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 sometimes looks clunky. Web.com is also expensive and forces you to upgrade to get essential features like search engine indexing. Overall, we think most people would be better off with an alternative website builder.
PROS
- Very easy to use
- Excellent support
- Competitive price:
CONS
- The editor is a bit 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. Basically, it serves as a one-stop shop for everything you need to create a free website or online store, including a custom domain and email services.
The Web.com website builder is designed to be accessible to first-time website builders, but we believe there are other website builders better suited for this purpose. Its page editor can be difficult to work with and takes some time to customize. The platform also makes your website difficult to find unless you upgrade to a more expensive plan.
Using Web.com
The Web.com experience is anything but perfect. The back panel is not specific to the website creator, but includes all Web.com services. This means that the tools available to you, including the site editor, are interspersed with ads to purchase additional services.
Furthermore, the editor of the Web.com website is uncomfortable. Pages and widgets take a few seconds to load, and it's easy to accidentally mess up your site's design by moving content elements. However, it offers more layout flexibility than other editors, which is a plus if you have 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
Each new Web.com website development package includes one hour of personalized customer service and technical support with the company's design experts. You also have the option of paying Web.com's design team to build your site for you. The site will be designed to your specifications and you can manage it with Web.com's site editor once your site is up and running.
Web.com AI Builder
Web.com's new AI-powered website builder is revolutionizing the way we create and manage online content. The builder is made up of a few different tools.
There's AI Writer, a game-changer for effortlessly creating or revamping engaging content, ideal for everything from website updates to engaging blog posts. Finding the perfect online identity is now a breeze with the AI-powered Domain Name Generator, which creatively aligns your vision with a unique domain name. AI Builder streamlines content creation, efficiently generating the necessary framework and content based on a few quick questions, allowing you to focus more on bringing your ideas to life. Additionally, AI Logo Builder offers a variety of customization options to create a distinctive brand identity with a visually striking logo.
These tools together offer a comprehensive solution to elevate your online presence with ease and creativity.
How to Create a Website with Web.com
The process of creating a website or online store with Web.com begins with choosing a template. The platform has more than 150 templates, all of them adaptable to mobile devices. They are 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 the templates later, so choose carefully.
Web.com templates are quite customizable. You can modify not only the color palette and fonts, but also details such as header styles, link colors, and button formats. More options would be even better, but this level of control at least 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 content elements. Features are individual elements, such as text boxes, images, and buttons, that you can add anywhere on your site. Blocks are full-width page sections that come with preset functions. You can add additional functions to blocks to customize them.
The combination of functions and blocks offers great design flexibility. However, we found that designing content within the Web.com site editor can be a challenge. The platform divides each section of the page into columns, and it's relatively easy to change the layout of an entire section when you add, remove, or move features. The column-based layout needs to be more consistent or removed entirely to make this experience more fluid.
Overall, we were pretty satisfied with the Web.com site builder, but it didn't stand out compared to other website builders we've tested. Problems with feature design also take a lot of the fun out of experimenting because it's so easy to unbalance the entire site with a few incorrect 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 multimedia. You can upload photos from your computer, Instagram, Facebook, Dropbox, Box or Flickr or search Unsplash's library of thousands of stock photos. Uploaded images are stored in a media library, but the library cannot be searched.
You can add or replace images by simply 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 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 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 does not offer email marketing tools.
SEO Functionality & Add-Ons with Web.com Websites
One of Web.com's biggest problems is how it treats SEO. In order for your site to appear on major search engines like Google and Bing, you need to upgrade from the basic pricing package.
The good news is that if you upgrade, Web.com allows you to customize the SEO titles and descriptions of your pages and add alt text to your images. You can also start a blog on any Web.com site.
Web.com does not have its own traffic analysis tools, but you can connect your site to Google Analytics.
Ecommerce
Web.com's top tier plans allow you to sell up to 500 products. Digital downloads or gift cards cannot be sold, and the platform does not support in-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 generate discount codes, and you can choose Stripe, PayPal, and Square to accept payments. You can also create an unlimited number of product options for customers to choose from.
Overall, however, 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 website development plans include one hour of one-on-one support from the company's professional designers to help you get started designing your website.
Web.com also has an online knowledge base. However, the articles appear to link to an outdated version of the site's creator. Finally, we found a number of detailed manuals on the current builder, but the articles were difficult to find because they were not located on Web.com.
Web.com Pricing
Web.com offers 3 affordable plans: Starter, Marketing, and Ecommerce. All three offer cheap introductory prices for the first month, but no free trial.
Web.com vs Weebly
Weebly is an easy-to-use website builder with 75+ templates and tons of features for selling online. While their advanced plans are more expensive than Web.com's plans, Weebly offers essential tools for SEO, inventory management, email marketing, and more. You also have third-party applications that you can use to extend the functionality of your site.
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.
We believe that most users would be better served by website builders from Weebly, Wix, or GoDaddy. All three platforms offer more customization options, more marketing tools, and better support for expanding your site.