Jimdo Review: It’s Simple & Fast, So What’s the Catch? [2026]

Jimdo at a Glance

Jimdo Pros, Cons, & Things That Could Be Better

Jimdo is a cheap, beginner-friendly option for small businesses just starting out. It’s simple, it’s fast, and the tutorial wizard that pops up when you first create a website can do a lot of the work for you. Not all of it, but a lot.

So, what’s not to love?

Jimdo’s biggest problem is that it’s competing against a number of strong alternatives: Wix with its design flexibility, Squarespace with its sleek experience, Hostinger’s Website Builder with its myriad AI tools. How does Jimdo hold up against these industry giants?

Well, it mostly doesn’t. After creating my own Jimdo website and testing every tool I could get my hands on, I can tell you that in certain areas, Jimdo struggles to keep up with the competition.

But don’t write it off just yet; on the other hand, it has a solid free plan, and built-in GDPR and VAT tools. These are particularly useful if your business is in Europe and you want to ensure your site visitors’ private data is protected. If you don’t need any of the features it doesn’t have, it might just be right for your business. Read on to find out.

Jimdo Sites Look Good, but They’re Not Too Customizable

Jimdo offers 20+ ready-made, mobile-responsive designs. Some of the templates stick to the classic minimalism that’s usually associated with site builders, but others pop off the page with a heavier use of bright colors and vibrant imagery.

I did find, however, that you can’t really just pick and choose a template. The site startup wizard (which I will talk about more below) will choose a couple for you to start from, and then you can change the basic style later.

Design and Customization

Jimdo very much belongs to the “we do it so you don’t have to” school of thought, and this is a double-edged sword.

On the one hand, Jimdo makes it easier to build a website. But at the same time, the page editor is not particularly flexible in terms of layout or customization. You can change your site’s color scheme, and pick from a few different color combinations, but that’s about it.

All sections of content must be chosen from pre-created, mini-layouts, and the content is confined to the pre-set mini-layouts you choose. Thankfully, there are several on offer.

Don’t get me wrong: the site editor is fine. That comparative lack of control works for people who just want to build a site and go. You can still put in your text and images, upload a video, and even throw in a slideshow. The theme customization gives you just enough to generally meet your branding guidelines…

But I wouldn’t try to meet any super-specific branding guidelines.

Jimdo Does Some Things Right, and Doesn’t Do Others At All

I once remarked that Jimdo sounds like someone’s nickname, and honestly, I still wonder where that name came from. Well, odd name aside, Jimdo makes me think of the kind of guy who’s friendly, and has his life together, but has apparently never heard of blogging.

No, that’s not a silly analogy. Jimdo is — in its current iteration — flat-out missing a blog feature. Where most site builders treat blogging as something of an afterthought, Jimdo doesn’t think about it at all.

And in fact, it’s missing quite a lot of features that we’ve found in almost every other site builder that we compared it to.

On the other hand, Jimdo does come with some nice extras here and there. For example, while buying domains through Jimdo is nothing special, it’s not often that a site builder will handle your emails for you. Jimdo can do that.

In addition, the things that Jimdo actually does, it mostly does well. Here are a few examples:

There Are E-commerce Features Galore

You have to pay extra for the store plans, but they give you just that: a big old store to sell things on. There are a ton of features to this, but this is my favorite bit: you can edit product pages like just about any other page, with much of the same functionality.

Feature-wise, you can do the standard stuff like add product variants, adjust shipping settings (e.g. offer free shipping on large orders), and offer discounts. You can also sell on Facebook and Instagram to reach more customers.

Once you’ve got some products up, you can accept payments from PayPal, Stripe, and (through those services) all major credit cards. Jimdo doesn’t charge transaction fees, which makes it particularly suitable for online stores on a budget. You only have to pay PayPal’s (or Stripe’s) cut.

There’s A Strong Focus On SEO

Jimdo wants your website to grow in popularity. You know, so you’ll stay on Jimdo. To that end, the company has implemented a bunch of SEO and stat-tracking features, so you can decide how best to expand your online operations.

For instance, you can modify page titles, meta descriptions, and URLs. The built-in analytics let you track visitor engagement. Also, Jimdo allows you to connect your website to Google Search Console, so you can monitor indexing and search performance via the built-in menu.

I should mention, however, that you’ll have to upgrade to a paid plan to get access to most SEO features. If you’re serious about growing your business though, I’d say it’s worthwhile.

Business Tools

There isn’t a huge marketplace full of addons, but there are a couple of extra useful tools. For example, the Business Listings (which costs a bit extra on most plans) will automatically submit your site to listings sites all over the web, to help you drum up more business elsewhere.

The Legal Text Generator can partially assist you in safeguarding your interests by creating a fundamental Terms of Service document and Privacy Policy. However, it’s important to note that no algorithm can replace the expertise of a local lawyer who is familiar with your jurisdiction’s laws. It’s advisable to consider upgrading to professional legal counsel sooner for optimal protection.

Add More Functionality With Smart Apps

Another easy way to add extra functionality to your site is through Smart Apps – widgets you can integrate directly from the editor.

For example, you can embed a scheduling system from Calendly so visitors can book directly on your site. Or, you can embed video streams from platforms like YouTube and Twitch, or audio playlists and podcasts from services like SoundCloud and Anchor.

With Google Docs and Google Sheets widgets, you get easy access to your content, so you can keep all information in one place. You can also gather all your socials and display your Twitter, Pinterest, or Dribbble profiles directly on your site.

Right now, the collection of apps isn’t big, but according to Jimdo, there will be additions in the future, so fingers crossed.

My Experience With Jimdo

The basic site editor is easy stuff, once you learn how to access all of the relevant menus and settings. It doesn’t have the most traditional interface, but it works. It’s that initial learning curve that might trip up new users, especially those who’ve never used a site builder before.

And when you don’t know what to do, there is a pretty good knowledge base designed to teach you all about Jimdo.

Getting Started With Jimdo

Like I said before, Jimdo doesn’t really let you choose templates. Instead, as soon as you sign up, the site creation wizard takes over. It will guide you through all the necessary steps to define your website’s goals and purpose. Only after that, will it present you with options for colors, fonts, and templates.

The wizard does a fair bit of work for you – it goes beyond picking a business category and a template. It will actually change the sample text in the website, depending on whether you’re making a website for a business or an individual.

My only issue is that this creation wizard only offers around two template choices at a time. And if you want to see more, you have to go through the wizard again. It’s an oddly unintuitive choice for what is otherwise a very intuitive tool.

Customizing My Jimdo Website

With Jimdo, all sections of content must be chosen from pre-created mini-layouts, and the content is confined to the pre-set mini-layouts you choose. Thankfully, there are several on offer. In addition to Smart Apps, you can add elements like images, slideshows, lists, banners, forms, and menus.

If you want to add other pages to your site, such as for services, portfolios, news, or events, you can do so with a click. I like how the pages are grouped according to purpose, so you can quickly find contractual pages like Terms and Conditions and store pages like a shopping cart.

Jimdo is by no means hard to use, but I still would have liked to see popups or some sort of guidance when you first open the editor. Some settings (such as for products) can be tricky to find, especially if you’re a newbie. It might take some time to learn where things are, but once you do, customizing your site should be fairly easy.

Additional Ease of Use Features

Easy Social Media Integration

There are a number of tools designed to make it easier for you to share parts of your site directly on social media, sell your products on Facebook and Instagram (as mentioned above), and generally reach an audience beyond your immediate website.

Good stuff all around.

Professional Design Analysis

Yep, you can hire a designer directly from Jimdo to look through your site, and show you how to make it better. Now that’s a feature I haven’t seen before. It’s always good to have an extra set of eyes on any project, and experts in the tools you’re using don’t hurt either.

Smart Forms

Jimdo’s built-in form builder makes it easy to collect information from your customers. You can create custom GDPR-compliant forms for inquiries, quote requests, or for gathering feedback.

Though the customization options aren’t as extensive as the ones SITE123’s form builder offers, you can still edit questions and mark fields as required. You can also set up a confirmation/thank you email that your visitor receives after submitting the form.

You can access the forms on all plans, but some features, such as file uploads are only available on paid plans.

The Support (at Least for Free SItes) Is Helpful, but Slow

Where Jimdo’s site editor is like a good fast-food restaurant – decent and quick – the support team seems to have opted for the gourmet experience. You get good answers to your question, but they take a long while to show up. Specifically, the response I got took until the next day.

That’s how it is on the free plan anyway. Paying for the Grow plan or higher will get you guaranteed support within 4 hours. But I’ll be honest: that should be the offer for every paying customer, so this policy is going to cost Jimdo a few points.

And even then, 4 hours is not great in an emergency, and many of Jimdo’s competitors do better. Like, a lot better. I’m talking minutes.

Also, the only way to get support that I have found is to click that little question mark at the bottom right of the site editor itself. That opens up a form which lets you leave a ticket/email for the support team.

Technically, support is available 24/7… though that doesn’t mean much on anything lower than the Grow plan.

I inquired if I could add a blog to my site. Though there’s no built-in blogging functionality, the customer support agent outlined some possible workarounds. It’s not quite what I want, but I appreciate that sort of thing.

For simpler inquiries (and faster responses), you can consult Jimdo’s chat bot. It will pull out relevant articles from the knowledge based on your questions, saving you some time.

If you like to really do things for yourself, you can search the aforementioned knowledge base for solutions to problems, or check out Jimdo’s blog. Yeah, they have a blog, despite not having one in the site builder. GO figure.

Jimdo’s Prices Are… Okay

Honestly, they’d be pretty good, if not for some arbitrary page count limits put on your site.

There’s a pretty solid free plan. You get 5 pages, and 5GB of storage, which you can use indefinitely. However, your site is limited to a Jimdo subdomain, and there’s a Jimdo ad on every page.

If you want to get started building your own first website, and want an experience that doesn’t feel overly limited in terms of features, Jimdo’s free plan might just do that for you. If nothing else, it’s a decent place to put your business’ contact information until you’re ready to invest in a bigger site.

You can even demo the e-commerce features on the free plan, though you have to upgrade your plan to actually accept payments.

The cheapest paid plan starts at $11.00 per month, which isn’t bad at all. It gives you access to all the basic site builder features. However, you’re limited to an incredibly arbitrary 10 pages. That’s just… silly. I’m sorry, but it is.

More expensive plans will get you access to more SEO features, the e-commerce features, social media integrations, and more. But even then, there are page limits. You’ll have to upgrade to the most expensive plan to be able to add unlimited pages to your site – something most other top website builders offer for free.