Drupal vs Yola: Comprehensive comparison guide for 2024

Final verdict

Drupal and Yola present unique strengths, making them suitable for different user needs and preferences.

• 
  Drupal (Overall Grade: 6.4/10)
  
  excels in flexibility, customization, and a wide range of features, particularly for users with technical expertise or those requiring complex, scalable websites. Its open-source nature allows for extensive customization through modules and themes, making it a powerful choice for developers and organizations looking for a robust content management system.
• 
  Yola (Overall Grade: 6.5/10)
  
  , with its slightly higher overall score, shines in user-friendliness, ease of use, and providing a straightforward solution for individuals and small businesses to create professional-looking websites. It offers a range of templates, drag-and-drop functionality, and essential ecommerce features, catering to users who prioritize simplicity and quick website setup without the need for coding skills.

Best for ecommerce

Verdict

: For users seeking advanced ecommerce capabilities and customization, Drupal is the superior choice. Yola, while more accessible, offers limited scalability and customization for ecommerce.

• 
  Drupal
  
  : Offers a robust ecommerce solution with its Drupal Commerce module, providing extensive customization and integration options. Ideal for those with specific ecommerce needs and the technical know-how to leverage Drupal’s capabilities.
• 
  Yola
  
  : Provides an easy-to-use platform with basic ecommerce features, suitable for small businesses or individuals starting their online sales journey. Its simplicity, however, comes at the cost of advanced functionality and scalability.

Best for informational & business websites

Verdict

: With Drupal scoring 7.5 and Yola closely behind at 7.4, both platforms offer strong capabilities for informational and business websites. However, Drupal’s slight edge in score and its extensive customization options make it a marginally better choice for complex and content-rich sites.

• 
  Drupal
  
  : Known for its flexibility and extensibility, Drupal is ideal for creating complex informational websites that require custom functionalities. Its open-source nature and vast array of modules and themes allow for a high degree of customization, catering to a wide range of web development needs.
• 
  Yola
  
  : Yola is a user-friendly platform that excels in simplicity and ease of use, making it suitable for individuals and small businesses looking to create professional-looking websites without advanced technical skills. Its drag-and-drop interface and responsive templates ensure that websites look great on any device.

Detailed comparison

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Winner: Drupal.

If you’re looking for a platform that offers more flexibility and extensibility, Drupal is the preferred choice.

Drupal, as a highly flexible and powerful content management system, offers a vast array of templates and designs to cater to virtually any website need. With thousands of themes available, users can choose from minimalist designs, industry-specific layouts, and highly customizable multipurpose themes. These templates are designed to be responsive, ensuring that websites look great on any device. Moreover, the Drupal community continuously contributes new designs and templates, expanding the options for users to keep their websites modern and engaging.

Drupal Themes

Compared to Drupal, Yola offers a diverse range of templates and designs, catering to various types of websites, from personal blogs to professional business sites. Users can choose from a wide selection of themes, each customizable to fit their specific needs and preferences. With hundreds of templates available, Yola ensures that there is something for everyone, regardless of their niche or industry. This variety, coupled with the platform’s user-friendly design tools, makes it easy for users to create a unique and visually appealing website without needing advanced technical skills.

Yola Themes

🏆 Winner: Yola

. Scoring an 8.0, Yola is designed with simplicity in mind, making it accessible for users of all skill levels to create and manage their websites. Drupal, with a score of 5.4, offers a robust platform but with a steeper learning curve, especially for those new to web development. If ease of use is a priority, Yola is the clear winner in this category.

Learning Resources

🏆 Winner: Drupal

. While both platforms offer solid learning resources, Drupal goes a step further with its wide array of detailed tutorials and active community forums, making it easier for users to learn and adapt.

When it comes to ecommerce, Drupal and Yola offer different capabilities. Drupal, with its Drupal Commerce module, provides a flexible ecommerce solution that can be seamlessly integrated into its content management system. It offers a wide array of features including product management, shopping cart, payment gateway integration, and customizable workflows. However, it has a steep learning curve and may require extensive customization to meet specific ecommerce needs.

On the other hand, Yola provides an easy-to-use website builder with ecommerce capabilities through an integration with Ecwid. It allows for the sale of up to 1000 products without transaction fees and supports multiple currencies and payment services. However, its ecommerce features may be limited by the lack of tiered options for scalability and a conventional CMS dashboard.

Drupal ecommerce features:

• Shopping Cart and Checkout Process
• Payment Gateway Integration
• Order Management and Invoicing
• Tax Calculation and VAT Support
• Shipping and Fulfillment
• Promotions and Discounts
• Reporting and Analytics
• Security and Compliance

Yola ecommerce features:

• Shipping and Tax configurations
• Product Catalog Management
• Ability to checkout as guest
• Analytics and reporting
• Promotions features

Ecommerce themes & templates

Drupal offers a wide array of eCommerce themes designed to cater to different types of online stores, from clean and simple designs to more sophisticated and feature-rich options. These themes are built with responsiveness in mind, ensuring that stores function seamlessly across various devices. On the other hand, Yola offers a range of templates for building websites, including those suitable for ecommerce, but the variety and design quality may not match those provided by other leading website builders.

Product page customization

Drupal offers extensive customization possibilities for product pages through its modular architecture, allowing for detailed content types, flexible displays with Views, and theme customizations. The Drupal Commerce module enriches e-commerce functionalities, enabling tailored product management, checkout flows, and payment systems. Yola’s eCommerce platform offers a variety of customization options for your product pages, including the ability to manage product options and combinations.

Payment processing

Drupal supports a wide range of payment gateways through third-party modules, including popular ones like PayPal, Stripe, and Authorize.Net. While Drupal itself does not charge any commissions or transaction fees, the individual payment gateways integrated with it do have their own fee structures. Yola supports various payment gateways for online store transactions, such as PayPal, Sage Payments, and American Express, allowing users to choose based on their specific needs, including geographical availability and fee structure.

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Winner: Drupal

. Drupal, with a score of 7.5, offers a wide range of features tailored for content creation and management. It supports rich text editing, enabling users to format text, insert links, images, and media, as well as create tables and lists with ease. The editor is highly customizable, allowing administrators to configure toolbars and options according to the needs of their site. Furthermore, it integrates seamlessly with Drupal’s content management system, supporting features like automatic content saving, version control, and access control, making it a powerful tool for building and managing diverse web content.

Yola’s editor, scoring 6.7, is designed for ease of use, allowing users to create professional-looking websites without needing coding knowledge. It offers a drag-and-drop interface, enabling users to easily add, customize, and position elements like text, images, and buttons on their web pages. The editor also provides access to a wide range of templates and customization options, including color schemes, fonts, and page layouts, to help users achieve their desired website look and feel. Additionally, Yola supports responsive design, ensuring websites look great on both desktop and mobile devices.

Mobile editor/app

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Winner: Yola

. Both Drupal and Yola do not have dedicated mobile editor apps. However, Yola allows for some small changes to be made using a mobile browser, giving it a slight edge over Drupal in terms of mobile editing. Therefore, Yola is the winner in this category.

Overall Result

:

Yola wins

. Yola scores 7.5, slightly higher than Drupal’s 7.1. While both platforms offer a free version, Yola stands out by providing the opportunity to test premium features during a 30-day refundable period and a 30-day money-back guarantee. Drupal, being an open-source CMS, doesn’t offer a trial version or the possibility to test premium features.

Yola offers a range of pricing plans with various features, while Drupal is free but requires separate purchases for domain, hosting, and website builder subscriptions.

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Winner: Yola

Yola offers managed cloud hosting with a 99.9% uptime guarantee and five data centers located in the US and EU. On the other hand, Drupal, being an open-source CMS, does not directly provide hosting services. The uptime, uptime guarantee, and data centers depend on the chosen hosting provider.

🏆 Winner: Yola

Both Drupal and Yola prioritize website performance and page speed, but Yola has a slight edge in terms of website speed optimization.

Yola’s approach to enhancing site speed includes CDN, caching, code minification, server response time improvements, and image optimization. Yola also emphasizes on improving Core Web Vitals (CWV) scores, focusing on Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), First Input Delay (FID), and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) improvements. However, the load times and PageSpeed scores can vary widely depending on the optimization and website complexity.

On the other hand, Drupal’s approach to website speed optimization is largely user-guided. Drupal offers numerous guides and tutorials on speed optimization, allowing users to optimize almost all aspects of their website. However, the load times and PageSpeed scores can vary widely depending on the optimization and website complexity. The improvement of Core Web Vitals (CWV) scores also depends on the users.

🏆 Winner: Drupal.

With a score of 8.6, Drupal outperforms Yola, which has a score of 6.3. Drupal’s extensive range of over 51,000 modules, compared to Yola’s 70+ apps and widgets, gives it a significant edge. These modules allow Drupal to extend its capabilities beyond its core features, enabling functionalities like advanced SEO tools, e-commerce solutions, and custom content types. On the other hand, Yola’s plugins and extensions enable functionalities like advanced social media integration and specialized e-commerce capabilities. However, the sheer volume and versatility of Drupal’s modules make it the clear winner in this category.

Drupal Applications

Yola Applications

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Overall Winner: Drupal

. Drupal stands out for its flexibility and extensibility, offering more advanced and customizable marketing features through its wide range of modules. Yola provides a more straightforward and easy-to-use set of marketing tools, suitable for individuals and small businesses, but some features are only available on higher plans.

🏆 Winner: Drupal

. With a customer support score of 6.7, Drupal edges out Yola, which has a score of 6.3. Drupal offers a comprehensive range of customer support options, including a community support system through Drupal.org for forums and documentation, and professional 24/7 support services via providers like Drupal Connect with flexible “pay-as-you-go” plans.

On the other hand, Yola offers 24/7 email support to all users, with priority support for Bronze, Silver, and Gold customers promising responses in under 24 hours. Paid plan subscribers receive premium support with prioritized requests. However, neither Drupal nor Yola offer specific support for enterprises.

It’s a tie

. Both Drupal and Yola prioritize security and have implemented robust measures to protect user data and websites.

Drupal, being an open-source CMS, offers more control over security configurations. It provides built-in mechanisms for preventing common web vulnerabilities and supports advanced security features like two-factor authentication. Regular updates for both its core and contributed modules, along with a dedicated security team, further enhance Drupal’s security.

Yola, on the other hand, provides built-in security features that are easier to use for individuals and small businesses. These include SSL encryption, DDoS mitigation, firewalls, regular software updates, data backup and recovery, as well as security audits and testing. By prioritizing security at multiple levels, Yola ensures the integrity and availability of its users’ websites.

🏆 Winner: Drupal

. Drupal, with a score of 7.5, utilizes AI to enhance various functionalities, including e-commerce, content creation, and user interactions. Although Drupal does not have an AI website builder, it integrates AI services for diverse functionalities, making it a versatile choice for web development. On the other hand, Yola does not have any AI capabilities, making Drupal the clear winner in this category.

Yola does not have any AI capabilities.

🏆 Winner: Drupal

. Both Drupal and Yola offer user management capabilities, but Drupal’s flexible permission and role system stands out.

• Drupal allows for an unlimited number of users to manage and edit a website, only constrained by server capacity and practical management considerations. Administrators can create various roles, such as “Editor” or “Administrator”, each with customized permissions. There’s no inherent limit in Drupal on the number of users with administrative or editing capabilities, enabling extensive collaboration and content management possibilities.
• Yola supports multi-user editing capabilities, allowing different levels of access and control based on the plan chosen. The primary account holder, often referred to as the Owner or Administrator, possesses comprehensive control over the website, including the ability to edit content, manage settings, and extend invitations to collaborators for website modification. Collaborators or Editors, invited by the account holder, can edit the website to varying degrees, which might range from content editing to page management, depending on the permissions granted by Yola’s platform. The number of users permitted to edit a website and the scope of their roles and permissions may vary, typically increasing with higher-tier subscription plans.

Drupal User Roles and Access Levels:

Additional Features

User Feedback

Users appreciate Drupal for its ease of use, security, and flexibility as an open-source CMS, highlighting its ability to scale and support a variety of websites and applications with modern technology tools. The community and documentation are frequently mentioned positives, providing ample support and resources. However, criticisms include a relative lack of plugins and themes compared to competitors like WordPress, the learning curve for customization without coding, and some challenges with installation and updates. The platform is praised for its robust content management capabilities, enabling users to manage content and user access efficiently. Overall, feedback underscores Drupal’s strength in creating secure, customizable, and scalable web solutions, despite some desires for more intuitive UI and easier setup.

Yola seems to have received mostly positive reviews. Users appreciate its professional templates, ease of use, affordability, and customer service. They find it ideal for website creation, especially for those without specialized knowledge. However, some users express dissatisfaction with aspects such as data security, customization limitations, and lack of certain features like chat support. Overall, Yola appears to solve the problem of easy website creation and maintenance for businesses and individuals, offering a range of templates and tools at a reasonable price point.

FAQ