Jimdo is a German website-builder. The company is privately held and headquartered in Hamburg, Germany, with offices in Munich and Tokyo. Jimdo has two products, Creator and Dolphin, offering free and paid plans.
Jimdo Dolphin is an AI-powered website builder designed for users with basic computer skills and automates most of the website building process. It uses artificial intelligence to get to know the user, their business, and their goals, then builds a website that is already fully personalized to meet their needs.
Jimdo Creator is a drag-and-drop website builder and hosting service suitable for users with some coding skills.
History
Jimdo was founded in 2007 by Matthias Henze, Christian Springub, and Fridtjof Detzner.
While they were still in high school, Springub and Detzner started their first internet agency, designing websites for small businesses in Cuxhaven, Germany. When Matthias Henze joined the company in 2004, the team decided to build their own content management system, which would go on to become Jimdo in 2007.
In April 2009, after Yahoo! announced that GeoCities was closing, Jimdo announced that former GeoCities users were welcome on Jimdo. Jimdo started the "Lifeboat for GeoCities" promotion to help users transition to Jimdo. Jimdo offered a ten percent discount to users who moved from GeoCities and Google Page Creator to Jimdo.
In 2010, Jimdo added a "store" service that allows Jimdo website owners to conduct electronic commerce services. Also in 2010, United Internet withdrew from the company's board. In February 2012, the 5 millionth Jimdo site went online and in November 2013, the 10 millionth. As of July 2019, over 25 million websites have been created with Jimdo.
On June 8, 2015, Jimdo secured 25 million euros worth of investment from the American company, Spectrum Equity. With this investment, Spectrum Equity now holds a share of 26.7 percent of Jimdo GmbH although the company remains privately held. In October 2016, Jimdo laid off 25% of its staff in a bid to regain focus after founders recognized that the company was getting slower at product development. Co-founder, Henze, described the decision as Jimdo's "most difficult moment".
In 2017, Jimdo launched its new artificially-intelligent website builder, Jimdo Dolphin. The new AI-powered product enables users with basic computer skills to build their own websites.
Jimdo's revenue increased in 2019 to 46.7 million euros. The domestic share was 41.4%, while the foreign share was 58.6%.
Corporate affairs
The Jimdo head office is in Hamburg, Germany. It also has offices in Munich and Tokyo. As of 2019, Jimdo has an international team of 220 employees worldwide.
Service
Jimdo offers two different services; Creator is the company's original drag-and-drop website builder, and Dolphin is the company's new AI website builder. Both products offer free and premium subscription plans. As of 2019, there are seven languages available: English, German, French, Italian, Japanese, Dutch, and Spanish. The English-language service uses American English. To increase speed and performance for their worldwide user base, Jimdo maintains data centers in Germany and Japan.
Jimdo Creator
Jimdo Creator was launched in February 2007. It is a website builder that is suitable for users with some technical expertise, who want to build their website from scratch and customize it using code. Creator offers a free plan and four premium subscription plans; Pro, Business, SEO Plus, and Platinum.
Jimdo Dolphin
Jimdo Dolphin was launched in March 2018, with a preview release in October 2017. It is an AI-driven website builder that is designed to make website building accessible to users with no experience. Dolphin gets to know the user, their business, and their goals, then build a website that is already personalized to fit their requirements. Dolphin offers the user fewer options than Creator, to make the process of building a website as fast and as simple as possible.
On its release, Jimdo's CEO and co-founder, Matthias Henze, said the company had seen "an opportunity to make website creation radically easier", describing Dolphin as "a new kind of website builder that asks you brief questions about your business, and then creates a totally personalized website with text, photos, and other details already filled in".