| Type | Private |
|---|---|
| Predecessor | Synthasite |
| Founded | Cape Town, South Africa, March 2007 |
| Founder(s) | Vinny Lingham, Co-founder and CEO Brent Viljoen, Co-founder and CTO |
| Headquarters | San Francisco, California, USA |
| Key people | Trevor Harries-Jones, CFO David Saxton, VP of Business Development |
| Products | Yola Web Site Builder |
| Services | Website builder, Web hosting |
| Employees | 76 |
| Website | yola.com |
Yola is a website builder and website hosting company headquartered in San Francisco. People without programming skills and a limited knowledge of HTML and graphic design can make web sites using Yola. Its drag and drop system allows users to incorporate widgets without knowing HTML. Yola also integrates e-commerce and blog software and acts as a domain registrar. It competes with other web hosting and creation such as Weebly, Lifeyo, Jimdo, Cif2.net, Webs, uCoz, Wix and Webnode.[1]
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The name Yola comes from the Hindi word jhola,[2] which has several meanings, one of which is "hatch" (used from a marketing perspective to signify that “Yola is where you hatch your big ideas”).[3]
The business started out under the name SynthaSite, founded by Vinny Lingham in March 2007. In November 2007, the company raised a $5 million round of financing from Columbus Venture Capital and launched the beta version of the product.
In February 2009, SynthaSite announced $20 million in Series B funding from Reinet fund.[4] The company was renamed Yola on March 26, 2009.[3] Lingham said the rename was in anticipation of the company’s future direction, and further that "the name SynthaSite has brought us to where we are today, but it won't take us where we want to go. We're reaching a global market and need a name that is easy to say, resonates in any language, and captures the creativity and excitement that our users bring to their Websites."[4]
According to Yola management, together with the Synthasite users, there are now more than a million users of the tools, including small businesses, individuals and groups.[5]
Yola offers different service levels: Yola Free, Yola Bronze,Yola Silver, and Yola Premiere. The free accounts have a website limit of 5 sites, a download capacity of 1024 megabytes, and basic web builder tools. The Silver version requires subscribers to pay an annual rate of $99.95. Yola Silver has many additional features over free, including an expanded storage capacity of 25GB, a domain name with privacy guard, unlimited premium styles, Google and Facebook ad credits and more web building tools.
Yola Premier package (which is a joint venture between Yola and HP Logoworks) costs $499.95 and includes one on one consultation with a HP Logoworks designer and a professionals created 5 page website.
Users can have domain names in .com, .net, .org, and .biz, each costing from $17.95 a year to $19.95 a year. The feature "Hide Yola Logo", which enables users to have a clear footer without the logo is available with the Yola Silver package.
The website has received several industry awards including:
Yola was also selected as an Endeavor (non-profit) Entrepreneur in 2006.