Google Sites vs Yola: Comprehensive comparison guide for 2024

Final verdict

Google Sites vs Yola both offer unique advantages, but they cater to different user needs and preferences.

• 
  Google Sites (Overall Grade: 5.6/10)
  
  is ideal for users seeking a simple, collaborative platform for creating basic websites. It excels in ease of use, integration with Google services, and robust security features. However, it lacks advanced ecommerce capabilities and extensive design customization options, making it more suitable for personal projects, team collaborations, and small business websites that do not require complex functionalities.
• 
  Yola (Overall Grade: 6.5/10)
  
  stands out for its diverse range of templates, ecommerce capabilities, and comprehensive marketing tools. It offers a user-friendly interface with more design flexibility and customization options compared to Google Sites. Yola is a better choice for small businesses and individuals looking to create professional-looking websites with ecommerce functionalities and advanced marketing features.

Best for ecommerce

Verdict

: Yola is a more suitable choice for ecommerce compared to Google Sites, offering a range of ecommerce features and integrations that Google Sites lacks.

• 
  Google Sites
  
  : Google Sites is not designed for ecommerce. It lacks built-in ecommerce features and primarily serves as a tool for creating simple websites. Users can integrate third-party tools or widgets for ecommerce functionalities, but this requires additional effort and may not provide a seamless experience. When comparing Google Sites vs Yola, Google Sites falls short in ecommerce capabilities.
• 
  Yola
  
  : Yola offers a more comprehensive ecommerce solution through its integration with Ecwid. It supports various payment gateways, product page customization, and additional ecommerce features such as shipping and tax configurations, product catalog management, and analytics. This makes Yola a better choice for small businesses looking to sell products online.

Best for informational & business websites

Verdict

: When it comes to creating informational and business websites, Yola slightly edges out Google Sites with a score of 7.4 compared to Google Sites’ 7.2. Both platforms offer user-friendly interfaces and robust features, but Yola’s diverse range of templates and customization options make it a more versatile choice for business websites.

• 
  Google Sites
  
  : Google Sites is an excellent choice for users who need a simple, collaborative platform to create informational websites. Its integration with other Google services and ease of use make it ideal for team projects and small business websites. However, it offers fewer design customization options compared to Yola, which might limit its appeal for businesses looking for more creative control.
• 
  Yola
  
  : Yola stands out with its wide range of customizable templates and user-friendly drag-and-drop interface. It provides a comprehensive solution for individuals and small businesses to create professional-looking websites without advanced technical skills. Yola’s additional features, such as SEO tools and e-commerce capabilities, make it a versatile platform for managing an online presence. When comparing Google Sites vs Yola, Yola’s flexibility and design options make it a better choice for business websites.

Detailed comparison

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Winner: Yola.

Yola offers a more diverse range of templates and designs, extensive customization flexibility, and a wider range of creative design possibilities compared to Google Sites.

Google Sites offers a limited number of templates suitable for various purposes, from personal blogs to business websites. These templates are designed for user engagement, simplicity, and functionality, allowing for customization to meet specific needs. However, compared to other website builders, Google Sites might offer less variety in templates and design customization options.

Google Sites Themes

On the other hand, 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.

Yola Themes

🏆 Winner: Google Sites

. Scoring 8.3, Google Sites offers a user-friendly interface that allows individuals with no coding experience to create and publish websites easily. Yola, with a score of 8.0, also offers a robust platform but with a slightly lower score. If ease of use is a priority, Google Sites is the clear winner in this category.

Learning Resources

🏆 Winner: Google Sites

. While both platforms offer solid learning resources, Google Sites goes a step further with its wide array of practical guides and comprehensive digital skill development programs, making it easier for users to learn and adapt.

When it comes to ecommerce, Yola has a clear advantage over Google Sites. Yola provides ecommerce capabilities through an integration with Ecwid, allowing for the sale of up to 1000 products without transaction fees. It supports multiple currencies and payment services, making it a suitable choice for small businesses looking to sell products online.

Yola ecommerce features:

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

Google Sites ecommerce features:

• No built-in ecommerce features

Ecommerce themes & templates

Yola offers a range of templates for building websites, including those suitable for ecommerce. However, the variety and design quality may not match those provided by other leading website builders. The templates are customizable, especially for users on higher-tier plans (Silver or Gold), which allow for deeper customization, including CSS editing.

Google Sites does not offer any ecommerce templates.

Product page customization

Yola’s ecommerce platform offers a variety of customization options for product pages, including the ability to manage product options and combinations. This feature is especially useful for selling items that come in different sizes, colors, or models, allowing customers to select their preferences directly from the product page.

Google Sites lacks any product page customization features. Products can be listed by embedding third-party platforms, and all customization can be done within those platforms.

Payment processing

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.

Google Sites does not have native payment features. Payment gateways can be integrated using external tools or links, by embedding HTML code for payment buttons from services like PayPal, Square, or Stripe, or by linking to an external checkout page. Third-party ecommerce widgets also offer a way to add payment functionalities. However, Google Sites doesn’t offer the comprehensive ecommerce capabilities that dedicated platforms provide.

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Winner: Google Sites

. Google Sites, with a score of 7.0, offers a user-friendly website builder editor that allows users to create and design websites without needing coding knowledge. With its drag-and-drop interface, users can easily add, customize, and arrange elements such as text, images, and videos on their web pages. It also provides a variety of templates and design options to help users get started quickly and ensure their site looks professional. Additionally, Google Sites integrates seamlessly with other Google services, enabling the incorporation of Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Maps directly into the website.

Yola’s website builder 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

. Neither Google Sites nor Yola offer a dedicated mobile editor app. However, Yola allows for some small changes to be made using a mobile browser, giving it a slight edge over Google Sites in this category. This feature can be beneficial for users who need to make quick updates or changes to their website while on the go.

Google Sites, on the other hand, does not provide any mobile editing capabilities, which can be a limitation for users who prefer to manage their website from a mobile device.

In summary, Yola receives a higher rating due to its ability to make some changes via a mobile browser, while Google Sites lacks any mobile editing capabilities.

Overall Result

:

Yola wins

. Yola scores 7.5, slightly higher than Google Sites’ 6.9. Yola offers a 30-day refundable period during which premium features can be tested, while Google Sites allows for some premium features to be tested within a 14-day trial period.

Google Sites and Yola offer a similar range of pricing options, with Google Sites providing more advanced features for larger businesses and enterprises.

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Winner: Google Sites

Google Sites and Yola both offer reliable hosting with a 99.9% uptime guarantee. However, Google Sites edges out with its extensive network of 21 global data centers and integration with Google Workspace, providing a more robust and scalable hosting solution. Yola, on the other hand, offers a more straightforward hosting solution with automatic and manual backup options, making it a good choice for small businesses and individuals.

🏆 Winner: Yola

Both Google Sites and Yola place a high priority on website performance and page speed, with Google Sites focusing on automated optimization, CDN, mobile optimization, browser caching, code minification, and use of AMP, and Yola emphasizing CDN, caching, code minification, server response time improvements, and image optimization. However, Yola gets the edge when it comes to website speed optimization.

Yola, like Google Sites, places a strong emphasis on website performance and page speed. Yola’s approach to enhancing site speed includes CDN, caching, code minification, server response time improvements, and image optimization. This approach leverages Yola’s fast servers and CDN network to boost load speed. Yola also suggests utilizing Google AMP for faster mobile page loads, although with some design compromises. Analysis of three Yola sites showed a range of Yola speed scores from 14 to 75, Google PSI scores from 8 to 80, and load times varying from 10.6 seconds to 2.3 seconds. Continuous maintenance and optimization are essential for keeping Yola stores fast.

Google Sites, on the other hand, does not disclose statistics about website Page Speed scores, or load times. However, it places a strong emphasis on automated optimization, CDN, mobile optimization, browser caching, code minification, and use of AMP. Google Sites also emphasizes on LCP, FID, CLS improvements for Core Web Vitals.

🏆 Winner: Google Sites.

Google Sites scores 6.4, slightly ahead of Yola’s 6.3. Both platforms offer a wide array of plugins and extensions to enhance website functionality, catering to various needs such as social media integration, e-commerce, chats, forms, video, audio, and more. However, Google Sites edges out with its integrations like Elfsight and Common Ninja that extend its basic functionalities to include features like social media feeds, review displays, chat support, e-commerce tools, and various interactive widgets. These integrations are designed to enhance user engagement, improve website functionality, and boost sales, making Google Sites a more powerful platform for businesses, educators, and individuals. Both platforms provide easy-to-use, customizable widgets that require no coding knowledge, ensuring that users can significantly enhance their Google Sites without technical difficulties.

Google Sites Applications

Yola Applications

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Overall Winner: Yola

. Yola stands out for its more comprehensive marketing tools, especially in email marketing, blogging, and ads and promotions. Google Sites, while offering basic SEO and analytics features, lacks in email marketing and blogging capabilities.

🏆 Winner: Google Sites

. In the comparison of Google Sites vs Yola, Google Sites takes the lead with a customer support score of 7.2. Google Sites offers a range of support options, including a Help Center, community forums, and direct support for Google Workspace customers. Paid subscribers benefit from 24/7 support for critical issues, making it a reliable choice for users who need consistent and comprehensive assistance.

Yola, with a customer support score of 6.3, provides 24/7 email support and prioritizes responses for paid plan subscribers. While Yola offers a call-you-back service and support via social media, it lacks the extensive direct support options available to Google Sites users. Despite this, Yola’s support is still commendable for its responsiveness and availability, particularly for small businesses and individual users.

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Winner: Google Sites

. Google Sites, with a security score of 9.3, offers robust security measures including SSL encryption, two-factor authentication, automatic malware scanning, and compliance with international data protection standards. It also benefits from Google’s regular security updates and infrastructure that offers DDoS protection and data redundancy.

Yola, scoring 8.3 in security, also provides strong security features such as SSL encryption, DDoS mitigation, firewalls, regular software updates, and data backup and recovery. However, it falls slightly short when compared to the comprehensive security measures provided by Google Sites.

🏆 Winner: Tie

. Neither Google Sites nor Yola offer AI capabilities in their website builders. Both platforms focus on providing a user-friendly interface for creating and managing websites, but do not incorporate AI tools or features. This lack of AI capabilities may limit the automation and personalization options available to users.

🏆 Winner: Google Sites

. Both Google Sites and Yola offer multi-user editing capabilities, allowing different levels of access and control based on the plan chosen. However, Google Sites has a slight edge due to its flexibility in management and development.

• Google Sites allows multiple users to collaborate with different roles, including Owners, who have full control, and Editors, who can modify content but not site settings. There’s no strict limit on the number of users who can edit a site. Viewers can only see the site, with no editing permissions. This structure supports collaborative website building with varied levels of access and control for different users.
• 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.

Additional Features

User Feedback

Users consistently praise Google Workspace, particularly Google Sites, for its seamless integration, ease of use, and collaborative features, making it a go-to solution for various professional and educational needs. The platform’s simplicity and user-friendly interface are lauded, enabling effortless website creation and sharing of information within organizations. While some users desire more customization options and additional features, overall, Google Workspace remains highly valued for its versatility and streamlined workflow facilitation.

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