Plasmic vs Builder

Both are visual builders for high-performance headless content on websites. Both are used for headless content management and have growth/optimization features, and let you drag and drop components from your codebase. But here are some of the key differences and tradeoffs:

Builder's breadth vs. Plasmic's depth. Builder currently has broader support for more development frameworks than Plasmic. Plasmic instead optimizes for deeper/richer capabilities within its core set of frameworks—enabling deeper code component support (see how children props are handled, for instance), deeper customizability (for instance, richer context-aware sidebar controls), component-mapping Figma import, no-code interactions, and much more. This is one of the main reasons why there exist many more green checkmarks in the Plasmic column in the feature matrices below.
Focus on being a CMS. Builder is a headless CMS first and foremost. Plasmic is a more general-purpose no-/low-code platform—but one where a main use case is managing rich content and pages. Plasmic also has a structured CMS built in (with things like localization, versioning, and so on), but it is unopinionated about where your data comes from, and partners with a number of other best-of-breed headless CMSes.
Enterprise. Plasmic has its roots supporting large enterprises, so Plasmic has a deeper bench on this front. For instance: branching/approval collaboration workflow, integration with existing localization workflows, organizations with multiple sub-teams and workspaces, cross-project versioned import dependencies, deeper platform customizability, hybrid/on-premise architecture, and more.

Contact our enterprise team for a side-by-side demo, or if you'd like to explore a migration. The feature matrix that follows was last updated 2023Q1. Have questions about any part of this? Reach out to our team.

Web design

Feature

Plasmic

Builder

Basic page-building

✅

Template library

✅

Style tokens: reusable values for spacing, colors, fonts, etc.

✅

❌

Mixins: reusable bundles of styles

✅

❌

Variants: powerful foundation for making different versions of components

✅

❌

Artboards: design across multiple screen sizes at once

✅

❌

Simplified and more intuitive layout, not simply passing through raw CSS, which has many sharp corners

✅

❌

Built-in customizable design system - edit any aspect of complex components like Selects, but also simpler ones like Button, Switch, etc.

✅

❌

Free-form drawing and positioning: for those sections of your page where need to break out of the box model, or where you are just mocking up new ideas

✅

❌

Cross-project imports: for instance, a central design system project that powers other projects (even across different teams)

✅

❌

Predictable styling when publishing to production - sealed CSS, not simply inheriting and leaking styles from outer scope where your design is published

✅

❌

Default styles: define your own global styles for h1's/links/etc., and even for different breakpoints and states

✅

❌

CSS transforms and transitions

✅

❌

Built-in interactive effects and animations beyond basic reveals, like variable parallax scroll, 3D tilt, hover effects that style descendants, etc.

✅

❌

High-fidelity Figma import that can import designs like these random popular templates in the Figma community: one, two, three

✅

❌

Figma importer converts instances of Figma components to Plasmic components including Figma variants and props

✅

❌

Multi-brand theming: different versions of certain styles, components, and pages (without forking everything), and easily switch between them

✅ Global variants

❌

Easy built-in hosting for quick publish and deploy

✅

❌

No-code creation

Feature

Plasmic

Builder

Built-in integrations

✅

Server-side integrations and data backends—secure, full-stack data integrations with platforms like Airtable, SQL databases, Zapier, Google Sheets, and authenticated APIs

✅

❌

Built-in component store: including off-the-shelf widgets, data integrations, interactive effects, design system libraries, and more

✅

6 comp-onents

Extended built-in integrations from CMSes like Strapi/Sanity to databases like Airtable and Supabase

✅

❌

Create dynamic pages/dynamic routes (using route and query parameters) in Studio without code

✅

❌

Built-in user logins, authentication, roles and permissions

✅

❌

Free-form dynamic data

✅

❌

Integrated code editor for code-driven designs

✅

❌

Data fetching components that can themselves take dynamic inputs and be nested

✅

❌

Visual dynamic values picker

✅

❌

Create components in different variants or states

✅

❌

No-code interactions and state management

✅

❌

Style tokens as Theo files

✅

❌

Shopify app

❌

✅

Development

Feature

Plasmic

Builder

Headless API

✅

Code components with custom controls

✅

Deploy to arbitrary tech stacks

✅

High-performance generated pages and assets

✅

Code component slots

✅

❌

Codegen

✅

❌

Build your own data integrations as components (isomorphic SSR/SSG data-fetching)

✅

❌

Components with dynamic props, such as a dropdown that lists the current products available from a chosen store

✅

❌

Custom data fetching components with pre-render-time fetch support

✅

❌

Multi-environment deployments—e.g. dev to staging to production—through tagged publishing

✅

❌

Component override API that allows full developer flexibility

✅

❌

Use your components directly without needing to wrap them

✅

❌

Tokens as CSS custom properties

✅

❌

GitHub integration

✅

❌

Global context components that provide project-wide dependency injection

✅

❌

Codegen syncing that allows concurrent code changes and visual changes

✅

❌

Support for Svelte and other frameworks (though still not with code components)

❌

✅

Content and growth

Feature

Plasmic

Builder

Content creator mode

✅

Headless CMS

✅

A/B testing, custom targeting, scheduled content

Dynamic variants

Basic hard copies

Multiple overlapping tests/targets/schedules on the same content

✅

Dynamic variants over pages or components

✅

❌

Co-vary any set of pages/components together

✅

❌

Dynamic variants that record specific overrides, rather than hard copies

✅

❌

A/B testing has first-class integration with optimization platforms like Google Optimize and Optimizely

✅

❌

A/B testing and optimization features have first-class integration with analytics platforms like Google Analytics, Mixpanel, Amplitude, etc.

✅

❌

Basic localization

✅

Localization framework integration

✅

❌

Localization support with variants

✅

❌

Integrated headless CMS with localization

✅

❌

RTL support

✅

❌

Editable zones within pages

❌

✅

Organization and collaboration at scale

Feature

Plasmic

Builder

Multiplayer

✅

Version history

✅

Hierarchical organizational model (Plasmic uniquely supports arbitrary teams and sub-groups of projects with varying ACLs, with customizable roles and permissions)

✅

Branching

✅

❌

Components that lock down edits/overrides

✅

❌

Cross-project imports and dependencies, including across permission boundaries and teams

✅

❌

Multi-project integration into a codebase

✅

❌

In-production previews

✅

❌

Unlimited version history, across both visual designs and CMS content

✅

❌

Find/replace all components and objects

✅

❌

Integrated headless CMS with localization

✅

❌

Git version control with codegen

✅

❌

Enterprise requirements

Feature

Plasmic

Builder

SSO

✅

Custom roles/permissions

✅

Partner agency network

✅

SOC 2 compliance

✅

❌

On-premise offering available

✅

❌

Managed isolated cloud deployment available

✅

❌

Support ejection with full source code for user projects

✅

❌

Domain capture SSO

✅

❌

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