Web.com Website Builder Review

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

Web.com Video Review

How Web.com Works

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 generating 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 unique brand identity with a visually striking logo.

Together, these tools offer a comprehensive solution to easily and creatively promote 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 easy to find a design that fits 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 heading styles, link colors, and button formats. More options would be nice, but this level of control allows you to customize your template without spending hours on it.

Customizing Content

To customize your site’s content, 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 provides a lot of design flexibility. However, we found that designing content in Web.com’s site editor 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 features. The column-based layout should be more consistent or removed altogether for a smoother experience.

Overall, we were quite happy with Web.com’s site builder, but it didn’t stand out from other site builders we tested. Design issues also significantly reduce the fun of experimenting, as it’s easy to throw off the balance of your entire site .

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 any other type of media. You can upload photos from your computer, Instagram, Facebook, Dropbox, Box, or Flickr, or search the Unsplash library, which has 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 have to 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 offered by Web.com is Local Listings, a service that will show 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 the biggest issues with Web.com is SEO management. To get your site to appear on major search engines like Google and Bing, you’ll need to upgrade from the basic plan.

The good news is that upgrading allows you to customize SEO titles and descriptions for your pages and add alt text to your images. You can also create a blog on any Web.com site.

Web.com doesn’t have its own traffic analytics tools, but you can connect your site to Google Analytics.

Ecommerce

Web.com’s premium plans allow you to sell up to 500 products. You can’t sell digital downloads or gift cards, and the platform doesn’t support store pickup or local delivery. Web.com also lacks many advanced features, such as inventory management or abandoned cart recovery.

On the plus side, Web.com online stores can 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 ecommerce 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 personalized support from 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 link to an outdated version of the website builder. Finally, we found a few detailed tutorials for the current builder, but they were difficult to find because they weren’t available on Web.com.

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 online sales features. While its advanced plans are more expensive than Web.com’s, Weebly offers tools for SEO, inventory management, email marketing, and more. It also has third-party apps that you can use to customize your website.

Web.com vs GoDaddy

GoDaddy is a lot like Web.com in that it offers a website builder along with domain and hosting plans. However, you get more for your money with GoDaddy. The company’s website builder includes an email marketing suite, online appointment booking tools, and built-in analytics.

Web.com vs Wix

Wix is one of the most customizable website builders on the market and has over 800 templates to choose from. The Wix site editor is easy to use and feels perfect compared to the Web.com editor. While Wix is more expensive than Web.com, you get access to a wide range of marketing and e-commerce features.

Bottom Line

Web.com is a relatively basic website builder that offers a good selection of templates and design options. However, we weren’t very impressed with the platform’s site editor and general lack of features for the price. Web.com does not offer email marketing and does not give Starter plan users access to essential SEO features. Online stores will lack sales tools such as inventory management and abandoned cart recovery.