Webs, formerly Freewebs, is a

freemium Freemium, a portmanteau of the words "free" and "premium," is a pricing strategy by which a basic product or service is provided free of charge, but money (a premium) is charged for additional features, services, or virtual (online) or physical ...

, primarily static site-only

web host A web hosting service is a type of Internet hosting service that hosts websites for clients, i.e. it offers the facilities required for them to create and maintain a site and makes it accessible on the World Wide Web. Companies providing web ...

founded in 2001. The service offers free and premium website hosting plans, and their own templated website building service. Unusually, Webs does not offer any dynamic content support aside from their own dynamic "apps", despite offering FTP access and allowing HTML uploads.

History

Webs began in 2001 as Freewebs just after the

dot-com bubble The dot-com bubble (dot-com boom, tech bubble, or the Internet bubble) was a stock market bubble in the late 1990s, a period of massive growth in the use and adoption of the Internet. Between 1995 and its peak in March 2000, the Nasdaq Comp ...

. It was a start-up launched by brothers Haroon and Zeki Mokhtarzada during their last year at the

University of Maryland, College Park The University of Maryland, College Park (University of Maryland, UMD, or simply Maryland) is a public land-grant research university in College Park, Maryland. Founded in 1856, UMD is the flagship institution of the University System of Mar ...

with the help of their younger brother Idris. Their goal was to enable anyone in the world to express themselves through the creation of their own website. Between 2003 and 2007, the company grew 1704%. By April 2007, the site recorded 18 million unique visitors a month. On November 14, 2008, Freewebs changed its name to Webs, but users' URLs remained in the freewebs.com domain unless they chose to change over. Now, new websites are given subdomains of webs.com, but the old freewebs.com/''sitename'' format still works, even for new websites. Users can also upgrade to a premium package and receive a custom web address without a Webs subdomain. On December 28, 2011, the online printing service

Vistaprint Vistaprint is a Dutch global, e-commerce company that produces physical and digital marketing products for small businesses. Vistaprint was one of the first businesses to offer its customers the capabilities of desktop publishing through the int ...

completed its acquisition of Webs for $117.5 million. On June 4, 2012, Webs released a new version of their Sitebuilder product, called Sitebuilder3. The new version includes a new drag and drop interface, more customizable themes, and simple social media integration. In early 2013, Webs underwent a redesign of the internal site, which overhauled the user’s building experience. It involved the removal of ads, the modernization of the user interface, and the addition of a step-by-step “successful website” checklist. On May 3, 2013, Webs introduced a SEO Booster, a

search engine optimization Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the quality and quantity of website traffic to a website or a web page from search engines. SEO targets unpaid traffic (known as "natural" or " organic" results) rather than direc ...

tool that helps users identify the best keyword phrases to build into their website in order to improve its position in search engine results. In late 2020, the parent company, Vistaprint, announced that on March 31, 2021 all the paying websites hosted by webs.com will be migrated to the Vistaprint domain and all the free websites deleted, with their owners' accounts removed. This change was postponed to June 30, 2021.Webs to Shut Down March 31st 2021
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Product

Webs offers a "drag and drop" interface and professional looking themes for users creating a new website. For pro-level websites, there are additional e-commerce features including unlimited webstore items and Google and Facebook advertising credits. All users can also link their websites to social media sites such as

Twitter Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...

and

Facebook Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Mosk ...

. Webs offers its own themes and site builder, as well as a selection of its own dynamic "apps" such as a blog, photo gallery, or webstore. Free websites are limited in features and also have a Webs banner on the bottom of the screen. The company offers premium plans with more tools and features and also allows customers to buy custom

domain name A domain name is a string that identifies a realm of administrative autonomy, authority or control within the Internet. Domain names are often used to identify services provided through the Internet, such as websites, email services and more. As ...

s. Webs now offers the 80% uptime guarantee, after many customers had complained about excessive downtime

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Webs (Web Hosting) Internet properties established in 2001 Free web hosting services Companies based in Silver Spring, Maryland