The first version of Freewebs had a peculiar idea about human expression: two paragraphs ought to do it. That was the space its templates allowed on a page. Customers disagreed. They wanted another paragraph, then a way to move paragraphs around, then pictures and links inside them. A website builder was finding its shape through the things people could not do with it.
- Free websites brought ordinary publishers online.
- Paid tools helped small businesses look professional.
- The builder retired in 2023; domains and email took a separate route.
01 / The closet was enough
Webs began in 2001, when Haroon and Zeki Mokhtarzada were finishing at the University of Maryland. Their younger brother Idris helped. People wanted websites built for them; making each one by hand imposed an obvious limit. A tool that let people do the work themselves could serve many more. The family business became a publishing system.
Haroon later recalled buying used servers as the dot-com collapse made equipment cheap. They went into a closet in Zeki’s apartment, connected through DSL. Even the name involved a compromise: the original address was FreeWebz, with a Z, because the other spelling was taken. The company that became Freewebs, and then Webs, started with what was available.
Entrepreneur put the initial investment at $2,000. It also supplied the useful design test: could the brothers’ nontechnical mother use it? That question gave the product a person to answer to. Someone should be able to publish without first acquiring an entirely different profession.
02 / Customers wanted paragraph three
In a 2005 account of the company’s development, Haroon described launching a simple editor and waiting for criticism. The two-paragraph restriction disappeared. Reordering followed. The editor gained richer content. This was a concrete sequence of repairs, each attached to something users were trying to accomplish.
As the company grew, direct conversations became harder to maintain. Support staff gathered requests; spreadsheets helped expose recurring complaints. The founders sometimes joined support chats themselves, incognito. The important discipline was selection. Implementing every suggestion, Haroon acknowledged, would make the product difficult to use.
That is the part another business can copy: record the obstacle, count how often it appears, and fix the work people are already attempting. A roadmap can begin with a customer trying to write one more sentence.
03 / A shopfront, then the work behind it
By December 2010, the company’s own description singled out businesses with zero to five employees, home-based entrepreneurs and consultants. Personal users, groups and nonprofits remained part of the audience. Webs occupied the space between a bare hosting account and hiring someone to design a site.
Its expertise was making common publishing tasks manageable. SiteBuilder3, introduced in 2012, let users arrange text, photographs, video and other elements by dragging them into a page. Suggested fonts and colors helped maintain consistency. Contact forms, maps, blogs, galleries, stores and social modules supplied the machinery around the message.
A website was only one job. ContactMe brought lightweight customer management into the family in 2010. Pagemodo, acquired in 2011, helped create Facebook pages. The product family followed a recognizable customer journey: get online, invite attention, keep track of the people who respond.
04 / Free was the introduction
Basic publishing cost nothing. Subscriptions bought more capabilities. A historical pricing review lists monthly equivalents on annual contracts of $6.99 for Starter, $14.99 for Enhanced and $29.99 for Pro. Those are retired prices, useful for understanding the model rather than planning a purchase.
Vistaprint recognized the arrangement. Its free business cards had introduced small firms to paid physical marketing products. Webs offered a digital entrance to a similar relationship. In December 2011, Vistaprint bought the company for $117.5 million, intending to connect those audiences and sell across both product ranges.
The acquisition presentation forecast roughly $9 million in 2011 revenue and standalone profitability in 2013. Those were expectations. The purchase price reflected an intended future relationship with customers as well as the subscription business already operating.
05 / The banner ad had to go
Earlier, Freewebs had pursued advertising, including sponsored widgets. In 2006 it opened a five-person New York office to expand that business. Sony Pictures’ Zathura promotion supplied a telling example: games embedded in users’ pages could turn the publishing network into advertising distribution.
Webs later removed banner ads from its redesigned free builder. Haroon explained: “we’re not putting ads on the sites.” Professional presentation had become the priority.
“Why not make this that company?”An advisor’s question, recalled by Haroon in Entrepreneur, after he said selling would mean starting another business.
The advice helped redirect a founder considering a sale toward further building. Venture backing followed in 2006. Contemporary accounts put that financing at $11 million; later profiles cite $12 million. The direction was clear even where the reported amounts differ: the family operation was taking on a larger ambition.
06 / Publishing was easier than permanence
The later record contains friction. Tooltester documented editor bugs in its 2012 update log and further technical complaints in 2014. Its retrospective review criticized outdated templates and stalled development. Ease of entry could not, by itself, keep a publishing service competitive with alternatives such as Wix.
Exact Hosting records the practical ending: domain and email services transferred on August 2, 2023; legacy website hosting had to move by August 31. Keeping a domain was a separate matter from keeping its website. VistaPrint now calls Webs retired and points visitors toward Vista x Wix.
The usable lesson has two sides. Remove the little obstacles that stop people starting. Then account for the obligations created when they stay. For a simple business presence, a hosted builder can save work. For a project needing portable code or custom application logic, convenience alone is an incomplete specification. Ask how the website leaves before the service closes.