*** Welcome to piglix ***

Yola (webhost)

Yola
Privately held company
Predecessor Synthasite
Founded Cape Town, South Africa, March 2007 (2007-03)
Founder Vinny Lingham (Co-founder and former CEO)
Brent Viljoen (Co-founder and CPO)
Headquarters San Francisco, California, US
Key people
Trevor Harries-Jones (CEO)
Brent Viljoen (CPO)
David Saxton (VP of Business Development and Marketing)
Lisa Retief (VP of Engineering)
Monique Viljoen-Platts (VP of Customer Service)
Products Yola Web Site Builder
Services Website builder, Web hosting
Number of employees
76
Website yola.com

Yola (/ˈjlə/) is a website builder and website hosting company headquartered in San Francisco. However, it was founded in Cape Town, South Africa. People without programming and graphic design skills 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 Wix, Weebly, Jimdo and Webs.

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. The company was renamed Yola on March 26, 2009. 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."

According to Yola's management, together with the Synthasite users, in January 2009 there were more than a million users of the tools, including small businesses, individuals and groups.

In February 2012 Yola introduced a fully functional online store that provides shopping cart functionality and gateways for various payment providers among other things. It is priced as a $10.00 per month add on for customers with a hosting package. The online store feature is being developed and maintained by a company called Ecwid. Yola users can now integrate this store widget into their websites via simple drag and drop. While this addition has been well received, critics point out that Yola will now be dependent on an external company for the development of one of their key features.


...
Wikipedia

...