Web.com is a simple, straightforward website builder that’s ideal for creating basic sites. It might not have all the bells and whistles, but there’s enough there to satisfy most small businesses and help grow their online presence.
Overview of Web.com
Let’s cut straight to the chase — we like Web.com. It’s not the very best of the bunch, but nor is it the worst either. Instead, it’s solid and reliable, and does a good job of building straightforward, basic websites without all the extra bells and whistles.
Web.com has recently undergone some major updates, meaning that it’s now easier and quicker to build a website. Its editor, in particular, has seen some big improvements, switching to a row-based drag-and-drop format that makes it easy to add and rearrange elements within your template.
Although its features aren’t super advanced, Web.com comes with all the basics, so you can customize each website page to reflect your business and brand. Plus, if you know how to code, you’ll be able to do and add more.
Its cheap starting prices are also worth mentioning, too. Build a website for just $1.95? Yes, please! Be aware though: this price is only valid for the first four weeks. After this, it will renew at $10. In the grand scheme of things, however, this is still relatively cheap, making it a good option if you need to keep an eye on your budget.
Is Web.com’s Website Builder Right For You?
Web.com’s target users are small businesses, and we agree that’s exactly the type of user this builder is perfect for. With this platform, you can build an attractive and professional-looking website in around an hour. It’s ideal if you want to add an online presence to your current business offering.
However, its features are limited in certain areas. For example, during our testing, we couldn’t add a booking system, online calendar, or a promotional popup. We also wouldn’t recommend it if you’re looking to start a blog. If these are elements you need, we’d recommend looking elsewhere.
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 website builder package includes one hour of one-on-one customer service and tech support with the company’s design experts. You also have the option to pay Web.com’s design team to build your website for you. The site will be designed to your specifications, and you can manage it using Web.com’s site editor once your site is launched.
How to Create a Website with Web.com
The process of creating a website with Web.com starts with choosing a template. The platform has more than 150 templates, all of which are mobile-responsive. They are organized by industry to make it easier to find a design that suits you. However, do note that you can’t change templates later, so choose carefully.
Web.com’s templates are fairly customizable. You can modify not only the color palette and fonts but also details like heading styles, link colors, and button formats. More options would be even better, but this level of control at least lets you 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 content elements. Features are individual elements, like text boxes, images, and buttons, that you can add anywhere on your site. Blocks are full-width page sections that come with pre-arranged features. You can add additional features to blocks to customize them.
The combination of features and blocks offers a significant amount of design flexibility. However, we found that laying out content within Web.com’s site editor can be a challenge. The platform divides each page section into columns, and it’s relatively easy to throw off the layout of a whole section when you add, remove, or move features. The column-based design either needs to be more consistent or eliminated altogether to make this experience more seamless.
Overall, we were happy enough with Web.com’s site editor, but it didn’t stand out compared to other website builders that we’ve tested. The issues with laying out features also take away much of the fun of experimenting because it’s too easy to throw your whole site out of whack with a few wrong moves.
Adding Multimedia to Your Web.com Website
Web.com enables you to add photos and videos to your website, 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 a library of thousands of stock photos from Unsplash. Uploaded images are stored in a media library, but the library isn’t searchable.
You can add or replace images just by clicking on any image box on your website. However, when creating galleries, you must add each photo individually.
Marketing Functionality with Web.com Websites
Web.com requires you to upgrade from its basic plan to access its online marketing features. The main marketing tool that Web.com offers is Local Listings, a service that will list 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 the biggest issues with Web.com is how it treats SEO. In order to have your site listed with major search engines like Google and Bing, you have to upgrade from the basic pricing package.
The good news is that if you do upgrade, Web.com enables you to customize your pages’ SEO titles and descriptions and add alt text to your images. You can also launch a blog with any Web.com site.
Web.com doesn’t have its own traffic analytics tools, but you can connect your site to Google Analytics.
Web.com at a Glance
Web.com is a website solution and online marketing solution designed for businesses of all sizes. All Web.com web builder accounts come with a free domain and SSL certificate(for a year), plus free private domain registration. While Web.com offers low introductory rates of $4.95 to $19.95 per month, that only lasts for one billing cycle. Afterward, they jump up to $9.99 to $39.99—a significant increase.
Pricing
Web.com offers four monthly pricing tiers:
- Website Essentials: $4.95 per month (first month offer), renews at $9.99 per month
- Business Essentials: $7.95 per month (first month offer), renews at $14.99 per month
- eCommerce Essentials: $13.95 per month (first month offer), renews at $24.99 per month
- eCommerce Premium: $19.95 per month (first month offer), renews at $39.99 per month
Easy-To-Use Website Builder
Building a beautiful website on Web.com is easy, even if you lack tech or design skills. The drag-and-drop website builder lets you customize your site’s look and functionality in a user-friendly interface.
You can add pre-designed content blocks to make custom photo or video galleries, promotional banners and more. If you want to spice up your site with more photos and videos, choose from its 2 million free stock images or embed videos from YouTube or Vimeo.
Don’t want to build a website from scratch? Take your pick from a variety of eye-catching website templates for online stores, portfolios and every type of business imaginable.
Advanced E-Commerce Features
The platform’s dedicated e-commerce features are only available on its eCommerce Essentials and eCommerce Premium plans. Once subscribed, you’ll be able to build a mobile-responsive online store with unlimited products and categories.
Web.com even connects to major shipping carriers and offers real-time shipping rates from carriers such as UPS, FedEx, USPS and DHL. Also, the multi-warehouse functionality lets you keep track of products stored in multiple locations.
Plus, Web.com has Amazon multichannel fulfillment and fulfillment automation capabilities—but again, this is only available on the eCommerce Premium plan.
Domains and Hosting
Web.com offers a free domain voucher for one year and secure web hosting on all website builder plans. If you already have a website and are just looking for hosting, the basic plan starts at $9.99 per month for a website with 15,000 visitors, up to 10GB of storage and 25 FTP accounts. Pricing for domains will vary depending on the extension you select and can range from $9.95 to $39.99 (or more) per year.
In addition, the free SSL for one year lets you protect your customers’ data such as credit card numbers, IDs and passwords. After the first year, expect to pay $27.96 annually for essential protections. Higher-tiered plans with larger warranties are available for up to $480 per year, but these are considered enterprise-level.
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