About Web Widgets and Free Website Builder

Our free website builder software was developed in house to service the needs of our customers. We are enthusiastic about the "cloud" and SAAS (software as a service) computing.

Web Widgets has been in the web development business since 2000, and is based in Auckland. We have helped build over 2500 websites.

Reuben Jackson, the CEO and founder of Web Widgets, had years of experience in the IT industry prior to starting Web Widgets and writing the website builder software.

The success of Website Builder has been the fusion of bringing together the 3 key elements of successful websites. These include design, functionality and search engine optimisation. Without a search engine optimisation, customers won't find you. Without a great design or brand, they won't stay long enough to make a purchase. And without functionality a sale or enquiry will never be completed. The integration of these key elements have been successful to our business, and to our customers businesses.

A Short Video

Why the Web Widgets Company Name?

Reuben initially started by developing 1 feature rich website and quickly learned that the features he had created were more valuable than the website he was working on, and so began Web Widgets. Back then the term "widget" just meant the same thing as a gizmo or a gadget. A widget was like a tool that you had no name to describe. And we had created all these really cool web tools for creating websites, updating websites, forums, shopping carts, etc, you name it. So we came up with the name, "Web Widgets" to describe all the web services we had to offer.

Since our early days the term "web widgets" has been hijacked around the world, and typically describes some kind of web object that can be copied on to your website page. We believe our name is still apt, as we make it easy for our customers to embed both our widgets, and all these other web widgets, into their websites hosted with us. So the name remains. We now have around 600 customers internationally using our website builder, CMS and shopping carts. In international terms, this makes us still a start up. In New Zealand terms we are definitely a key player in the web development market, with around 30 new customers signing up every month. However, the internet is a fast moving game and what is a unique service today, will have several copy cats with cheaper prices tomorrow. We have to keep moving to ensure we don't lose the race.

A side note, many government departments in NZ also refer to a widget as a something akin to a "general sellable item", e.g. anything a NZ business might manufacture and sell overseas. Again, we believe our name is apt, as we are helping our merchant customers sell their widgets online, and we ourselves, also trying to sell our web widgets services online.

What kind of software and hardware do you use?

In our office we use a mixture of windows and macintosh computers. In the data center, we use load balanced linux servers. We make strong use of leading edge open source software and cloud services to run our business.

Meet our Key Staff:

Other Information About Web Widgets Ltd

Buy NZ Made - Reuben developed the Web Widgets software in house. The benefit of this is we can customise our software to the changing needs of NZ customers.

Buy NZ Made - Over 95% of our expenditure is New Zealand based. We generate more export income than imported expenses, thus doing our bit to reduce the trade deficit. 

Web Widgets turns off their desktop computers and lights each night to conserve electricity. Every bit counts! We also use a carbon zero electricity supplier. Our staff have walking access to Banks, Post Office and common suppliers. We use natural light and natural air flows rather than air conditioning when possible.

Web Widgets values that staff should have flexible working conditions and slide time to balance their life commitments.

Web Widgets do not permit gambling, pyramid marketing schemes nor any illegal content on their servers. The content on our servers are bound by NZ law.

Web Widgets respects the privacy of your data and your customers data.

Web Widgets believe in sustainable business objectives.

Web Widgets reuse paper on both sides to save the environment. Every bit counts.

Web Widgets donates regularly to Child Fund, Unicef, Amnesty International, Oxfam and several local charities. 

Exit Strategy

Not many people put an exit strategy on their website, but many of our new customers enquire about how they can trust that we will still be around in a year or 2, and will their website be safe. Here's our answer.

Our company is successful, with good cash flow and no debts. We have a good sustainable business model.

Our systems and your data are backed up in geographically remote places. In the event of a major catastrophy, there might be a slight disruption to your level of service, but we would be back up and running within a matter of 48 hours in a worst case scenerio. This time allows for the delay of nameserver propogation, and in many cases, most websites would be back online within a few hours.

Web Widgets is a team of professionals, who all have differing skills, but all understand the complete CMS system. It is unlikely that we would ever all be hit by a bus, however there are procedures in place for the replacement of key personel.

We are here for the long haul. It is not the intention of Reuben, our primary shareholder to sell our company. If the company ever was sold, our hosting customers would retain access to the CMS system that they use to build and maintain their websites.