Web.com review

Web.com is part of the Newfold Digital group, which also owns Bluehost, HostGator, and various other well-known brands. It offers web hosting, website creation, and other digital solutions, but you won’t often find it on lists of the best website builder or the best web hosting services.

Web.com review: Snapshot

As our Web.com review will show, it just doesn’t bring enough to the table to be a viable option. Although it has been around for over two decades, Web.com hasn’t kept up with the rapidly evolving website builder world. Its services are quite basic, and it just doesn’t offer the design flexibility, advanced features, or competitive prices that would make it a viable option in today’s market.

For starters, its advertised prices are only available for the first month, after which they increase by more than 500%. There’s no free trial or free forever plan, and the management interface is somewhat confusing and poorly designed. What’s more, the customer service is slow, and the support team doesn’t appear well trained or all that knowledgeable.

Unfortunately, we simply can’t recommend using Web.com, as there are numerous more attractive alternatives on the market. Competitors such as Wix and HostGator’s Gator Builder clearly stand out as much better options due to their design flexibility, ease of use, and affordability.

Score: 2.5/5

Read on for the full Web.com review.

Web.com’s competitors

How does Web.com compare to its main competitors?

Web.com: Key features

Although it’s a basic website builder that doesn’t stand out from the competition on any level, Web.com still has a few key features worth mentioning. We’ve outlined these below.

There’s a selection of analytics tools on offer that are designed to help you monitor the performance of your new website. On the simplest level, you can view information about page views, sessions, and unique visitors. However, you can also view more detailed information including live visitor numbers, what pages are the most popular, and what devices your audience prefers.

Monitor the location of your audience and gain insights into your online store’s performance through the selection of ecommerce stats.

Web.com’s website builder may be limited and a little basic, but at least its marketing tools are decent. For starters, you can submit your website to a selection of local business directories with the click of a button. These include Google Maps, Yellowpages.com, Yahoo Local, and more.

In addition, you can submit your site directly to the major search engines when you’re ready for it to show up in the search engine results. Business email is also available with all website builder plans, and there are various social media tools designed to help you share your content and grow your audience.

With Web.com, you can create a simple online store. However, the tools on offer are very basic, so don’t expect the same level of service as you would get from an industry leader such as Shopify or Weebly. You can add products, but the customisation options are limited. Discount coupons are supported, which is a little surprising considering the lack of any other advanced tools.

In addition, order management and fulfilment tools are only available in the website editor. This is strange, to say the least, and we would have liked to see a dedicated store management page. Web.com offers a selection of website templates, but these could be better. The company advertises 150+ templates with its website builder plans, but we could only find 125 on our last count.

On the plus side, the templates are all fully responsive and quite attractive. However, many of them are quite similar to each other, which can make it hard to create a truly unique design. There’s also a small number of designs in some important categories. For example, a quick look at the portfolio templates reveals just eight options, which is far less than we would have liked to see.

Web.com: What’s new in 2022?

Web.com doesn’t provide product updates or any other information about new tools, features, or integrations. In fact, it only provides a small amount of information about anything, which is a little concerning.

There is a blog and a help centre which we would expect to contain information about new additions to Web.com’s service, but neither seemed to.

Web.com: Pricing

Web.com's two website builder plans, for unlimited pages, are priced at £8.07 and £19.41 a month respectively. Annual, biannual, triannual, and even five-year payment plans are available with significant discounts across the board. Note, though, that there’s no free trial or money-back guarantee. Other fees may also apply, such as domain registration after the first year, which could cost you up to $38 a year thereafter.

Web.com’s pricing plans

Testing Web.com

One of the key things to think about when selecting a website builder is how easy it is to use. To test this, we signed up for the mid-range Marketing plan and built a simple site, testing every aspect of the editor and its design flexibility along the way.

How easy is it to start a website with Web.com?

To get started with Web.com, you will need to sign up for a premium account. There’s no free trial or free forever plan. Once you’ve created an account, you will be taken to a management dashboard, which we found to be quite poorly designed and outdated.

Hit the "Website Packages" button on the left of the screen, and then scroll down and click the "Launch Website Builder" button to get started. The website management portal is much more modern and attractive, which is certainly a plus.

Hit the "Create Site" button, select a template, and you will be taken to the site editor. However, this is also quite limited. It uses a block-based editing method, which can make things easier for beginners. On the downside, though, this means that you will be constrained to pre-coded element positions.

And to make things worse, there’s no code access. You can add small custom HTML snippets, but even these are quite limited. In short, we found the editor to be too basic. It could be useful if you just want to get online fast, but even in this case, there are better options on the market.

Alternatives to Web.com

Web.com offers a range of website building solutions, but it just doesn’t compare to more popular competitors such as Wix and HostGator’s Gator Builder.

For starters, Wix’s site editor is much more powerful than Web.com’s. It has the advanced Wix Editor and the more beginner-friendly Wix ADI, which uses artificial design intelligence to aid site creation. In addition, Wix has more than 500 attractive templates compared to Web.com’s 125 (despite advertising 150+).

At first glance, it appears that Web.com has better support than Wix. However, we found its live chat terrible and its email responses slow and uninformed. Wix may have limited support options, but at least its team is responsive and knowledgeable. On the downside, Wix’s cheapest plan comes in at £11 a month.

HostGator’s Gator Builder is another popular option that’s known for its excellent design flexibility and competitive prices. It boasts an excellent selection of features, including basic ecommerce integrations, a selection of templates, and pixel-perfect drag-and-drop editing.

In addition, HostGator’s cheapest plan costs less than Web.com’s, and its customer service clearly stands out as superior. There’s also a load of freebies on offer, including a free SSL certificate, a free domain, and more.

Web.com’s features compared to the competition

Web.com: The verdict

Although Web.com is a well-known name that has been active in the web services space for over two decades, its website builder just doesn’t bring enough to the table.

In addition, there’s no free trial, free version, or even a money-back guarantee. The editor is functional but basic, and you will be constrained to the pre-coded element positions of the overly simplistic templates. On the plus side, features such as analytics and reporting tools stand out as attractive. The marketing package also isn’t bad, and the ecommerce tools enable you to create a basic store.

All things considered, there’s very little that makes us want to recommend Web.com as a viable option. There are so many more attractive alternatives on the market, including builders such as the Gator Website Builder, which offers much more advanced features at lower prices.

The bottom line: Don’t waste your time with Web.com if you’re looking for a reliable, functional website builder with anything more than the most basic features.

Further reading on website builders

When it comes to website builders, see our tips for building your first website, how much it costs to build a website, and our buying guides for the best small business website builders, the best ecommerce website builders, and the best free website builders.