This is an exhaustive feature comparison review of Weebly and Yola, the easy website builders. The ‘Feature Criticality’ is subjective. What is critical for some might not be critical for others. Evaluate based on your needs. Whether you are looking for building a free website or building an inexpensive website with maximum value for money, you will find this ‘Weebly Yola Feature Comparison Review’ useful. Towards the end of the feature comparison table, you will find a description of each of the features. Refer to the descriptions for details. Hope this helps with your decision making process.

–  A Review By Raju Nunna

Feature Description	Weebly	Yola	Feature Criticality
1. Download Site	Yes	No	High
2. Blog	Yes	Yes	High
3. Mobile Site	Yes	Yes (Paid only)	High
4. Custom Domain Name For Free Users	Yes	No	High
5. Forced Advertisements	No	No	High
6. Clean Footer (Free Accounts)	Yes	No	Medium
7. Collaborated Editing	Yes	No	High
8. Copy Site	Yes	No	High
9. Copy Page	Yes	Yes	Medium
10. Support for Free Users	Decent	Excellent	Medium
11. Phone Support for Paid Users	No	30 or 90 Days	High
12. Password Protected Pages (free users)	No	Yes	Medium
13. Forms & Form Fields	Limited	Un-Limited	High
14. Review Form submissions on Site	Yes	No	High
15. File Upload through Forms	Yes	No	High
16. File Manager	No	Yes	Medium
17. Sites per free account	2	2	Low
18. Sites per paid account	10	5	High
19. Unlimited Pages	Yes	Yes	Medium
20. Unlimited Space	Yes	No	Medium
21. Unlimited Bandwidth	Yes	Yes	Medium
22. White Label Reseller	Yes	No	Low
23. Audio Player	Yes/No	Yes	Low
24. Video Player	Yes/No	No	Medium
25. Themes & Templates	Decent	Decent	High
26. Easy Theme Editing	No	Yes	High
27. Flexible Design	No	Yes	High
28. Built-in Image Editing	Yes	Yes	Medium
29. Easy Website Editing	Yes	Yes	High
30. Site Management & Administration	Good	Best	High
31. YouTube & Flickr Integration	Yes	Yes	High
32. Favicon for Free users	No	Yes	Medium
33. Education. Teachers/Students	Yes. 40 Student Sites	No	High for Teachers
34. Embedded Documents	Yes	No	Low
35. Site Settings	Yes	Yes	High
36. E-Commerce	Yes	Yes	Low
37. Archive/Retrieve	Partial	No	High
38. Version Control	No	No	High
39. Sub-Domain Redirection	No	No	High
40. Custom Domain Registration	Yes($40)	Yes($18)	Medium
41. Custom E-Mail with Domain	No	Paid	High
42. Traffic Statistics	Basic	Basic	Low
43. Widgets	Yes	Yes	Low
44. Facebook & Twitter Links	No	Yes	Medium
45. User Management	No	No	High
46. Forums	No	No	Medium
47. Mailing List Subscriptions	No	No	Medium
48. e-Mail Marketing	No	No	Medium
49. Facebook Connect	No	No	Medium
50. Tables	No	No	High
51. Sub-Menus	Yes	Limited	High
52. Export/Import Themes	Yes	No	Medium
53. Custom Panel	No	Yes	High
54. Editable Background	No	Yes	High
55. Full HTML/CSS Control	Yes	No	High
56. Third Party Themes	Yes	No	High
57. Multiple Page Layouts	Yes	No	High
58. 301 Redirect	Yes	No	High
59. Drag & Drop Buttons	Yes	No	High

1. Archive/Download: The ability to download a site is critical. When you out grow the current provider, you will have to choose a different provider. Weebly provides the option to download the site so that you can host it any where else like GoDaddy, HostGator, MediaTemple, SoftLayer etc. When we analyse a software, migration path is the most important piece we look at. Your business needs are expected to change as your business grows. When the time comes for migration, you should not be held hostage. If your site is with Yola, you have to create a whole new site at the new host and will have to add content manually.
2. Blog: Both Yola and Weebly provide built-in Blog. There are some shortfalls. But there is some provision and it can be very helpful for many situations.
3. Mobile Site: Both Yola and Weebly automatically generate a Mobile optimized sites. Yola’s mobile sites are more advanced and offers more choice. However, Yola offers Mobile optimized sites for Yola Silver customers only, which costs $10 a month. Weebly offers mobile optimized sites for free users too.
4. Custom Domain Name: If you have bought a domain name from a third party registrar like GoDaddy, then you will be able to use it with your free Weebly site. With Yola, free users do not have that choice. Only Yola paid users (Yola Siver and above) have the option of using custom domains bought else where.
5. Forced Advertisements: Both Weebly and Yola do not force advertisements on your site. This is important for Branding.
6. Clean Footer: Another high priority feature. Weebly’s promotional footer for free accounts is clean and unobtrusive. Yola puts a gigantic footer on free sites which is bad for Branding. On top of it, Yola adds a theme designer footer also for free accounts which is really bad for Branding. Of course, paid users can always remove the footers.
7. Collaborated Editing: Most of the businesses have multiple people updating the site content and administering the content. If you are seeking third party help, collaborated editing is the way to go. Free Weebly users can add multiple administrators. Paid Weebly Users can add administrators, authors, and in addition give permissions to selective people for each page etc. This puts you, the site owner, in full control. Yola has no collaborate editing.
8. Copy Site: This is the way to maintain a backup of your site for trying out new features, or for maintaining previous versions. Weebly provides a ‘Copy Site’ option for free users also. Yola has no such option. If your site with Yola goes bust for some reason, you are screwed because you have no copy and have no archive option either. A Yola site gone is a Yola site gone forever.
9. Copy Page: Both Weebly and Yola provide an option to copy page within the same site.
10. Support for Free Users: Weebly provides an email support for free users. Yola provides support through community forum and email. Weebly’s support for free users is flaky at times. Weebly’s support for paid users isn’t any better. Yola’s support through forums and social media is excellent even for free users.
11. Phone Support for Paid Users: Yola provides phone support for paid users. Weebly does not. E-Mail is the only choice Weebly provides. When things go wrong and when its urgent, phone support is very important and Weebly does not provide one. Weebly does not answer all emails. With Weebly, community may be the only choice. Unfortunately, Weebly hides a lot of real issues posted on their facebook pages thus blocking you from community support too.
12. Password Protected Pages: Yola gives the option of password protecting the pages for free users also. Weebly limits the password protection feature to Paid users only. If you have some private pages that you share with employess etc, and need to hide some pages from public or from search engines, they need to be password protected.
13. Forms & Form Fields: Yola lets free users create as many forms and as many fields in a form as you like. Weebly limits the number of fields to 5 for free users. With Weebly, if you need to add more than 5 fields in the form for collecting information, you will have to upgrade to Weebly Pro.
14. Review Form submissions on site: 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. If you have multiple forms in your site, with Weebly, you can choose to view entries of an individual form or the entries from all the forms. Weebly also has the option of sending the form submission to any email you configure. Yola does not provide the option to view form submissions on site. Yola sends submission information via email.
15. File Upload through Forms: 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.
16. 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.
17. Sites per free accounts: Weebly lets a free user create 2 sites. Yola gives 5 sites for free accounts. No big deal.
18. Sites per paid accounts: Weebly gives 10 sites per paid accounts and all 10 sites get pro features. Yola gives 25 sites per paid account and all 25 sites get premium features. This is very important if you are serving clients etc. Value for money and ability to serve and maintain 25 clients from single account.
19. Unlimited Pages: Both Weebly and Yola do not limit the number of pages you can create.
20. Unlimited Space: Weebly gives unlimited storage space for free users also. Yola limits the storage space to 1GB for free users. Yola paid users are also limited to 5GB of server space. But 5GB is a lot of space and takes years and years of information to fill it up, unless you are uploading lots of videos/photos to your site.
21. Unlimited Bandwidth: Both Weebly and Yola do not put any restrictions on the bandwidth. If you occasionally run promotions and attract a ton of visitors all of a sudden, you are covered. There other shared-hosting providers who take your site offline if the number of visitors exceed certain amount. You do not need to worry about it with Weebly or Yola.
22. White Label Reseller: Weebly has a reseller program. Weebly lets you sell weebly as your brand. Does not matter for 99.99% of people. Yola does not openly offer a white label reseller package. But if you are big enough, Yola will negotiate a reseller package with you.
23. Audio Player: With Yola, free users can upload audio files and play directly on the site. Weebly provides the audio upload option to Pro (paid) users only.
24. Video Player: Yola has no option to upload and play your video on your site directly. Weebly lets Pro users to upload and play video directly on the site. It is important if you do not want to upload a video to public libraries like YouTube.
25. Themes & Templates: Both Weebly and Yola offer decent templates. Decent enough for the targeted customer segment. Yola’s themes have more punch, while Weebly’s themes are more functional with Call-To-Action Button etc.
26. Easy theme editing: For the targeted user base, Yola offers lots of options, easy to use, without touching the CSS. You can modify backgrounds, banners, logos, etc. To do similar things with Weebly, you will have to edit the style sheet, meaning you need to spend time understanding the syntax.
27. Flexible Design: With Weebly you are going to be very restricted with how you can design your site, unless you are ready to revamp the style sheet yourself. But if you are some one who is capable of revamping the style sheets, why would you need these easy site builders to begin with ? These are supposed to be for non-technical people, and serve as a means of building a site without the hassles of having to deal with style sheets. Yola gives you adequate amount of control over the design of your site without ever having to take a look at style sheet. You can adjust margins, independently edit font styles, sizes etc wherever in the site you like. But with Weebly, you are restricted to one style of font for all titles of your site, and one style for the entire text of your site. If you want a section to use a different font in Weebly, you are out of luck. Yola lets you change any text any where any way you like.
28. Built-in Image Editing: 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, styles etc. Yola’s image editing is basic and really doesn’t serve the purpose if you need to layer multiple images for creating a banner etc. Also, the Yola’s Picnik image editor does not work with Safari.
29. Easy Website Editing: Both Weebly and Yola offer an easy website editing interface intuitive enough for new users.
30. Site Management & Administration: Both Weebly and Yola provide an easy way of managing and administering the site. Yola is super easy. With Yola, every thing is accessible from the editor interface and is very smooth and integrated. With Weebly, you have to juggle between several screens, tabs and buttons to achieve some thing. With Yola, editing, changing settings, administering is very easy and very quick. With Weebly, it is not so straight forward to get your work done and you may often end up searching on the internet how to do some thing because you have to go through different screens, tabs, buttons etc.
31. YouTube and Flickr Integration: Both Weebly and Yola gives you the option to embed YouTube videos and add Flickr phots.
32. Favicon: Yola lets free users use favicon for their sites. Weebly limits it to Pro users only.
33. Education option for Teachers & Students: It is a high priority for teachers who would like to teach students about how to create websites. Weebly gives Teachers ability to manage 40 student sites for free. If the teacher signs up for Weebly pro, all 40 students get to use the Weebly Pro features too. Weebly’s education option also comes with some additional features like assignment form, student management etc. Yola has no such option. Since Yola does not have collaborated editing functionality, it can not provide some thing like Weebly Education.
34. Embed Documents: Weebly lets its pro users embed pdf documents, spreadsheets, powerpoint presentations etc into the site. Visitors can read the documents directly on the page inline without having to download it. Yola does not provide this option.
35. Site Settings: Both Weebly and Yola offer a decent level of settings for your site, pages, search engine optimization etc. Yola makes the settings a breeze. With Weebly, you have to lurk around a bit, but it is all there. To get things done in Weebly, be prepared to juggle between pages, tabs, buttons.
36. E-Commerce: Both Weebly and Yola have options for E-Commerce with PayPal and Google Checkout. Neither of them offer SSL. Real E-Commerce sites need to look for more reliable sources with a higher amount of control in your hands.
37. Archive/Retrieve: Weebly provide a download mechanism but no upload mechanism. Yola provides nothing. Both fall short when the necessity arises. You can not upload a previously saved copy if your live site gets messed up.
38. Version Control: Neither Weebly, Nor Yola have a provision to save a stable version. It is especially important because your live site is your only copy. If that goes wrong, you are left with nothing until you re-design your site.
39. Sub-Domain Redirection: 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.
40. Custom Domain: Weebly provides domain registration services at an exorbitant price of about $40 per year.  You will be better off buying some thing from GoDaddy for $10 and use it for your free or pro accounts. Yola charges $18/year for custom domains. When you buy a custom domain through Yola, you get to use it for your free Yola site too. “Weebly has no phone support which is a very critical requirement one should look for while choosing a domain registrar.”
41. Custom E-Mail with Domain: You have an option of buying an email account with Yola for $10/year. You can also setup free Google Apps for custom email with Yola. With Weebly, Google Apps is the only choice for custom email. Free Google Apps has a limitation of 10 accounts. If you ever need more than 10 custom email, you will have to pay $50/year per email account.
42. 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.
43. Widgets: Weebly and Yola allow you to add many kinds of widgets ranging from Google Maps, Calendar  etc. For all the rest, you can just use html embed.
44. 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.
45. User Management: This is a weakness with both Weebly and Yola. Neither of them provide a user management. Your site is just a web presence. You can not maintain user profiles, allow user registrations etc for providing your visitors an added experience or for creating private areas for logged in users.
46. Forums: Neither Weebly Nor Yola offer a built-in forum capability. You will have to rely on the included paid Tal.ki or use an ad supported forum like Lefora or Nabble as an embed.
47. Mailing List and News Letter Subscription: Both Weebly and Yola does not have built-in functionality to collect emails subscriptions.
48. e-Mail Marketing: Neither Weebly Nor Yola have an option to distribute newsletters or cater to other email marketing needs. You will have to use third party solutions like MailChimp and ConstantContact.
49. Facebook Connect or Google Connect: Neither Weebly nor Yola offer your visitors to use their facebook or google or other ids to comment or connect with your site. You will have to use third party solutions like Disqus or Livefyre to cover for it partially.
50. Tables: If you need to add pricing tables or any other tables, there are no drag-and-drop elements in either Weebly or Yola. You will have to resort to custom html.
51. Sub-Menus: Sub-Menus are a critical part of navigation and usability for website users. Weebly provides Multi-Level Sub-Menus, dropdown Menus and Flyout Menus for Free users also. Yola does not offer sub-menus for free users. Yola paid can use two levels of sub-menus.
52. Export/Import Themes: Weebly lets you export/import themes and styles you designed for one site to be used on other 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 redo the customizations for the theme manually for every site.
53. Custom Panel: 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 add any Yola emelems in the boxes. It can be used of text boxes, images. There is no such option with Weebly. Yola also provides stylizable Horizontal Line element. You can choose your own color, width, type etc for horizontal line in Yola. There are no such options with Weebly.
54. Editable Background: Yola lets you simply click and upload your own background image. You can choose a color, or upload your image and apply it to some or all pages of your Yola site. With Weebly, you need to edit the CSS code to bring in any such changes and you can not opt to have different backgrounds for different pages.
55. 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 paid users get CSS control only. No HTML control means absolutely no control on markup and must rely on the themes provided by Yola with some minor variations.
56. Third Party Themes: This ties into point 55 above. Since Weebly allows total html/css customization and also lets users export/import themes, there are plenty of third party themes available for Weebly. With Yola, third party themes is not a choice.
57. Multiple Page Layouts: Weebly allows for creating any number of custom page layouts. This gives a lot of flexibility with designing the site to your taste. Each page can be adjusted to suit its needs. Yola basically has one page layout only.
58. 301 Redirect: Weebly offers 301 Redirect option to all of its users. It’s absolutely necessary to redirect the traffic to the appropriate page. Whether you move you site from some where else or change the url, you can easily take care of it in Weebly. Yola does not allow for 301 redirect configuration.
59. Drag & Drop Buttons: Every Weebly theme comes with four Buttons types that can be used any number of times any where on the site. With Yola, you need to depend on third party solutions for adding buttons via custom-html embed.