Readymag

What Readymag is

Readymag is a web publishing tool for design-led work. The framerwebsites.com blog describes it as "a design-led web publishing tool built for editorial work" and says it sits behind digital magazines, photography portfolios, visual essays, agency case studies and branded longform stories. PickPlugins, an alternatives site, says it was founded in 2012, is headquartered in Brooklyn, New York, and grew from a tool for designing zines into a platform for websites, presentations, portfolios and other digital publications, built for people who do not write code.

The reader it fits is a designer, art director, photographer or small editorial team for whom the look of the page is the point. Everything here comes from third-party pages: PickPlugins, Website Planet, Siter.io, Framer's own comparison page and blog, and a freelance web designer's comparison. Where a competitor's page makes a claim, it is attributed as that competitor's claim.

What you build and how

The canvas. The framerwebsites.com blog says the tool "centers on a free canvas": you drag, place, layer and overlap elements with full control over typography, color and rhythm, and the result "feels closer to print design than to a typical website". A freelance web designer's comparison page calls it a freeform canvas with "nearly unlimited layout possibilities", good for layered type, animation and out-of-the-box visuals, and adds that it is easy to over-design or lose structure. One reader review on Website Planet, dated September 2022, praises the transitions and animation features and calls it flexible for designers who want to customize everything from scratch. Another from the same year complains that the interface logic is poor and that it runs slowly on a Mac M1. Website Planet's own reviewer says it has a steep learning curve and took some time to get used to.

Grids, fonts and images. PickPlugins lists customizable grids, access to over 5,000 free fonts, and an Unsplash integration with more than 2 million photos. It says you can design landing pages, presentations, editorials, e-shops and portfolios, collaborate with team members and publish immediately. Those are the entry points for the portfolio-builders membership as well: the same canvas serves a photographer's portfolio, an agency's case-study showcase or a one-off exhibition piece.

Layouts for each device. Siter.io's comparison, which is a competitor's page, says Readymag handles responsiveness through 3 layouts, desktop, mobile and tablet, that you lay out separately. The framerwebsites.com blog describes the same approach as manual: you build the desktop layout, then rebuild it for tablet and mobile, and a change at one breakpoint usually means revisiting the others. Framer contrasts that with its own inherited breakpoints, which is a claim from a competing product.

Pages and content. The framerwebsites.com blog says Readymag offers a lighter content model than a database-backed CMS: you can build collections of pages and reuse design across them, which suits a publication running one long story at a time. The freelance designer's comparison says there is no CMS and calls Readymag "not built for ongoing edits", a tool for a designer more than for a client who wants to update text. Framer's comparison page puts the contrast plainly: Readymag "excels at self-contained visual stories", while a site that needs shared content, components and a release process belongs on Framer. It also says the two can be used together, with Readymag producing a special editorial or exhibition piece that a Framer site links to.

Selling and forms. Website Planet's reviewer says Readymag lacks dedicated blogging, email or marketing features and offers barebones e-commerce, SEO and lead-generation tools. E-commerce is limited to 10 physical products or fewer, with payments through Stripe or Ecwid only, and no digital products, promotions or newsletters. Website Planet adds that Readymag itself recommends integrating e-commerce through a third-party app. Siter.io notes that on the free plan, forms, Lottie animations and custom code are preview-only.

SEO. The sources disagree. The framerwebsites.com blog says both tools cover meta tags and sitemaps but gives Framer the structural advantage. The freelance designer's page calls Readymag not SEO-friendly and prone to slow loads. A reader weighing a portfolio that needs to be found in search should test a published project before relying on either view.

Publishing and hosting. PickPlugins lists free hosting and free SSL, and project export as PDFs. According to Siter.io, citing Readymag's pricing page, code export exists only on the top Advanced plan, and Advanced also allows embedding a project into an external site with an iframe. On the other plans, Siter.io says there is no documented way to take the built site with you.

Collaboration. PickPlugins says you can collaborate with team members. Siter.io lists 1 collaborator on the Personal plan, and Framer's comparison says plans vary by published projects, domains, views and collaborators.

The evidence from the pages

Pricing differs by source, and the two price lists are in different currencies. PickPlugins lists a Free plan that creates a 10-page published website with 1 collaborator, then Personal at $15 a month, Freelancer at $25, Studio at $40 and Business at $65, plus an Extra plan with custom pricing and priority support. It also states that annual billing carries a 10% discount.

Siter.io, whose page says it was checked on 2026-09-04 and cites Readymag's own pricing page, gives a different structure. Free is 1 website of up to 10 pages on a Readymag domain with Readymag branding. Personal is EUR 13 a month billed yearly or EUR 18 monthly, with 1 published site on a custom domain, no branding, unlimited pages, 10,000 views a month, custom fonts, password protection and 1 collaborator. Freelancer is EUR 27 a month billed yearly and allows 3 custom domains, 5 published sites and 25,000 views. Advanced is EUR 51 a month billed yearly and allows 10 custom domains, unlimited published sites, 75,000 views and code export. Siter.io says those are EU prices and that it did not convert them. It also reports that students and registered non-profits get 50% off any plan.

The most unusual detail is the view cap. Siter.io says Readymag is the only builder in its comparison set that meters how many people look at your work: views are capped per month across all published sites, so a project that gets picked up elsewhere can hit a ceiling. That is a competitor's framing of a published limit, so check the live pricing page. Website Planet says Readymag has 3 plans and calls the Personal plan the better fit for an online editorial or a highly visual portfolio with a custom domain, while questioning whether Freelance justifies its cost.

On support, Website Planet's reviewer emailed the team and got a reply within 30 minutes, which it describes as canned and not exhaustive. It credits the community forum, small but attentive and active, with rescuing the support score. SpotSaas, a software comparison site, says Readymag does not offer a free trial, a point separate from the free plan listed above.

Who it suits and who it does not

Readymag suits an independent designer, photographer or art director building a portfolio, a visual essay or a presentation where typography and layout carry the message. It also suits a small studio making an editorial or exhibition piece that stands alone, perhaps linked from a larger site. The 10-page free plan is enough to test the canvas.

It is a poor fit for a marketing site with a blog and a growing page library, for a shop beyond 10 products, or for a client who expects to edit text without a designer. A developer wanting code export will find it only on the highest plan, and Website Planet's reviewer calls the learning curve steep. Several of these pages send those readers to Framer, Squarespace or Shopify instead.