When we started out, we wanted to bring you the absolute best website building software on the planet. Since then, we’ve come a very long way, and yet we have so much more we want to offer to you. Today, we have announced the launch of our “Pro” package - which is the next phase of Yola, focusing on the needs of small business customers.

By offering enhanced features and tools, such as Premium Styles, advertising credits & bigger file sizes as part of our Pro package, we are able deliver real value for your money – while continuing to offer an extremely robust free option. In creating this package, we’ve made some changes to our free service. With Yola Free, you can create 5 websites with unlimited pages with 1GB of storage per site. This is more storage than most of our users will ever need, but in order to ensure that we can maintain a reliable and robust offering for everyone, we will charge for usage in excess of that. The Pro version of Yola will allow users to build up to 25 sites with 5GB of storage per site, upload files as big as 100MB, and upload HTML files to their site. In addition, Yola Pro customers will get a Premium Style, removal of the Yola Link and over $50 in advertising and stock photo credits. For more info, see the package details and our FAQs.

As a result of these changes, we are able to focus our development resources on the needs of our small businesses customers who are using Yola to promote their businesses. We’re excited to be launching Yola Pro and are looking forward to feedback on how we can improve our offering.

Vinny Lingham
Founder and CEO

I want to thank all our users and customers for all the input relating to the launch of our recent “Pro” package.  Your feedback is very valuable to us.  As a result of all the interactions and feedback from our users, we’re considering making some changes to our offering to ensure that everyone sees the huge value in what Yola is doing.  Thanks for all the productive & constructive comments.

We are a small company and are very passionate about our product and our users, so it’s important that we offer a paid package to meet the needs of a certain portion of our userbase in order to ensure that we can offer a free package to those who cannot afford to pay for it.

Right now, we’re in the process of gathering data and analyzing it.  Once we complete this, we will be in a better position to understand what your needs are and customize our Pro package to suit the needs of our paying customers, without significantly reducing the value of our free package.  In order to maintain a free service for everyone, we do need a small portion of our users to pay for our premium packages to ensure that it’s financially viable.

We really value our community and trust that you will understand that as a startup company, we need to experiment to figure out what works and eventually come up with a win-win solution.

So, in the interim, please be patient as we deliberate - we are working around the clock to understand your needs better so please keep sending us feedback!

Regards
Vinny Lingham
CEO, Yola

We know Yola site owners really like being able to modify and personalize their sites to meet their needs, so we’ve added some new features that provide even more choices. We’ve improved banners and backgrounds, added an option to take out the Yola Link, and added new Styles.

Change your background

We’re greatly expanding the number of Styles that let you change the background of your site. We also added Apply to All, so you can easily use the same background and banner image throughout your site – makes it so simple to update everything at once. To learn more, go to Personalize your Style.

Remove the footer

We love the Yola Link at the bottom of every page, but realize it might not be for everyone. With the new Yola Link Removal feature, you can take out the Yola Link from all current and future sites in your account for only $9.95/year. If you choose to remove it, you can do it from the bottom of your page within the Sitebuilder.

Try out a new Style

Check out two fantastic styles that take advantage of the above new features. They are named Flowershop and Victoria – try them out with the next site you build.

We have lots more features coming to give you even more customization, so check back on the blog, or better yet, join our community.

iStock Images used in a website

We’ve all heard the expression “A picture is worth a thousand words”. On your web site, the right images can quickly convey your site’s topic and create an impression for your business.  We created this site using iStock photos.

We’re making it easy to get great photos and images for your site, by partnering with iStockphoto. They have an easy-to-search library full of royalty-free (no licensing costs) images. Prices are as low as US $1.00.

As a special offer for Yola users, you can get 5 images for free (from a selection of 30), and 20% off your first order. Sign up with iStockphoto and find some great pictures for your site.

SynthaSite just rolled out another release of new features today.

1) Layouts!
You asked for a way to create more professional looking sites.  We listened.  Click the new “Change Layout” button on the far left of your screen and select from 9 different options!  You can start with a blank page, or use a preset layout with drop zones to give you greater control over your content.  Drag and drop widgets vertically OR horizontally to easily achieve the best look and feel.  You can use the same layout for your whole site, or a different one on each page, as you prefer.  The layouts work with all of our existing styles, so whether you are new to SynthaSite, or an old hand, you can start making use of this feature today.  We look forward to seeing what all you wonderfully creative site builders do with it!

2) A new style!
We have added a new style called “Burlap” which is optimized for the new layouts.  The Burlap style supports custom banner and background images, and there are four beautiful color palettes to choose from.  There has never been a better time to build a new website, or give an old one a “make over”!

3) Searchable help topics!
SynthaSite has always offered tutorials and FAQs, but as we have grown into a more complex, feature rich tool we have recognized the need to grow our library of help files and make them searchable.  Check out our new support page, and use the searchbox to ask any site building questions you have.  If the answer isn’t there - drop us an email.  We will be sure to add it.
Additional features: submit a support query and check the updates online using your private code.  Vote on the most and least helpful topics.  Just read the basics or click through to other related topics if you want to learn more.

We are committed to making site building easier and more fun for all our customers.  We look forward to your feedback on our latest release!

We’re releasing a bunch of new features today and the update is taking a bit longer than we expected.  We’ve had so many new users join us over the past couple of months that its taking a while to update everything.

In the meantime, your published sites are available and we expect to have the site builder available for login soon.  Thanks for your patience.  You’ll love the new features we’re releasing.

We’re making some exciting changes to our user interface and need to take down the site builder this Thursday (July 10, 2008) between 1am and 4am PST.  During this time, you will not be able to make changes or updates to your sites.  Your published sites will stay up and your visitors will still be able to visit your sites.

Thanks for your patience.  We think you’ll really like the changes we’re making!

SynthaSite is upgrading a server component on Friday (20 June 2008) morning and need to take the SynthaSite Site Builder offline between 1am and 2am PST.  During this time, you will not be able to log in and make changes or updates to your sites.  Your published sites will be unaffected.

We’re beefing up our servers on Thursday (12 June 2008) morning and need to take SynthaSite offline between 1am and 4am PST as part of this upgrade.  During this time, you will not be able to make changes or updates to your sites.  But don’t worry, visitors to your published sites will not have any interruption and will still be able to see all the great stuff you’ve been publishing.

Thanks for your patience as we scale SynthaSite to meet the needs or our ever growing user community!