Jimdo asks you. Clay reads your listing.
Jimdo's Dolphin builds a site out of the answers you type in. Clay builds one out of the listing you already keep current.
A real Clay site — built from a Google listing
Jimdo is the sensible choice on a lot of German and Dutch high streets, and it has earned that. It has been here since 2007, the support answers in your own language, and the legal pages it generates are written for the law you actually trade under. This page is not going to pretend that counts for nothing.
The difference is where the first version comes from. Jimdo asks you a run of questions — what you do, what the site should say, which pictures to use — and builds from your answers. Clay asks one thing, your business name, and builds from your Google listing: your photographs, your opening hours, your reviews, your map, your phone number. Every fact in it was already true before you arrived.
Typing is the part people put off
Answering twenty questions about your own business is still typing, and typing is the part people put off until Sunday. It is also the part that goes stale. The hours you entered in March are wrong by December, and nothing on the page knows it.
Clay reads about a hundred of your Google reviews and your listing before it writes a line, and once the site is claimed it re-reads that listing about once a day. What it keeps current is the rating, the review count and the opening hours — not the rest of the page, which stays exactly as you left it.
The Impressum is yours to write
Jimdo generates an Impressum and a privacy notice from a form, and for a business registered in Germany that is real work already done. Clay does not. You get a legal section with a page per document and a footer link to each, and you paste in the text your accountant or your lawyer gives you.
The same goes for support. Jimdo answers the phone, in German. Clay has no number to ring — everything comes through email — and that is worth knowing before you move rather than after.
What you get
Your listing, not a form
Photos, opening hours, reviews, the map and your phone number are read off your Google Business Profile before you type anything.
German and Dutch, natively
Eight languages, and the copy is written in yours rather than translated into it. A Dutch site even links to /bezoek, not /visit.
Open or closed, right now
The hours band reads Open until 17:00, or Opens tomorrow at 09:00, off your Google week, and paints itself green, orange or red.
Clay vs Jimdo
Three of these rows go to Jimdo, and one of them — the German legal text — is a fair reason for plenty of businesses to stay where they are.
Questions
Does Clay write my Impressum?
No. There is a legal section, a page per document and a footer link to each, but the words are yours to paste in. Jimdo generates that text from a form. If the generated Impressum is the reason you are on Jimdo, that is a good reason to stay on Jimdo.
Can I move my Jimdo site over?
There is no importer. For most businesses there is little worth importing: the photographs, hours, reviews and map come out of your Google listing, and the rest is a few paragraphs to paste. A Jimdo shop with a hundred products is a different question and a slower afternoon.
Will the site be in German, or a translation of English?
It is written in German. The copywriter is told the language and writes in it rather than translating, and the country of your Google listing picks it — Dutch for a Dutch listing, German for a German one. Eight languages exist; a business in Poland or Sweden gets an English site.
Does it take bookings, the way a Jimdo plugin does?
Booking is part of the site rather than an embed: tables, appointments and hire, on one engine — how booking works. It is a paid feature, and it takes no money. A deposit is stated on the card and printed on the confirmation, and the customer pays you in person.
Can I bring my Jimdo content across?
Not automatically — there is no importer, and we would not pretend otherwise. What replaces it is that you do not start from a blank page either: the first version is built from your Google listing, and your own site is read for a menu or a price list where one is published on it.
Jimdo asks you. Clay reads your listing.
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