Vessa vs Visualbook
Visualbook and Vessa both sell a hosted brand guideline for one payment, with no monthly fee. Visualbook is €412 to €821 + VAT per manual and packs in what studios ask for: editors, a site in any two languages, visit stats, your own subdomain and a static export. Vessa is €39 once for your own brand and a client's brand is €149 + VAT, for businesses. It puts the effort into the page instead: motion documented as values and code, a wizard that drafts the guideline from your logo and website and an AI connection that builds it and publishes it.
Visualbook has a trial to build in and then one payment per manual: €412 + VAT with one editor, €617 with five and from €821 with ten, with €79 for each editor after that. A year of one client brand is that one payment and nothing after it. On Vessa building is free and a client's brand is €149 + VAT, for businesses. You pay it once and there's nothing to renew.
Updated October 2026. Visualbook's prices, editions and AI connector were checked on its site on 26 October 2026.
| Vessa | Visualbook | |
|---|---|---|
| Price model | Free to build. Publishing your own brand is €39 once with VAT included, and a client's brand is €149 + VAT, for businesses. No subscription. | One payment per manual, + VAT: €412 with one editor, €617 with five, from €821 with ten. Each extra editor is €79. No monthly fee. |
| What you pay to start | Nothing to build. €39 once when you publish, then edit and republish for as long as you want, with nothing to renew. | A trial to build in, then the edition's price, once. |
| Your own domain | Not offered. Every guideline lives at vessa.design/brand/{name}. | Point it to your own subdomain, in every edition, at no extra cost. |
| Languages | One per guideline. You write it in any language, and the page's own labels stay in English. | The site in any pair of languages, with DeepL to translate. The editing panel comes in six. |
| Visit stats | Not offered. | Visit statistics in every edition. |
| Export | No PDF or static export. Download everything gives a ZIP of the files and the colour and type tokens. | A one-click static export of the whole project, and an AI export. No PDF. |
| People editing it | One account per guideline. No team seats. | One, five or ten editors by edition, each with their own login, and €79 for each one after that. |
| Private or password-protected guidelines | Yes, a password per brand. No viewer accounts or SSO. | Password-protected pages and files. |
| Motion system | A built-in section: motion personalities with live scrubbable specimens, real easing and duration values, and copy-as-GSAP or CSS code your developer can paste. | Its site doesn't mention motion, animation or video. |
| Editor | A structured form. You fill typed sections and the template owns every layout and animation decision. No canvas. | Edit on the page itself, where your client sees it, from ready-made sections, with an admin panel behind it. |
| Credit on the live page | Your own brand's page ends with a “Published with Vessa” link. A client's brand carries nothing of Vessa's, and you can sign either with your studio's name. | Every manual carries the designer's or studio's name in its footer. |
| AI: building and reading the guideline | Both directions. An MCP server, so Claude, Claude Code or Cursor can create the guideline, fill sections, upload assets and publish it. And a versioned brand.json plus an llms.txt on every published guideline, with no key and no login. Motion is in the JSON: easing curves, duration bands, stagger. | An MCP server in every edition, for Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor and other clients. The agent creates pages from your brief, writes copy, sets colours and type and uploads files, and every write lands in an audit log. Its site doesn't mention publishing from the agent. |
| Track record | New. Launched 2026. | On its sixth version. Its homepage says small local and billion-dollar brands use it, without naming a number. |
Updated October 2026. Visualbook's prices, editions and AI connector were checked on its site on 26 October 2026.
Where Visualbook is the better buy
Visualbook costs more and puts the difference into features a studio will notice. In these cases they're worth it.
Editors in the box. Every edition comes with editors, one to ten, each with their own login, and more at €79 each. Vessa has one account per guideline, so the client either asks you for a change or you hand them the login.
Two languages. A Visualbook site runs in any pair of languages, and DeepL does the first pass. A Vessa guideline is one language, and the page's own labels are English. For a brand that speaks German and French, that settles it.
Your domain and your numbers. Visualbook points to your own subdomain at no extra cost and counts the visits. A Vessa guideline lives at vessa.design/brand/{name} and shows no visit numbers.
Taking it with you. One click gives you a static export of the whole project, and Visualbook says that if it ever shuts down you get the working project, editing included, licensed to run on your domain. Vessa has no static or PDF export. Download everything gives you the files and the tokens, not the page.
The different bet each one makes
Visualbook bets that a brand manual is a small website the client owns, so it ships the parts of a website: editors, languages, statistics, a domain and an export. It's a good build, and the one-time price tells you the buyer is a studio or a company that wants the manual done and paid for.
Vessa bets that most guidelines are a handover, and that the page is the product. Your own brand is €39 once and a client's is €149 + VAT, for businesses, and the craft went into what a reader actually opens: the moodboard that reflows when you open an image, colours that copy on click, a type specimen set in the client's own faces, and a motion section with real easing curves and code your developer can paste. No other guideline tool documents motion as values and code.
The AI side differs in one step. Visualbook's agent builds pages, which is more than most guideline tools allow. Vessa's agent builds the guideline and publishes it, while you keep the taste calls, and every published guideline serves a brand.json and an llms.txt at its own URL with no key to request. Before any of that, the create wizard drafts the guideline from your logo, your fonts and your website, so you start from a page and not from an empty form.
Who should pick which
Pick Visualbook if the client needs a second language, their own subdomain, visit numbers or an export they keep, or if several people on their side edit it. It costs more, from €412 + VAT where a client's brand on Vessa is €149 + VAT, for businesses, and you get real things for it.
Pick Vessa if you hand over identities one at a time and the price matters, if the identity moves and you want the motion documented as values and code, or if you want your AI to build the guideline and publish it while you keep the taste calls.
See one before you decide
VANTA is a full Vessa guideline, live, with the motion section doing what the motion section does. Read it the way a client would. The gallery has more from real brands.
€39 once, per brand. No subscription.