Websites and hosting decision

Webstudio Cloud

Prefer self-hosting: the product is open-source (official GitHub repo) so a technical user can deploy and run the Builder/CLI and avoid the hosted subscription while retaining core features.

Visit website
You pay

$15/mo

$180/yr

Read off the official pricing page.

You’d pay instead

$20one-off6 h to build

$0/mo6 h/mo upkeep

On cash alone, building overtakes the subscription at 1 seat.

What a replacement has to do

  • Visual WYSIWYG editing of pages and styles, bind external data (Resources/GraphQL), export static or dynamic site, and deploy to a host.

What it still won’t have

  • Managed Webstudio Cloud hosting (Cloudflare-backed CDN and Workers)
  • Built-in overage protection and page view handling on Cloud plan
  • Managed backups and staging publishing on the hosted Pro plan
  • Cloud-hosted analytics and edge optimizations provided by Webstudio Cloud

What remains hard

  • Infrastructure at scaleWebstudio Cloud hosting is backed by Cloudflare. Get ludicrously fast performance, world-class security, and scalability.
Read the build prompt

First-year cost

Keep paying

Paying is—cheaper in year one.

On cash alone, building overtakes the subscription at 1 seat.

Paid seatsseats

Money you would actually spend

Keep paying
—

Subscription price × seats × 12

Build it
—

AI build —APIs + hosting —

Time you would spend

—

—

What you would spend

What we assumed

The verdict above measures whether you could build it. This one is only about money.

Runnable build prompt

Not run yet
Build a self-hosted instance of Webstudio using the official GitHub repo (Node.js 18+, Yarn/PNPM), deploy the builder backend and export CLI, and host exported sites on Cloudflare Pages or Vercel. In scope: clone and run https://github.com/webstudio-is/webstudio, install dependencies, run migrations (if any), configure project storage and asset uploads, enable the CLI static/dynamic export, wire a sample HTTP Resource and webhook form, configure deployment to Cloudflare Pages (or Vercel) with SSL, and add automated backups. Out of scope: reimplementing the visual editor or core export logic. Include error handling, startup scripts, and end-to-end tests that publish a sample project and verify rendered HTML and resource bindings.
How we checked5 sources · 1/1 runs agreed · evidence score 99

How the score was reached

  • Self-host verdict base92
  • An open-source build was found+5
  • 5 cited sources+3
  • Price verified on pricing page+3
  • 1/1 assessment runs agreed+4
  • Hard moats found in the evidence-3
  • Evidence score99

The base comes from the verdict. Everything under it is a check that either happened or did not, and each one is a fact frozen in this record rather than a judgement made at render time - so the same evidence always produces the same number.

How scoring works →

Integrity checks

What held up, and what did not.

✓ Price read off the page✓ 1 independent runs, one answer✓ Citations limited to fetched pages! 1 moat quoted from the page