Jimdo or Jimdon’t? Website Builder Review

Jimdo is the best value for money website builder for small business owners. We know you’re concerned about the cost of doing business – we are too, in fact. It’ll be a relief, then, to hear Jimdo scores a splendid 4.7/5 in our “Value for Money” research this year.

We tested Jimdo Website Builder (formerly known as Jimdo Dolphin), which is the user-friendly version of Jimdo Creator (that gives you access to code customization). Weighing up its features, customer reviews, marketing tools, and more, we found Jimdo is well suited to busy people running local businesses.

Read on to find out pros and cons, best use cases, and who should definitely not use it.

Overall, Jimdo scored 3.1/5 in our website builder testing. It’s not a stellar result, but it’s not too shabby for a non-mainstream platform. We’ll go into the reasons why further down.

Here’s a summary of Jimdo’s test results in each category of our research (all scores are out of five):

Sadly Jimdo didn’t make it into our list of the top website builders. But that doesn’t mean it won’t be the right option for you – particularly if you’re just getting started with website building, and want an affordable, low-fuss solution.

How much does Jimdo cost?

Jimdo has eight subscription packages ($0-$49 per month) including a free plan and three options for selling online.

Jimdo is the best value website builder, according to our tests. In our last round of testing, Jimdo was top of the money-saving leaderboard, too. Scoring 4.5/5 in 2022, the website builder delivers slightly better features at reasonable price points this year.

Now let’s look at the features you’ll get in each price plan:

Pros and cons of Jimdo

✅ No transaction fees

If you want to sell online, several major platforms will take a commission from every single transaction – Squarespace and Shopify are key examples. But Jimdo won’t take a cut from money you’re making online, leaving more profit in your pocket.

✅ Autosave

In a world of distractions, it’s reassuring to know any edits you make to your Jimdo site are instantly saved. Shopify and Squarespace don’t have this feature, so you have to remember to click “Save” or else lose your hours of hard work.

❌ Limits on pages

It’s rare for a website builder to impose such tight boundaries on the number of pages. Jimdo allows a maximum of 10 pages on its Basic ($19/month) plan. By contrast, Squarespace allows up to 1000 pages on any of its plans, and even GoDaddy (a nearer competitor) allows 50.

❌ No blogs

Unusually for a website builder, Jimdo won’t allow you to create a blog section. This seems like a critical failing, because fresh news and updates are often vital to meet website visitors’ needs. All other major website builders allow blog creation – including Shopify, Wix, GoDaddy, and Squarespace.

❌ Can’t sell on marketplaces like Amazon, eBay

Multichannel selling is a key strategy for online merchants – that means access to external marketplaces like Amazon, Etsy and eBay is a necessity. While Shopify, BigCommerce, and Wix easily allow such integrations, Jimdo is stuck in the early 2000s, and can’t connect with external marketplaces. And don’t expect a point of sale option, either.

If you’re looking to sell products, services or subscriptions online, you should check out our review of the best ecommerce platforms for small businesses for alternatives to Jimdo.

Jimdo key features explained

1. AI-generated website based on your needs

You don’t need any programming skills at all to be able to build a Jimdo website. While WordPress can seem intimidating, getting started with Jimdo simply involves answering multiple-choice questions.

There are rather a lot of questions – some pretty repetitive. I had to answer three versions of “What is your website about?” and I was bored by question 10. For comparison GoDaddy – which takes you through a quiz, too – lets you loose on template editing after just two questions.

An AI feature I liked was the domain name generator. After I’d indicated my website is about tech repair services, Jimdo’s engine suggested highly relevant URL options. It even explained the benefits of each one – including the (accurate) advice that the keywords it chose would help my website’s visibility through search engines.

After around 10 minutes of quizzing, Jimdo presented a good-looking new website. It was already time for me to start editing. No waiting weeks for a web developer to get back to my emails. And all this on the free trial plan – no credit card details necessary. That’s truly convenient for a time-pressured entrepreneur.

2. Limited text editing options

If you’ve ever used website builder tools like this before, you’ll notice Jimdo has a very limited set of design customization options. For a quick example, there’s four text size options. Four.

And if you want to edit the color of a button, you’re going to have to change your website’s whole color scheme to do it. You can’t edit the spacing between lines of text, nor control exactly where on the page a text box sits.

All of those features are basics of any word processor you’d use – Pages, Word, Google Docs, and so on. Given that websites are largely made up of words plus images, some decent text editing tools would come in handy. Jimdo misses the mark here.

3. Access to stock images: useful but generic

There’s a small image library of copyright-free images for you to populate your Jimdo site with. They’re high-quality, well-edited and often atmospheric, helping you set a professional tone for your website. And you don’t have to pay to use them. Bonus.

There are some limitations with Jimdo’s image library (are you picking up on the theme?), for instance, I found just 120 images in the “Services” category. After scrolling past pictures of grapes and holiday villas, I came across a grand total of 10 images featuring computers. For my IT repair website, these would be the only useful ones for me.

That said, the AI did a decent job of including IT-based photos throughout the website it made for me. And I was genuinely impressed by the ability to import images from Instagram. When I tried it, the pictures came through in high resolution. Honestly, I was expecting some blurring.

4. Online shop: severely lacking on most fronts

Jimdo gives you a basic set of online selling features, but leaves out inventory and order management features fast becoming standard in the ecommerce space.

Most of all, you should know there is one integration for your online shop: a delivery service called shipcloud. There’s no app store, and no other integrations at all (except PayPal). That means no accounting software, no marketing emails, no loyalty points, no dropshipping, and no warehouse services.

Here’s a summary of what you will and won’t get with a Jimdo online shop:

There are some nice personal touches you can add – such as custom messages after order completion and shipping. But there’s no inventory synching which means you’ll have to manually update stock levels if you sell products anywhere other than your Jimdo site. That’s simply not sustainable for retailers with multiple sales channels.

Jimdo is leagues behind Shopify and Wix, both of which have app stores with a huge range of sales integrations. You’ll struggle to scale up an ecommerce business with Jimdo. It’s best for businesses with product sales as a side income stream, rather than the main source of revenue.

What kind of businesses is Jimdo best for?

Overall, Jimdo’s AI website maker is best for entrepreneurs looking for an affordable, professional website with a simple design.

1. Local business: in-person services, restaurants, bars, and members’ clubs

Jimdo is ideal for creating a website to promote an in-person business, where you need little more than a few pages of information plus a contact option.

You can use Calendly or Google Calendar to let customers book appointments directly from your website. This is an essential feature for local business owners as, alarmingly, you could lose half your bookings if you don’t give visitors access to your schedule.

There’s a convenient button to let mobile users phone you directly from your website too. That’s vital for converting visitors to customers.

2. Musicians, bands, and songwriters

A neat Soundcloud integration is available directly within Jimdo, as well as Bandcamp, Anchor, Vimeo and YouTube. That allows music-makers to share their sounds with web visitors straight from these external sources. Because your viewers won’t have to leave your website, you’re more likely to keep their attention and increase the chances of them getting in touch with you.

How does Jimdo compare to its competitors?

If hands-on support is important to you, IONOS pricing plans include a dedicated account manager and phone support. You won’t get that level of assistance with a Jimdo subscription. That could sway your decision if you’re a beginner to the website creation experience, and want to know there’s help if you need it.

Jimdo vs Wix

Although Wix’s prices have crept up slightly in the past year, it still offers better features than Jimdo at similar price points. Wix Business Basic ($28/month) includes 20GB of storage and unlimited bandwidth, while Jimdo’s Basic ecommerce plan ($19/month) allows just 10GB of storage and bandwidth respectively.

Plus there’s the awkward 100 product limit recommendation in Jimdo, whereas Wix stores run just fine with up to 50,000 listings. With Wix you can also sell memberships, subscriptions, mobile tickets, takeaway meals, hotel bookings, and digital art – none of which are possible with Jimdo.

Jimdo vs Squarespace

Compared with Squarespace, Jimdo is a better value option provided you only need basic selling tools. Squarespace charges 3% commission on sales under its Business plan ($30/month), while Jimdo has no such fees on any of its plans.

If you sell more expensive products, Squarespace may be a better option than Jimdo because it offers buy now, pay later with Afterpay. Oddly, Jimdo doesn’t allow for pop-ups whereas Squarespace does. CSS and Javascript customization is also possible with Squarespace but not with Jimdo. Clearly, Squarespace has a broader range of features overall compared with Jimdo.

Does Jimdo have good customer reviews?

Yes, by and large, Jimdo customers are happy with the website builder product. A few mention speedy customer service and the fact they’ve been using Jimdo for years. Others note it’s easy to use without the need for software engineering skills.

Several negative reviews mention subscription auto-renewal that they were unaware of or struggled to get refunded.

On its Facebook page during January to February this year, Jimdo mentioned issues with its email services. Some customers expressed alarm at these recurring problems, claiming their business operations were interrupted. A few remarked that Jimdo’s response times were too slow.

It’s important to be aware that Jimdo has a clear policy of prioritizing customer care for higher paying clients. Those on the free plan can expect no customer support at all. That likely explains the discrepancy in help and support for various Jimdo users.