an option of hiring an expert with coding skills who will create a unique template for your project.

Jimdo Website Design

As I mentioned, Jimdo offers two editors, the AI-based and the Creator Editor. Your customization freedom and ease of use will depend on your choice. If your goal is a simple, workable website without big design expectations, the AI editor is the best option for you.

This way may require only easy modifications of fonts, colors, button shapes, etc., on your part. You can even simply add images and other content necessary for your activities. The platform can build headings according to your industry and key products.

A patent drawback of the site builder is that it’s short on templates. Yet, they all are responsive. That is, they will look good on all devices. The Jimdo templates have professional designs capable of attracting customers.

At your disposal will be a massive library of royalty-free images. Businesses and online stores will appreciate the free logo maker available in all plans, including the free one.

As to customizations, you cannot expect much from both editors if you do not plan to work with the code. The Creator Editor gives access to it, by the way. By inserting custom code blocks, you can create more original designs on Jimdo. Otherwise, your creative freedom will be pretty limited.

I was surprised to discover that the only way to create a blog on Jimdo is via Creator Editor. With the AI editor option, you won’t be able to build a site for blogging!

Jimdo offers five plans for its Creator Editor. Prices range from €0 to €31 a month. Obviously, you’ll have too many restrictions on the free plan. In case you wish to get access to advanced SEO tools and other design opportunities, you need to choose at least the SEO Plus plan at €21 a month.

One more premium option from Jimdo is Professional Design Analysis. With its help, you can contact a Jimdo assistant, and they will guide you through the design settings of your website. However, the option is only available on the most expensive Unlimited plan.

Jimdo Online Store

Jimdo offers basic tools necessary for eCommerce. It is ideal for small online shops run by an individual or a truly small company. The features you can expect to get in the premium Online Store plans include the following:

• Local Pickup to connect customers to your physical shop;
• the Facebook/Instagram for Business wizard to create smart ads for social networks;
• discount management tools;
• the Legal Text Generator to supply your website with legal pages.

Pay attention that the platform recommends adding up to 100 products. Jimdo allows you to create a separate page for each. You’ll have a long list of product details you can indicate for any of your goods. No digitals are supported on the platform.
The only payment methods available on Jimdo are PayPal and Stripe. This will be enough to accept payments via credit/debit cards. Yet, a complex online store might require more.

However, the biggest advantage of Jimdo for eCommerce is the absence of transaction fees. It is true for any plan with the ability to sell goods. Jimdo’s marketing and analytical possibilities are pretty moderate. Still, you can connect Google Analytics to your website via the Statistics menu.

So, Jimdo is mainly addressed to freelancers, startups, and small agencies looking for a simple way to create an online portfolio or a tiny store with the ability to sell their physical products online.

Jimdo SEO

Besides mobile responsiveness, all Jimdo templates can boast SEO built-ins. This means you can expect your website to be ranked high by major search engines and bots. It will also load very fast.

Want to tune up your SEO settings yourself? OK, Jimdo will let you do it. At your disposal will be the following options:

• custom page URLs;
• smart redirects;
• keyword edits;
• a text optimization wizard;
• page title edits;
• page description edits;
• alt text for images;
• the 404-page option;
• backlinks (through the Business Listing application to the premium Jimdo plans);
• sitemap & robots.txt options, and more.

All this is available on any paid plan from Jimdo. But the SEO section of the platform has deficiencies, too. Thus, you won’t be able to add alt tags at present.

Publishing a Website on Jimdo

You’ll need to connect a domain name to your website to push it online. With the free plan, you’ll only be able to use the Jimdo subdomain. That is, your website’s URL will end with ‘jimdosite.com’.

Within any paid plan, you can get a custom domain (free for one year) or connect the existing one. When your website is ready, you can publish it, and it will appear on the Internet immediately. You can continue editing it at this stage. Your visitors will only see the changes after you click on Publish again.

Another useful option from Jimdo is the Under Construction mode. You can choose it to make your website’s content or the entire website invisible to visitors and search engines. When you are happy with the settings, you can turn back to normal mode. Finally, you can unpublish your website when it needs complex improvements.

Jimdo Technical Support

Support on Jimdo is of high quality but rather sluggish. Only on the most expensive plans can you expect to get assistance within one hour. Other paid plans go with 4 hours of possible waiting.

If you choose the Start plan, things are even more complicated – you can get help within 1-2 working days. Finally, the free plan does not include technical support at all.

Jimdo doesn’t offer a live chat. You can only submit a request via the special form given on the platform. However, there’s also the Help Center, where you can find detailed explanations for any feature available on Jimdo.

Jimdo Verdict

Jimdo is a convenient, good-looking website builder with easy-to-use editors and a set of basic tools. Thanks to the free and low-price packages, the platform will suit freelancers and individual entrepreneurs when they search for a quick and easy start.

The more expensive plans from Jimdo can satisfy the needs of small businesses and online stores. These can be restaurants, photography agencies, small shops, etc., the main goal of which is to attract more local customers.

When you plan a complex eCommerce or a large business site, Jimdo is not a good option for you.