Splitleaf vs RapidWeaver

RapidWeaver Elements and Splitleaf both run on your computer. They differ on what you pay for, what you may build, and what is left when you stop paying.

Elements comes from Realmac Software, which has made RapidWeaver since 2004. It runs only on a Mac. It keeps your site in a project file on your disk, and it publishes by FTP, SFTP or S3. The older app, RapidWeaver Classic, is still sold.

A licence that depends on what you build

Elements has three plans, and the plan decides what you are allowed to do with your own work:

• Base, $99 a year. A small Elements badge is placed on your published site, and each project can have only two global components.
• Plus, $149 a year. No badge, but you may not sell a site to a client.
• Pro, $249 a year. An active Pro licence is required to build and sell websites for clients.

The app is the same. Only the permission changes. The CMS works the same way: CMS Pro is a separate licence for each domain, so every client site is one more purchase.

We think this is the wrong way to sell a tool. A licence should cover a person, not a purpose. You should not pay more because a site has a client, or because it is on a second domain. Splitleaf has one licence: $129, once. You build what you want with it, for whoever you want, with no badge.

What happens when you stop paying

Elements is a yearly subscription. Realmac's terms say the licence does not expire, and you can keep using the last version from your paid year. That part is fair. But look at what else ends:

• The right to do client work. Pro must be active to build and sell client sites. Stop paying, and the version you keep no longer covers that work.
• Updates. A newer version will not run. It shows an "Update Period Expired" window and offers an older download.
• Your cloud backups. Elements Cloud needs an active subscription. It is where Elements backs up projects and stores the store products you bought.
• Access, at Realmac's choice. The terms let Realmac end or suspend your access "for any other reason deemed necessary by the Provider".

Then look at what you own. The published site is yours: HTML, Tailwind CSS, and PHP if you use the CMS. Your Markdown content is yours. But the source you design in is a single .elements project file, made for one app on one platform. Realmac supports syncing it only through iCloud Drive, and warns that Google Drive and Dropbox can corrupt it. Paid store components come with a revocable licence, not ownership. And text a client edits in the online CMS lives only on the server. Republishing from Elements may overwrite it.

In Splitleaf the source and the output are the same thing: a folder of HTML, CSS and Markdown files, with every publish committed to your own GitHub repository. The app you bought keeps working and publishing, and every right you had stays with you.

The CMS needs PHP

The Elements CMS needs PHP 8.4 or newer on your server, and every page that shows CMS content must end in .php. Your static site becomes a PHP site, and your host has to run and patch PHP for as long as the site lives.

Splitleaf publishes CMS content as plain static HTML. Any static host can serve it.

AI: your Claude plan, inside the app

In Splitleaf you can pick Claude Code as the agent, on Mac and on Windows, with the same features on both. It uses the Claude account you sign in with, and usage counts against the Claude plan you already pay for. You need no API key. It works on the same files as the canvas and the CMS, and every change it makes is staged for you to keep or undo. You can also connect your own key from Anthropic, OpenAI or OpenRouter.

The assistant built into Elements needs an API key, billed per use by OpenAI or Anthropic. Realmac warns that this "can become more expensive with regular or intensive use". To use a Claude subscription, you connect an outside app such as Claude Desktop through Elements' MCP server, and Elements must be open with the project loaded.

Feature comparison