Choosing the correct website builder decides the success of your website. Since open source platforms like self-hosted WordPress are difficult for individual site owners, there exist lots of free hosting platforms. They only charge for additional services like domain, emails and offer site editor and hosting for free. Weebly and Yola are two such easy website builder tools for beginners to start a website. Here is a complete comparison of features of Weebly and Yola to help you to decide what could be the best option for your site.
Weebly Vs Yola
Below the table we discussed about the important features in detail.
| Feature | Weebly | Yola |
|---|---|---|
| 301 Redirect | Yes | No |
| App Center (Marketplace) | Yes | No |
| Bandwidth for Free Account | Unlimited | 1GB |
| Blog | Yes | Tumblr Blog Embed |
| Built-in Image Editing | Yes with ImagePerfect Editor | Yes with Aviary editor |
| CAPTCHA on Form | No | Yes |
| Column Layout | No | Yes |
| Contact Form | Yes | Yes |
| Copy Page | Yes | Yes |
| Copy Site | Yes | No |
| Custom Domain | Paid from Starter | Paid from Bronze |
| Custom E-Mail with Domain | Google Apps | Paid and Google Apps |
| Custom HTML On Page | Yes | Yes |
| Domain Registration | Yes($39.95) | Yes($11.95) |
| Drag & Drop Elements | Complete | Partial |
| E-Commerce | Yes | Yes |
| Easy Theme Editing | No | Yes |
| Easy Website Editing | Yes | Yes |
| Edit Source CSS | Yes | Paid for Silver and Gold |
| Edit Source HTML | Yes | Paid for Silver and Gold |
| Editable Background | Yes | Yes |
| Education Version for Teachers/Students | Yes 40 Student Sites | No |
| Email Marketing | Paid with Weebly Promote | Paid with Constant Contact |
| Embedded Documents | Yes | Yes |
| Export/Import Themes | Yes | No |
| Facebook Auto Sharing | Only Blog Posts | Paid for Silver and Gold |
| Facebook Connect | Yes | Yes |
| Facebook Like | No | Yes |
| Favicon for Free users | No | Yes |
| File Manager | No | Yes |
| File Upload through Forms | Paid for Pro and Business | No |
| Flexible Design | No | Yes |
| Footer Ad on Free Site | Yes | Yes |
| Footer Ad Removal | Paid from Starter | Paid for Silver and Gold |
| Forums | No | No |
| Mailing List Subscriptions | Paid with Weebly Promote | 60 Days trial with Constant Contact |
| Mobile Site | Yes | Paid for Silver and Gold |
| Multi-level Sub-menu | Yes | No (2 level sub-menus) |
| Multiple Editor | Yes | No |
| Number of Sites per Free Account | 10 | 2 |
| Page Limit for Free Account | Unlimited | 3 |
| Password Protection | Paid | Yes |
| Phone Support | Paid for Pro and Business | Paid |
| Premium Templates | No | Paid for Silver and Gold |
| Review Form Submissions on Site | Yes | No |
| Self-hosted MP3 Player | Paid | Yes |
| Self-hosted Video Player | Paid | No |
| Sharing Buttons | Facebook and Twitter Only on Blog Posts | Facebook, Twitter and G+ on all pages |
| Site Download | Yes | No |
| Sites per premium account | 10 | 5, 25 and 50 for Bronze, Silver and Gold plans. |
| Storage for Free Account | 500MB | 3GB |
| Support for Free Users | No Good | Decent |
| Themes & Templates | Limited | Good |
| Traffic Statistics | Basic | Basic |
| Tweet This Button | No | Yes |
| User Management | Paid for Pro and Business | No |
| Version Control | No | No |
| White Label Reseller | Paid | No |
| Widgets | App Center | Yes |
| YouTube & Flickr Integration | Yes | Yes |
1. Ease of Use
Both Weebly and Yola offer drag and drop interface to make the interface more user friendly. Weebly names it as elements and Yola names it as widgets. You can drop the elements / widgets on the content area of the site and rearrange it as you need. The big difference is Weebly allows editing the content on the page while on Yola every click will take you to the popup window. Once you are used to create few sites there will be no big difference between Weebly and Yola editors.
2. Templates and Page Layouts
Weebly is focusing on responsive layouts and offers limited number of templates. The page layouts are categorized based on the header image size and the layout can be changed at any time. On the other hand, Yola offers large number of responsive, premium and free themes. The page layouts can be changed to two columns or three columns with variations which is more practical. Creating a columned layout on Weebly is really a challenging task while this is available as default layouts on Yola.
Though there are many third party theme provides available for Weebly compared to Yola. But you need to keep in mind that Weebly does not offer support on issues arising due to third party themes and widgets.
3. Pricing and Plans
Before go further, it is better to understand the pricing plans offered by Weebly and Yola. Both companies offer four types of plans with similar price range as indicated below. Weebly allows 10 sites per account with the premium plans applicable per site while Yola limits the number of sites on each plan.
| Weebly | ||||
| Plans | No. of pages | Storage | Ad | Price / month |
| Free | Unlimited | 500MB | Footer Ad | 0 for 10 sites |
| Starter | Unlimited | Unlimited | No Ad | $8 per site |
| Pro | Unlimited | Unlimited | No Ad | $12 per site |
| Business | Unlimited | Unlimited | No Ad | $25 per site |
| Yola | ||||
| Free | 3 | 1GB | Footer Ad | 0 for 2 sites |
| Bronze | Unlimited | 2GB | Footer Ad | $4.17 per 5 sites |
| Silver | Unlimited | 5GB | No Ad | $8.33 per 25 sites |
| Gold | Unlimited | Unlimited | No Ad | $16.66 per 25 sites |
Since the number of pages is 3 on Yola’s free plan it will be of no use. At the same time Yola’s silver / gold plans can have 25 sites but Weebly pro / business plan is on per site basis.
4. Blogging
Weebly offers built-in blog but the problem is that you can’t backup Weebly blog content which is a huge risk. Yola does not offer built-in blog but allows Tumblr blog embed. In our perspective both building content without backup and embedding Tumblr blog are meaningless. So if you are looking for a good blogging platform then you may need to look for WordPress or other equivalent platform.
5. Site Backup or Download or Archive
Keeping the regular backup of your site is mandatory for peace of mind and restoring on emergency needs. Assume you created 500 blog posts on Weebly and accidentally deleted the “Blog” index page during page management. That will be your life moment because there is no “Trash” bin to keep the deleted content and in matter of seconds all your 500 posts will be disappeared.
The other aspect of backup is for migration. Since your needs may change over the period of time it is necessary to keep the backup for migrating to other platform. Weebly allows you to download the complete site to local computer but this can’t be uploaded back again on Weebly. At least you can keep the backup and use it for migrating to other platform. Yola does not even allow you to download the content which essentially means you need to create a site from scratch in case of content loss or migration.
Related: Review of Weebly site builder.
6. Mobile Site
Both Yola and Weebly automatically generate a mobile optimized site of your desktop site. However, Yola offers mobile optimized site only as a premium feature available for Silver ($8.33 per month) and Gold ($16.66 per month) customers. Weebly offers mobile optimized sites for free users and also have iOS and Android apps for building a site on the go.
7. Footer Ad and Custom Domain
In order to connect your site to a domain name bought from third party registrars like GoDaddy, you need to have premium account on both Weebly (starter) and Yola (bronze).
Similarly both Weebly and Yola display advertisements on the footer area of your site. While with Weebly you can remove the footer ad with starter plan, Yola only allows removing the ad with silver or gold plan. It does not make any sense to pay $4.17 per month for Yola’s bronze plan to have a footer ad on a custom domain.
Both Weebly and Yola offer one-year free domain subscription under all premium plans. In addition, Yola offers a one-year free private registration for your domain.
8. Collaborated Editing
It is a common scenario multiple users may need to contribute to the growth of a single site. The users can have different roles like editor or administrator. Weebly offers multi-editor environment where free users can invite other people to administer the site and paid users can allow others to only edit the content or administer the dashboard or administer the whole site. This helps you as a site owner, in full control to have collaborative editing. Yola does not collaborative editing feature.
9. Support for Free Users
Weebly provides chat, community and email support for free users. Yola provides support through community forum and email. Both platforms offer phone support for premium users. Weebly has a real problem in setting up a knowledgeable support for free users and support for paid users isn’t any better. Especially after Carbon upgrade Weebly platform is no more stable like before and needs the support consultant’s help for one or other matter. On other hand, Yola’s support is definitely much better than Weebly for all types of users.
10. Password Protected Pages
You may need a password protection when you have pages on your site only to be shown to specific users. Yola gives the option of password protecting pages for free users also. Weebly limits the password protection feature to paid pro / business users only. The pages can be made visible to specific member or groups.
11. Form Features
Weebly captures all the form submissions and makes them available for you to review them on the site. You can login to your site from anywhere to check the submissions. If you have multiple forms on your site, with Weebly, you can choose to view entries of an individual form. Weebly also has the option of importing the form submission for you process it locally. Yola does not provide the option to view form submissions on site. Yola sends submission information via email.
Weebly does not offer CAPTCHA on contact forms while Yola offer CAPTCHA option to stop spam.
For paid users, Weebly provides an additional type of form field where your visitors can upload files to you. For ex: If you are conducting a photo contest, your visitors can upload their photos through the form submission. Or, if you are a service provider, your visitors can upload a requirements document for you to provide a quote. Yola does not have a file upload option through forms.
Related: Review of Wix site builder.
12. File Manager
Weebly does not provide a way to manage your uploaded files. Yola has a file manager that lets you manage your uploaded files.
13. Audio and Video Player
With Yola, free users can upload audio files and play directly on the site. Weebly provides the audio upload option to pro and business users only. Yola does have an option to upload and play your video on your site directly. Weebly lets pro/business users to upload and play video directly on the site. Since using YouTube or custom HTML is possible in both platforms we do not see self-hosted video playing is necessary.
14. Easy Theme Editing
Yola offers lots of easy to use options without touching the CSS. You can use “Style Designer” to modify backgrounds, banners, logos, create boxed or full width, footer color, etc.,. To do similar things with Weebly, you will have to edit the stylesheet, meaning you need to spend time understanding the syntax.
15. Image Processing
Weebly provides a very good built-in image editing function called ImagePerfect, which can be used to create layers of images with transparency settings, text overlays, etc. Yola also offer in-built image editor Adobe Aviary which has advanced features like drawing on images, adding frames, stickers, etc.
Both platforms offer gallery element, but Weebly in addition also offer slideshow element. There are also free and paid stock images available on Weebly and Yola does not any stock images.
Related: Weebly Vs Wix – Comparison and review.
16. Favicon
Yola lets free users use favicon for their sites. Weebly limits it to premium users only.
17. Site & Page Level Settings
Both Weebly and Yola offer a decent level of settings for your site to add header and footer codes. Also you can add analytics tracking and webmaster tools verification codes. In addition to site level settings, Weebly allows page level settings which will be useful while using custom HTML codes, hide individual page from search engines and setup 301 redirects for each page. Yola does not offer page level setting to do these things.
18. Ecommerce
Both Weebly and Yola have options for ecommerce, while Weebly allows free users to create an online store with basic features Yola only allows premium users to add ecommerce feature. Also Weebly offers lot of easy to use functionalities like selling digital goods, coupon codes, shipping and tax calculator.
19. Custom Domain
Weebly provides domain registration services at an exorbitant price of about $39.95 per year. You will be better off buying some thing from GoDaddy for $12 and use it for your Weebly paid accounts. Yola charges $11.95 per year for custom domains.
Warning: Neither Weebly nor Yola offers an option to forward your subdomain to an outside host if you ever decide to migrate to some one else. You must use a custom domain to really secure your brand and visitors.
20. Custom Email with Domain
You have an option of buying an email account with Yola for $9.96 per year. You can also setup Google Apps for custom email with Yola. With Weebly, Google Apps is the only choice for custom email. Google Apps will cost you $50 per year per email account or $5 per email per month.
21. Traffic Statistics
Even though both Weebly and Yola offer statistics, they are pretty much worthless for any practical purpose. You really need to hook in Google Analytics and both of them let you plug it in.
22. Facebook & Twitter Links
Yola offers built-in drag-and-drop elements to add social links to your site. Yola saves you the trouble of having to use html embed and put the corresponding widget code from Facebook, Twitter etc. Weebly does not offer built-in elements for Facebook or Twitter. You have to do it manually in Weebly. The lesser custom html elements you need, the better it is.
23. Membership Site or User Management
Yola does not offer membership sites. Your site is just a web presence and you cannot maintain user profiles, allow user registrations, login, etc., for providing your visitors an added experience or for creating private areas for logged in users. Weebly offer unlimited membership sites with registration/login feature for business users and allow partial membership option for pro users.
24. Forums
Neither Weebly nor Yola offers a built-in forum capability. You will have to rely on third party forums like Nabble, Tal.ki or any forum App.
25. Newsletter and Email Marketing
Weebly allows built-in email collection for newsletter subscription and you need to integrate the emails manually with Weebly Promote or any third party services like Mail Chimp. Yola does not offer built-in subscription form but it allows you to integrate with Constant Contact.
26. Sub-Menus
Sub-Menus are a critical part of navigation and usability for website users. Weebly provides multi-Level sub-menus, dropdown menus and fly out Menus for Free users also. Yola offers only two levels of sub-menus.
27. Export/Import Themes
Weebly lets you export/import themes and allows the custom theme to be used on multiple sites. This is very useful for designers and for those who would like to share their customizations with others. Yola does not offer an option to export/import a theme. With Yola, you need to do the customizations for the theme manually for every site.
28. Custom Panel
Panel is another critical requirement that greatly enhances the look and feel of your site. Yola lets you choose multiple colors of custom panels with custom boxes. You can create a custom panel and any element inside the box. There is no such option with Weebly.
29. Full HTML/CSS Control
This is the biggest advantage with Weebly. Even the free users of Weebly get the full HTML/CSS control allowing for total theme customization. You can adopt any template to work with Weebly. Yola does not provide any control for free users. Yola silver / gold users get CSS control and HTML access.
30. SEO
Weebly page URL are with .html extension which are generally indexed well in search engines due to the static nature of the content. Weebly blog pages will have no extension, though we did not find any difference in indexing many users reported to us that the blog posts are not getting indexed. Yola site’s pages will have .php extension and free sites are allowed to be indexed by search engines. Both Weebly and Yola offer dynamic XML Sitemap for search engine submission.
The difference is, Weebly allows to set 301 redirects for each pages on your site while Yola does not have this option.
Related: Download free Weebly SEO guide.
Other Factors
- Weebly offers white label designer platform and a special teacher / student platform. So if you are selling for a reseller kind of working model then Weebly is better choice for you.
- Other important factor we noticed is Weebly is being offered as part of many paid hosting services like Bluehost whereas we do not see Yola is being offered as part of any paid hosting services. This means you can choose Bluehost or HostGator for hosting your Weebly site and have access to your hosting server.
- App Center – Weebly is moving towards making the platform more commercial and open by allowing third party vendors to sell widgets on App Center. This gives more options for users to choose from free to paid elements like Table, Pricing Table, Accordion, etc., Yola does not offer separate App Center or marketplace though few third party services are integrated.
Conclusion
Weebly and Yola both are easy to use site builders targeting different types of customers. The choice mainly depends on the feature you want and the number of sites you have. We believe the above comparison of features will help you to understand which is best for you and select the right choice on first time to start building your site.
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