Yola Website Builder Review 2024: A detailed guide

Yola is a free website builder that offers robust e-commerce features, making it ideal for beginners. Its drag-and-drop interface is straightforward and user-friendly, but it also allows customizations for those with coding skills. 

One standout feature is switching templates without losing previous work, providing more flexibility than many competing builders. Additionally, Yola supports business monetization by integrating the Ecwid store builder widget.

Let’s not spill all the beans here. Read my Yola website builder review blog in 2024 to the end to learn more about what Yola offers. 

Yola Website Builder Review: Getting started

The first step in building a website with Yola is selecting a template, with over 60 options organized into categories like Small Business, Personal & CV, and Landing Pages.

Customization follows a two-part process: first, you design, then you add content. However, you can skip the design step initially and return to it anytime during site creation.

You’ll choose your website's colors, fonts, and animations in the design phase. Yola offers more than 60 color palettes, each featuring five matching shades.

1. Page customization

Customizing pages in Yola is done by adding, removing, or modifying content blocks. A wide range of blocks is available, organized into categories like Title, Testimonials, Video, and Gallery. Each block includes a large thumbnail preview, allowing you to see its layout and elements before adding it to your site.

Editing within a block is simple. You can click the placeholder to replace images with your own photo or select from an extensive stock photo library. Basic editing tools let you zoom, adjust overlay intensity, or apply a black-and-white effect. That’s essentially the customization available.

Modifying content in a Text block is straightforward: simply click, select the default text, and type your own. You can also revisit the initial design choices, making it easy to adjust colors and fonts across the entire site whenever you like.

In Block settings, you have additional customization options, like choosing the text box placement within the block and adjusting the block’s overall look. These settings vary depending on the type of block you’ve selected.

2. Creating an online store

Yola includes an online store that you can set up even on a free plan, though it does come with limitations, such as being restricted to selling only three physical items. This feature becomes significantly more robust with the paid plans. 

A notable and time-saving feature is the ability to upload your product list via a CSV file—a functionality that surprisingly isn’t standard with all e-commerce platforms. This is an important aspect to know in the Yola website builder review.

Yola allows you to add various product options and variations, set shipping rates, and receive SEO improvement suggestions for each item. It also offers a ‘related product’ section and a ‘buy now’ button, which lets you place product details anywhere on your site with a direct link to the store. Selling digital goods is possible, but only with paid plans.

For payment processing, Yola supports Square and PayPal and manual payment options like cash on delivery, bank transfers, or purchase orders. Analytics tools include Facebook Pixel, Pinterest Tag, Snapchat Pixel, Google Ads, and Google Analytics.

3. Templates

Building a website with Yola begins by selecting a template. While Yola’s templates are customizable to a certain extent, they don’t match the design quality of those on platforms like Squarespace, IM Creator, or Wix. Yola’s templates are fairly basic and may feel somewhat uninspired.

Users can upgrade to a paid plan to access more template options, though these premium templates still lack the visual impact of other site builders. 

One advantage, however, is that Yola allows you to switch templates anytime, with most content automatically transferring to the new layout. Elements customized through Style options, like background images, font styles, and custom CSS, are typically the only items that won’t carry over.

4. Editor

Creating a website with Yola starts by choosing a template, though the design quality of Yola’s templates is somewhat limited compared to platforms like Squarespace, IM Creator, or Wix. Yola’s templates are generally basic and might feel a bit plain.

Users can access additional templates with a paid plan, although these premium options still lack the visual impact seen with other website builders. 

One helpful feature is the ability to switch templates anytime, with most content transferring to the new design. However, customizations made in the Style settings, such as background images, font styles, and custom CSS, typically do not carry over.

Yola also provides a range of style customization and editing options. The Style editor lets you modify your website's theme, colors, fonts, and layouts. Those on the Silver or Gold plan have additional access to edit CSS and HTML codes for greater customization.

5. Blogging

Yola lacks a built-in blogging tool, but it offers integration with Tumblr. This allows users who blog on Tumblr to embed their posts directly into their Yola website.

Unfortunately, Yola doesn’t support importing blogs from other platforms. Instead, it recommends linking to an existing blog or embedding it within the website using an iframe code.

6. Mobile site editor

Yola provides ten responsive templates, but all other templates display the full desktop version on mobile devices unless mobile publishing is activated—a feature only available on the Silver and Gold plans.

For added mobile functionality, Yola offers a tool called Mobile Plus, which includes features like tap-to-call, mobile maps, and directions. However, Mobile Plus is limited to Yola’s responsive templates and is exclusive to Silver and Gold users.

Even with Mobile Publishing enabled, customization options are minimal. They allow only adjustments to the background color and font and the option to disable the site banner image.

7. Image adding and gallery

Yola allows you to upload and store image files in a File Manager, where you can also create folders to help organize and manage your images. For image editing, Yola integrates the Aviary editor, enabling simple modifications.

Yola also offers access to Pixabay’s stock image library directly within the site editor, but this feature is only available to users on the Silver and Gold plans.

When adding an image gallery, Yola provides four styles, which is relatively limited compared to platforms like Wix. Besides the built-in Gallery widget, you can also add an image gallery using the Flickr Gallery widget, which can pull images from your Flickr account or the Flickr pool.

8. eCommerce

Yola offers two options for selling products on your website: the PayPal widget or the built-in Yola Online Store. The PayPal widget is simple, free, and available on all plans but lacks advanced features.

Yola's Online Store is an add-on feature for $10 per month on any paid plan, but it does not offer a free trial. The Yola Online Store is essentially a white-label integration with Ecwid, which provides advanced e-commerce capabilities such as support for digital products, customizable tax and shipping settings, integration with FedEx and UPS, and over 20 payment gateways.

Wix is another website builder that offers Ecwid integration for e-commerce.

9. Domains and emails

Yola’s paid plans (Bronze, Silver, and Gold) allow you to link a domain you already own or purchase a new domain through Yola. If you buy an annual paid plan, Yola offers a free .com domain for the first year. 

However, you must pay the price difference if you prefer a different domain extension, like .org. For example, a .org domain costs $14.95, while a .com domain costs $11.95, so the difference is $3.00.

The free domain offer is only available when signing up or upgrading from the package page. Like many other free website builders, Yola Free doesn’t support custom domains, so you’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan to use one.

After purchasing a domain, you can set up custom email addresses with Yola Mail. This service lets you access emails online or through an email client (e.g., Outlook Express, Thunderbird). However, Yola Mail doesn't come in the free version and will cost $9.96 per year for each custom email address.

Pricing structure

Now comes the pricing structure. While the pricing plans are quite affordable, there might be some chances of confusion. This is because the pricing structure provided by Yola is extensive and may be confusing for beginners.

This is the pricing structure when you want to create a basic website. When you choose the yearly plan, you can save up to 42%. Moreover, you will also get a free domain for 1 year. Visit the pricing page for more information.

Ready to use Yola?

Yola offers a simple and affordable way to create a basic website. It provides access to a highly sophisticated e-commerce solution, making it a strong choice for online stores. Yola’s drag and drop interface is easy to use, and its reliable customer support is another positive feature.

While Yola excels in SEO and marketing tools, don’t expect many additional features. Building a website with Yola doesn’t require coding knowledge, but advanced users will appreciate the ability to access HTML/CSS for further customization. 

What’s your opinion on my Yola website builder review? Do you have any other questions? Let me know in the comments below. 

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