Home » Website Builder Ranking » Yola Review

 
Rating:
2.7

The Best

  • Good value for multiple websites

The Worst

  • Limited features
  • Yola ad in Bronze plan

Starting From

$4.16 / month

  • Free plan

Yola Review: Its Strength Is Support

Last updated: See Updates

This article has been written and researched by our expert tooltesters through a precise methodology. Learn more about our methodology

Robert Brandl

Robert Brandl

Author

Inka Wibowo

Inka Wibowo

Researcher

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This website builder certainly lets its sunny South African and Californian roots shine through: the company has a very friendly appearance. Yola puts a lot of weight into its support by offering telephone support for new customers — something you don’t see with many providers.

Basically they seem to want to provide a simple, fool-proof option for beginners. In addition to the free plan there is Yola Bronze ($59.40 per year) or Yola Silver ($99 per year, domain name included). One of the biggest drawbacks of the Bronze plan is that Yola’s branding in the footer will not be removed.

They also provide an e-commerce option. The web store is based on the powerful Ecwid plug-in that lets you sell both physical and digital goods while offering a wide range of payment options. It’s $19.95 per month and includes all Silver features.

With Yola Gold ($199 per year, domain name included) you also get a Facebook-publishing tool, directory submissions and an application that helps you improve your SEO (search engine optimization).

We’re here to tell you if Yola is worth it.

Videos

  • Yola Video Review
Yola Video Review video

You can compare Yola to other website builders side-by-side in our Comparison Tool.

Screenshots

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yola-mobile-website-300x260
yola-navigation-300x204
yola-templates-1024x204

Yola Pricing

$0

Free

No custom domain, maximum of 3 pages. It has a Yola ad in the footer.

$4.16

Bronze

Unlimited pages, 2 GB of storage and a custom domain name. The Yola ad in the footer isn't removed.

$8.33

Silver

The cheapest ad-free plan. Up to 25 websites.

$16.66

Gold

Unlimited storage, bandwidth and pages plus advanced SEO options.

Monthly prices for 1-year contracts. Domain included in selected packages.

Pros and Cons of Yola

  • Pros
  • Cons

Pros

  • Good value for multiple websites

    The Silver plan includes up to 25 websites, which is very good value.

Rating Details

Ease of use Info popup

The editor is intuitive and well structured.

Choice and flexibility of design (templates) Info popup

Yola’s templates have a nice modern look and can also be customized to a certain degree. However, their choice is very limited. The new mobile website version looks pretty good but is only available on Silver plans.

Advertisement-free Info popup

Silver plan only. Yola Free and Bronze feature a pretty visible Yola ad in the footer.

Languages Info popup

Currently available in EN, FR, EP, DE, IT and PT. No special feature to create multilingual sites.

Your own domain name (e.g. .com or .net) Info popup

You can point a domain you already own to Yola or buy a new one through Yola. Paid plans only.

Depth of navigation Info popup

Two levels deep but this is only supported by their premium templates—if your site grows this will be a limitation.

Widgets (small tools to add extra functionality) Info popup

Offers quite a range of widgets, most of them are integrations from third parties. It’s also easy to integrate share buttons for social networks. No app market available.

Mobile App Info popup

  • iOS
  • Android

Yola has a mobile app for its online store (My e-Shop, which is powered by Ecwid), however for non-ecommerce Yola websites, there is no native mobile app available.

E-Commerce Info popup

Yola features a powerful e-commerce widget which comes from Ecwid.com. Find our detailed review of the online store here.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Info popup

Title, meta and description tags are all customizable at page level. URL text is always created from the respective menu item.

Blog

An external Tumblr blog can be integrated via their widget.

Visitor statistics Info popup

Yola Silver features its own tracking tool, which only stores data up to 30 days, or you can use Google Analytics (recommended).

Contact form

Offers a very flexible and easy-to-use contact form builder.

Password protection & member areas Info popup

You can either protect the entire site or individual pages.

Newsletter tool Info popup

No internal solution but they integrate with Constant Contact.

Add HTML code Info popup

Allows you to add external widgets and other tools.

Storage space

1 GB +

Yola Silver offers 5 GB of storage, Yola Gold doesn’t have a limit. Yola Free customers can upload up to 1 GB.

Backups & Restore Info popup

Creating a backup or restore point is not possible.

Support

  • FAQ
  • Chat
  • Email
  • Telephone

Email, phone and knowledge base. Support is one of Yola’s strengths, however, after their recent updates we found a lot of links in the support section were not working anymore.

Fun Factor Info popup

It’s fun to work with the website builder as long as you don’t expect complex things from it.

Overall Rating

2.7

Fine for a simple and flat website due to its limited depth of navigation. It lacks basic features and their templates are very limited.

Conclusion

We have mixed impressions of this website builder. On the one hand it is easy and fun to work with. On the other hand it is only suitable for very flat websites, due to structural limitations in its templates.

Its support was fast and reliable, so this product may be just right if you want to be able to talk to someone on the phone. For everyone else we would recommend one of Yola’s more affordable competitors which offer better value overall.

Yola’s online store can certainly impress and if you are planning on getting involved in e-commerce now or in the future, this will be definitely something worth considering.

> Compare Yola to the best website builders on the market

Yola Examples

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Careers Website

FAQ

Yes, but you will have to purchase the domain names separately.

Four individual pages is the limit, unfortunately.

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The authors

Learn more about us

Robert Brandl

Founder and CEO

Hi, my name is Robert Brandl! I used to work in a digital marketing agency where I managed website and email marketing projects. To optimize my client's campaigns, I always had to find the optimal web tools. Tooltester offers this knowledge to you, hopefully saving you endless hours of research.

Inka Wibowo

Content Manager

Hi, I'm Inka! I started using website builders and content management systems over 10 years ago, when I managed websites for clients in my first marketing role. Since then, I've worked on hundreds of web and digital projects. Now, at Tooltester, I'm happy to be able to use my experience to help users like you find the right website builder for your needs.

Learn more about us

We keep our content up to date

17 Dec 2021 - Mobile app rating added.
17 Jan 2017 – We added the restore & backup feature in the table
16 Sep 2015 – There isn’t an integrated blog and templates are very limited.
14 Mar 2013 – We added information about password protection.
12 Feb 2013 – Yola essentially renders the free plan useless by imposing a three page limit.
07 Mar 2012 – Review of Yola’s online store added
11 Jan 2012 – Pricing updates, mobile website version
21 Jul 2011 – Complete update of the review

THE BEHIND THE SCENES OF THIS REVIEW

This article has been written and researched following a precise methodology.

Our methodology

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