Vinny Lingham's dashboard

Vinny Lingham posted an update in Yola on October 01, 2009 05:02:

Yola Pro Package Update - Message from the 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

A comment on the update "Introducing Yola Pro" in Yola:

Hi Diane

Very good question. I think some clarification is in order. Yola does not charge for hosting or bandwidth. Even our free users get unlimited bandwidth and unlimited hosting.

To clarify: Hosting refers to PUBLISHED sites. Once a site is published, any files that are stored there are never removed and not metered (You can have unlimited traffic and usage of the files that are published). However, there are some costs involved with storing large amounts of files that are in the file manager and are not used often.

For example, you could use up you 1GB free limit to build your website using Yola Free and if you wanted more space, you would simply delete old files in the File Manager - they will not be removed from your website.

I hope I'm making it clear? The limits are placed on storing files - not the use of them on your pages or the use of them once your site is published.

As you can imagine, there are many people who try to abuse Yola's services and have been storing large amount of files which they never need or don't use. These limits are also in place to protect us. The reality is that 98% of our users don't even reach these limits.

Yola has everyone's best interests at heart and we're trying to build a sustainable company that provides both a high quality free and paid service to all Internet users. I personally value all your feedback - so please keep it coming.

Regards
Vinny Lingham
CEO, Yola – Vinny Lingham, on October 01, 2009 02:45

A comment on the update "Introducing Yola Pro" in Yola:

Hi Diane

Very good question. I think some clarification is in order. Yola does not charge for hosting or bandwidth. Even our free users get unlimited bandwidth and unlimited hosting.

To clarify: Hosting refers to PUBLISHED sites. Once a site is published, any files that are stored there are never removed and not metered (You can have unlimited traffic and usage of the files that are published). However, there are some costs involved with storing large amounts of files that are in the file manager and are not used often.

For example, you could use up you 1GB free limit to build your website using Yola Free and if you wanted more space, you would simply delete old files in the File Manager - they will not be removed from your website.

I hope I'm making it clear? The limits are placed on storing files - not the use of them on your pages or the use of them once your site is published.

As you can imagine, there are many people who try to abuse Yola's services and have been storing large amount of files which they never need or don't use. These limits are also in place to protect us. The reality is that 98% of our users don't even reach these limits.

Yola has everyone's best interests at heart and we're trying to build a sustainable company that provides both a high quality free and paid service to all Internet users. I personally value all your feedback - so please keep it coming.

Regards
Vinny Lingham
CEO, Yola – Vinny Lingham, on October 01, 2009 02:45

A comment on the update "Introducing Yola Pro" in Yola:

Hey Donald

Yola has UNLIMITED Bandwidth.

Regards
Vinny Lingham
CEO, Yola – Vinny Lingham, on October 01, 2009 02:38

Vinny Lingham replied on September 21, 2009 05:48 to the problem "Yola hosted sites blocked by SAIX/Telkom" in Yola:

Hi All

Sorry for the late update but I've been working around the clock to deal with this issue. We are taking this incident very seriously and will take appropriate action. Unfortunately, I cannot provide more information at this stage and I apologize to all our South African users. I trust that after many years of telecom monopoly in SA, this is not unexpected in the least for any of us.

Regards

Vinny
CEO, Yola

Vinny Lingham replied on July 16, 2009 17:47 to the question "can I use my own domain name after I have published my site?" in Yola:

Hi Darron

What do you feel is a fair price for a domain name?

Vinny
CEO, Yola

Vinny Lingham replied to a topic that has since been removed from Yola. see the change log

Vinny Lingham started following the update "We are Changing Our Name!" in Yola.

Vinny Lingham started following the problem "Lost site, problems with servers?" in Weebly.

Vinny Lingham set one of Emmy's replies as an official response to "China blocking access to Synthasite?" in Yola

Vinny Lingham marked one of Emmy's replies in Yola as useful. Emmy replied to the question "China blocking access to Synthasite?".

Vinny Lingham started following the idea "New Options for Domain Registration with SynthaSite!" in Yola.

Vinny Lingham replied on March 02, 2009 06:20 to the praise "Reached 1000 replies tonight... Whoooo hoooo Party time excellent" in Yola:

Congrats Ed! Thanks for all your contributions!

Vinny Lingham
CEO, SynthaSite

Vinny Lingham replied on February 19, 2009 01:47 to the problem "Problems with SynthaSite: One Long Term User Group's Perspective" in Yola:

Hi Ben,

We're sorry to hear that you're leaving SynthaSite, but thank you for taking the time to send us your feedback.

Vinny

Vinny Lingham shared an idea in Yola on February 17, 2009 19:18:

SynthaSite Raises Series B Funding!

I'm proud to announce that Reinet Fund has just invested $20 million into SynthaSite, securing our future and enabling us to continue to build our business model and product offering. This is a massive vote of confidence in SynthaSite, and we owe it to each and every one of you. Our interaction with all of you in this forum plays a large role in guiding the direction we take. Thank you for all of your feedback and support. It's been instrumental in our success.

See my blog post and the press release for more details about the funding and thank you again for all of your support.

Vinny Lingham
Founder and CEO

Vinny Lingham replied on February 17, 2009 06:44 to the problem "Trying to upload files to dreamhost...it is not going so well. Please help" in Yola:

Hi Alan

If you could email support@synthasite.com, we can help you troubleshoot your problem more closely.

My question to you, however, is:

Why wouldn't you want us to host your website? It's free, and whenever you make changes, it's instantly reflected when you click update - no downloads and zip files. I'd love to hear from you on this.

Regards
Vinny Lingham
CEO, SynthaSite

Vinny Lingham set one of Vinny Lingham's replies as an official response to "What's synthasite top five "to do list"?" in Yola

Vinny Lingham replied on February 03, 2009 06:19 to the question "What's synthasite top five "to do list"?" in Yola:

Hi Deathnote!

Thanks for asking! SynthaSite's current policy is not to discuss our features until we deploy them - for various reasons. I will, however, share with you some of the things we are working on that should be available sometime in the next 3-6 months:

1. Improving our domain name features (including things like DNS management)
2. Allowing the modification of the footer ("Built with SynthaSite") - there will be a small fee for this
3. Improving our styles and layout options
4. Adding more widgets
5. Much, much more!!!

I can't give specific dates or make any promises - but I can say that we have a lot planned for this year - so stay tuned. We (myself especially!) are definitely listening to each and every suggestion and using those suggestions to influence our product plans, so please keep them coming!

Regards
Vinny Lingham
CEO, SynthaSite

Vinny Lingham replied on November 24, 2008 03:31 to the question "Is there (or going to be) a "Pro" version of Synthasite?" in Yola:

Hi Ry

Thanks for your question. I personally realize that this is a concern for many of our users. We're working hard on a creative solution to allowing users to remove it. There is something in the works - but it will only be ready sometime next year. We try desperately not to charge our users for things that we believe should always be free with our product - however when giving our free templates we have to give attribution to the designers that provided them.

We are charging our customers for value added services such as the domain names that we sell right now and we're investigating options around the footer links. We only launched SynthaSite a year ago and have been focused on building key features for our users and your voice is heard - your feedback in this respect is vital and thanks for it!

Vinny Lingham
CEO, SynthaSite

Vinny Lingham started following the idea "We are a finalist in the Itweb Personality Awards 2008!" in Yola.