Website builders tend to conquer the online world with its simplicity in using. And I bet that Jimdo, just like Wix and Weebly, has plenty of cherries in its pie, to make a life of a first-time-user a bit sweeter. Though, let’s not forget about robust CMSs, which can also help you during your journey. WordPress is considered to be extremely user-friendly and incredibly reliable website tool. So let’s see what they both are capable of and get to know which one is better to build your web project with!
Jimdo in details
The very first word that comes to mind while describing Jimdo is “easy-to-use”. Being a website builder, it provides you with the most user-friendly experience a novice can get. So, bare in mind, if you are a web-virgin, Jimdo with its drag-and-drop features, WYSIWYG tool, and coding free environment, will be the perfect choice for a start. Let’s take a look at its main pros first:
- Managing content. As it was mentioned before, Jimdo primary goal is to make your life easier, so after you logged into your website, you are able to edit or add the content right on the page where it’s located. So you evaluate the content structure from a visitor’s point of view, and can change anything faster than anyone says ”lame”. Sounds too good to be true, right? You can also add images, embed Youtube videos and even insert Google Maps extracts.
- E-commerce feature. This little website builder surprises its customers with the variety of websites you can create. Photographer’s portfolio, fashion blog, artist’s music gallery or even…a small store! Install Jimdo Online Store Element within your web project, manage the main settings such as currency type, shipping options, and payment process, upload your products (just as easy as any other type of content) and your little store is ready to go! It has its limitations, though, the affordable number of items you can sell is around 50.
- Design. Surprise Surprise: editing templates requires from you the same amount of effort as in the content case. There is almost nothing you can’t change. Don’t like the default color you template offers? Just click on the part you are willing to transform and imply changes with the help of an intuitive editor.
But Jimdo is also a very tricky builder since it varies in its packages. You can get a free, Pro, Business and Platinum Jimdo. Unfortunately, due to this fact, the features included in every version differ a lot. For instance:
- SEO Optimizations. We all know how important it is to be evaluated by Google in the right way. Web owners go to great lengths to reach the highest SEO score and one day land on the 1st page of the search results. It’s bitter to see, though, that free Jimdo version lacks a crucial SEO optimization features, such as the option of editing page titles and page descriptions, as well as the ability to insert the corresponding keywords and the worst – manage a Google preview. That appears to be the big fat disadvantage in comparison to WordPress, which allows you to edit a Snippet Preview, and add Focus Keyword to any of your posts with the help of free Yoast SEO plugin.
- Design customizations. Though, as it was mentioned earlier Jimdo allows you to change the template of your website a lot, sometimes it turns into a hard-core for non-coder. If you seek some more profound adjustments which require using the code, you might need to hire a professional for that. But in case you’re an experienced developer, you’ll be able to do wonders with your design.
- Cheap look. Mind that using Jimdo might affect your website visitors opinion and not in a good way. Getting free package leaves you with a .jimdofree.com subdomain, which is not appropriate if you are building a strong branding strategy. You will also face your web project stuffed with ads. Moreover, there are not that many of free, neat templates available to get, not as many as in WP case, which can boast its rich templates storage, not speaking of 3d parties inputs.
Those were just three main cons, an affordable Jimdo version can scare you off with, however, that’s not it. There is also a severe limitation in storage capacity, bandwidth and lots more.
WordPress reviewed
This open source CMS is arguably the most well-known and beloved website tool on the global scale. Starting as a blogging platform, it went far beyond this limit and became a robust resource for creating web projects of different types, such as online stores, non-profit and corporate websites, vivid portfolios and much more. So, what are WP pros?
- Open Source. WordPress does not come with any packages, it’s the only and unforgettable open source project with no considerable limitations. You don’t have to pay anything to get it, just go to the official WP site, download it and install within a few minutes. Also, if you feel ready to try yourself in performing pervasive changes, you may do anything you wish, having the direct access to the code. One of the advantages of being open source as well. Not only because of that, but also because of a great variety of free plugins and templates, WordPress is given credit for performing its job the best.
- Worldwide fame. As I mentioned above, WP being used all over the globe created a super user-friendly environment for beginners and web developers who are eager to learn WP even better. There are thousands of WP camps, held in almost every part of the world. You can meet professionals here, working with this CMS for years, visit lectures of leading experts and, well, get pro support without paying. Having lots of the fellow WP website owners is also extremely beneficial, in case you meet some problems. Just go online, find a WP forum and – vu’a la – you’ll be taken care of.
- Gentle learning curve. Jimdo might be a bit easier to use than WordPress, but it doesn’t mean that WP is more complex. You’d need more time to “unlock” some features, though once you’ve learned it, you are able to do anything you want. And on the CMSs scale, WordPress is considered to be one of the most user-friendly ones. It possesses a neat editing tool with an instant preview option, HTML built-in editor which allows you to perform some of the more sophisticated changes straightaway and in general admin board is pretty intuitive for a beginner.
Though, even a web hero like WordPress has its Achilles’ heel:
- Security. WP main advantage may turn bad for this open source project. Due to the fact that plenty of people use WordPress, it comes without surprise that it is more vulnerable to web violations. Hackers can try to attack your website, though WordPress strikes back instantly updating security patterns in an automated way, preventing repeated criminal actions.
- User-created content. By default, all the users on WordPress website are registered as admins. So from time to time, it gets a bit complicated for a regular person to contribute to your site. However, there is a nice way to leave comments below your posts. The user may simply log in via Twitter, Facebook or Google+ and share his or her opinion.
- Constant updates. Since WP tends to enhance its performance, there are plenty of updates planned to be conducted at least a few times per month. Though, you can use an automated updating mechanism to prevent spending your precious time on getting new versions for your plugins, themes or other files.
Conclusion
As it seems, Jimdo and WordPress are both great starters for users with intermediate web knowledge. Though, Jimdo is more suitable for websites of a small size or little local e-stores. It just can’t expand its functionality to power bigger sites with thousands of pages stuffed by content. WordPress, on the other hand, looks like a pro when it gets to coping both with easiness and power.
In case you are willing to move your site from Jimdo to WordPress, go ahead and try out CMS2CMS, an automated website, and forum migration service. Run a free Demo, enjoy the results of the preview of your renewed project and complete the full migration.