Yola

Creating a website with Yola starts with a template. Yola's templates are customizable (to a certain degree), but the quality of their designs are definitely inferior in comparison to those offered by Squarespace, IM Creator or Wix. Yola's templates are basic and borderline bland.

Note the users on the Free plan only have access to 10 templates.

Yola gives users the chance to upgrade to one of its paid plans for better choice of templates. However, the collection of premium templates lacks the wow factor that templates of other website builders offer.

But the good news is, Yola's templates are switchable – you can change your template choice anytime you want and the majority of your content automatically converts over to the new template. Items customized under the Style options, such as background images, font styles and custom CSS, seem to be the only elements that don't get transferred over.

Many users have found the Yola editor's interface a bit outdated and not as intuitive as that of other website builders such as Wix and Weebly.

Yola uses the drag-and-drop technology. But unlike Wix and Website.com, it's more restrictive – elements cannot be added anywhere you'd like. When you drop elements, you can only place them in pre-determined boxes within the template. In other words, where you can add elements depends on the limits of the template.

Yola's interface features a horizontal bar editor at the top of your screen. From this toolbar, you get access to all the editor settings.

Yola offers an extensive array of style customization and editing options. The Style editor lets you customize the theme, colors, fonts and layouts used on your website. If you have subscribed to Yola's Silver or Gold plan, you are also given access to edit the CSS/HTML codes of your website.

We also noticed that Yola's interface does not include any undo/redo buttons.

Yola offer a good range of widgets that let you add contact forms, appointment scheduling, maps, blogs, videos, and photo galleries onto your website.

Most of Yola's widgets are integrations from third parties, including YouTube and Metacafe for videos, PayPal buttons, Facebook and Twitter buttons and more.

Yola lets you upload image files and keeps them accessible in a File Manager. The File Manager also lets you add folders for easier image management and organization.

Yola lets you edit your images via an integrated Aviary editor.

Yola has also integrated Pixabay's easy-to-search stock image library right into the site editor. However, this feature is only available to Yola Silver and Yola Gold users.

When adding an image gallery, you can choose from 4 different styles. Compared to Wix and other website builders, that's not a lot of choices.

In addition to the built-in Gallery widget, you can also add an image gallery to your website using the Flicker Gallery widget. The Flickr Gallery widget can pull image from your Flickr account or from the Flickr pool.

Yola provides two options for selling products on your website – through the PayPal widget or with their built-in storefront. The PayPal app is very basic, but it is free and available on all plans.

Yola's storefront option, Yola Online Store, comes as a separate add-on feature that can be integrated into any paid plan at $10 per month. Unfortunately, there is no free trial for this feature.

Yola Online Store is simply a white-label integration with Ecwid. Ecwid offers advanced ecommerce features, including support for digital products, customizable tax and shipping settings. Integration with FedEx and UPS, and much more. It also comes with more than 20 payment gateways to choose from.

Wix is another website builder that offers an integrated-Ecwid eCommerce solution.

Yola's paid plans (Bronze, Silver and Gold) allows you to point your website to a domain you already own. You can also buy a new domain through Yola. Yola gives you a free .com domain for one year when you purchase an annual (paid) plan. If you want a domain that is not .com (ie. .org), you will need to pay the price difference.

For example, if you want to use a .org domain, the cost for that is $14.95. A .com domain costs $11.95. So, you will need to pay the difference of $3.00.

Also, the free domain offer is only available from the Package signup or upgrade page. Just like other free website builders, Yola Free doesn't support custom domain names – if you want to use a custom domain for your website, you will need to upgrade to one of Yola's paid plans.

Once you have purchased your domain through Yola, you can also setup your domain email addresses using Yola Mail. Yola Mail lets you view your emails online via a webmail interface or via an email client (ie. Outlook Express and Thunderbird, etc.). Unfortunately, Yola Mail is not free – it's offered at $9.96/year per custom email address.

Yola's support comes in the form of a knowledgebase, library of tutorials, email support, and, for paid subscribers, live chat.

Yola's live chat support is generally available Monday to Friday, between 7am to 9pm GMT. You can assess Live Chat from within the site editor. accessible from within the site editor.

Yola also offers a toll-free phone number.

You can find additional tips and site updates on Yola's official blog.

While Yola's website builder is relatively easy to work with and is loaded with plenty of site widgets, it doesn't stack up well against its competitors mainly due to the small template selection and the lack of a blogging tool. Yola's better features – eCommerce and image editor – are third-party integrations found in other website builders. In fact, many of Yola's features are merely integrated third-party applications: Ecwid, Aviary, Constant Contact, WuFoo, Flickr, Google Maps, PayPal, Tumblr, YouTube, Metacafe, Facebook, Twitter, etc.

If you are already using any of those applications, then it's good news to know that Yola lets you easily incorporate them into your website. But if you are not a current user of these applications, then it means you now have to sign up for extra services with these providers just to add the needed functionality to your Yola website. A good example would be the blog.

In other words, Yola doesn't really bring anything of unique value. While the free plan might be worth trying, the paid plans (especially the Gold plan) definitely doesn't quite deliver enough for that price. You can get better plans and prices elsewhere.