Yola vs. Wix Review: Which Is Better? (Jan, 2011)

We compared Yola vs Wix with our AR Appraisal Rankings® method

Our Choice: Yola

     1.  Yola

     2.  Wix

Why?:  Yola  is not flash based which is terrible for SEO.

Try Yola Free: Click Here

Stop Browsing. Start Building." is Yola's motto, and building a site on Yola is about as simple as it gets. The step-by-step process of choosing template, placing text and links, and organizing information is extremely easy on the other hand Wix.com is probably the most innovative of the free hosting sites listed in this article. While the other sites offer a product that seems built on "blocks" of space, often leaving a very geometric-looking page,

Yola
Simple drag and drop page editor with a good choice of widgets and templates

Pros

  • Good Picture Editing tool, which includes cropping, red-eye correction and optimization
  • Good selection of widgets including Google Maps and You Tube Videos
  • Can edit raw HTML
  • Can have different banner pictures on different pages
  • Works with PayPal shopping cart
  • No popup ads
  • Free use of custom domains registered elsewhere

Cons
  • Not completely wysiwig - some elements look slightly different when published
  • Yola's page editor is quite limited, so realistically some knowledge of html and css is needed to customize the templates, which are pretty basic and all quite similar
  • Yola is only free with a Yola Link: "Make a free Website with Yola" - not great for a business website
Free Stuff
  • Free hosting at Yola sub domains
  • Up to five sites with a 1GB or storage per site, which should be plenty unless you're publishing video
  • Free templates
  • Free use of custom domains registered elsewhere

Extras
  • Custom domains: $19.95 a year for registration
  • Premium styles: from $19.95
  • Remove Yola Link for $9.95 a year
Wix

Flash-only website builder, which has the best selection of templates but among the highest costs.

Pros
  • Sites are well-designed and professional - good-looking templates come with pre-designed pages, such as a home page and a contact page
  • Easy Drag and Drop wysiwig (What You See is What You Get) page editor.
  • Flash widgets make creating menus, mini-pages, and animations a snip
  • Can be used in conjunction with other blogs and web builders, such as MySpace and Word Press
  • No popup ads

Cons
  • Quite expensive (see below) if you do not want to display Wix ads, which shout that your website was "Free"
  • Your site uses Flash, which has it's own disadvantages. Among them, usability, for example, the back button won't work, slower load times and accessibility - not everyone has the Flash plug-in installed

Free Stuff
Hosting is free with a Wix sub domain, Wix ads and logos and a free template

Extras
  • Use your own domain (registered elsewhere) for around $4.95 a month.
  • Get rid of Wix ads and logo too - from $9.90 a month
  • Wix Widget-only plan is from $5.95 month
  • Ecommerce Packages start at $24.90 (special offer: $15.90 for first six months)

Conclusion

Choose Yola, Reason? It is much easier to use. It's not flash based which is terrible for SEO.

Wix is a flash based website building program so that is the type of website building experience they cater to. Yola is different than Wix and doesn't cater to flash based sites, so the things you want to do exactly like Wix might not be possibly with Yola. Yola has all the tools you need to create a small business site and Yola is free as compare to Wix which is very costly.

Try Yola Free: Click Here