What do you want to build?
A reading-first site with your list and paid work close at hand.
All of it — theme, tools, integrations — in one subscription.
Start free with this setup
Yoast. WooCommerce. Mailchimp. Akismet. Every renewal, every conflict, every Sunday-night patch.
Yoast SEOSEOYoast SEOSEOYoast Premium — $118.80/yr per siteNot a screenshot — click around. Demo data, zero signup.
Photographers, beekeepers, ceramicists, philatelists, fountain-pen enthusiasts — and 0 more expert communities, each with a dedicated landing page written in their own vocabulary.
Five platforms, twelve features, one row per truth. We checked.
Feature counts reflect capabilities shipped without third-party add-ons as of May 2026. LCP figures for WordPress, Ghost, and Squarespace are third-party median-LCP measurements (State of Web Vitals CMS explorer, corewebvitals.io, 2026 crawl) — a median-LCP metric, distinct from other public sources that report a pass-rate (% of sites passing all Core Web Vitals) instead, which isn't directly comparable. No public LCP benchmark was found for Substack. VeloCMS's 0.8s is an internal desktop performance target, not a mobile figure and not yet an independently published measurement.
VeloCMSCOMPLETE | WordPress+ plugins | GhostSelf-host | Substack10% fees | SquarespacePaid plans | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Block editor | Native | Plugin needed | Native | Limited | Native |
| Page builder | Native | Paid add-on | Not available | Not available | Native |
| Native commerce | Native | Plugin needed | Not available | Not available | Native |
| Newsletter w/ segments | Native | Plugin needed | Native | Native | Not available |
| AI SEO scoring | Native | Plugin needed | Not available | Not available | Not available |
| Paid memberships | Native | Plugin needed | Native | Native | Limited |
| Custom themes | 39 incl. | Paid add-on | 11 incl. | none | 100s · paid |
| Integrations library | Native | Native | Not available | Not available | Not available |
| Transaction fee | 0% | 0% | 0% | 10% | 0–3% |
| LCP (VeloCMS: desktop target) | 0.8s | 1.9s | 1.3s | n/a | 1.7s |
| Full data export | Native | Native | Native | Limited | Limited |
| Monthly price (starter) | $9 | $8+ | $0 | $0 | $36 |
| Native total | 10/12 | 2/12 | 4/12 | 3/12 | 5/12 |
The core platform is identical on every plan. Team size, API access, and white-labeling are what scale.
For solo creators ready to launch a serious blog.
For creators monetizing with team + advanced workflows.
For teams running multiple client blogs at scale.
Drag the slider to your monthly revenue. We'll show what each platform pockets.
If something else is missing, ping us at [email protected].
It replaces WordPress + 8 plugins (Yoast, WooCommerce, MailPoet, Akismet, BackupBuddy, Elementor or Beaver, WP Rocket, MemberPress) + Mailchimp + Stripe Connect + a separate hosting bill. One subscription, one platform, one update path.
WordPress is a 20-year-old PHP CMS plus a plugin marketplace. Plugins conflict, charge separately, and need weekly security updates. VeloCMS ships block editor, page builder, e-commerce, newsletters, AI SEO, and members in one shipping unit — no separate plugin bills, no Sunday-night patches.
It keeps working, and you keep your content either way. Every post, member, media file, and setting exports as JSON, CSV, or Markdown from the admin panel any time — no self-hosted fallback needed, just a clean export you can take anywhere.
14-day trial — card required, no charge until day 15. Cancel anytime. You keep everything you wrote on free export — Markdown, attachments, members CSV.
Yes. Posts, members, subscribers, attachments — all yours. Export anytime as Markdown + JSON. If we ever shut down, you walk away with a complete, portable export — nothing proprietary, nothing to negotiate.
Probably. We ship dedicated landing pages for 101 expert communities (photographers, beekeepers, ceramicists, philatelists, fountain-pen enthusiasts, and 96 more). Browse all 101 at /niches.
We tested imports from WordPress XML, Squarespace XML, Substack export ZIP, Ghost JSON, and Medium archive. Each ports posts, attachments, and metadata. Comments require a manual mapping step (we surface this in the importer wizard).
Yes, within limits: every plan starts with a 14-day free trial and you're not charged until day 15, and we refund an accidental first charge in full if you ask within 14 days of it. After that window monthly plans aren't refundable, but you can cancel anytime with no further billing.
We'd like to count visits and watch where people get stuck. With your OK we use Google Analytics and Microsoft Clarity (heatmaps and session recordings) on velocms.org, and they set cookies. Without it, no analytics cookies are set and Clarity stays off. Cookie policy
