Launched as Freewebs.com again in 2001, Webs.com is an easy drag-and-drop web site builder, now owned by the printing and advertising big, Vistaprint.
For those who’re accustomed to Vistaprint, you would possibly know the corporate already has an internet site builder by itself website (we evaluation it here), however that is fully separate from Webs.com. Pricing, options, editor and the whole lot else are all very completely different.
Webs.com presents its service higher than most, with pages displaying all of its templates, a video explaining the editor, particulars on the options out there and the method of constructing your web site. It is all very clear and easy.
A free plan permits attempting out the service fundamentals for your self with no danger. Free web sites are feature-limited (as much as 5 pages solely, no cellular website, no internet retailer) and embrace Webs branding, however there’s sufficient performance to provide you an thought of how Webs.com works.
The $5.99 (£four.61) a month (paid two-yearly) Starter plan drops the Webs branding and offers you a free area title and a cellular web site (a parallel website relatively than a strictly responsive theme), however limits storage to 1GB and presents assist through electronic mail solely.
The $12.99 (£9.99) a month Marketing strategy will get you 5GB storage, premium themes and three customized electronic mail addresses. You possibly can promote as much as 20 gadgets in your internet retailer, and there is dwell chat assist if you happen to want it.
Spending a month-to-month $22.99 (£17.68) on the top-of-the-range Professional plan permits limitless storage and internet retailer gadgets, helps 25 customized electronic mail addresses, throws in search engine submission and ‘web optimization Booster’ instruments, and provides phone assist.
The dearth of true responsive themes is the key challenge right here, particularly because the free plan would not have any cellular assist in any respect, however on stability Webs.com presents what seems like an affordable set of options for a good worth.
Getting began
Signing up with internet providers can usually be a trouble, however Webs.com streamlines the method a lot that you will barely discover it taking place.
Faucet the Signal-Up button, for example, and also you’re prompted to enter your electronic mail deal with and select a password. However the exact same web page additionally tries to ease you into the online design course of by prompting you to select a website title, and select a template from the choice out there.
The template designs look affordable at first, till you discover that the perfect ones are solely out there with the Enterprise and Professional plans, whereas the free and Starter plans solely get you round 40 extra primary examples (examine the complete set here, the starred themes are premium-only.)
The templates are offered just a little oddly, too, forcing you thru countless horizontal scrolling to view the complete set. That is perhaps effective on a pill the place you may swipe proper, however it’s not a sensible use of display screen area on a desktop. Nonetheless, we made our selection in a only a few seconds, and moved on to the subsequent stage.
Webs.com means that you can use a free subdomain (myname.webs.com) or a website you personal already. The corporate also can register a website for you, however with the web site quoting costs ‘from $19.95’ (£15.34) for a dot com, it is most likely higher to look elsewhere (somebody like title.com will register dot com domains from round £10 ($13) a 12 months, and common gross sales imply it is usually much less.)
Lastly, verify your selection of Webs.com plan, the web site opens your template in its editor, and shows a tutorial video which walks you thru all of the operational fundamentals in three minutes.
Editor
The Webs.com editor will get off to a disappointing begin with its bare-bones templates. We had chosen an instance with three enticing photos and a textual content field on the entrance web page, for example, however on launch the editor displayed a single empty picture field, leaving us to pick out the remainder.
The default structure is an easy empty web page, however there are different primary constructions to select from, combining your selection of an internet site banner with a left and right-hand sidebar.
A dock on the backside of the web page gives an honest set of widgets, protecting textual content, photographs, structure (columns, tables), photograph galleries, slideshows, video, audio, Twitter feeds, Fb feedback and Like packing containers, PayPal buttons and extra.
There aren’t any visible previews for any of those, an issue with among the extra advanced teams of widgets (Timeline, Options, Companies, Staff.) A Contact widget had a imprecise icon with just a few traces on it, for example, so we needed to drag and drop it onto a web page to see what it did. That is a nuisance, though the widget did at the very least transform very succesful, a block of parts together with a map, textual content deal with, cellphone numbers, electronic mail and social media hyperlinks.
Understanding what you are able to do with a web page factor additionally takes extra work than normal. The very best editors show a toolbar near the factor everytime you hover your mouse over it; Webs shows only some, requires a left-click to show extra, and even then, most of these choices are displayed in a distant toolbar on the prime of the display screen. You will rapidly be taught the place to look, however the interface by no means feels fairly as snug because it ought to.
The editor has some technical points, too. We left our take a look at website open till its session timed out, for example, anticipating the editor to ask us to log in once more. Nevertheless it apparently did not discover, as an alternative displaying oddball errors for even easy duties, equivalent to changing a picture. This may be mounted by backing out of the editor and logging in once more, however newbies might not understand that, and it is simple to see how somebody might spend an age attempting to unravel these unusual points.
There are some neat touches, equivalent to the power so as to add a number of new type information varieties to the Contact Type. However for each a type of, we got here up with issues and points. Just like the horribly primary Twitter feed widget, for example, which within the editor is a left-aligned field which might’t be centered or considerably repositioned. Oh, and who had the weird thought of utilizing an ordinary Search icon for the Preview perform?
Media
Webs.com has a number of media-related widgets, however they’re unfold just a little awkwardly between two areas of the editor dock. The ‘Fashionable’ part has Picture and ‘Picture & Textual content’ parts, whereas a separate Media part has Slideshow, Video, Audio and Icon choices.
The Picture widget would not have an built-in editor, however it covers the core fundamentals with resize, crop, zoom and rotate instruments. You possibly can retailer commonly-used photographs (as much as a complete of 500MB) in a server-based My Pictures library, and an built-in inventory picture library provides you entry to a number of high-quality photographs totally free.
Movies aren’t out there with the free Webs.com plan, and the usual video widget solely helps YouTube hyperlinks. However you may host small movies by yourself website, and assist for customized embed codes might assist you to insert movies from many different suppliers.
Whereas most web site builder Audio instruments primarily simply embed the participant from a third-party service like SoundCloud, the Webs.com providing goals to play MP3 recordsdata hosted by yourself web site. That could possibly be extra handy, however we tried it with a few MP3s and it simply did not work. The participant displayed a period of zero seconds for our decisions, and perhaps investigating completely different encoders would repair the issue (though each our MP3s performed regionally), however this should not be a difficulty Webs.com clients have to fret about.
The Picture Gallery widget permits importing photographs out of your native system or any beforehand uploaded photographs, though annoyingly it would not offer you entry to the inventory picture library.
As soon as we had uploaded our Gallery photographs, although, we discovered it very configurable. Pictures will be reordered by dragging and dropping from inside the editor, and also you’re in a position to alter settings just like the photographs per row, the crop model, hover motion, title and caption guidelines (after they seem, after they do not), whereas an elective Lightbox swap permits displaying all of your photos as a full-screen slideshow.
Alternatively, you may simply use a daily Slideshow widget. It isn’t fairly as a lot enjoyable because the Gallery, however you continue to get to outline the participant background, shade, the size of time to play every slide, any transition, and extra.
Weblog and e-commerce
Webs.com would not have a weblog widget, as an alternative requiring you add a weblog on the web page stage. That is not tough to do (click on Pages, Add A New Web page, select Weblog), however it’s just a little rigid, as weblog pages cannot be personalized and tweaked in the identical manner as the remainder of your website.
Once you create a brand new put up, for example, you have to use a easy stripped-back editor which has solely a tiny fraction of the options of the principle web page builder. This helps formatted textual content, photographs, audio and video recordsdata, however there isn’t any direct assist for including a photograph gallery, map, or any of the opposite options (though an uncommon function to edit the HTML supply would possibly assist you to insert different web page objects.)
Formatting points apart, the remainder of the weblog performs fairly properly. The editor means that you can assign as much as three classes to a put up, they are often scheduled to publish in some unspecified time in the future sooner or later, you are in a position to make posts viewable to teams of customers relying on their function on the positioning (Members, Moderators, Directors, extra), and a quite simple built-in feedback system permits customers to say what they consider every put up.
The Webs.com internet retailer is primary, however delivers most og the core options we’d count on. Your merchandise can have a number of photographs connected, you are in a position to outline product variations like measurement and shade, and the catalog could also be organized into classes to assist clients discover the products they’re enthusiastic about. Funds could also be taken through playing cards (utilizing Stripe) or PayPal, and stock management helps to watch and handle your inventory ranges.
Specialist platforms equivalent to Shopify offer you many extra settings and extension choices, however the Webs.com resolution is not dangerous, and if you happen to can dwell with the 20-product restrict, the $12.99 (£9.99) a month Marketing strategy could possibly be superb worth.
Help
Whether or not you are on the Webs.com dashboard, editor, web page supervisor or wherever else, the Help button is at all times seen, apparently as a simple and handy strategy to get assist in your present job.
The Help interface seems good. It makes use of a drop-down window, relatively than taking you away to a different web page; a search engine helps you discover articles, and browse their content material; and there are hyperlinks to video tutorials and different assist routes.
Sadly, whereas the presentation is nice, the assist website is let down by the content material. Prime of the Fashionable Subjects listing is a video tutorial designed to assist first-time customers, for example, however clicking this took us to a “the web page you had been on the lookout for would not exist” error message. This wasn’t a one-off mistake, as we seen the identical downside with each embedded hyperlink we tried. Webs.com clearly must spend extra time checking and sustaining the positioning.
Different articles referred to options which not appeared to exist, equivalent to the power so as to add a video gallery. This appears to be one other indicator that the assistance database hasn’t been up to date for a while.
It isn’t all dangerous, and in easy conditions, we discovered the system labored very properly. For those who do not perceive why there isn’t any Weblog widget, for example, typing Weblog within the search field instantly shows an article explaining add it from the New Pages menu. The assist interface is nice, however the content material desperately wants an improve.
If you cannot discover what you want on the database, you are additionally in a position to contact the Webs.com assist group through dwell chat, electronic mail or phone, relying in your plan. We have seen loads of on-line buyer opinions complaining concerning the stage of assist they’ve obtained, but when nothing else, the Webs.com 30-day money-back assure provides you loads of time to attempt the service before you purchase.
Remaining verdict
Webs.com has just a few fascinating and worthwhile options, however they’re outnumbered by all of the hassles and issues. Ignore it, till Vistaprint spends the cash to provide it an enormous overhaul, or closes it down.