Webs.com Comparison and Review

Pros:

• Low monthly cost
• Offers month-to-month plans in addition to annual and biannual plans
• Excellent guidance for website creation
• Easy email set up for your domain
• Large number of templates available
• Free one-year registration of a .com

Cons:

• No free trial available to test the service
• Can't edit HTML of the website template
• Phone and live chat support not available

Conclusion:

Webs.com's Starter package charges a low monthly cost with month-to month payment options.  You also have the ability to test out the website builder tool for free and host your website under a subdomain of Webs.com. Webs.com website builder is not as easy to use or as intuitive as some of the other website builders reviewed on this site. It lacks several features that make it easy to use such as the ability to drag and drop content blocks, and customizing your site is difficult.  A setup wizard to help you get started is not provided,  so if you need  a lot of guidance this may not be your best option. Customer service is also lacking with no phone or live chat support offered. Overall, Webs.com website builder is not a great builder for someone who is a novice or wants to easily customize their website.

Ease of Use

Webs.com’s website builder scored three out of five stars for Ease of Use. The product provides below average guidance and is not as intuitive as some of the other builders. It does not have a setup wizard that instructs you on how to use it to set up your website. Adding a block of content is easy and only takes a single click. Adding an image is as simple as clicking in a content box, clicking “Photo”, and then selecting which photo to upload.  However, Webs.com does not provide an image library.

Webs.com offers over 300 customizable templates to choose from. Webs.com allows you to edit the HTML of individual content blocks to customize your website. However, we found the overall flexibility of the builder to be below average. Webs.com provides direct editing, but the builder does not allow you to drag and drop content blocks. You can enter site descriptions and keywords for the purpose of optimizing your site for search engines. When adding content, only a general content box can be added but it allows you to include video and audio files, Flash modules, photos, YouTube videos, and more.

Customer Support

They do not offer phone or chat chat. The only support available is through their online ticketing/ email system.  The overall quality of its customer support is average.However, Webs offers FAQs, video tutorials, forums, and a searchable knowledgebase, all of which were very helpful. Overall, we gave Webs.com three out of five stars for Customer Support.

Account Features

Webs.com does not provide you with any email accounts with the website builder service.  But, if you want to set up an email account related to your domain name (i.e. yourname@yourwebsite.com), you can easily set up a business account through Gmail or YahooMail. Webs.com Starter plan doesn't include any online advertising credit. Webs.com does not provide Pirvacy Protection, which keeps your personal information out of the WHOIS database. (The WHOIS database is a publicly searchable database with information about the registrants of domain names.) Keeping information like your name, address, telephone number, and email address out of this database helps protect you against unwanted marketing, spam, and identity theft.

Pricing

Webs.com’s Starter package costs around $7 per month with the purchase of the annual payment term, but you must pay for an entire year’s worth of service up front to get the low monthly costs of $4, which totals to roughly $84. Month-to-month pricing is also available for about $8 per month plus a $5 setup fee, but it doesn't include the domain name. You can also lower the price to $6 per month by paying for two years of service up front ($144). The Starter Plan include a domain registration if you pay for the annual or biannual plan, but month-to-month Webs.com customers can register a domain for you at a cost of roughly $30 per year. You can also have a domain registered with another service but pointed at Webs.com’s servers. With the Starter package, you are able to set up a Web Store to display your products, and you can receive payments from customers on your site through PayPal and Google Checkout. Webs.com also provides a 30-day money-back guarantee so you can test the service before committing to a plan. Another option for testing its service free of charge is the Webs.com Free account. A Webs.com Free account must be hosted on a subdomain of www.webs.com (e.g. yourdomain.webs.com) instead of your own domain (e.g. www.yourdomain.com).  

Upgrades

Webs.com offers additional plans ranging from $13 to $35 per month depending on plan and contract length that provide you with increased storage, bandwidth, and e-commerce tools if you need more storage space or functionality. Additionally, each upgraded plan contains a free domain registration.