Web.com website builder review

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Whether you’re looking to build a website for your small business or create a personal website, our Web.com hosting review will help you decide if a Web.com website is the right choice.

This Web.com review will delve into the platform’s pricingsimplicityfunctionality, search engine optimization (SEO) capabilities, and more!

For more details and a virtual Web.com tour, check out our series of Web.com reviews on pricingcreating a website with Web.com’s DIY Site Editor, and employing its most commonly used elements and features.

Web.com has a pricey but user-friendly website builder that makes it easy to build a small business website in a few hours without writing a single line of code. 

While Web.com is more expensive than some alternatives (especially for ecommerce pages), it offers a generally easy-to-use interface with convenient drag-and-drop functionality, plenty of attractive templates, and easy access to thousands of gorgeous images.

Web.com Site Builder

                         Pros

  • User-friendly drag-and-drop Site Editor
  • Thousands of photos through Unsplash ™ available within the Site Editor
  • Dozens of attractive customizable Web.com templates
  • Excellent customer service

                         Cons

  • Images can be tricky to edit
  • Loading times can be slow
  • No free trial

Web.com Website Builder Pricing: Compared to Other Website Builders

Web.com pricing is divided into two types: Web.com Websites and Web.com Ecommerce Websites. Within each type of plan, there are a few pricing levels or tiers.

There is no free plan or free trial period with Web.com, but the Web.com Website plans offer drastically reduced rates for the first 30 days.

Web.com Website Plans

Web.com Website Plans come in three pricing tiers, each aimed at a different level of website functionality or type of user: the Starter Plan, Marketing Plan, and Ecommerce Plan.

Web.com Starter Plan – $1.95 for the first four weeks, then $10.00 per four weeks

The Starter Plan allows you to build a website for your business. You can create a homepage, a blog, a contact page, a portfolio— all of the necessary components for a straightforward business site with no online store.

The Starter Plan gives you access to:

  • Web.com website builder
  • Web.com’s massive collection of stock images through Unsplash
  • Dozens of templates to create the layout for your page
  • A free domain for one year
  • Access to a “website coach” to aid you in creating your site
  • Web.com support
  • Optimization for mobile devices

Who Is the Starter Plan Best For?

This plan is designed for individuals or businesses that are just getting started online.

With no online store, The Starter Plan is geared toward businesses that want a website to promote services, build brand awareness through blog content, and generate calls to action (CTAs) to get responses from potential customers.

Web.com Marketing Plan – $2.95 for the first four weeks, then $15.00 per four weeks

The Marketing Plan includes all the features of the Starter Plan, plus a few  marketing upgrades:

  • Placement of your business profile in multiple local directories
  • Submission to major search engines like Google™, Yahoo™, and Bing™

Who Is the Marketing Plan Best For?

The Marketing Plan is best for businesses that don’t need an online store but want to enhance their search engine presence.

This plan is designed to raise your company’s online profile, boost its SEO results, and bring more visitors to your site.

Web.com Ecommerce Plan – $3.95 for the first four weeks, then $20.00 per four weeks

The Ecommerce Plan includes all the Marketing Plan features, plus some ecommerce features:

  • Ability to sell up to 50 products in an online store
  • Accept credit card payments
  • Set up a secure shopping cart
  • Order tracking and management.

Who Is the Ecommerce Plan Best For?

This plan is designed for small businesses that want to sell a limited number of products online through their websites.

Web.com Ecommerce Website Plans

If your business needs a free-standing online store not attached to a homepage or has more than 50 products to sell, you will want to look into Web.com’s Ecommerce Website Plans.

Web.com offers three Ecommerce Website Plans: Ecommerce Express, Ecommerce Standard, and Ecommerce Pro.

Web.com Ecommerce Express Plan – $29.95 per month

The Ecommerce Express Plan is the least expensive Web.com ecommerce plan. It allows you to create an online store for your business with the following features:

  • The online store builder
  • Access to customized website templates
  • A business email address
  • Analytics and support tools
  • A shared SSL security certificate
  • Sell up to 20 products
  • 2.5% transaction fee
  • Accept all major credit cards
  • Incorporate popular payment services like PayPalⓇ

Who Is the Ecommerce Express Plan Best For?

This plan is designed for small businesses that have a minimal number of products to sell.

Web.com Ecommerce Standard Plan – $59.95 per month

The Ecommerce Standard Plan includes all of the features of the Ecommerce Express Plan, plus the following upgrades:

  • Sell up to 500 products
  • 1.5% transaction fee
  • Email marketing suite
  • Submit products to Google

Who Is the Ecommerce Standard Plan Best For?

This plan is ideal for companies with a substantial catalog of products to sell, want those products featured on Google searches, and are interested in using email marketing campaigns.

Web.com Ecommerce Pro Plan

The Web.com Ecommerce Pro Plan includes all of the features of the Ecommerce Standard Plan, plus the following upgrades:

  • Sell an unlimited number of products
  • 1% transaction fee
  • Grant access to multiple users
  • Affiliate management
  • Dedicated SSL security certificate

Who Is the Ecommerce Standard Plan Best For?

The Ecommerce Standard Plan is ideal for mid-size businesses with an extensive catalog of products to sell and multiple team members involved in maintaining the website.

How Simple Is the Web.com Website Builder?

The Web.com website builder is reasonably intuitive. Its drag-and-drop functionality makes it simple to place new elements, and it offers a variety of pre-designed blocks that can be added directly to a site with one drag.

Some functions require a little time to figure out, especially those involving cropping and sizing images. On the other hand, Web.com makes it easy to choose royalty-free images from Unsplash from within the website builder.

Getting Started and Customization

The first step is to sign up with Web.com. Just click the purple Get Started button.

The site will then walk you through the steps of choosing a domain name, which is included free for one year.

Next, you will be prompted to choose your plan. From here, Web.com will send you to Checkout. Here, you will enter your name and email address to create an account and a Web.com login. Next, you will enter your payment information.

An email confirmation will provide a button to Get Started. From there, you will choose a template and start building your ideal small business website.

Creating and Changing Content

The Web.com Site Editor features a drag-and-drop functionality that makes it easy to add features to your site.

If you’ve chosen a template with the basic layout you want to use, customizing it for your purposes is reasonably straightforward. You can click on any block to change the text, images, or other elements.

Theme option on the toolbar also makes it easy to change the color scheme, font, headings, and structural elements of your page.

Adding a Section

In the Site Editor, you can drag and drop the following elements directly onto your page:

  • Heading – text blocks that are larger than regular text to catch customer attention
  • Text – blocks of wording you use on your page
  • Button – small boxes that users can click on to navigate to a different page or to perform an action like sending an email or making a phone call
  • Icon – symbols you can add to your page
  • Photo
  • Video
  • Gallery – groups of photos that appear in a block on your webpage
  • Slider – a series of slides populated with text blocks that display one after another, also sometimes known as a carousel
  • Form – sections of your website where visitors can enter personal information
  • Map
  • Space
  • Panel
  • Divider

Web.com also offers pre-made blocks that can be added directly to your page without having to create them from scratch:

  • Headings
  • Menus
  • Covers
  • Banners
  • Features
  • Galleries
  • Text
  • Team
  • CTAs
  • Logos
  • Testimonials
  • Contact
  • Video
  • Footer

Adding New Pages

The Web.com Site Editor features a Pages tab to add a new page to your website automatically.

The Add New Page button allows you to choose to create a blank page to fill in from scratch, duplicate a page that already exists, or choose a template.

The Template option pulls up a menu of pre-designed pages for various common website purposes, like a product page or app landing page, as well as some designed for specific kinds of businesses.


Tasks More Difficult Than They Should Be

While finding and adding images is extremely easy in Web.com’s Site Editor, editing and resizing photos gets a bit complicated until you get the hang of it. Creating blocks with text overlaying images is particularly tricky.

Changing certain existing elements in the template you have chosen can be more time-consuming than one would prefer, as well.

For instance, if a testimonials section is already established in the template, but you want to use a different testimonial layout (the toolbar offers several), you can’t just change the design. You have to delete the entire section and add a new one from the toolbar.

Web.com Website Builder SEO

Web.com maximizes your site’s SEO practices through several mechanisms.

Basic SEO Features

Web.com offers the following SEO features:

  • Submits site to local directories and search engines monthly
  • Maintains Google business page and presence on other widely used sites such as YelpⓇ
  • Monthly reports
  • Keyword strategy development
  • Content strategy suggestions
  • Local listing for nearby customers
  • Map placement

Web.dev Score

To assess a basic Web.com website’s performance, we submitted our demo Web.com site to Web.dev, a Google-created tool to measure performance in four areas: performance, accessibility, best practices, and SEO.

While these scores may look dire at first glance, bear in mind that this was a demo website— no real effort had been placed into maximizing its SEO potential. With some attention paid to optimization practices, these scores would be much higher.

Taking that into consideration, Web.com scores higher than expected in three out of four categories.

Web.com Website Builder SEO Summary

The Web.com Website Builder offers quite a few SEO-boosting features, making it possible to create a competitive site that will draw visitors and increase your company’s digital presence.

Support

Web.com customer service receives high marks in most reviews. Support agents are easily accessible through the Web.com phone number, posted prominently on every page of its website. You can also receive support through the Help? button on the Site Builder, which provides tutorials for frequently asked questions (FAQs) and an option to send Web.com an email.

Web.com Alternatives

GoDaddy ™  – GoDaddy is an affordable and user-friendly website builder.

Wix – Wix is a highly flexible tool. But, the added functionality comes with more complexity.

Weebly – Weebly is a reasonable choice but doesn’t excel in any specific area.

Squarespace – Squarespace is well-suited for creatives.

Web.com Website Builder Review – Conclusion

Web.com features a user-friendly Site Editor that makes it possible to rapidly build an eye-catching website that includes all the features your small business needs for a successful digital presence.

Who Should Use This Tool?

  • Small businesses with no need for an online store
  • Website beginners
  • Service-oriented businesses

Who Shouldn’t Use This Tool?

  • Small business owners who want to test the web builder with a free trial
  • Businesses with a large number of products to sell in an online store
  • Companies solely relying on SEO for customer acquisition

Try It for Yourself

If you’re still not sure whether Web.com is the right website builder for your small business, you can give it a try for a low rate (less than $5) for the first 30 days.

Web.com Site Builder