| Type | Private |
|---|---|
| Founded | Hamburg, Germany (2007) |
| Founder(s) | Matthias Henze Christian Springub Fridtjof Detzner |
| Headquarters | Hamburg, Germany |
| Employees | 60 (2011)[1] |
| Slogan | Pages to the People |
| Website | Jimdo |
| Registration | Required |
| Available in | German, English, French, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, Russian, Italian, Dutch, Polish, Portuguese |
| Launched | February 19, 2007[2] |
Jimdo is a WYSIWYG web hosting service.[3] Jimdo offers JimdoFree, a free web hosting service, JimdoPro and JimdoBusiness, both premium services. Jimdo is operated by Jimdo GmbH, a Hamburg, Germany-based company.[4] It competes with Weebly, Yola (formerly Synthasite), Webs, uCoz, Wix, Webnode and other web hosting and creation sites.[5]
Contents |
Jimdo was founded in February 2007 by Fridtjof Detzner, Matthias Henze, and Christian Springub.[6]
In July 2008, United Internet AG purchased a 30 percent stake in Jimdo GmbH.[4]
In 2009, Jimdo attempted to lure users of Google and Yahoo! In April 2009, after Yahoo! announced that GeoCities was closing, Jimdo announced that former GeoCities users were welcome on Jimdo.[7] Jimdo started the "Lifeboat for GeoCities" promotion to help users transition to Jimdo.[8] Jimdo offered 10 percent discounts to users who moved from Geocities and Google Page Creator to the JimdoPro service.[9]
In 2010, Jimdo added a "store" service that allows Jimdo website owners to conduct electronic commerce services.[10] Also in 2010, United Internet withdrew from the company's board.[11]
The basic Jimdo service is free; users of the basic service have their website names as the site name and .jimdo.com. The two premium services, Jimdo Pro and Jimdo Business, allow users to have their own domain names. They also receive additional storage space and no advertisements. Jimdo Pro costs 5 euros per month, and Jimdo Business costs 15 euros per month.[12] As of 2011, the languages available on Jimdo are Chinese, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Russian, Polish, Dutch, Portuguese and Spanish.[13] The English-language service uses British English.[12]
Two months after the service launch in 2007, Rafe Needleman of CNet gave a positive review to Jimdo. Needleman described Jimdo as a "good service for creating a quick site to document a trip or other event, or to prototype a simple personal or business site." He also said that Jimdo was not "mature enough yet" for use by a United States-based small business, "but it's worth keeping track of."[12] More recently, VentureBeat reported on the opening of the US office in San Francisco and the launch of an online store feature, concluding "US readers will probably hear more about the company in the coming months".[14].