# Siteon vs. assembling it yourself: Netlify or Vercel + Formspree or Basin + Tina or CloudCannon Putting a static site's back end together from separate services, at the same scope as Siteon (commercial use, a form with auto-reply and Slack notifications, and a CMS the owner can use), came to roughly $30 to $55 a month for one site in our survey of official prices on 2026-10-04, mostly because auto-replies start on form plans of about $20 and per-site CMS plans start at $10 to $49. Siteon includes hosting, forms and the CMS from $4/month per site. Separate services are the better choice when you need what they do in depth, such as Netlify's free tier and Git-based builds, Vercel's server-side features, or a full headless CMS. URL: https://siteon.dev/compare/diy-stack Updated: 2026-10-26 ## The short version | | Assembling it yourself | Siteon | |---|---|---| | Services to sign up for | Hosting + form service + CMS (+ glue between them) | One | | Form auto-reply and Slack | Usually from the ~$20/month form plans | Included on every plan | | CMS the business owner can use | Separate plan per site, or open source with your own Git login setup | Included, marked with HTML attributes | | Server-side code, Git-based builds | Available (Netlify, Vercel) | Not available. You deploy a built folder with the CLI | | Free production hosting | Available (Netlify Free, Cloudflare Pages, Vercel Hobby for non-commercial use) | Available (on `.siteun.com`, with a "Made with Siteon" badge). Custom domains and badge removal on paid plans | Sources: the tables below (prices checked 2026-10-04): [netlify.com/pricing](https://www.netlify.com/pricing/), [vercel.com/pricing](https://vercel.com/pricing), [formspree.io/plans](https://formspree.io/plans), [tina.io/pricing](https://tina.io/pricing). ## Hosting | Plan | Monthly | What you get | |---|---|---| | Netlify Free | $0 | 300 credits/month (stops at the cap). Netlify Forms submissions use no credits | | Netlify Personal | $9 | 1,000 credits/month | | Netlify Pro | $20 | 3,000 credits/month | | Vercel Hobby | $0 | 1M CDN requests/month. Personal, non-commercial use only | | Vercel Pro | $20 per developer seat | 10M CDN requests/month included | | Cloudflare Pages Free | $0 | Requests to static files are free | Sources (checked 2026-10-04): [netlify.com/pricing](https://www.netlify.com/pricing/), [vercel.com/pricing](https://vercel.com/pricing), [Cloudflare Pages limits](https://developers.cloudflare.com/pages/platform/limits/). ## Forms | Plan | Monthly (billed monthly / yearly) | Submissions per month | Auto-reply | Slack | |---|---|---|---|---| | Formspree Free | $0 | 50 | No | Yes | | Formspree Personal | $15 / $10 | 200 | No | Yes | | Formspree Professional | $30 / $20 | 2,000 | Yes | Yes | | Basin Growth | $24.17 | 1,000 | Yes | Yes | | Netlify Forms | No extra charge | No stated cap | No (build it with Zapier or similar) | Yes | Sources (checked 2026-10-04): [formspree.io/plans](https://formspree.io/plans), [usebasin.com/pricing](https://usebasin.com/pricing), [Netlify Forms usage and billing](https://docs.netlify.com/manage/forms/usage-and-billing/). ## CMS for a static site | Plan | Monthly (billed monthly / yearly) | Notes | |---|---|---| | TinaCMS Free | $0 | 2 users | | TinaCMS Team | $24 per project / $290 a year | 3 users included (up to 10) | | CloudCannon Standard | $55 / $49 | 3 users included. No free plan | | Prismic Starter | $10 | Headless: you build the fetching and rendering yourself | | Decap CMS | $0 (open source) | You set up Git authentication yourself | Sources (checked 2026-10-04): [tina.io/pricing](https://tina.io/pricing), [cloudcannon.com/pricing](https://cloudcannon.com/pricing/), [prismic.io/pricing](https://prismic.io/pricing), [decapcms.org](https://decapcms.org/docs/intro/). ## Totals: one site, and ten client sites Conditions: commercial use, a form with auto-reply and Slack notifications, and a CMS a non-developer can use. Yearly prices are used where they exist. These are our estimates from the prices above. | Setup | One site, per month | Ten sites, per month | |---|---|---| | Cloudflare Pages + FormKeep Professional + Prismic Starter | about $30 | — | | Netlify Personal + Formspree Professional + Tina Team | about $53 | — | | Cloudflare Pages + Basin Growth + Prismic Starter × 10 | — | about $124 | | Netlify Pro + Basin Growth + CloudCannon Standard (+7 users) | — | about $163 | | Vercel Pro + Formspree Business + Tina Team × 10 | — | about $322 | | Siteon Lite | $4 | $4 × 10 | Sources (checked 2026-10-04): the tables above, plus [formkeep.com/pricing](https://www.formkeep.com/pricing) (Professional $19.50/month) and [formspree.io/plans](https://formspree.io/plans) (Business $60/month billed yearly). ## Where assembling it yourself is the better choice - **A free live site on your own domain.** Netlify Free and Cloudflare Pages host a live site on your own domain for $0. Siteon's Free plan publishes on `.siteun.com` with a badge; custom domains start on a paid plan - **Git-based builds and server code.** Netlify and Vercel build from your repository and run functions. Siteon serves a folder you built, and runs no server code - **A full headless CMS.** Content modeling, APIs and editorial workflows in a dedicated CMS go much further than Siteon's marked areas - **Your own domain today.** All of the services above take a custom domain now; on Siteon hosting it is (coming soon) ## Where Siteon is simpler - One script tag and HTML attributes, instead of wiring three services together - Auto-reply, email and Slack notifications and spam protection on every plan - One price per site, with no per-seat charge for editors - AI agents can run all of it through the CLI and MCP server See also: [How do I add a contact form to a static site?](https://siteon.dev/guides/add-contact-form-to-static-site) and [Plans and limits](https://siteon.dev/docs/plans). --- Siteon is infrastructure for AI-built websites: it adds hosting, a CMS your client can edit, contact forms, analytics and control from AI agents (CLI and MCP) around static HTML built with AI or by hand, so it is ready to ship.