Figma

Astro is a web framework built around content. Pages are authored as components with an HTML-first template syntax, and by default the framework ships no client-side JavaScript for them. Interactive pieces are declared individually and hydrated on their own. The island model is the core idea: a page is mostly static HTML, and any component that needs interactivity is marked as an island with a hydration directive. That island can be written in React, Vue, Svelte, Solid, or plain JavaScript, and different islands on the same page can use different frameworks. The framework also ships a content collections API that validates front-matter against a schema at build time. Astro suits marketing sites, documentation, blogs, and content-heavy storefronts where interaction is limited to a few widgets. It is a poorer fit for applications where most of the interface is stateful and interactive, because the island boundaries then multiply and the static-first advantage shrinks.

Framer is a design and publishing tool where the canvas and the live site are the same artifact. A designer lays out breakpoints visually, and publishing produces a hosted site with no separate build step or handoff to an engineer. The product covers the ground a design tool and a site builder would otherwise cover separately. Components can have variants and interactions, content can be bound to a CMS collection, and animations are configured on the canvas rather than written as code. Effects such as scroll transforms are set up through the same visual interface. The tradeoff is the boundary of the tool. A site that fits Framer's model ships quickly and looks polished; a site that needs custom server logic, unusual routing, or a data layer outside the CMS reaches the edge of what the canvas can express. Teams sometimes publish a marketing site in Framer while the product itself is built elsewhere.

Ghost is a publishing platform that combines a website, a newsletter, and paid membership in one system. A publication runs on Ghost, posts are delivered by email to subscribers, and paid tiers are managed through the same admin rather than through a separate membership plugin. The product is open source and can be self-hosted, and the hosted service is the commercial offering. Subscriptions are handled through Stripe, with the platform managing member records, tiers, and gated content. Because the site and the newsletter are the same system, a post does not have to be maintained in two places. The tradeoff compared with a hosted newsletter service is that Ghost expects the publication to be a website first. It is a good fit for a writer or a small media business that wants a domain, an archive, and a subscriber list under its own control; it is a heavier tool for someone whose only need is to send an email to a list.