React Bricks vs Builder.io

Introduction

React Bricks and Builder.io are both Headless CMSs with visual editing capabilities, making it easy for marketers to create and manage content without needing to write code.

Both platforms have an extensive set of features that allows for advanced customizations, such as custom content blocks and custom fields. Additionally, they both offer integrations with external content sources, like other headless CMSs or e-commerce platforms, providing a powerful and intuitive tool for content creation and management.

Despite their similarities, React Bricks and Builder.io differ in several ways. Let’s take a look.

Content management vision

Builder.io aims to give marketing content editors freedom to create without needing developers' help.

React Bricks, instead, gives editors autonomy while guaranteeing the corporate design system remains consistent. To achieve this, React Bricks has a set of pre-made bricks, but they are only meant to act as a reference: the intention is that designers and developers should create all of the necessary content blocks, with a unified design system that is consistent, ensuring that the corporate image is always preserved.

Visual editing interface

With Builder.io, you edit texts using sidebar text input fields, and you can preview the changes in real time on the page, meaning you can make sure everything is just right before you publish it.

React Bricks takes this concept one step further by allowing you to directly edit the page content inline, just as if you were using a word processor like Word or Pages. This is more intuitive for content editors, as it eliminates the need to switch between the page and the sidebar, allowing them to make changes quickly and efficiently.

Custom React components

React Bricks focuses on the React technology, supporting all the main React-based frameworks, like Next.js, Gatsby and Remix.

Builder.io works with the React, but also with Vue, Qwik, Svelte and Angular, so, if you are not using React, Builder.io may be a better option for you.

React Bricks makes it easy to use components from your design system. Just add React Bricks visual editing components like Text, Image, and Repeater to your JSX code to enable visual editing. Then, add a schema property to your component to enable editing of props via sidebar controls for what's not directly editable (e.g. background color).

With Builder.io, integration is different. You must register your components with all their props, which will be edited using sidebar controls, without inline editing.

Hosting and Deployment

Both Builder.io and React Bricks provide the opportunity to host the frontend website wherever you want, giving you the flexibility to choose the best platform for your needs.

As far as we know, Builder.io does not offer an option to self-host the backend APIs. React Bricks offers self-hosting as an add-on for Enterprise plans. This feature allows you to have full control over your API infrastructure and server location, and gives you the ability to customize it according to your specific needs.

Pricing model

Builder.io pricing model is based on page views. This is accomplished by inserting a tracking pixel into each page to track the number of visits, which may not be suitable or ideal for enterprise customers.

React bricks, on the other hand, does not track your page views; its pricing model is based on the number of pages, authors, support level and the features required. For enterprise customers, plans are tailored to their specific needs.

A/B Testing and Environments

Builder.io has two specific features that React Bricks doesn’t currently have: A/B testing and the ability to create test environments. These features are planned for 2023 for React Bricks.

React Bricks's A/B testing will be based on a new GDPR-compliant analytics system, which users can opt-in to.

For Environments, the admin user will be able to create branches of content and merge them. This is useful for iterating on a new version of the website, while leaving the production code untouched.

Collaboration

Builder.io and React Bricks use different strategies to manage the collaboration of several editors working on the same website.

Builder.io offers real-time collaboration, allowing multiple users to work on the same page simultaneously.

React Bricks leverages a lock system to prevent two people from writing the same content at once and avoid content override.

It shows you who is online and who is viewing a page. When an editor starts writing on a page, they gain write control, blocking other users from writing. The lock is released when the page is saved or left unsaved, allowing other editors to make changes. It's also possible to manually release the lock, if needed. Enterprise customers often prefer this lock mechanism to avoid confusion and track content creation responsibilities.

Conclusion

Depending on the specific requirements of the user, the decision between React Bricks and Builder.io can be a difficult one.

In our opinion, Builder.io may be better suited for those without coding experience, or those not using React. React Bricks, on the other hand, may be better for startups, corporate and enterprise users who need more flexibility and control.

Ultimately, the decision of which platform is best for the user depends on their specific needs and preferences. Both are great CMSs with visual editing.

We suggest that you try both on a demo project to understand the developer experience and content editor experience of both solutions before making a decision.