Fire path
from approx. £12 – £50 p.m.
per brand or portfolio
For whom
Designers, studios and boutique agencies
Focus
Visually strong, tailor-made brand books and a neat transfer to the customer.
The digital brand handbook from MerkBrouwers
Competitors
The market is full. The choice is easy.
From a wiki in Notion to an enterprise platform costing a thousand pounds per month. We explain what each platform does, what it costs and where it ends for you.
The overview
Six ways to preserve your brand.
The market for digital brand manuals ranges from a handy wiki to a complete governance platform. The amounts below are indicative and vary by country, model and time — they are here to position the market, not to criticize a provider.
Corebook
free entry, paid approx. £15 – £120 p.m.
per workspace
For whom
Agencies, scale-ups and mid-tier brands
Focus
Scrollable guidelines on the web, with animation and video previews in separate modules.
Zeroheight
free entry, paid approx. £20 – £49 p.m.
per editor
For whom
Tech, scale-ups, UX/UI and product teams
Focus
Deep synchronization between design tokens from Figma and the code and marketing guidelines.
Frontify
on request, often from approx. £500 – £1,500+ p.m.
per year, on contract
For whom
Large organizations, enterprises and corporates
Focus
All in one: asset management, guidelines, approval flows, own subdomains and SSO.
Bynder
custom work, often approximately £5,000 – £20,000+ per year
enterprise contract
For whom
Corporates with a large digital archive
Focus
Comprehensive asset management: taxonomy, rights management and brand protection across entire archives.
Notion / Coda
approx. £0 – £10 p.m.
per user
For whom
Startups and micro-SMEs
Focus
Flexible wiki and internal manual. Limited display of files, formats and color systems.
MarkBase
£40 – £225 p.m. excl. VAT
per organization, not per user
For whom
Organizations that actually want their brand to be consistent
Focus
One brand manual that your entire team uses — free for MerkBrouwers customers
Three layers
Every platform promises more. They solve different things.
The basics: show
Show headings and colors neatly, put down files and pretend that everyone will follow it afterwards. This is the level of a style guide in PDF, a wiki or a nice brand book.
- Show colors and fonts
- Save files somewhere
- Guidelines as a document
The middle: cooperation
The manual moves with your brand, you decide who sees what, and external parties only get what they need. This is where the difference between a document and a tool begins.
- Always the current version
- Access by role or zone
- Secure link for printers and agencies
Enterprise: Governing
A platform that manages your entire archive with automatic tags, approval routes before something goes live and login via the corporate environment. Powerful — and your own purchasing decision.
- AI-tagged asset management
- Approval routes per campaign
- SSO and own subdomain
Per provider
What they do well. And where it ends for you.
No straw men. This is what we see when we look at organizations.
Fire path
Strong in
Published brand books to look at. This is a great solution for a studio that produces an identity and transfers it neatly.
Where it ends
It's a book, not a tool. You pay per brand or portfolio, and it is intended for people who design — not for the colleague who just needs a banner.
Corebook
Strong in
Modern, modular and fast. Guidelines that you read through like a site, with nice previews.
Where it ends
The structure remains up to you. Anyone who does not have time to fill modules and keep them up to date will have exactly the same chaos in three months' time — in a nicer shell.
Zeroheight
Strong in
The best choice if you have a design system team. Figma tokens syncing with code is real work.
Where it ends
You pay per editor. An organization of thirty people quickly becomes a shocking amount. And without a team managing tokens, you don't have half the value.
Frontify
Strong in
Mature enterprise solution: asset management, approval flows, SSO and own subdomains. A serious transition for a corporate with twelve brands.
Where it ends
You buy a governance device. Annual contract, implementation process and a price that starts where our top scale ends.
Bynder
Strong in
If you need to find, tag and provide rights to thousands of assets, this is exactly what it was built for.
Where it ends
It is an archive, not a brand manual. And the price tag suits a department, not an organization that wants absolute consistency.
Notion / Coda
Strong in
Completely free if you already have it, and incredibly flexible. A great start for one person with one brand.
Where it ends
Flexibility is exactly the problem. Everyone creates their own page, files are in separate folders, and after six months your logo is in three places in three colors. A wiki is not a source.
Calculation example
What an organization of thirty people costs.
Calculated based on the indicative prices mentioned, without discount, tax or implementation process. The bars show where the price difference is — not which tool is the best.
Notion / Coda
approx. £300 per month
30 users × £10
Fire path
approx. £50 per month
per brand or portfolio
Corebook
approx. £120 per month
highest paid name
Zeroheight
approx. £600 per month
30 editors × £20
MarkBase
£95 per month
11 – 50 employees, per organization
Frontify
approx. £500 – £1,500 per month
often from this level
Bynder
approx. £420 – £1,670 per month
£5,000 – £20,000 per year
Provider prices are indicative and change regularly. Always request a current quote when making your choice. Our own rates are exclusive of VAT and apply per organization, not per user.
MerkBrouwers benefit: £0 per month
Are you a customer of MerkBrouwers? Then your brand manual is ready and you pay nothing for it.
Fair's fair
That's why we don't fit everywhere.
Choose a viewing platform if…
You provide an identity to a customer and want to transfer a beautiful brand book. Then Brandpad or Corebook are exactly the right tools, and we are not.
Choose an enterprise platform if…
You have to manage an archive of thousands of assets, need approval routes before campaigns go live, and want to log in via the corporate environment. Frontify and Bynder do that really well.
Choose MarkBase if…
Your brand already exists and the problem is that everyone deals with it differently. You want one place that your intern and your director understand, without anyone having to take a course.
What you do get with us
Logos, colors and fonts with the correct values and sizes
Files that can be downloaded directly, in the format you need
Dos & don'ts that show how and what not
One current version — no brand manual_def_v3_latest.pdf
Seven levels of access, from intern to management
Multiple brands next to each other, each with its own guidelines
A secure link for printers, agencies and partners
Templates that remain brand-compliant, without anyone checking
What we don't do: automatically tag an archive of thousands of assets, approval routes for each campaign or login via your corporate environment. We leave that to the platforms that were built for that purpose - and therefore also ask for that.
Kennis & kunde
They sell software. We come from a design agency.
Each platform on this page can build a portal. That's not where the difference lies. The difference lies in who is behind it: a company that sells a tool, or an agency that builds brands and has created the software from them.
Them: a software company
- They provide a platform. You provide the content, the structure and the perseverance.
- Ask them which use of color suits your brand and you will receive a knowledge base article.
- Support is done via a ticket. Your brand is customer number 4,812.
- After onboarding you are a user, not a brand.
We: a design agency with its own software
- MerkBrouwers builds brands every day. MarkBase was born from that — we were the first users ourselves.
- “We saw the problem of brand chaos and built the solution.”
- We think about your brand, not just your login.
- To ask? You speak to a person who knows your brand, not a ticket number.
- For MerkBrouwers customers, MarkBase is free — because it's aftercare on the brand we built for you, not a product.
An online brand manual
- They
- Yes
- We
- Yes
Files in the correct format, available for immediate download
- They
- Yes
- We
- Yes
Knowledge of software
- They
- Their profession
- We
- Our tools
Knowledge of brands and brand identity
- They
- Included with the manual
- We
- Our daily work
Thinking about your brand
- They
- Not included
- We
- What we exist for
What you have after a year
- They
- A subscription
- We
- A brand that fits everywhere
That's the difference between buying software and having your brand guaranteed by the agency that works with it every day.
Questions about comparison
Good to know.
Are you unsure between two solutions? Send us your situation and we will honestly say whether MarkBase suits you — or whether you would be better off elsewhere.
Why does a design agency make software?
Because we were tired of it ourselves. “We saw the problem of brand chaos and built the solution.” Every day we saw how beautiful identities were diluted into expressions that no one could find anymore — so we created the tools we wanted to use ourselves. As a result, MarkBase knows exactly what a brand manual must meet: we were the first user.
Are you as extensive as Frontify or Bynder?
No, and that's not an understatement. These platforms manage your entire archive with automatic tagging, over approval routes and login via the corporate environment. These are different products with a different price tag. We make your brand so accessible that your entire team uses it. This requires a different budget and a different type of customer.
Do I have to pay per employee?
No. Our price depends on the size of your organization, not on the number of logins. So a team of thirty people does not cost thirty times as much as a team of three. That is immediately the biggest price difference with tools that charge per editor.
Isn't a brand manual just a wiki in Notion?
To some extent yes — and that is precisely the problem. A wiki is flexible: everyone creates their own structure and after six months your logo will be in three places. A brand manual is not a document but one source: the same colors, the same files, the same statements, ready to use.
We already have a style guide in PDF. Then why switch?
Because a PDF does not move. Everyone prints their own version, no one knows which is the correct one and the files are somewhere else. The portal contains one current version with the correct formats right next to it.
What if my organization grows later?
Then you scale: from one brand to several, from one team to multiple departments with their own access. And if you really want enterprise asset management at some point, then that will be a conscious choice in addition to your brand manual — not something you have to purchase now.
See the difference for yourself.
We walk through your own brands in a short demo. Then you will immediately see whether this fits, or whether you are better off elsewhere.