Webs, formerly Freewebs, was 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 h ...

founded in 2001 and active until 2023. The service offered free and premium website hosting plans, and their own templated website building service. Unusually, Webs did 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 (or dot-com boom) was a stock market bubble that ballooned during the late-1990s and peaked on Friday, March 10, 2000. This period of market growth coincided with the widespread adoption of the World Wide Web and the Interne ...

. It was a

start-up A startup or start-up is a company or project undertaken by an entrepreneur to seek, develop, and validate a scalable business model. While entrepreneurship includes all new businesses including self-employment and businesses that do not intend ...

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 university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in College Park, Maryland, United States. Founded in 1856, UMD i ...

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 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 Web traffic, website traffic to a website or a web page from web search engine, search engines. SEO targets unpaid search traffic (usually referred to as ...

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. The last free subdomains were finally shut down on August 31, 2023, with all existing domains transferred to ExactHosting.com.

Product

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

Twitter Twitter, officially known as X since 2023, is an American microblogging and social networking service. It is one of the world's largest social media platforms and one of the most-visited websites. Users can share short text messages, image ...

and

Facebook Facebook is a social media and social networking service owned by the American technology conglomerate Meta Platforms, Meta. Created in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with four other Harvard College students and roommates, Eduardo Saverin, Andre ...

. Webs offered 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 were limited in features and also had a Webs banner on the bottom of the screen. The company offered premium plans with more tools and features and also allowed customers to buy custom

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

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

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Webs (Web Hosting) Internet properties established in 2001 Internet properties disestablished in 2023 Free web hosting services Companies based in Silver Spring, Maryland