Yola vs SubHub: Comprehensive comparison guide for 2024

Final verdict

Yola and SubHub both offer unique features tailored to different user needs, but they cater to distinct audiences.

• 
  Yola (Overall Grade: 6.5/10)
  
  is a versatile website builder ideal for individuals and small businesses looking to create professional websites without advanced technical skills. It offers a user-friendly drag-and-drop interface, a wide range of customizable templates, and essential features like SEO tools and e-commerce capabilities. Yola excels in ease of use, design functionalities, and hosting quality, making it a solid choice for users seeking a comprehensive solution for their online presence.
• 
  SubHub (Overall Grade: 5.6/10)
  
  is specifically designed for content creators and entrepreneurs aiming to build and monetize membership sites. It provides tools for setting up subscription models, managing member access, and offering exclusive content. While SubHub may not have the same level of design flexibility or general e-commerce capabilities as Yola, it shines in its niche, offering a user-friendly platform for managing membership-based businesses.

Best for ecommerce

Verdict

: Yola and SubHub cater to different ecommerce needs. Yola is better suited for small businesses looking to sell a variety of products, while SubHub excels in membership and subscription-based ecommerce.

• 
  Yola
  
  : Yola is designed for small businesses and individuals who want to sell products online. It offers a user-friendly drag-and-drop interface and integrates with Ecwid for ecommerce capabilities. However, it lacks scalability and a marketplace for extensions. Yola’s ecommerce features include shipping and tax configurations, product catalog management, and guest checkout options. It scores 5.7 for ecommerce.
• 
  SubHub
  
  : SubHub is tailored for content creators and entrepreneurs focusing on membership and subscription models. It provides tools for setting up subscriptions, managing member access, and offering exclusive content. SubHub supports PayPal and Stripe for payment processing and allows for physical and digital product listings. It scores 5.9 for ecommerce.

Best for informational & business websites

Verdict

: Yola slightly edges out SubHub for informational business websites due to its broader range of templates, ease of use, and comprehensive security measures.

• 
  Yola
  
  : Yola is a user-friendly website builder designed for individuals and small businesses. It offers a drag-and-drop interface, making it easy to create professional-looking websites without advanced technical skills. Yola provides a variety of responsive and customizable templates, ensuring that websites look great on any device. With features like SEO tools, e-commerce capabilities, and custom domain publishing, Yola is a comprehensive solution for creating and managing an online presence. Scoring 7.4, Yola is particularly well-suited for those looking to establish an informational business website with ease.
• 
  SubHub
  
  : SubHub is tailored for creating and managing membership sites, making it ideal for content creators and entrepreneurs aiming to build a community and monetize their content. It simplifies setting up subscription models, managing member access, and providing exclusive content. While SubHub is user-friendly and efficient for membership-based businesses, it is more specialized and may not offer the same level of flexibility for general informational business websites. Scoring 7.2, SubHub is best for those focused on membership and subscription-based models.

Detailed comparison

🏆

Winner: Yola.

Yola offers a wider range of templates and designs, more customization flexibility, and more creative design possibilities than SubHub.

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

On the other hand, SubHub website builder offers a variety of customizable membership website templates designed to cater to different needs and themes. There are 14 specifically themed templates available, each designed to help users jump-start the design of their membership website homepages. These templates are fully customizable, allowing users to modify layouts, add or remove sections, and tailor content to fit their brand.

🏆 Winner: Yola

. Scoring 8.0, Yola is slightly easier to use than SubHub, which scores 7.7. Yola’s drag-and-drop interface and straightforward design tools make it a convenient choice for individuals and small businesses looking to establish an online presence. SubHub, while user-friendly, is more specialized, focusing on building membership websites and online courses.

Learning Resources

🏆 Winner: Tie

. Both Yola and SubHub offer a variety of learning resources, including tutorials, guides, and video tutorials. However, neither platform has a large community of users.

Yola and SubHub both offer ecommerce capabilities, but they cater to different needs. Yola is more suitable for small businesses and individuals who want to sell a variety of products online. It offers an easy-to-use, drag-and-drop website builder with ecommerce capabilities through an integration with Ecwid. However, its ecommerce features may be limited by the lack of tiered options for scalability and a conventional CMS dashboard, as well as the absence of a marketplace for extensions and plugins.

On the other hand, SubHub is designed for content creators and entrepreneurs who want to monetize their content through membership and subscription models. It offers a range of tools tailored for setting up subscription models, managing member access, and providing exclusive content.

Yola ecommerce features:

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

SubHub ecommerce features:

• Paypal and Stripe integration
• Physical and Digital product listings
• Pay-per view products

Ecommerce themes & templates

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. The templates are customizable, especially for users on higher-tier plans (Silver or Gold), which allow for deeper customization, including CSS editing. While Yola supports ecommerce functionality, the emphasis on the number and variety of ecommerce-specific templates is less pronounced, suggesting a more generalized approach to template offerings.

SubHub, on the other hand, does not have ecommerce specific templates. This might limit the customization options for users who want to create a unique and personalized online store.

Product page customization

Yola’s eCommerce platform offers a variety of customization options for your 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. Furthermore, Yola supports variable pricing for these product options, enabling you to adjust prices based on the specific variant chosen by the customer.

SubHub offers a range of product page customization options, allowing for the addition of physical items, digital downloads, and pay-per-view content. Features include the ability to manage product variants, upload images, and set visibility preferences. Users can also implement SEO strategies through meta tags and manage tax settings. Additional functionalities include member-specific discounts, image carousels, and individualized shipping costs.

Payment processing

When it comes to 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. While Yola doesn’t directly charge commission fees for transactions, the chosen payment gateway might impose its own fees, including transaction and possibly monthly fees.

SubHub supports two main payment gateways: Stripe and PayPal. These integrations allow for secure payment processing for subscriptions and store items using debit or credit cards. The platform itself does not charge commissions on transactions.

🏆

Winner: SubHub

. SubHub, with a score of 6.9, offers a user-friendly website builder tailored for creating and managing membership sites. Its features encompass customizable templates, diverse content publishing options, and flexible subscription plans with seamless integration for recurring revenue through payment processors. Additionally, SubHub supports online course creation, provides marketing tools like landing page builders, and offers detailed analytics for monitoring website metrics.

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.

Mobile editor/app

🏆

Winner: Yola

. Both Yola and SubHub do not have a dedicated mobile editor app. However, they allow some level of content management through the mobile browser version. Unfortunately, neither platform supports layout and design changes on mobile. Despite these limitations, Yola scores slightly higher than SubHub in the mobile editor category, making it the winner in this comparison.

Overall Result

:

Yola wins

. Yola scores 7.5 in product testing options, slightly higher than SubHub’s 7.0. Yola offers a free version and a 30-day refundable period for testing premium features, while SubHub provides a 14-day free trial and a 7-day money-back guarantee.

Yola offers a wider range of plans, including free and paid options, and the possibility to add an online store as an add-on. SubHub, on the other hand, offers three plans, each with a different set of features and storage limits.

Winner: Yola

. Yola offers managed cloud hosting with a 99.9% uptime guarantee and data centers located in the US and EU. SubHub also provides managed cloud hosting but does not disclose its uptime statistics or the locations of its data centers. Yola’s transparency and reliability give it a higher hosting quality score.

🏆 Winner: Yola

Both Yola and SubHub have strategies in place for website speed optimization, but Yola takes the lead with a more comprehensive approach and a focus on Core Web Vital improvements.

Yola’s approach to website speed optimization includes a variety of strategies such as the use of a Content Delivery Network (CDN), caching, code minification, server response time improvements, and image optimization. These strategies, combined with a focus on improving Core Web Vitals (Largest Contentful Paint, First Input Delay, and Cumulative Layout Shift), make Yola a strong contender in terms of website speed optimization. However, the load times and PageSpeed scores can vary widely depending on the level of optimization and the complexity of the website.

On the other hand, SubHub’s strategies for website speed optimization include image optimization, caching, and a mobile-optimized design. However, they do not provide any information on their Core Web Vitals improvements. Like Yola, the load times and PageSpeed scores for SubHub can vary depending on the level of optimization and the complexity of the website.

🏆 Winner: Yola.

Yola scores 6.3, offering a variety of functionalities through plugins and apps, including social media integration, e-commerce tools, marketing and SEO enhancements, customer engagement features, and various utility widgets. SubHub, with a score of 5.7, offers a set of built-in features, including customizable designs, member management, and subscription management, along with limited third-party integrations primarily with MailChimp, Google Analytics, and payment gateways like Stripe and PayPal. While Subhub provides a comprehensive toolkit for creating and managing membership sites, its range of external integrations might be seen as limited compared to Yola.

Yola Applications

🏆

Overall Winner: Yola

. Yola stands out for its more comprehensive marketing tools, especially in SEO, email marketing, and social media integration. SubHub, while lacking in social media integration, offers strong features in SEO and email marketing.

🏆 Winner: Tie

. When comparing Yola vs SubHub, both platforms offer robust customer support, each with its unique strengths. Yola provides 24/7 email support, with priority responses for Bronze, Silver, and Gold customers, and a call-you-back service for personalized assistance. Additionally, Yola supports inquiries via social media channels, ensuring users have multiple ways to get help.

SubHub, on the other hand, offers customer support through email and a support portal, where users can submit detailed queries and attach files. SubHub also provides an FAQ section for immediate answers to common questions, emphasizing accessible and responsive support.

Both Yola and SubHub have a customer support score of 6.3, indicating that while they offer solid support options, there is room for improvement in their services.

🏆

Winner: Yola

. Yola takes a comprehensive approach to security, with measures including SSL encryption, DDoS mitigation, firewalls, regular software updates, data backup, and recovery, as well as security audits and testing. These measures help protect against various threats such as data interception, denial-of-service attacks, unauthorized access, and system vulnerabilities. By prioritizing security at multiple levels, Yola aims to ensure the integrity and availability of its users’ websites, mitigating risks and enhancing overall trust and reliability in their platform.

SubHub, on the other hand, does not provide any information about its website security measures, which is a significant drawback. While it does outline its approach to data privacy in its privacy policy, the lack of transparency about website security is concerning. Therefore, Yola is the clear winner in this comparison.

🏆 Winner: None

. Neither Yola nor SubHub offer any AI capabilities. Both builders focus on providing a user-friendly interface and a range of features for building and managing an online presence, but they do not utilize AI to enhance the user experience or provide additional functionalities.

🏆 Winner: Yola

. Both Yola and SubHub offer multi-user editing capabilities, but Yola scores higher in user management.

• 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.
• Subhub allows multiple user accounts, however the platform does not specify how many accounts are supported.

SubHub User Roles and Access Levels:

Additional Features

User Feedback

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.

User feedback on SubHub presents a mix of positive and negative experiences, emphasizing the platform’s feature-rich environment and customizable templates. Users appreciate the flexibility and the quality of customer service, highlighting the platform’s continual updates and support as key benefits. However, some users express dissatisfaction with aspects such as the platform’s interface, lack of community features, and service fees for ticket resale. Concerns were also raised about the custom design service and mobile-friendly solutions taking longer than expected.

FAQ