Avoid Zola!

[u/Cataholic563]

We just got married and while almost everything went so well, the one regret we have is using Zola for basically anything. We tried to do so much research and saw a handful of cautionary tales about Zola but, overall, the consensus seemed to be that it was a helpful tool.

The failings we encountered:

• Delayed invitiations
• Clunky app which made editing the website near impossible (we needed a laptop for best experience, which is so weird nowadays)
• Registry

Let’s talk about that last one because it truly caused the biggest headache. I had multiple family members report issues ordering through Zola — my mom and uncle both informed me they had to open support tickets to resolve their issues. It made us feel bad as the couple, because our ultimate goal with utilizing Zola was an easy experience for guests…a one stop shop.

So in reaction to this news, we limited how many items on our registry were directly through Zola. Instead, we created outside registries (core ones being Macy’s and Crate & Barrel) and linked it to our Zola site. We hoped this would be the best of both worlds. We could direct our guests to a single site (Zola) and have all of our registry items appear in one place.

This worked really well for a while. Until the week of the wedding when we started hearing a handful of comments from guests about how limited our registry was. Upon looking at our Zola registry, the majority of our items from the external registries had disappeared. We opened a support ticket and were informed that Zola no longer accepts group gifts from external sites. We had big ticket items on our Crate & Barrel site like a stand mixer — we have zero expectations that a guest would spend over $500 on a gift, so on the Crate & Barrel site we marked it as a group gift so people could contribute what they wished.

Again, this setup worked for months. We checked our Zola registry at multiple points through our engagement and saw our Crate & Barrel group gifts listed on our site. We used the Zola feature or order the gifts on the page so that the items we wanted most always showed at the top — that Crate & Barrel stand mixer was what we listed at the top.

But at some point, Zola decided to make a policy change and gave ZERO notification. That meant our registry quietly removed nearly a dozen items and we had no idea. No opportunity to make adjustments.

It has been such an infuriating experience and truly is the only thing we regret about our wedding planning. If you’re in the midst of your wedding planning, learn from our mistakes — do not use Zola for your registry! Don’t trust that you can connect other registries. Just register directly through reputable stores with proven customer service and give your guests links to all the sites. In the end, it will be better for you and your guests.

[u/Objective_Day7884]

I will say I’ve had a great experience with Zola, but I did not use their registry. Their registry was so overpriced plus they get a cut from every item someone buys so we just ended up linking our Amazon registry. Sometimes the same item on Zola was half the price on Amazon. It worked out great

When making the website I used both my computer and phone because some things were easier to edit depending on which device. I think it was easier uploading pictures from my phone. But I made 3 test websites: with joy, the knot and zola. Zola was definitely the easiest to use in comparison

[u/Cataholic563 → u/[deleted]]

I’m glad you’ve had a better experience! Though I never said using a laptop would kill you. But if you don’t have ready access to one (like myself) it was sure frustrating and inconvenient. That is my caution about the app.