I have been a loyal user of Rapidweaver since it first launched. I invested many thousands of dollars in stacks and plugins over the years and I have many live client sites still built in Rapidweaver … I am trying to figure out the wisest choice moving forward. I loved Rapiweaver but I can’t keep building on a platform with no future and I am just not sold on Elements. I am trying to get out of web development as a career - but I have two huge new web projects launching that will need to be active longterm. I really cringe at the idea of learning a whole new ecosystem so I am curious how it compares to Rapiweaver and the learning curve. I need to have a blog and some dynamic content that my client can update and will need to have an events calendar, video, and integrate booking software, etc - is this possible with Blocs? I am impressed with what I see so far - but I can’t really afford to invest thousands more dollars into new plugins and stacks to make it work as needed - yet I don’t feel safe moving forward with Rapidweaver. What all do I need to purchase to accomplish my goals with Blocks. I’d love some honest feedback and I hope this is ok to post.
Welcome to the Blocs forum. Here you find find so many knowledgeable users. I am not the one to answer your question, even though I started using Blocs at version 2. I have seen so many x Rapidweaver and from other platform joining Blocs. A good place to start, until someone answers your concern is type Rapidweaver in the search (magnifying glass) in the forum.
I was in exactly the same thought process you are in Sep 24, awful dilema isn’t it? Foundry closed shop and was not sure of longetivity of Stacks and what it also meant for my Foundry created websites and supporting them. There was much radio silence with Stacks then and and therefore uncertainty, I had numerous websites created in RW/Stacks and was about to start a couple of big projects and thought the same as yourself. To change platform is a personal choice, Elements was a no no for me, based on reasons that felt appropriate for me and I didn’t actually want to leave the RW/Stacks, had been fammiliar with it for a long time. In addition to this I had bought many many stacks and didn’t want to abandon this investment.
In Oct 24 I tried Blocs, after about a week of experimenting was pretty much away with it. For a RW/Stacks user it is intuitive, similar overall concept but different in a number of ways and approaches has different ways of doing things, not massively different, but things such as setting breakpoints the order you make changes to cascade down to smaller screen layouts.
To use it could be best described as being a cross between Foundry and Foundation. You have the Foundry ease of the modular Bootstrap elements and you apply styling and functionality using classes similar to Foundation. Using the classes is great, I think the thing that makes them sound scary is that they are called classes, this can imply that you are getting in dirty with CSS and off putting for a no coder workflow (before you start using them). Foundry did the same but instead of calling it classes, it called it Blacksmith. Don’t think of it as classes, rename it in your head to custom options or something like that as it is all menu driven, but each class is it’s own personal options panel that can be applied individually to elements or to many elements for gobal control.
Do you need to invest in thousands of plugins, the simple answer to that is no. Much of what you want to do with 3rd party stacks can be done in Blocs. Some need more creative thinking to do. The third party blocs are for more special things such as Any Video, a great video addition that is more like a suite of functionality. You have much functionaility already with Blocs, but in my case I chose to purchase this for ease of use, workflow and more extended features. For many other things you will use Custom Interactions, classes and now the new feature of Stacked Containers so much you would have done with third party stacks you can create yourself. I really missed my Image Map stack, and if you look on this forum you can see it can actually be done natively in Blocs, just needed a bit of creative thinking. For most other things, just check out the forum and ask questions, it is very friendly and helpful.
You want a blog and editable content. You certainly need Volt CMS. This is hands down the best no-code CMS I’ve ever used, I’ve used five in the past. With RW/Stacks Alloy you could only use one blog and editable content needed to be done with droplets/embed process. You don’t need to use the latter with Volt, it is similar in use to WebYep, you just add a box on the page with a unique name to be web editable. Blogs you can have as many as you want with Volt, you are not limited to one. I created a website that has multiple sections using multiple blogs, it therefore became a website with all user editable pages.
Booking system, not that I’m aware of natively. If it is using third-party srvice that can be embedded then it isn’t a problem, stuff embeds beatifully in Blocs. If you want a Blocs solution I think you may be stuck there, somebody else can clarify that.
Should you change platform? Only you can decide that. I have a lot of respect for Stacks, I will probably be running both Stacks and Blocs in parallel, with stacks being used for PWA Pro related content when I want to create a web app. For websites though I am using Blocs exclusively now and have/am converting older websites over to Blocs for longetivity support.
If you do venture in to Blocs you will need Blocs Plus and Volt CMS. That will certainly let you achive most of everything you have used previously.
I know zero about web development and have managed to get a site up and running with interactions with Zapier in the space of a few weeks. I bough a few Blocs and Brics to speed things up and I’m pretty happy so far.
I had a number of nice animations that made everything look a lot slicker, but had to turn them off as they were not working well on Samsung Galaxies (weirdly specific).
Great result!
Welcome to the Blocs forum 
As mentioned, you can use Volt CMS for a blog or build a Wordpress Theme with Blocs Plus and get blogging features that way (Bigger learning curve).
As for a Calendar and Booking system, I’m not aware of any add-ons for Blocs and this is not the sort of thing you could easily build with Custom Interactions. However, you could add support for this type of functionality using the Blocs code widget to embed a 3rd party code snippet.
My advice is always to take Blocs for a spin, see if it gels with you. The free version of Blocs is feature limited in a few ways, but there is no time limit, so you can take your time playing around with it.
Good luck on your quest to find a replacement 
Hi @Meraki - welcome to Blocs.
@SpookyDoo has summed everything I was going to say, so saved me typing it all ! 
Also @Norm has mentioned about using third party codes for a calendar (which Google’s does embed I believe) and a booking system depending on what type as there are hundreds out their you can simply bring into blocs.I used a holiday park booking system on a site I did and its working flawlessly.
If after you have had a play around and want to dive deeper into Blocs - then I 100% recommend looking at Blocs Master from @Eldar
Good luck !
@ZoomZoom - nice site!
Welcome to the community @Meraki
Welcome @Meraki.
@ZoomZoom Congrats on your site. 
Though noticed your site can inadvertently be horizontally scrolled on iOS (phone / tablet), temporarily leaving the user with a mostly empty white space. Unsure if there is a general setting in Blocs to prevent this, Blocs already includes overflow-x hidden on the body. So maybe something else in your page is conflicting or causing this.
Welcome to Blocs,
@Adie-Sam and the others have summarized everything correctly. In October 2024, I decided to leave Rapidweaver despite many investments for the same reasons.
With Blocs, you are more flexible, it makes adjustments via classes very accessible, and it can do a lot out of the box. This saves on the purchase of extensions. I also think the custom interactions have great potential.
I also feel that the team behind Blocs resolves issues more quickly and responds to requests and suggestions quite promptly. I do not regret the switch.
Check out Bookly as a plugin for ‘bookings.’ since it sounds like you require WordPress options. But otherwise, for web design, while I have made a few purchases from other Blocs users, aside from Blocs Pro check out Eldar’s “Blocs Master” products… tons of blocs & templates, great ‘training’ and more than worth the membership. Hope it’s okay to post all that here, but that’s my opinion on your question. Search those things, I don’t think you will be disappointed. Cheers!
Hi I moved from Rapidweaver plus foundry 3 a great combination to Blocs 6 once you see how things works the the actual blocs has a lot more than the rapidweaver without all the addons You can make better sites with the plain Blocs than Rapidwaever, I redid my site from scratch in a day or so and then refines it over a few months with changes as I got to grips with the way it works. www.malcolm-cooke.com. Cheers
That “no future” remark made me do the following Google search, and upon seeing the results, I was pleased that AI decided to mention Blocs as an alternative…
Back when I was a SoftPress Freeway 7 Pro user, there were many in the final days who defected to RapidWeaver. I tried RapidWeaver on numerous occasions but always found myself sticking with Freeway. Something about Freeway was just better suited to the way my brain works.
I first fell in love with Freeway just after it hit version 2.0, in early 1999. I was shocked at how intuitive the UI was. I considered it to be the MacPaint of web design – having a true Mac-like feel to it, not some Windows app rehashed for the Mac. I became so enthralled with Freeway that I later became instrumental in getting a Japanese language edition made (learning how to use PowerGlot, and even helping translate a huge chunk of the enormous 300+ page printed manual). It didn’t stop there either. I attending a couple Macworld Tokyo shows with SoftPress engineers to promote the product.
I even had the privilege of visiting SoftPress in Oxford on two separate occasions, the latter of which was at the peak of the BSE crisis (mad cow), and I decided to have a steak in Oxford anyway.
Ultimately, SoftPress closed its doors, forcing me to make some hard choices (even though they later resurrected the company). I tried RapidWeaver several more times, but my brain just couldn’t figure it out. It seemed so very unnatural compared to the DTP model used by Freeway.
My quest for something better eventually led me to Blocs. I think it was at about version 2 when I first start toying with Blocs. Although Blocs was a night-and-day difference from Freeway, it really didn’t take me too long to get my head around how to use it. It’s hard to describe, but a lot of it just made sense to my creative designer brain. What didn’t make sense got answered in this forum, thanks to the great people here, including the developer. And the great part is, @norm (creator/developer) is a super nice fellow who has continued to add and expand the software into the absolutely incredible web design tool it is today. I stand in awe to ponder that Norm still has even more mind-blowing features up his sleeve for us!
Now, bear in mind that my experience won’t guarantee Blocs will be an easy transition for hardcore Rapidweaver users who have used it for years and actually grew to like it. Because as I said, I really couldn’t figure out RapidWeaver compared to Freeway or to Blocs. But my gut feeling is that if you give Blocs a chance, you may fall head over heels for it, as I have. It’s really an amazing piece of software. But most importantly, Blocs still has a bright future ahead of it.
Thanks @JDW 
Love this picture, fantastic to see x2 G4 cubes and a couple of G3 iMac’s in the background.
Also loving that Freeway merch, I may have to get some Blocs apparel made 
Thanks. I’ll need to work out how to stop that
omg thanks for such a wonderful and detailed reply - I am going to purchase today! Thanks so much for the input and clarity.
Thanks for such a detailed reply! I’m in!
@ZoomZoom, Looks like you may have got it resolved. You might want to express the cause and remedy (to help others) as I’ve seen it on other Blocs sites also. Due to this it may need mentioned in the Documentation, Blocs Bytes, etc., based upon cause.
All I did was switch off scroll FX on everything, so I guess that was what was causing it? I had an element scroll in from the right - it must’ve been creating a lot of false space I guess.
Thanks, easy remedy but interesting cause. Seems like Norm should look at that, seen it before.