Grigora Review: A $59 Lifetime Deal Website Builder

What Is Grigora and Why Does It Matter?

It's not every day that a full-blown website builder shows up as a lifetime deal. Grigora is available on AppSumo starting at $59, and it's positioning itself as a genuine alternative to platforms like Squarespace and Webflow — the kind of tools you'd normally pay monthly for indefinitely.

Grigora launched as part of AppSumo's Plus Week celebration. While you don't need a Plus membership to buy the base tiers, tiers four and five are Plus-exclusive. If you're considering a higher tier, joining Plus actually makes financial sense since members get 10% off year-round, plus an additional 10% during Plus Week when purchasing over $100 — working out to roughly 19% savings.

The big question is whether a one-time purchase can genuinely deliver the kind of experience you'd expect from established monthly platforms. After extensive testing, the answer is surprisingly nuanced.

Getting Started: Templates and Setup Wizard

Grigora's onboarding starts with choosing a layout, which functions somewhere between a WordPress theme and a page template. There's a solid library of options, and while none of them are jaw-droppingly gorgeous, they're all clean and professional. For small to midsize businesses, that's exactly the right target — you want something that conveys information clearly, not a flashy Apple-style parallax showcase.

A nice touch during template browsing: hovering over a preview scrolls through the full page, so you can quickly evaluate layouts without clicking into each one. You can also filter templates by category like food, business, or portfolio.

The setup wizard walks you through choosing a color palette and font combinations. It's intentionally simplified at this stage — the options are limited to preset combinations, which might feel restrictive at first glance. But everything is fully customizable later in the editor, including the ability to upload your own custom fonts. The wizard is really just meant to get you up and running with a reasonable starting point.

The Site Editor: Drag-and-Drop Done Right

The site editor is where Grigora really starts to show its strengths. The left toolbar gives you access to individual elements — buttons, text blocks, images, containers, and more — that you can drag directly onto your page.

One of the first things I test with any visual builder is how responsive the drag-and-drop feels. Can I place elements precisely where I want them, or am I fighting the interface? With Grigora, element placement is accurate and smooth. Dropping a button above a specific section, for instance, works exactly as expected on the first try.

For more technical users, there's full CSS support. You can assign custom class names, use CSS Flexbox for alignment, and wrap elements in containers with precise dimension controls. The layers panel on the side gives you a clear hierarchy of every element on the page, making it easy to reorder and nest items — especially useful when dragging into nested containers gets fiddly.

Less technical users aren't left behind, either. The sections library offers pre-built templates for common page elements like counters, hero sections, contact forms, and testimonials. Just drag one in and customize the content. No CSS knowledge required.

Dynamic CMS Lists and Content Feeds

One of Grigora's more powerful features is the dynamic CMS list element. This lets you create feeds that automatically pull in your latest blog posts, directory entries, or other content types — similar to what you'd build with custom queries in WordPress.

The workflow is straightforward: drop in a CMS list element, set the number of columns (say, four for a grid layout), and then design a single template card. Any changes you make to that template automatically apply across all entries in the list. You can add dynamic fields like the featured image, post category, title, publish date, and a linked button — all bound to your actual content.

Building out a card involves toggling each element to "dynamic" mode and selecting the appropriate data source. For example, setting an image to pull from the featured image field, or linking a button to the post URL. It's not quite as intuitive as, say, Webflow's CMS bindings, but it's genuinely capable once you understand the pattern.

To get cards looking polished, you can wrap elements in containers and use Flex alignment with minimum heights to ensure consistent card layouts. Setting a background color on the container gives you that clean card aesthetic. It takes a few minutes of tweaking, but the results are solid.

Pages, SEO, and Site Structure

Page management in Grigora is clean and well-organized. By default you get a homepage and an archive page, and adding new pages is as simple as clicking "Add Page" and entering a title and permalink. Importantly, pages and blog posts are kept entirely separate — a design choice that keeps things organized as your site grows.

SEO is woven throughout the platform rather than being bolted on as an afterthought. Each page gets its own SEO title field (which can differ from the page title), and blog posts have a full SEO panel with meta titles, meta descriptions, slug editing, and even a content analysis tool that scores how well your post targets a specific keyword.

Mobile responsiveness is handled directly in the editor with device preview toggles for desktop, tablet, and mobile views. You can make device-specific adjustments on the spot, though you may need to manually tweak image dimensions across breakpoints — there's no automatic responsive image sizing yet.

Headers, Footers, and Reusable Components

Headers and footers are managed through the component section of the site editor. Once you design them, they apply globally across every page you add them to. The default header template is surprisingly complete — navigation, search bar, social media links, and a newsletter signup link all included out of the box.

One important workflow note: when you create a brand new page from scratch, it won't automatically include your header and footer. You'll need to manually add them from the elements panel. It's a minor friction point, but easy to forget.

Editing components works the same as editing any other part of your site. You can click into a header or footer directly from a page, or navigate to the component section. Both approaches open the same editor, so it's really just a matter of preference.

The Blog Editor and AI Writing Tools

Grigora's blog editor takes a streamlined approach — no block editor here. You just type, and when you need to insert something, use slash commands (just like Notion or Ghost) to add images, quotes, embeds, and more.

Image handling is solid. You can upload your own images, pull from Pexels' stock library, or generate images using AI (which costs 750 credits per image). Each image gets accessibility fields for alt text, titles, and captions right in the editor. There's also a focus mode that strips away the entire interface, leaving nothing but your content — a genuinely nice touch for distraction-free writing.

The AI toolset is where things get interesting. Beyond basic content generation (500 credits for a full blog post), there are two standout features. The internal link suggester scans your entire site and recommends places to add links to your other content — a tedious SEO task that most people skip entirely. The FAQ generator (150 credits) reads your post and creates relevant FAQs, which is particularly useful for longer, technical articles where readers might want quick answers without reading everything.

The post editor also shows reading time, word count, and has a full SEO analysis section with keyword scoring. You can manage your meta title, meta description, featured image, and slug all from the same panel.

Customizing the Single Post Template

If your blog posts look too wide or need a different layout, you can customize the single post template directly in the site editor. Navigate to Pages, find your single post template, and adjust the layout using containers and width settings.

For example, wrapping the post content in a container and setting the width to 750 pixels creates a much more readable column width. Just remember to also set a max-width of 100% so the content doesn't overflow on smaller screens. It's the kind of detail that separates a polished site from a rough one.

This template-level control is a strong point. You're not stuck with whatever the theme gives you — you have full control over how every post renders, using the same visual editor you use for everything else.

Built-In Newsletter Tools

Grigora includes a native newsletter feature that lets you send any blog post directly as an email newsletter. From the post editor, you can choose a template layout (magazine or centered), customize it, and either send immediately or schedule for later.

The subscriber management lives in a dedicated newsletter section, though the actual sending always happens from your posts. This means you can write a post, save it as a draft (so it doesn't appear on your website), and still fire it off as a newsletter — a flexible approach that keeps your content workflow unified.

There's also a newsletter subscription block you can drop into any page using the element editor, making it easy to build email capture into your site design.

Settings, Fonts, Domains, and Integrations

Under Settings, you'll find custom font uploads (supporting TTF, OTF, WOFF, and WOFF2), custom domain configuration (one per website on your plan), and site-wide SEO settings. There's also a WordPress migration tool for importing existing content.

Code injection is available for adding custom scripts, though it currently applies site-wide rather than on a per-page basis. You can work around this with the custom HTML element in the page editor, but a dedicated per-page injection option would be a welcome addition.

The Google integrations are particularly well done. You can connect Google Search Console to see your search performance data directly in the Grigora dashboard, and Google Analytics 4 for traffic insights. There's even a built-in keyword research tool that shows search volume and ranking difficulty — handy for bloggers who want to plan content without leaving the platform.

Team collaboration features round out the settings with role-based access (contributor, author, editor, administrator), a built-in project manager for task assignments, and Google Docs-style commenting on blog posts. These are native features, not third-party plugins, which is genuinely impressive for a tool at this price point.

Directory Listings: Custom Post Types Made Simple

Directory listings are Grigora's answer to WordPress custom post types and Advanced Custom Fields — but dramatically simpler. You create a "collection" (like taco trucks, apartments, or services), define custom fields (plain text, rich text, images, links, dates, switches, options, or references), and then add entries by filling out a straightforward form.

Once your collection exists, you can display it on any page using the directory listing element, which works just like the CMS list. Bind dynamic fields to your custom data, style the cards, and you've got a functional directory. Grigora also automatically generates a collection page template that you can customize in the site editor.

For non-technical users who've been intimidated by WordPress's ACF plugin or custom post type setup, this is a significant improvement. It's powerful enough to handle real use cases but simple enough that you won't need a developer to set it up.

Grigora vs. Breezy: How Do They Compare?

Breezy, another lifetime deal website builder that was recently available on AppSumo, is the most obvious comparison point. Having tested both extensively, they serve slightly different audiences.

Breezy edges ahead in visual polish — its templates and default designs feel a bit more refined and modern out of the box. If aesthetics are your top priority and you want something that looks great with minimal customization, Breezy has the advantage.

Grigora, on the other hand, offers more technical depth. Features like directory listings with custom fields, CSS Flex controls in the visual editor, dynamic CMS bindings, and the built-in keyword research tool give it an edge for users who need more than a basic website. The collaboration features and native newsletter tools also push it ahead for content teams.

If you already own Breezy, adding Grigora to your toolkit gives you complementary strengths. If you're choosing just one, it comes down to whether you prioritize design simplicity (Breezy) or feature depth (Grigora).

Final Verdict: 8.2 out of 10

Grigora earns an 8.2 out of 10. It's a genuinely capable website builder that punches above its weight for a lifetime deal. The visual editor is responsive and flexible, the CMS and directory features rival tools that cost significantly more per month, and the built-in SEO, newsletter, and collaboration tools mean you're not immediately hunting for third-party integrations.

There are areas for improvement. The color palette doesn't auto-apply to new elements, the preview function had some bugs during testing, bulk post management is limited, and code injection should be available per-page. None of these are dealbreakers, but they're the kinds of polish items that separate a good tool from a great one.

For content publishers, small businesses, and freelancers building client sites, Grigora is a strong pick — especially at the lifetime deal price. We live in a time where the tools are rarely the limiting factor, and Grigora is a solid example of that.

Watch the Full Video

Prefer watching to reading? Check out the full video on YouTube for a complete walkthrough with live demos and commentary.