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Write.as VS ViewForge

Compare Write.as VS ViewForge and see what are their differences

Write.as

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Rating
0 reviews
Alternatives Is it good?
ViewForge

Year/Make/Model fitment search for Shopify. 8 verticals, Smart Parse, and your data in Shopify metaobjects — not a vendor database. Free tier, Pro at $49.

Rating
0 reviews
Pricing
Freemium Free trial $19 / Monthly ($19/month Starter 1,000 products, custom templates, CSV import)
Alternatives Is it good?
Lucris
Financial decision-making for Shopify brands, connecting sales and marketing to show what drives profit - and what to do next. sponsored
Note: These products don't have any matching categories. If you think this is a mistake, please edit the details of one of the products and suggest appropriate categories.

Which is more popular?

Based on our record, Write.as seems to be more popular. It has been mentioned 60 times since March 2021.

social mentions
60 vs 0
Blogging popularity
100% vs 0%

Base details

Website, pricing, platforms and company facts side by side.

Write.as
ViewForge
Website write.as normalview.pro
Pricing
Official pricing
Freemium Free trial $19 / Monthly ($19/month Starter 1,000 products, custom templates, CSV import) Official pricing
Platforms —
Shopify
Company Startup from the United States Startup from the United States · 1 - 9 employees · 2026
Listed in
CMS Blogging Blogging Platform Website Builder +1
eCommerce Tools Custom Search Fitment

About Write.as and ViewForge

In their own words, as submitted to SaaSHub.

Write.as
ViewForge

No description of Write.as yet.

ViewForge is a Year Make Model (YMM) parts finder for Shopify. Shoppers pick their vehicle, machine or device from cascading dropdowns and see only the parts that fit. Fitment search works across eight verticals — auto, motorcycle, tractor, marine, power equipment, bicycle, printer and...

Read more about ViewForge

Features and specs

What each product offers, as listed by its team.

Write.as 5 features
ViewForge 9 features
  • Simplicity
    Write.as provides a minimalist and distraction-free writing experience, focusing solely on the content without the usual clutter of other blogging platforms.
  • Anonymity
    Users can post content anonymously, which is ideal for those who want to share thoughts without revealing their identity.
  • Privacy
    The platform emphasizes privacy, with no tracking, ads, or third-party cookies, giving users peace of mind.
  • Markdown Support
    Write.as uses Markdown for formatting, making it easy for users familiar with Markdown to format their posts quickly.
  • Speed
    The platform is lightweight and fast, ensuring a quick and seamless writing and reading experience.

Possible disadvantages

  • Limited Features
    Due to its minimalist approach, it lacks many features found in other blogging platforms, such as custom themes, plugins, or advanced SEO tools.
  • Subscription Cost
    While Write.as offers a free version, some of the more desirable features, like custom domains and multiple blogs, require a paid subscription.
  • Customization
    Users have limited options for customizing the appearance of their blogs, which might be a drawback for those who want a highly personalized site.
  • Limited Community Interaction
    Unlike some other blogging platforms, Write.as does not have features like comments or community engagement tools out of the box.
  • Learning Curve with Markdown
    Users unfamiliar with Markdown may find it challenging to format their posts initially, requiring a learning curve.
  • Fitment Information
    Cascading Year/Make/Model fitment search, up to four levels
  • Vertical integration nobody else has
    8 built-in vertical templates, plus custom templates on paid tiers
  • Shopify Metaobjects
    Fitment stored as native Shopify metaobjects — your data survives uninstall
  • Smart Data Processing
    Smart Parse: extract fitment from existing product titles and descriptions, with confidence scoring
  • CSV Import/Export
    CSV import with fuzzy matching and a coverage dashboard
  • ACES / PIES
    ACES / PIES import and NHTSA VIN decoding
  • My Garage
    Saved-vehicle garage, compatibility table, and product-page fit notice
  • Context Aware Fitment Search
    Collection-level fitment assignment
  • No Obligations
    Free tier with no expiry, up to 50 products

Analysis

An editorial look at what each product does well and who it suits.

Write.as
ViewForge

Overall verdict

  • Overall, Write.as is a good choice for users who value simplicity and privacy in a blogging platform. It may not be suitable for those looking for advanced features, extensive customization, or robust multimedia integration, but it excels in delivering a straightforward and user-friendly writing experience.

Why this product is good

  • Write.as is a minimalist blogging platform designed to provide a distraction-free writing experience. It focuses on simplicity, privacy, and ease of use, making it appealing for users who want to write and publish content without dealing with complex features or ads. The platform supports Markdown, enables anonymous posting, and offers a clean, unobtrusive design.

Recommended for

  • Writers seeking a minimalist and distraction-free environment
  • Privacy-conscious individuals who want to blog anonymously
  • Users who prefer a simple and clean interface
  • Bloggers interested in focusing solely on content creation

No analysis of ViewForge yet.

Videos

Walkthroughs and reviews on video.

Write.as 1 video + Add
ViewForge 1 video + Add

Write.as & Why I Use elementary OS

ViewForge: YMM Search & Filter

Category popularity

How often each product is chosen within a category, 0–100% relative to the other.

Score bands 0–20 21–40 41–50 51–60 61–100
Write.as
ViewForge
100% 100%
Blogging
0% 0%
0% 0%
eCommerce Tools
100% 100%
100% 100%
CMS
0% 0%
0% 0%
Custom Search
100% 100%

Questions & Answers

As answered by people managing Write.as and ViewForge.

What makes your product unique?

ViewForge's answer:

Three things. (1) Data ownership: ViewForge writes fitment as Shopify metaobjects native to your store — most competitors store fitment in their own database. (2) 8 verticals out of the box: auto, motorcycle, tractor, marine, power equipment, bicycle, printer, electronics — most competitors are automotive-only. (3) Smart Parse: extract fitment automatically from your existing product titles and descriptions instead of re-typing everything.

Why should a person choose your product over its competitors?

ViewForge's answer:

Data ownership. Fitment lives in your Shopify metaobjects, so uninstalling does not take your compatibility data with it. Convermax, EasySearch and PartFinder all keep it in their own databases, and getting it back depends on their export tooling on the day you cancel.

Cost at the low end. The search widget, the compatibility table on the product page and the saved-vehicle garage are all on the free tier, up to 50 products, with no expiry. EasySearch puts the table and the garage behind its $75/month Premium plan. Convermax starts at $250/month.

Automotive and non-automotive coverage. Eight built-in templates, and fully custom templates from $19/month, for catalogs that do not decompose into Year/Make/Model at all.

How would you describe the primary audience of your product?

ViewForge's answer:

Shopify merchants whose customers need to know whether a part fits before they will buy it — and who do not have an engineer on staff to build that themselves.

Concretely: auto and truck parts retailers, powersports and motorcycle dealers, tractor and agricultural parts sellers, marine and outboard suppliers, small-engine and power equipment stores, bicycle and e-bike component shops, printer supply merchants, and electronics accessory sellers.

Catalog sizes run from a few dozen products on the free tier up into the tens of thousands; it is running in production on a catalog of roughly 40,000 SKUs. The common thread is not the industry — it is that "does this fit my thing" is the question deciding the sale.

What's the story behind your product?

ViewForge's answer:

ViewForge came out of agency work. Normal View was building for a parts retailer running roughly 12,000 SKUs who needed fitment search, and every app we evaluated stored the merchant's compatibility data in the vendor's own database.

That is a strange trade when you look at it directly. Fitment data is genuinely expensive to produce — it is weeks of work — and the merchant would not own the result. It would belong to whichever app happened to be installed that year.

Shopify metaobjects made a different answer possible: write fitment as native structured data inside the merchant's own store. The theme reads it, the Storefront API queries it, Admin GraphQL exports it, and it is still there after an uninstall. That decision is what the rest of the app is built around.

Everything else came from real catalogs rather than a roadmap. Eight verticals exist because a tractor catalog is not Year/Make/Model. Smart Parse exists because that retailer had already written fitment into 12,000 product titles, and nobody was ever going to retype them.

Which are the primary technologies used for building your product?

ViewForge's answer:

  • TypeScript
  • Shopify metaobjects, as the fitment data store
  • Shopify theme app extensions for the storefront components: fitment search, saved-vehicle garage, compatibility table, product-page fit notice
  • Shopify Storefront API, for querying fitment from the theme
  • Shopify Admin GraphQL API, for writing and exporting fitment records
  • NHTSA vehicle database, for VIN decoding
  • ACES and PIES XML parsing, for automotive catalog import

User comments

Share your experience with using Write.as and ViewForge. For example, how are they different and which one is better?

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Reviews and articles

External articles and on-site reviews we used to compare the two products.

Write.as no reviews yet
ViewForge no reviews yet

We have no reviews of ViewForge yet. Be the first one to post

Social recommendations and mentions

Recommendations tracked on public social media and blogs since March 2021.

Write.as 60 mentions
ViewForge 0 mentions
  • ActivityPub Fuzzer: Improving Testing in the Fediverse
    There's a lot of it on the Fediverse tech circles. I find a lot of it through following the #Fediverse tag on Mastodon. Bandwagon.fm: A federated platform for musicians and fans: https://bandwagon.fm/ Bonfire: A modular server for... - Source: Hacker News / 10 months ago
  • Personal blogs are back, should niche blogs be next?
    And it's very easy to start with something that is also "social": - https://write.as - a https://writefreely.org instance that also syncs with Mastodon, so people can see/discover/subscribe/ comment on your posts without extra hassle of... - Source: Hacker News / 10 months ago
  • Introducing the Write.as MCP Server: Anonymous Publishing Gets AI Superpowers
    The Write.as MCP Server transforms how AI systems interact with Write.as, the minimalist blogging platform beloved for its simplicity and privacy-first approach. By implementing the Model Context Protocol (MCP), this server enables LLMs,... - Source: dev.to / over 1 year ago

View more

Tracking ViewForge since Aug 2026.

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