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:
  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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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