Anybody doing business with Jimdo; or heard about them ?

"With Jimdo everyone can show his or her interests and passion on the Internet - on his own website! In fact, it's free and no technical knowledge is required!"

I never heard of them until my wife pointed this company to me; seem to be 3 young guys from Germany founded the company in 2004.

http://www.jimdo.com...-1/the-company/

Several foreign languages on the right-bottom of every page in the link.

I am a digibete so any advise will be appreciated very much.

LaoPo

The problem with this type of websites is you normally can't take them with you when one day you decide you want to use another hosting company. You're locked into their system and it has limitations over a proper website.

There's a forum out there full of IT professionals and web artists looking for work. It'd be better and cheaper in the long run to hire someone for a job designing a website than signing up for some fly by night portal that ends up holding your site hostage.

^^^^^^ to both posters, above:

Isn't that the same with ALL domain names, contracts and Domain registrars' companies ?

like what they say themselves here: ?

http://www.jimdo.com/wiki/JimdoPro_Domains#International_domains

LaoPo

Generally the risk of getting locked up is very real, it happens.. as mentioned before. Bad companies register themselves as owners and you have no way of getting out of it.

This risk can to some extent be reduced by using one company as the registrar, a second company for the DNS records and a third company for the web hotel.

If the web hotel is bad you just sign up somewhere else and point you DNS record to the new place...

If the DNS service is bad you just sign up for a new DNS service somewhere else and point you registrar to it.

If you registrar is bad (and make sure they give you full ownership of the domain before you make your mid up)...well one thing they can do is stopping you from setting up your DNS record... unusual I guess, but then you transfer to some other registrar, If the old registrar refuses to let it go you can ask the new one for advice...

So divide your eggs in 3 bowls...

Martin

Generally the risk of getting locked up is very real, it happens.. as mentioned before. Bad companies register themselves as owners and you have no way of getting out of it.

This risk can to some extent be reduced by using one company as the registrar, a second company for the DNS records and a third company for the web hotel.

If the web hotel is bad you just sign up somewhere else and point you DNS record to the new place...

If the DNS service is bad you just sign up for a new DNS service somewhere else and point you registrar to it.

If you registrar is bad (and make sure they give you full ownership of the domain before you make your mid up)...well one thing they can do is stopping you from setting up your DNS record... unusual I guess, but then you transfer to some other registrar, If the old registrar refuses to let it go you can ask the new one for advice...

So divide your eggs in 3 bowls...

Martin

..care to explain ? How can you put your eggs in 3 bowls if you have just one domain name ?

LaoPo

I think the first thing we should find out is exactly what do you plan to do on the Internet, what type of web site are you looking to set up. I have looked through Jimdo and to honest there is nothing wrong with it, it seems very professional. It is leaning towards e-commerce so if that is what you want to do, then fine.

So tell us what you want to do and then we can come up with some positive feedback.

I think the first thing we should find out is exactly what do you plan to do on the Internet, what type of web site are you looking to set up. I have looked through Jimdo and to honest there is nothing wrong with it, it seems very professional. It is leaning towards e-commerce so if that is what you want to do, then fine.

So tell us what you want to do and then we can come up with some positive feedback.

My wife as thinking of setting up a(nother) web shop and use them as a host.

To me (but as said, I'm a digibete) this company looks serious and I like the story behind the 3 young guys from Hamburg Germany, setting up and diving into a niche-market in the IT business.

But, I could be wrong and I'm not sure WHY they would be more special than other similar companies....?

LaoPo

So she has some existing sites, where are they hosted?

To be honest it's hardly a niche market there are hundreds of companies offering turnkey e-commerce solutions, but as I said it looks very professional, a lot depends on the number of products etc., your market and features you require, if you are serious about doing it I would recommend a fair amount of research first, because web based e-commerce offerings are thick on the ground.

The important part is not so much where you host it, it is how you market your site and drive customers to it.

Anyway good luck with your project.

Generally the risk of getting locked up is very real, it happens.. as mentioned before. Bad companies register themselves as owners and you have no way of getting out of it.

This risk can to some extent be reduced by using one company as the registrar, a second company for the DNS records and a third company for the web hotel.

If the web hotel is bad you just sign up somewhere else and point you DNS record to the new place...

If the DNS service is bad you just sign up for a new DNS service somewhere else and point you registrar to it.

If you registrar is bad (and make sure they give you full ownership of the domain before you make your mid up)...well one thing they can do is stopping you from setting up your DNS record... unusual I guess, but then you transfer to some other registrar, If the old registrar refuses to let it go you can ask the new one for advice...

So divide your eggs in 3 bowls...

Martin

..care to explain ? How can you put your eggs in 3 bowls if you have just one domain name ?

LaoPo

Basically when you type in www.siamect.com or whatever your domain name is in the web browser, you computer will ask the DNS server for the IP address of that domain. The DNS server may or may not know, so if not, it passes the query on to the next levels of DNS servers and so on, until it is up on the highest level which point to the primary DNS server of your domain. The primary DNS server is responding and the records is distributed back the whole way and you computer will know the IP address of the domain. After that it will send a request to the web server...

So in order for you to control this...

Bowl 1 is the registrar, technically It manages the record that contains that IP address of the DNS server. You shall have total control over that record.

Bowl 2 is the primary DNS service that is in charge of the records that give you the ip of the web server (or other servers) if you know the domain name.

Bowl3 is the Web server itself (or other servers) that contains your web page.

By giving these three instances to three different companies you can easily switch out anyone of them whenever you like.

EDIT:

There is a bowl number 4 and that is the framework you are using for the web application itself.... Don't use one that the web hotel provide you with. It will be difficult to move it. Download one that has good reputation.There are many free ones,under GPL license that are very good... Google is your friend. Install it locally in your home and have everything setup there before you go live... and arrange backups of both files and databases and do it often every hour of so, so you can correct any break in attempt quickly.

Martin