Review of Web.com

If you are looking to create a website — or have one created for you — with a minimum of effort, Web.com could well be the right service for your company to choose.  A recent in depth Web.com review found a number of positives. Web.com offers both a DIY Web builder for creative types (which includes an impressively huge number of templates!) and the option to have experts to come up with a custom designed and built site. The second option, customized design, is the one that is focused on most heavily, and it is true that their developers do an excellent job. Besides Web site platforms, Web.com offers assistance with online marketing and real time results tracking. However, although there is no set up fee, neither is there a free trial period offered and the service can end up being very pricy indeed.

What Web.com offers to the small business

Owners and managers of small businesses often are looking for a simple site without bells and whistles. Web.com provides the type of site that a layperson will be quite capable of building him- or herself.  Even if the small business person chooses to have Web.com’s professional developers create the site, it will still be easy to maintain and modify as necessary without a lot of programming knowledge.  This gives the management of a small business a highly desirable sense of freedom. No more depending on a developer to find the time to make all those changes and updates that are necessary to keep the site fresh, current and, most important of all, competitive in today’s online market place. A Web.com site will work very well for an e-commerce small business. What is more, the service will take care of online marketing and search engine ranking, as well as helping track the site’s vital statistics.

Varied and flexible templates

Perhaps the most outstanding feature of Web.com is the huge number of templates that the service makes available. With more than 2,500 template designs, clients will be spoiled for choice. To make it easier to decide on one, the templates are organized into 30 categories and from there, into some 300 sub categories. Anyone who finds the sheer variety overwhelming can skip the step of looking at each one and instead search for certain keywords or a preferred color scheme. All template examples can be enlarged for a closer inspection. And after selecting a template, there is always the opportunity to change it out for a different one. Web.com will transfer all your information to the new template with a minimum of fuss and bother.

Drawbacks of the service

Unfortunately, Web.com falls somewhat short in the important area of user friendliness. The problem is not the actual interface itself, but rather the number of bugs which are encountered by anyone attempting to use the service. This is particularly annoying because the majority of users are likely to be business owners or e-commerce operators, not IT experts, making a user friendly site all the more essential. There are four instructional videos for signed up members only, but these are quite brief and lack sufficient detail. Your best course of action is to contact Customer Service when you encounter a problem or would like a consultation about the quality of your site; the team can be reached by either telephone or email. There is also a searchable portal where more information may be found.

Pricing

Although some Web hosting sites will offer a free trial of their services, Web.com does not. On the surface, it is free to use Web.com to build your own site. However, every business person knows that there really is no such thing as a free lunch. Once you have created your website gratis, you will need to have it hosted and maintained — at a hefty cost — by guess who? Web.com of course. Other services are really quite reasonable for the first month of use but after that, their prices sky rocket, making Web.com very expensive compared to other, similar services. Here is a list of their prices:

Website builder: $1.95 for the 1st month; $22.95 per month subsequently.

Custom built site (base plan): free for 1st month; $114.95 or more subsequently.

Website and marketing: $2.95 for 1st month; $32.95 subsequently.

Website, marketing and e-commerce: $3.95 for 1st month; $42.95 subsequently.