Written by If you are wondering how to create a Google Web Story (also called AMP Story), the answer is: Try a Web Stories Builder.
Web Stories builders are the best way to create engaging stories within a few minutes and with no code or development skills.
There are a dozen of Web Stories builders available. They will help you with delivering great stories for your audience (and for Google).
Which one is the best for you?
In this complete review, we will detail some of the major web stories builders on the market.
This guide will help you to understand
- The benefits and features of each Web Stories builder
- Who is the team behind
- What is the right tool for you
Hopefully, after reading this article, you will find your favourite Google Stories builder and start creating visual content for your website.
Table of Contents
What is a Web Story for Google?
With a Google Web Story, you can share text, images and videos in a slideshow format optimized for mobile devices, directly from your website. The cherry on the cake: a web story can be found directly from the Google Search page.
It shares similar features with other stories formats such as Facebook or Instagram stories. However, it has significant differences:
- Google Web Stories are built for the open web
- No dedicated mobile or desktop application is needed to read a Web Story, just your web browser.
- You have full control over the creation process
- Google displays Web Stories in the search result
One important note is that the story must adhere to a specific format to be indexed and available in the Search Engine Result Page (SERP). AMP Story is the story format supported by Google.
The Google Web Stories builder or AMP Stories builders help you to deliver web stories in the right format for Google. (And that’s why you are here today, to learn more about it).
Here an example of a Web / AMP Story. As you can see, you can easily embed them on a website.
For more information about Google Web (AMP) Stories, I highly recommend reading this complete guide.
Today, the focus of the article will be about the AMP Stories Builders.
What is an AMP Stories Builder?
With an AMP Stories Builder, you can produce a Web Story within minutes without coding. It helps you speeding up the creation process.
A story builder is a web-based application and offers an interface where you can start creating and editing your story by adding text, images and videos.
Here some of the features you will get by using a Web Stories builder:
- Drag and Drop of elements on the story
- Pre-defined templates layout
- Access to a vast images library
- Hosting of your stories
Once the story is created you can embed it on your website or share it via your social media or email.
What is the best AMP Stories builder?
The goal of this review is not to make a ranking of the AMP Stories editors available, but rather to give you a good overview of each of them.
For the review process, I’ve contacted each vendors, and I offered them the possibility to participate in this article. Some replied, and some ignored me.
They were treated the same way. I shared with a questionnaire, and they were free to give their answers. Their answers are slightly edited.
Nevertheless, I try to keep the essence of their message.
Also, I’ve done my research and tested each available AMP Stories Builders.
For each tool, you will understand
- What are the main benefits
- Who are the people behind
- What are the main features
- What is the pricing
- And what will be the next features available
Review of the AMP Stories Builders
Here the list of AMP Stories builders that have been reviewed.
| AMP Stories Builder | Pricing | Country | Drag & Drop | Prebuilt templates | Analytics | Engagement features | Mobile App | Automated Stories / AI |
| Ampstor | Free | US | Yes | Yes | No | No | No | No |
| Flash Stories | Free | Taiwan | Yes | No | No | No | No | No |
| Make Stories | Free | India | Yes | Yes | No | No | No | No |
| Once | Free | France | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | No | No |
| ProductStories | Freemium | North Macedonia | No | Yes | Yes | No | No | No |
| StorifyMe | Freemium | Germany | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | No |
| tappable | Free | Belgium | Yes | No | Yes | No | No | No |
| viqeo | Freemium | Russia | Yes | Yes | No | No | No | Yes |
| Visual Stories | Freemium | India | Yes | Yes | No | No | No | No |
| Web Story Today | Paid | Switzerland | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| ZMOOZ Stories | Freemium | US/France | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
For more detail Click on one of the images below to open a new page with the review.
My two cents about the AMP Stories builders
The AMP Stories format and the stories builders will be successful if the following is true:
- The stories are easy to create
- The stories are available in Google Search
- The stories increase engagement and conversion
Easy to create
The product makers are doing a great job with their builders and try to solve a key challenge: reducing the time-to-publish. There is still work to be done, and the creation process should be smoother.
Being able to re-use existing assets, pages or other web properties and quicky build a story will help.
A game-changer for the builders will be the creation of a dedicated mobile application.
At the moment, AMP builders are web-based and working for desktop only. You need to sit behind your computer to create a story.
Being able to create a story “on the go” from a smartphone and push it to your website will open the AMP Stories format to a new audience – individuals.
At the moment, it is still focused on businesses and marketing professional.
Stories in the SERP
In 2019, when I wrote the complete review of AMP Stories, Google has announced that it will display more and more stories in the SERP, and especially under a section called Visual Stories.
Indeed, I found some stories in the SERP, but never saw this Top Stories feature.
Maybe Google doesn’t have space anymore for a new SERP features? (This is sarcastic.)
Joke aside, if Google does not highlight more this format on its search page. Publishers and businesses won’t start using it.
Increase engagement and conversion
Engagement and conversion are associated with the visibility of the stories in Google Search (SERP) but not only: The features offered by the framework are important as well.
The team behind the AMP framework are doing a great job to make these stories format the most advanced and flexible among the other stories format.
They have released already great features such as a menu, attachment and CTA.
Hopefully, they will offer even more possibility to create unique stories.
What is the future of Web Stories on Google?
The teams working on those Stories Builders are investing a lot of their time and energy on the format.
They have good hope in the success of the format.
Anita from Ampstor said that “it is just the start, brands will start to utilize this technology more in the years to come“.
She also thinks that the openness of the format is an opportunity: “All current social media stories are published in a closed ecosystem, so accessibility will be significantly improved as brands start to publish on the open web. “
The team at VisualStories are highlighting the critical role of Google for a successful story.
They said, “AMP Stories will redefine the way users see the web; when some content in this format starts appearing in search results of prominent search engines, such as the travel search queries.”
Still, some of the vendors would like to see more features. Sergei from viqeo mentioned some ideas such as “quizzes, sticker and more monetization options“.
Flash Stories team would like to see improvement in the future as well. Gary Yang from Flash Stories indicates “The AMP Stories itself is good but not perfect at the moment, we are looking forward to more function from Google soon, such as Page Attachment function.“
Finally, the stories builders are playing an essential role in this ecosystem. Anita from Ampstor said: “It is our role as toolmakers and active members of the contribution community to help introduce this format to the world and help them understand the benefits that it offers for businesses.“
To recap
The Web Stories format is just at its beginning, and more great features will come in the following months.
It is still the right moment for you to start embracing this format.
The best way to create your first stories is to pick one of the AMP Builders on the market.
The product makers will love to hear from you and support you with your very first creations.
It is time to start your first stories before the space is getting crowded.
Hi Samuel! It’s always a pleasure to read your blog. They are so in-depth and informative. I really appreciate your efforts tha you put in. Great work! The AMP Stories builders and Editors blog was a great read (as always)! Visual Stories was outstandingly great from the rest, given the features and network that it has built. Surely, making the Stories easy-to-create and easy-to-publish for anyone, is a big challenge.
It was really worth reading this blog.
I have personally tested the MakeStories and VisualStories.
MakeStories have problem with publishing. It you want to use your domain, and if you have wordpress, then though claimed, but the publish to wordpress don’t work. So, I could not go ahead with MakeStories, though they had a Good Interface and libraries.
Talking about the VisualStories, it’s really one of the best Story Builder. The ease with which, we can create the stories is good.
The publishing freedom is absolutely handy, totally easy.
You can use your domain and publish the stories on your sub-domain. I tried with https://stories.solaank.co.in
Also, if you don’t have the website, you can create the one with visualstories.com
The team is really helpful, and their response was also good and positive. They guided me properly during the whole setup of the website. Their efforts are appreciated.
But yes, they have a long way to go… A lot of scope for improvement is there for VisualStories.
For me, the VisualStories worked well…
Absolutely right, Deepakraj! Samuel’s blogs are indeed worth to read – and there’s so much so much research, efforts out into, that is really commendable. This blog is surely a big library for the Web community building Web Stories.
Glad that you liked VisualStories. We always strive for user-first approach.
But, yes, as you said we have a long way to go. Surely, we will challenge ourselves each coming day and bring nothing but the best for the users!
Thank you Samuel for bringing us together here with your blog. It’s always a pleasure interacting with you – always a great learning experience.
Hey.. you could add Web Stories Generator to the list. It’s a WordPress plugin that generates automatic web stories from your posts. https://www.webstoriesgenerator.com
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