Web.com offers a basic website builder with over 150 templates for professional websites and online stores. The platform offers decent customization options, but the page editor is sometimes clunky. Furthermore, Web.com is expensive and requires an upgrade to access important features like search engine indexing. Overall, we think most people would benefit more from an alternative website builder.
PROS
- Very easy to use
- Excellent technical support
- Competitive pricing
CONS
- Editor is somewhat limited.
- Can’t add custom code
Web.com Video Review
How Web.com Works
Web.com Group Inc. is a domain name registration and website building services company based in Jacksonville, Florida. Essentially, it serves as a one-stop solution for everything you need to create a free website or online store, including a custom domain and email services.
Web.com’s website builder is designed to be accessible to novice website builders, but we think there are other website builders that are better suited for this purpose. Its page editor can be difficult to use and takes time to customize. The platform also makes it difficult to find your site unless you upgrade to a more expensive plan.
Using Web.com
The Web.com experience is far from perfect. The back office isn’t dedicated to the website builder, but rather includes all of Web.com’s services. This means that the available tools, including the editor, are cluttered with ads for purchasing additional services.
Furthermore, Web.com’s editor is clunky. Pages and widgets load in seconds, and it’s easy to accidentally mess up the layout of a site by moving content elements. However, it offers more design flexibility than other editors, which is a plus if you have the time to build your site.
Web.com Features and Tools
Web Hosting
All Web.com sites include web hosting with unlimited storage and bandwidth. You also get a free domain for one year, an SSL certificate, and five email addresses with 2GB of storage each.
Expert Design Service
Every new Web.com web development package includes one hour of personalized customer service and technical support from the company’s design experts. You also have the option to hire Web.com’s design team to design your site. The site will be designed to your specifications, and you can manage it using Web.com’s website builder once it’s launched.
Web.com AI Builder
Web.com’s new AI-powered website builder revolutionizes the way we create and manage online content. The builder is comprised of several tools.
There’s AI Writer, a revolutionary tool for easily creating or updating engaging content, ideal for everything from website updates to engaging blog posts. Finding the perfect online identity is now incredibly easy with the AI-powered domain name generator, which creatively matches your vision with a unique domain name. AI Builder simplifies content creation by efficiently creating the necessary structure and content with just a few quick questions, allowing you to focus more on bringing your ideas to life. In addition, AI Logo Builder offers a variety of customization options to create a distinctive brand identity with a visually striking logo.
Together, these tools offer a comprehensive solution to easily and creatively enhance your online presence.
How to Create a Website with Web.com
The process of creating a website or online store with Web.com starts with choosing a template. The platform offers over 150 templates, all of which are mobile-friendly. They’re organized by industry to make it easier to find a design that suits your needs. However, keep in mind that you won’t be able to change them later, so choose carefully.
Web.com templates are highly customizable. You can change not only the color palette and fonts, but also details like header styles, link colors, and button formatting. More options would be nice, but this level of control at least allows you to customize your template without spending hours on it.
Customizing Content
To customize the content of your site, Web.com offers a drag-and-drop site builder with two different styles of content elements. Features are individual elements, such as text fields, images, and buttons, that you can add anywhere on your site. Blocks are full-width page sections with predefined functions. You can add additional functions to blocks to customize them.
The combination of features and blocks offers a lot of design flexibility. However, we found that designing content within Web.com’s website builder can be difficult. The platform divides each page section into columns, and it’s relatively easy to change the layout of an entire section by adding, removing, or moving elements. The column-based layout should be more consistent or removed altogether for a smoother experience.
Overall, we were quite happy with Web.com’s website builder, but it didn’t stand out compared to other website builders we tested. Issues with feature design also significantly reduce the fun of experimenting, as it’s all too easy to throw an entire site off balance with just a few wrong steps.
Adding Multimedia to Your Web.com Website
Web.com allows you to add photos and videos to your site, but not audio files, PDFs, or other types of multimedia. You can upload photos from your computer, Instagram, Facebook, Dropbox, Box, or Flickr, or search Unsplash’s library of thousands of photos. Uploaded images are stored in the media library, but it’s not searchable.
You can add or replace images by simply clicking on the box next to any image on your site. However, when creating galleries, you must add each photo individually.
Marketing Functionality with Web.com Websites
Web.com requires you to upgrade to its basic plan to access its online marketing features. The main marketing tool Web.com offers is Local Listings, a service that will list your business on Google Maps, Yahoo Local, and Yellowpages.com.
You can connect your site to Instagram, Pinterest, and Disqus, but not to a Facebook business page. Web.com also doesn’t offer email marketing tools.
SEO Functionality & Add-Ons with Web.com Websites
One of Web.com’s biggest issues is SEO management. To get your site to appear on major search engines like Google and Bing, you’ll need to upgrade to your basic plan.
The good news is that upgrading your account allows Web.com to customize your page titles and SEO descriptions and add alt text to your images. You can also create a blog on any Web.com site.
Web.com doesn’t offer its own traffic analysis tools, but you can connect your site to Google Analytics.
Ecommerce
Web.com’s premium plans allow you to sell up to 500 products. Digital downloads and gift cards cannot be sold, and the platform does not offer in-store pickup or local delivery. Additionally, Web.com lacks advanced features like inventory management and abandoned cart recovery.
On the plus side, Web.com’s online stores allow you to create discount codes, and you can choose to accept Stripe, PayPal, and Square for payments. You can also create an unlimited number of product variants for customers.
Overall, though, we weren’t impressed with Web.com’s e-commerce capabilities; for the price, we think other website builders offer more advanced tools and better customization options.
Web.com Customer Support
Web.com offers 24/7 customer support via phone, email, and live chat. All new web development plans include one hour of personalized support with the company’s professional designers to help you get started with your website design.
Web.com also has an online knowledge base. However, the articles seem to reference an outdated version of the website builder. We did eventually find a few detailed tutorials for the current builder, but they were difficult to find because they weren’t available on the Web.com website.
Web.com Pricing
Web.com offers three affordable plans: Starter, Marketing, and Ecommerce. All three offer introductory pricing for the first month, but they don’t include a free trial.
Web.com vs Weebly
Weebly is an easy-to-use website builder with over 75 templates and plenty of features for online sales. While its advanced plans are more expensive than Web.com’s, Weebly offers essential tools for SEO, inventory management, email marketing, and more. It also has third-party plugins that you can use to extend your website’s functionality.
Web.com vs GoDaddy
GoDaddy is very similar to Web.com in that it offers a website builder along with domain and hosting plans. However, with GoDaddy, you get more for your money. The company’s website builder includes an email marketing package, online meeting booking tools, and built-in analytics.
Web.com vs Wix
Wix is one of the most customizable website builders on the market, offering over 800 templates to choose from. Wix’s website editor is user-friendly and feels seamless compared to Web.com’s. Although Wix is more expensive than Web.com, it offers access to a wide range of marketing and e-commerce features.
Bottom Line
Web.com is a relatively simple website builder that offers a good selection of templates and design options. However, we weren’t very impressed with the platform’s website editor and the overall lack of features for its price. Web.com doesn’t offer email marketing, and it doesn’t give users on the Start plan access to essential SEO features. Online stores won’t have sales tools like inventory management and abandoned cart recovery.
We think most users will benefit most from website builders like Weebly, Wix, or GoDaddy. All three platforms offer more customization options, more marketing tools, and better support for scaling your site.
