Webs Reviews

Webs has helped customers to effortlessly create over 50 million websites worldwide. It focuses more on website creation than website hosting, so it more neatly fits into our Online Website Building Tools category (where it takes the #1 spot). However, we have included it in our Web Hosting category for those of you who are keen to see how it compares with other web hosting companies.

When it began, Webs was known as 'Freewebs' and its main selling point was that it freely offered all the tools you might need to create a website, along with a decent amount of web storage space and bandwidth. Its business model relied on the fact that many of its customers would choose to upgrade, once they saw how streamlined the Webs.com service was. Despite its name change, it still makes use of this basic reasoning, encouraging users to begin by quickly and easily signing up for a free website and then encouraging them to upgrade to a plan that suits their specific needs.

Webs has simplified and bundled everything into 4 easy-to-use packages (Free, Starter, Enhanced and Pro) that cover everything from building the website to hosting, promotion and site statistics. The site building part of this bundle is excellent for beginners: within minutes, you can have an attractive site up and running, and can start adding content like text, photos and videos.  If you are very tech savvy and would like to use a more advanced, customizable approach (e.g. using CGI, Perl, MySQL or PHP) then you may wish to look elsewhere, as Webs.com will probably not suit your requirements.

As Webs.com focuses on quick and easy website design for personal sites and small businesses, its hosting specifications are much lower than those of its competitors.  To give you an idea of how low its specifications are, it measures storage space in megabytes; most other web hosting companies measure storage space in gigabytes (as 1 gigabyte equals 1024 megabytes, that's quite a significant difference).  Also, if you have a business and want to create an online store with anything above 30 products, you will need to upgrade to the Pro package, which starts at $16.67 a month and offers an unlimited number of WebStore items. To put that in perspective, some companies offer their most basic VPS (Virtual Private Server) hosting for less than this - and a VPS hosting plan gives you a much greater level of control and more impressive high-end specifications. Hosting capabilities are, therefore, not a strong point for Webs.com, when compared to specialist hosting companies, like those featured in our top 10 list. As Web.com's performance and uptime seem to be somewhat lower than some of the industry leaders, your website could lose customers or search engine rankings during downtimes. Lastly, if you want unlimited bandwidth or unlimited web storage then Webs definitely isn't the site for you.

In the past, some users found Webs' live chat services less than satisfactory. Webs seems to have taken the negative customer feedback to heart, now offering an enhanced level of customer support. For those signed up to the free package, the customer support is still almost non-existent, but customers on the Starter package can contact customer support 24/7, via email; those on the Enhanced package can contact customer support 24/7 via email or live chat; while Pro customers have the added perk of phone support 09:00-17:00, Monday to Friday ET. This brings Webs' customer support service more in line with its competitors in the industry.

You clearly need to consider your current and future requirements for web building and hosting before making a decision. The lack of advanced, customizable options mean that if you are tech savvy and looking to expand an online business, Webs is probably not the site for you. On the other hand, Webs.com may be a perfectly adequate hosting company for those who have no website design experience and want an easy package that will do all the basics for them. Webs.com is an attractive hosting option for personal or small non-profit websites. However, Webs costs are relatively high, compared to other web hosting companies, because its packages include site building tools that gives you a slick and professional look. So if you are new to this field, have some cash to spare and want to make a great-looking personal or small business site in a matter of minutes, Webs.com is hard to beat. If you are still unsure, why not read our reviews of InMotionHosting and HostMonster to see if their plans are better suited to your specific requirements.

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