Best web stories tools (builders, apps & platforms)

Detailed side-by-side comparison of the most popular and best web story builders, apps and platforms.

 

Why are web stories so important in the mobile-first world?

Web stories are the hottest marketing topic of 2020/2021. Overcoming limits of social media, web stories expanded their purposes from just entertaining and communicating brand messages to engaging and fast converting visitors into customers and loyal followers.

Tappable, shareable and shoppable dynamic content that can be found on the open Web became a must have tool for achieving KPIs and high value ROI.

Use cases for web stories are various and numerous: from ecommerce where web stories serve as a perfect mobile-first shopping solution, to blog re-energising and enriching tools, publishers’s favorite SEO and revenue features, and all the way to marketers top pick for creating mobile-first funnels and landing pages.

Google Web Stories

Google developed Web Stories that can appear on Google search, discover and images. Anyway, the huge flaw is that Google’s web stories can be applied only on WordPress and can work only by downloading plugins and additions.
In order to run this function, you should do a bit of coding and developing - which is not the case with the other web story platforms. That is why many users turn towards the easier and better solutions that provide even more benefits and features than google stories.

Web stories as a perfect mobile-first landing pages and great funnels

Web stories are designed to be perfect landing pages for ecommerce and retail because they might include:

• Product tagging
• Engaging elements
• CTA links and
• Appealing visuals

Web stories can successfully replace traditional and massive landing pages. Less time, less money, less effort and more conversions - isn’t it great?!

Unfortunately, not only web story builders have shopping features within, so those web story providers can be fine use cases for publishers. With

• in-app media stocks and
• strong editor for captivating mobile first content

web stories can improve reading experience and (if properly indexed) can be a huge plus for SEO.

Marketers perhaps have found the best use case for web stories.
They detected the way to circle the whole funnel with web stories. Many marketing agencies and digital marketers are using web stories as a complete and perfect funnel for every industry.

With

• advanced analytics
• native integrations for measuring funnel performances
• funnel visualisation
• personalisation

web stories represent the best mobile first funnels so far.

How to pick the best tool to leverage the most of web stories?

Choosing the right solution can be easy if you know which business and marketing goals you want to achieve. If you are a retailer or an e-commerce entrepreneur you’ll seek for more sales, conversions and engagement that will help you to improve your marketing and product performances.

If you run a publishing company or you are a blogger and storyteller, you’ll crave for something that will showcase your words and pictures in a re-energised and dynamic form that sparkles with amazing effects, visual media and sharing possibilities that will improve your visibility and grow your audience.

If you are a digital marketer or managing a marketing agency, you’ll love to have every option for exploding your clients' reach, awareness, brand recognition, success stories and stunning high converting ads. All these mixed with a perfect analytics and integrations with 3rd analytics parties and pixels would make an outstanding combination of all your covered needs.

Stories bring great (ROI) return of investment to both individuals and companies (startups, medium and large enterprises and corporations), so while doing this overview we assured to point out all the features and usability of the explored apps in this comparison table.

Detailed breakdown of possibilities different web stories builders are offering

To help you make the best decision here is a detailed overview of the best web story tools - you’ll have the full insight, from the pricing to the very detailed features.

 

	StorifyMe	Ampstor	MakeStories	Tappable	Storyly
Use cases  Perfect for ->
E-commerce	✔️				✔️
Retail	✔️			✔️	✔️
Marketers	✔️
Publishers	✔️		✔️	✔️
Bloggers	✔️	✔️	✔️
Startups	✔️	✔️	✔️	✔️	✔️
Medium and large enterprises	✔️			✔️
Corporations	✔️
Channels
Open web	✔️	✔️	✔️	✔️
Native apps	✔️				✔️
Social Media	✔️				✔️
Google AMP	✔️	✔️	✔️	✔️
Price
Free plan limitation	✔️		✔️
Solution features
Visualisation of a funnel	✔️
Micro Landing page	✔️
Widgets for website	✔️			✔️	✔️
Templates	✔️	✔️	✔️	✔️
Drag and drop	✔️	✔️	✔️	✔️
Gifs	✔️	✔️	✔️	✔️
Stock media library	✔️	✔️	✔️	✔️
Animations	✔️		✔️	✔️
Smart cropping	✔️		✔️	✔️	✔️
Slide ordering	✔️		✔️	✔️	✔️
Custom fonts	✔️		✔️	✔️	✔️
Product tagging	✔️
CTA	✔️	✔️	✔️	✔️	✔️
Engaging elements	✔️				✔️
Sound reproduction	✔️	✔️	✔️	✔️
Scheduling	✔️				✔️
Other features
Branding	✔️		✔️	✔️	✔️
QR Codes	✔️		✔️	✔️	✔️
Integrations with media providers	✔️	✔️	✔️	✔️
Consistent storytelling for web and apps	✔️			✔️
AMP support	✔️	✔️	✔️	✔️	✔️
Localization	✔️
Custom domain	✔️
SEO benefits	✔️	✔️	✔️	✔️
Personalization	✔️				✔️
Custom audience	✔️				✔️
Native integrations with analytics	✔️
Enterprise ready features	✔️
Team members	✔️			✔️	✔️
Privacy	✔️
Audit logs	✔️
GDPR compliance	✔️			✔️
Privacy configuration	✔️
White label	✔️
API access	✔️
Sign up without an app	✔️	✔️	✔️	✔️
Video tutorials	✔️
Chat support	✔️			✔️	✔️
E-mail support	✔️
Phone support	✔️
Dedicated onboarding	✔️
Platform training	✔️
Creative support	✔️
Dedicated success manager	✔️

#1

StorifyMe

 

StorifyMe is the only all-in-one 100% web stories and app/social media story platform, fully suited for all use cases:

• E-commerce - storified landing pages with product tagging and website widget features
• Individual storytellers - amazing integrations with stocks and media libraries
• Marketing (agencies and marketers) - Among numerous outstanding StorifyMe features, the personalization feature is the final touch in completing a perfect funnel
• Publishers and bloggers - SEO optimization benefits, text transformation and content adjustment editor make StorifyMe the great fit for publishing marketing needs

In sum, you get an exclusive web story platform that enables creating stories, unlimited distributing and advanced measuring. This powerful platform:

• enables SEO benefits
• provides +100 favorite integrations to achieve multifunctional activities
• has an option for A/B testing
• provides unlimited linking and sharing
• offers many engaging elements
• have outstanding funnel visualization
• have story personalization and custom audience configurations
• provides advanced measuring shopping and engaging activities
• has website widget for story highlights

You can make use of a powerful editor with rich media and stock libraries, use the ability to tag and sell products directly from stories making them a new sales channel, get AMP and SEO support and use StorifyMe stories as perfect funnels and landing pages. The story widget is available in various shapes and dimensions, and can be embedded on your website easily. If you want your brand or e commerce store to stand out, this is a must have feature!
There are two more important features that makes StorifyMe a great web story platform - suitable solutions for enterprises and API support.

All this makes StorifyMe a perfect candidate for all web stories use-cases.

 

#2

Ampstor

 

Ampstor platform is an amazing free story builder. Run by a young creative team that developed a charming platform for publishers. Using Ampstor you can find beautiful templates for food lovers, travel, animals… As a publisher you can brand your stories and create it for your portals. Optimized for mobile with webpage integration - with free hosting on Ampstor, FTP Upload, Access to Code. Also, you can add a link with the CTA button and this feature is something that can be used for sponsored content on the publisher's website.
The cons are no product tagging, engaging elements, analytics, limited story editing and upload media and it is hard to navigate. The platform is not e-commerce friendly, but it can be appealing if you are a blogger or a storyteller enthusiast. If you explore their library you’ll find great examples and inspirations for creating your story.

 

#3

Make stories

 

One thing is sure - they have a rich library. The most adorable thing about this platform is the audio feature. This can be used as a branding tool for movies or concerts. If you create a story you can add an audio effect or embed a tweet, which is a pretty cool thing.
On the other hand, engaging elements, product tagging and other converting features are missing. This platform is good for teams with a developer although it is advertised as easy to use one. But they found a solution for this, once a week for an hour, their founding team gathers around the google hangouts and offers to their customers to walk them through the app and explain how it works.
By using amp-analytics this platform shows your story activities only if you set it up first. A good thing is possibility to connect the measuring tools, but the bad thing it is a long process. This provider can be considered as a regular solution for those who are not demanding much from web stories.

 

#4

Tappable

 

If you want a good branding platform for raising awareness you can use Tappable.
Tappable is free in beta version, however the pricing is not shown. This platform has detailed branding and good story preview in its editor which can be adjusted. It is a bit hard to navigate but it provides many functions. SEO optimization can be one of the good things here. The bad things are: there is no possibility to add a product tag which makes it not useful for ecommerce; as for marketers it has solid number of functions but it requires a significant amount of time to create and optimize story; tappable is advertised as engaging platform but it doesn’t have engaging elements that will drive customers voice to be heard, only CTA links are allowed.

 

 

#5

Storyly

 

Storyly is the only app besides StorifyMe that can embed a story widget. Storyly provides only app solutions and you can sign up only if you have one. It is not unlimited for use as the other companies mentioned before are. Anyway, this platform has anomalies in poor and slow editing, media upload and no available libraries to start with storytelling. They have only 4 engaging elements and a CTA option but no product tagging and SEO benefits. Another bug is limited character number, and if you need to type a longer sentence you are forced to use another text element which is annoying and disturbing. The price that Storyly has is too expensive for this kind of service.

So which is the best web stories app or platform?

All story providers offer same basic creating, distributing and sharing features, though individual features vary:

• Product tagging, story as a micro landing page: StorifyMe
• Story as a funnel: StorifyMe
• Story Widgets: StorifyMe, Storyly
• Media library, gifs and animations: StorifyMe, Tappable, Make stories and Ampstory
• Google and SEO: StorifyMe, Ampstor, Tappable
• Personalisation: StorifyMe, Storyly (described on the site but not within the app)
• API Access: StorifyMe
• Advanced analytics: StorifyMe, Tappable and MakeStories
• E-commerce ready solutions + Shopify store story highlight addition: StorifyMe
• Enterprise ready solutions: StorifyMe

Based on this review and a short summary the conclusion is that StorifyMe is standing out as a clear winner.

Don’t waste your time, start telling the best web stories ever. Try StorifyMe for free