Web.com offers a basic website builder with over 150 templates for professional websites and online stores. The platform offers good customization options, but the page editor can be clunky at times. Web.com is also expensive and requires an account upgrade to access important features like search engine indexing. Overall, we think most users will be better off using an alternative website builder.
PROS
- Very easy to use
- Excellent support
- Competitive pricing
CONS
- Editor is somewhat limited.
- Doesn’t allow you to add custom code
Web.com Video Review
How Web.com Works
Web.com Group Inc. is a domain registration and website building company based in Jacksonville, Florida. Essentially, it offers 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 for your site to be found unless you upgrade to a more expensive plan.
Using Web.com
The Web.com experience is far from perfect. The admin panel isn’t exclusive to the website builder; it includes all of Web.com’s services. This means that the available tools, including the editor, are peppered with ads for purchasing additional services.
Furthermore, Web.com’s website editor is clunky. Pages and widgets load in seconds, and it’s easy to accidentally change the layout of your 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 create your site. The site will be designed to your specifications, and you can manage it using the Web.com 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.
Among them is 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 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 questions, allowing you to focus 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 optimized for mobile devices. They are organized by industry to make it easy to find a design that suits your needs. However, keep in mind that you won’t be able to modify templates later, so choose carefully.
Web.com templates are highly customizable. You can change not only the color palette and fonts, but also details such as heading styles, link colors, and button formats. While more options would be nice, 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 website builder with two different styles of elements. Elements are individual elements, such as text fields, images, and buttons, that you can add anywhere on your site. Blocks are full-width sections of a page that include predefined features. You can add additional features to blocks to customize them.
The combination of elements and blocks provides a lot of design flexibility. However, we found that designing content in Web.com’s website builder can be complicated. 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 website builder, but it didn’t stand out from other website builders we tested. Design issues with features also take away much of the fun of experimenting, as it’s easy to throw off balance with just a few wrong moves.
Adding Multimedia to Your Web.com Website
Web.com allows you to add photos and videos to your website, but not audio files, PDFs, or other types 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 website. 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 sites like 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 its approach to SEO. To get your site to show up in major search engines like Google and Bing, you’ll need to upgrade your plan.
The good news is that upgrading allows you to customize your page SEO titles and descriptions 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 options for customers.
Overall, though, Web.com’s ecommerce capabilities didn’t impress us. For this 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 link to an outdated version of the website builder. We eventually found a few detailed tutorials for the current builder, but the articles were hard to find because they weren’t hosted by Web.com.
Web.com Pricing
Web.com offers three affordable plans: Basic, Marketing, and Ecommerce. All three offer low introductory prices for the first month, but none 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, and more.
There are also third-party apps that you can use to extend your website’s functionality.
Web.com vs GoDaddy
GoDaddy is very similar to Web.com, offering a website builder along with a 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. Wix’s website editor is user-friendly and feels more polished than Web.com’s. Although 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 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 the price. Web.com doesn’t offer email marketing or access to basic SEO features for users on the Basic plan. Online stores will be missing out on sales tools like inventory management and abandoned cart recovery.
We think most users will benefit more from website builders like Weebly, Wix, or GoDaddy. These three platforms offer more customization options, more marketing tools, and better support for scaling your site.
