Jimdo Is SO Simple — But TOO Simple

Jimdo is undeniably one of the easiest website builders. It has a block-based editor where you select a pre-made block and edit its content to fit your website.

I tried making a website using everything the Jimdo editor offers, including all Jimdo blocks - Cover, About, Text, Columns, Image, News, Slideshow, List, Banner, Music, Bookings, Menu, Contact, and Smart Apps. And it was one of the fastest website-making experiences.

Jimdo Blocks

You have multiple versions of each block. Plus, you can edit the color palette, font set, button shape, and basic animations of a Jimdo site.

A combination of rightly-selected blocks, a suitable color palette, and a fitting font set can surely help you make a good, publishable Jimdo website (fast!).

For example, here are a couple of nice-looking Jimdo-made photography websites:

1. Marina Proksch-Park

2. Hej-its-her

Notice how well the Jimdo blocks, combined with selected colors and fonts, work for them. Similarly, they can work for you as well. However…

If you want a bare minimum website (like many do), Jimdo is a good fit! I can imagine having nice personal websites, portfolio websites, service websites, etc., built with Jimdo.

However, Jimdo is too simple to make a unique or even slightly different website.

In fact, it even lacks some VERY BASIC elements. For example, you can’t add a simple text box for a paragraph because all its text blocks have some combination of heading and text — you’ll need to hide the heading part each time to get a simple text box.

Jimdo’s Text Blocks

Similarly, Jimdo doesn’t even have a padding/spacing option. This means if you want something as simple as this — with some space above and below the text — you can’t have it with Jimdo:

Forget Jimdo for anything more than basic.

If you move past the basic elements, Jimdo has nothing to offer. (And therefore, a Jimdo website will probably never feature among the top few examples in any of our website inspiration posts.)

For instance, here’s a part of a photography website made with Squarespace:

The images are randomly yet beautifully arranged

It is only possible because Squarespace has a drag-and-drop editor. Plus, you can resize images as needed.

Something like this is impossible with Jimdo because:

1. You can’t drag and drop images as you like.
2. You can’t resize images randomly.

In the website builders market, simplicity results in simplicity. In simpler words, a simple website builder only builds a simple website.

Jimdo is a prime example. But other website builders like GoDaddy and Square Online fall in the same category. On the value/effort matrix, they are ‘low value, low effort’ website builders.