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↗Open-source builds that already do this
Every project below is open source and already does this job today. Fork one, self-host it, or take the parts you need — the build prompt further down assumes an empty file, and this is the shortcut past that. Licences differ; check the one on each card before you ship.
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 scale
Webstudio Cloud hosting is backed by Cloudflare. Get ludicrously fast performance, world-class security, and scalability.
First-year cost
Keep paying
Paying is—cheaper in year one.
On cash alone, building overtakes the subscription at 1 seat.
Money you would actually spend
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
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 checked
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 →Cited sources · 5
Every page the run actually retrieved.
- official productWebstudio — Advanced Open Source Website Builder
- official pricingPricing — Straightforward and predictable pricing
- official docsFeatures — Learn about Webstudio's features
- open sourcewebstudio-is/webstudio
- open sourcemicroweber/microweber
Integrity checks
What held up, and what did not.
