Yola – you might not have heard of them yet, but they're another easy to use website builder that focuses on making things simple for non-tech people to create their website. The company was born in Cape Town, South Africa in 2007, and now hosts around 10 million users with over 50 million web pages. Read our Yola review below.
OverviewYola is dedicated to bringing its customers an easy, intuitive, drag and drop platform that lets those without any technical knowhow get a simple website up and operating in for an hour or two
Yola offers some packages ranging from their limited Free plan all the way up to their Gold plan and various paid-for add-ons. Their main competition is other website builders with an easy, intuitive interface that are perfect for beginners such as Weebly and Squarespace.
Let’s check out a little more about the basics of Yola before we dive into all the gory details below.
Where does Yola’s strength lie?
As we’ve mentioned, Yola’s strength lies in its absolute ease of use. Even those with no design or technical experience can have something up and running in a matter of mere hours – the learning curve is one of the quickest in the game. It’s a breeze to use compared to a lot of its competitors.
If you needed something simple up on the web yesterday, Yola is a good find.
Who is Yola recommended for?
The platform itself will suit those that have never touched a website builder before. It has been designed for small and micro businesses in mind, such as accountants, beauticians, and cafes. The site builder also works well for those who would like to create an events page or personal hobby site.
Yola won’t be a good choice for anyone that wants a more extensible design oriented site, those who like to tinker behind the scenes, larger businesses or people who wish to do a bit of blogging. It doesn’t offer the kind of options that are needed for these sort of activities
How scalable is a Yola site?
At its most premium plan (Yola Gold), Yola offers unlimited pages, bandwidth, and storage, 150MB file sizes, along with the option to create up to 25 websites under the one account – it’s huge.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, you’ve got the Yola Free plan. The Free plan comes with 1GB of bandwidth, 1GB of storage, 5MB file size limits, two websites, and three web pages for each site.
If you’re planning on starting out with the free plan and migrating to another paid plan, though, we recommend against it. Switching over your website will result in reduced SEO – start off with a paid plan to begin with, or restart your site when switching to a paid plan instead.
What sort of a reputation does Yola have?
Yola isn’t a super well-known platform, even though it does have a lot of user accounts. The platform has evolved over the years too – Yola isn’t the same as it was just two years ago.
As such, reports about the platform are mixed. Although some users report a nothing but flawless experience with building a simple website, still more report unhelpful customer service and poor billing support.
Does Yola have a money back guarantee?
Yola’s paid plans all come backed with a 30-day money back guarantee, so if your site doesn’t work out, then you can simply get your money back. Unfortunately, there is no data export feature to roll it over to a new platform if you decide to do this, though – you’ll have to start again.
Key FeaturesFor experts, the problem, isn’t that Yola Silver isn’t a solid program. The simple truth is that there are more comprehensive options available for a better value. The disadvantages of Yola Silver aren’t so glaring that critics aren’t willing to give the program an average rating, but why settle for average when there are outstanding options available for less money?
Ultimately, Yola Silver does live up to the expectations of a modern website builder by offering a user-friendly interface and intuitive editing tools. It also comes with robust social features, which are a key to modern marketing techniques. However, Yola Silver falls short when it comes to blogging tools and mobile website options. For most businesses, no matter how small, these are essential tools. Building a website without them can put you behind right at the starting line. In the end, experts recommend other options over Yola Silver.
Outside of billing issues, many of the complaints against Yola Silver had to do with limitations. However, to easily create a sleek and attractive website program is specifically aimed at micro and small businesses who don’t need or want a ton of features and storage space. Customer who fell into this category were much more satisfied with the program. Those with little design create a sleek and attractive website quickly. More seasoned designers can also enjoy access to both CSS and HTML to a whole other level of customization. Yola also offers an extensive selection of widgets that can be added to your website to increase functionality. Overall, users were pleased with the ease of use even if Yola Silver initially lacks certain features.
The most common complaint against Yola Silver has to do with billing problems. It appears that a significant portion of customers had trouble canceling their subscription or received unexpected charges. Furthermore, those who had trouble canceling also had problems contacting customer service to resolve the problem. Consumers even went so far as to accuse the company of deceptive billing practices. There were enough complaints in this vein to constitute a real issue.
Beyond billing issues, users also point to a lack features as a major drawback to the program. Navigation tools are limited, and other standard features like a blog and newsletter have to be added through third-party integration. Ultimately, unhappy consumers awarded Yola Silver just 2.5 out of 5 stars.
Design & CustomizationRegarding website editors, Yola is sleek, easy to use, easy to navigate, and implements a simple drag and drop interface. The only annoyance when you’re starting out is that a lot of interesting features will sit behind a pay wall.
Check out our wrap up of Yola’s design features below.
| Feature | Overview |
| Website Templates | Yola features Responsive, Premium, and Free website templates. In our opinion, the only ones that look professional and modern are the 9 Responsive templates, which is the only option you’re given in the beginning anyway.
Free Premium |
| Website Builder Interface | The editor is one of the cleanest that we’ve come across many website builders. Along the top, you have the main navigation bar, comprising of Widgets, Style, Page, Settings, SEO, Navigation, Files, Mobile, and Website.
Clicking on some of these options reveals a smaller bar or two below the main bar, giving you further related options. For the others, it brings up an overlay with the relevant information. Some areas are not available to access in all plans and require an upgrade. Your website is laid out below with a drag and drop interface. |
| Page Style Customization Options | Opening up the Style option from the editor’s top navigation bar will bring up all your style choices. This includes Colors, Fonts, Headings, Background, Banners and CSS options. There is also the Designer option, which will open the Style Designer menu, appearing on the left-hand side of the page |
| Site Navigation | Page navigation is accessed via the Navigation option on the bar at the top of the page. It’s easy to add and edit pages from here. |
| Content Management | There is a File Manager (under the Files option on the navigation bar) included looking, after all, your uploads for each website that you create. Each website will have a different File Manager. |
| Photos and Galleries | Both photos and galleries can be added to their respective widgets and the content managed by the File Manager. |
| Mobile Site Building | Mobile site building is only available in the high premium plans. The mobile site builder is separate from the desktop site builder, and so you will need to configure it yourself. |
| Social Sharing Integration | ‘Share this’ button available in widget form. |
| Design Services | Not available. |
Features & Tools Yola offers the majority of the main features of other website builders and a few more specific to the platform only. Check out the main options below.
| Feature | Overview |
| Setup | Easy to choose from templates, including a preview option before you finish selection. The next screen requests your contact details, supposedly to display on your site, although we didn’t see this happening. |
| Web Design | Somewhat customizable – choose colors, elements, layouts, etc. |
| Custom domain name | Available only with paid plans. |
| Depth of Navigation | Up to 2 levels of navigation with higher paid plans. |
| Widgets and Apps | A reasonably good selection of widgets is available to drag and drop on your page. For extra add-ins, there is the HTML code widget. |
| Monetization | Ability to add Google AdSense, banners, eCommerce, etc. |
| Visitor Statistics | Google Analytics available. |
| Photo, Video, and Audio | A wide range of media widgets available including pictures, gallery, YouTube, mp3, Flash and Flickr. |
| Blogging | No integrated blogging platform included. You may use a Tumblr widget or create links to Blogger or WordPress sites. |
| Google Maps | Google Maps widget available. |
| HTML Editor | HTML widget only available. |
| Social Media Integration | Facebook like, Facebook comments, Google +, Share Me, and Tweet this widget available. |
| Forms and surveys | Forms are available as a standard widget item. Wufoo 3rd party form widget is available to add a survey to your site. |
| Storage Space | Ranges from 1GB up to unlimited storage space, depending on the plan. |
| Newsletter Tool | Only available with third party ‘Constant Contact’ paid add-on. |
| Forum | Only available for adding HTML widget code. |
| E-Commerce / Online Store | Add free PayPal items and catalogs to your website with their associated widgets. Proper eCommerce online store option (an Ecwid plugin) available for purchase for US$10/month. A vast amount of options available for users with up to 1000 items in your store. |
| Gateway Integration | The online store add-on has an enormous number of payment gateways available – this includes American Express, Bitpay, eWAY, iDEAL, PayPal, Stripe and many others. |
| SEO Friendly | Meta descriptions are editable in all plans. The only real plan that is optimized for SEO purposes is the Yola Gold plan. The Gold plan contains some great SEO monitoring and helper tools. |
| Site Limited Access (Password Protection) | Password protection available for one or multiple pages with all plans. |
| Google® Analytics | Available via the Settings menu. |
| Website Security | All websites are hosted on Yola’s secure servers. |
| Multiple Languages | The websites builder is available in English, Italian, French, German, Spanish and Portuguese. |
| Mobile Optimization | Limited, and only available with paid plans. |
| CDN Technology | Not provided. |
Plans & Pricing While you will probably want to start out with Yola’s Free plan to check out the editor and the features of the website builder first, there isn’t much to write home about with the free version. To build any functional website, you’ll need to sign up with one of their premium paid plans.
Use the free plan to play around with before you decide to build a website, but we recommend not adding the content you want on there. Rolling over your content from a paid plan will diminish the effectiveness of your eventual SEO.
Free Plan
Yola’s free plan gives you a limited choice of templates and the Yola editor. You can build up to 2 websites, with up to 3 pages total on each. This won’t be enough for anything but the most basic of sites.
The free plan offers password protection on each page, and you will be provided with the website address http://www.yoursitename.yolasite.com. You have an allotted 1GB of storage and 1GB of bandwidth with file sizes of up to 5MB. There will be Yola advertising placed at the bottom of each of your pages.
Premium Plans
Yola’s premium plans at first glance look similar to their competitors. They’re around the same price and offer similar add-ons, and all come with a 30-day money back guarantee. However, you will notice that even with the premium plans there are other options that you might need to purchase.
The online store option costs an extra $10/month on top of any premium plan, and Yola Mail can be added to premium plans for $9.96/year. Making your domain name private will cost an extra $9.95/year.
Yola Bronze
US$4.17/month yearly, US$5.95 month to month
Bronze is the lowest possible plan you can upgrade to with Yola. You’ll get along with it all the inclusions of the free plan but with added unlimited pages and bandwidth, an upgrade to 2GB storage, a custom domain with free private registration, and premium support services.
You’ll still have Yola’s advertising on your page, and you won’t have any depth of navigation available or a mobile friendly site.
Yola Silver
US$8.33/month yearly, US$12.95 month to month
Yola Silver gives you all the benefits of the Bronze plan but now with 5GB of storage, and removed advertising. You also now have access to mobile optimized site design, advanced editing, navigation submenus, and the option to publish to Facebook.
Yola Gold
US$16.66/month yearly, US$24.95 month to month
Yola Gold is without a doubt the most useful of all Yola’s packages – and you’ll want to use it if you need to concentrate on your SEO. The package contains everything included in the Silver package, along with unlimited storage, SEO scans, keyword usage, traffic reports, SEO monitoring, and Yola business directory listing.
Customer Support Reports about Yola’s technical assistance from users has been patchy. The platform promises a maximum 24-hour turn around with all queries.
Ease of Use Yola is beautiful, well laid out website editor. It makes the website building process practically a walk in the park for anyone who wants to use it. Beginners will love it, and design experts will appreciate how well thought out all the layouts are.
Anyone can get up and running with a new website in less than a couple of hours. The editor has a drag and drop interface, and all menus feel smooth, and like they’re located in exactly the right place. Coders have the option to edit the CSS code, or write custom HTML widgets should they so desire.
The templates certainly aren’t that interesting or diverse, but the responsive ones, at least, look professional – even though there are only 10 of them! Customizing each is easy, and adding widgets is simple too.
For those looking at an eCommerce option, the Ecwid based store uses a different sort of editor, but it’s also easy to get the hang of.
If you’re looking for a good way to add in SEO, you’ll need to sign up for the Gold plan – the other plans are severely lacking. It’s a shame that this SEO option isn’t an extra add on like the online store.
Conclusion There’s a lot to like about Yola – the gorgeous editor, the ease of creating pages, and the simple setup of an eCommerce store. Even though Yola has a more than adequate help section, unless you’re doing something a little bit tricky, then you probably aren’t going to need it.
If you just need a basic website for a small business or personal project, and you want to design it yourself with the minimum amount of stress and time, then Yola may be a good website editor for you to choose. The eCommerce add-on is quite extensible for an online store with up to 1000 items, and it offers a tremendous amount of payment gateways to choose from.
The problem that we find with Yola is that you need to pay quite a bit to get a good amount of modern website functionality from the platform. The templates are limited, and everywhere you look, the site is asking you to pay a fee for something. This is a definite turn off.
If you’re looking at Yola, there are other website builders that you should check out too. Platforms like Squarespace and Weebly have a similar setup but may be more precise to your needs.
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