Jimdo Website Builder Review

A lot of other website builders offer hundreds of options to tweak and adjust nearly every element of your website. This is a great approach if you want to bring your vision of a unique website to life. However, it’s possible to get lost in the sea of themes and plugins, especially for people who don’t have a specific plan in mind.

Jimdo offers a solution for the business owner who isn’t interested in creating a perfectly tweaked website. Jimdo works best for businesses that want a professional website that communicates information clearly and effectively on mobile and desktop, that aren’t dedicated to a creative vision, and don’t have the time to build something unique. Jimdo’s shorter list of options and AI-powered suggestions are more approachable, and it will definitely save you time scrolling through options.

• Ease of Use: Given how much Jimdo has streamlined website building, it’s entirely possible to publish your website in just a few minutes.  

• Mobile Focus: Jimdo Dolphin allows you to edit your website on the go, while also ensuring that any website built with its platform will look good on mobile screens.

• 0% Ecommerce Transaction Fees: Jimdo does not take a cut of your transactions when you use it for ecommerce. This is a big benefit over many competitors.  

• Try Before You Buy: More of an unlimited length trial, Jimdo allows you to get an in-depth look at its features and builder before you decide to purchase anything.

• Simple Website Builder: Even among other easy-to-use website builders, Jimdo Dolphin is a very approachable and easy-to-understand website builder.

• AI-Powered Building: Jimdo will ask questions about your website and then use AI to give you informed suggestions.

• Limited Options: While a selling point in terms of simplicity, if you’re looking for a ton of different options to dial into your website, Jimdo Dolphin will feel limited.

• Jimdo Dolphin: Jimdo actually offers two distinct website builders. Jimdo Dolphin is the version that doesn't require any coding knowledge. Jimdo Creator is the other builder and it is more tech intensive. Also, once you select which website builder you want, there is no way to change your mind without starting from scratch.

• Reliant on PayPal: Jimdo is only set up for payments via PayPal for US ecommerce stores. This means if you want a credit card gateway you’ll have to connect to Stripe.

• Customer Service: Jimdo only offers customer service via email. There is no way to get in direct contact with Jimdo or get in touch over the phone.    

Jimdo offers five total plans; three for general websites and two for ecommerce websites. Jimdo pricing as shown on the homepge reflect the price for an annual commitment; to keep things easy to understand, those are the prices we’ll list below. Jimdo also has a more expensive monthly payment option, and some plans also have a two-year option that reduces the price. You may need to experiment until you know what you’ll need.

This plan can technically be used to host your website, however, you'll run into a lot of features you won’t be able to access. Your website will also be stuck with Jimdo advertisements which gives any website an unprofessional look. If you publish your website with this plan you’ll also be stuck with a .jimdosite.com subdomain, which makes it harder for your website to appear on Google and other search engines, since your site will be seen as part of Jimdo and not a unique destination.

When to use: We do not recommend publishing your website with the Jimdo Play plan unless you have no other choice. The drawbacks will make your website look unprofessional.  Beyond just looks, not having a custom domain will hurt your business’s discoverability, which is an essential part of growing online. 

However, this plan is a great tool to explore what Jimdo Dolphin can do before you upgrade to another plan. Unlike some other builders, Jimdo’s free option never expires so you can take your time getting familiar with the builder before you publish your Jimdo business website.

Breaking down to $9 per month the Jimdo Start plan is the least expensive option that Jimdo offers. The Jimdo Start plan comes with some good features: a custom domain, custom email address, and access to customer support.  This plan also includes access to statistics and search engine optimization (SEO) features so that you can start to increase your site’s visibility.

When to use: If your business is just starting out and your primary goal is to have an online presence as soon as possible this plan may be a good fit for you.  If your business needs a professional, quick, and easy-to-build website, this plan is a great entry point.

If this plan seems like a good fit for you, you can click here to get started.

Breaking down to $14 a month, this is Jimdo’s best-selling plan for general websites. The Jimdo Grow plan takes everything in the Start plan and expands it, adding more storage, more custom email addresses, and other important features. This plan also adds more advanced tools for SEO and social media marketing, to grow your online presence.

When to use: We recommend the Jimdo Grow plan for starting most businesses. The plan is comparable in price to similarly featured plans offered by competitors and, in some cases, provides more features. If your goal is to create a professional website quickly, this is a great plan to start. Just remember that this plan does not have any ecommerce features.

Breaking down to $18 a month, the Jimdo Business plan is Jimdo’s best-selling ecommerce plan. This plan includes all of the features of the Jimdo Grow plan and adds ecommerce functionality.

When to use: This plan offers a relatively low-cost investment for the businesses that are dipping their toes into the world of ecommerce. However, as your business gains more attention you may start to feel like you’re running up against the limits of this plan.

You can start building your new ecommerce store by clicking here 

Jimdo’s most expensive and feature-packed plan, the Jimdo VIP plan, works out to be $24 per month. The Jimdo VIP plan builds on the Business plan and gives you unlimited storage, bandwidth, and webpages.  This plan also allows you to set up 20 forwarding email addresses. Unique features of this plan include access to feedback from a Jimdo design expert and  includes Jimdo Business Listings, which is an optional feature for all of the other plans.

When to use: This plan is really geared towards businesses that have momentum, want to take advantage of Jimdo’s 0% transaction fee for ecommerce sales, and never want to worry about hitting a limit or being held back. This plan feels like the “peace of mind” package so that you can focus on other areas of your business and not worry about managing any limits for your website.

Most of your core experiences and feature sets are thoroughly explained and discussed in our Jimdo Plans and Pricing breakdown. That being said, Jimdo offers a few other bells and whistles that come with an additional cost on top of an existing plan. Let’s go over two of the most notable examples.

In the same way that setting up a business website can be time consuming, maintaining a social media presence can be a full-time job of its own. Jimdo Business Listings is an optional feature that will help you keep your various social media accounts updated in a single spot, and overall will help streamline your time spent promoting your business on social media. 

While the default Jimdo builder — known as Dolphin — is designed so that you don’t have to deal with any computer code, Jimdo Creator is labeled as “for coding experts.” Jimdo Creator is set up to provide a more involved building experience with more plugins and customization options, many of which are options geared toward the more tech-savvy business owner and exists essentially as a separate product under the Jimdo branding.  

Jimdo fills a niche in the website builder space that has a lot of value. While many builders are concerned with giving you hundreds of options and choices to make your website unique, Jimdo is much more focused, and instead seeks to get your website looking good on all screen types as quickly as possible.

If you’re the kind of person who doesn’t want to sift through pages of options, then spend time tweaking and adjusting every little element until it’s exactly right, Jimdo’s AI-powered website builder can get you a website built quickly and relatively effortlessly.

For ecommerce businesses that are growing and still exploring what works for them, Jimdo’s lower price point and 0% transaction fee make it an appealing option for startups that are looking for functionality or don’t care about a ton of bells and whistles.