Rarchy review 2024: app features, pricing, pros & cons

Website projects are about one thing; how to best organize information. Rarchy is a tool that aims to help do just that by helping you build and edit sitemaps plus diagram how users move through your site. Find out their hits and misses in this Rarchy review.

Rarchy review 2024: Is Rarchy any good?

Rarchy is a solid entrant in the sitemap and user flow space. With a sleek design and ease of use that’s on par with other apps, it’s a website planning tool capable of delivering adequate results. In our Rarchy review, we’ll discuss what works and what might disappoint.

Rarchy pricing plans

How much does Rarchy cost? Let’s first review Rarchy prices.

No big surprises on the pricing side of things and as you’d expect with a SaaS product, Rarchy tries to accommodate teams of varying sizes with their 3-tier pricing model.

*Worth noting that their site lists this as $124/month which would actually be $1,488 a year. However they state you’ll be billed $1,990 meaning this plan is effectively more expensive than paying monthly and comes in at $165.83/month.

How much does Rarchy cost for nonprofits?

According to their site, it looks like Rarchy is the same price whether you’re a for-profit or nonprofit business. Honestly, that makes them an outlier since most companies in the sitemapping world (and in general) tend to support the work of nonprofits with reduced prices.

At Slickplan, for example, we help nonprofits and NGOs save on their costs by offering discounts on a per-case basis. Just reach out to us here and we’ll let you know how much you can save.

Are there any Rarchy coupon codes or promo discount vouchers?

Nope. From what we could gather, there are no coupons or vouchers out there for Rarchy, they’re set on their prices.

Rarchy free vs paid: what’s the difference?

Rarchy’s freemium option gives you a nice taste of what their core products can do. Of course, the feature set this version comes with and functionality is substantially throttled but you do get 1 free sitemap and 1 free user flow diagram to play around with.

Among the key restrictions you’ll face with the free plan is that you can’t work with more than 50 pages, can’t invite anyone to collaborate and also can’t even add comments.

Naturally, the paid plans give you more bang for your buck.

The Pro plan doesn’t actually give you much for the price, you still only get 1 user and are limited to 50 pages with the crawler (500 pages if importing from CSV/XML) but can at least add comments to your sitemap.

The Team plan allows for 5,000 pages and 10 users & teams, while the Agency plan ups the page count to 25,000 along with unlimited maps, users and teams.

What’s the difference between a team and a user? Can you just add a team of 50 and work around the user count?

There’s no info on their site so your guess is as good as ours.

As far as no-cost options go, we think we have the best free sitemap generator out there plus free 14-day trials for whichever plan you like.

Rarchy? No such offer so you better hope you can read your team’s mind since you can’t test out their paid plans with your collaborators.

Rarchy overview: what is Rarchy & what is Rarchy used for?

Rarchy is mainly two things; sitemapping and diagramming software.

Combine those tools and you have most of the basics you need for planning a website ("most" because content planning is a big one that’s missing here) and that’s ultimately what it’s used for.

Rarchy features list

And now onto what you’re really here for; the features of Rarchy. We’ll take you through the features we both have, what only they have and what you can only find on Slickplan.

1. Interactive visual sitemaps

Where better to start than sitemaps? They’re the foundation of your site after all and a core feature of both Rarchy and Slickplan.

Being able to see how your entire site is laid out from a birds-eye view is among the best ways to analyze big-picture concepts like information architecture and content silos.

From there, you can see how pages interact and develop the logic of the site.

With Rarchy sitemaps you can do the fundamentals like adding/deleting pages and moving things around as well as add basic (and uneditable) "wireframe" blocks to pages to roughly approximate what might go on a page. You can also add comments but they have to be less than 500 characters.

Slickplan sitemaps are a bit more robust.

With our visual sitemap generator, you can do all the above plus define your link structure both internally and externally.

2. Diagramming

If you think about it, a website is really a series of decision points. Will the user move to the next page and further into your funnel? Will they click your CTA? Is checkout so frustrating that they bounce before buying?

If reducing friction in the decision-making process and optimizing user flow are your goals (and they should be), diagrams and flowcharts are your best friends.

Only after you diagram out the user journey, can you start to make the user experience better. Otherwise, you’re sort of just guessing.

Rarchy’s diagram tool only allows you to use 5 symbols which may stifle you if you’re working on a particularly complex process that requires referencing things like databases, off-page connections, internal storage and more.

With Slickplan’s Diagram Maker, we offer dozens of symbols so no matter the process, you’ll have the visuals to represent it properly.

In other words, we’re on par with a dedicated diagramming tool like Lucidchart.

3. Drag & drop editor

A simple but oft-overlooked feature is how the editor works. We’ve come to expect drag and drop capabilities from a sitemap editor and, rest assured, you can do this with both Rarchy and Slickplan. No sweat.

4. Site crawler & importer

There are only 2 ways to get a sitemap into whichever tool you choose; use a crawler or import via a file.

Let’s compare crawlers first.

These babies make life pretty easy by making importing as simple as punching in a URL.

That’s not the whole story though.

Blindly bringing in a sitemap, without the ability to set parameters means you might not be getting the exact data you need.

Regarding parameters for customizing the crawl, Slickplan gives you more control, but Rarchy is serviceable nonetheless.

Moving on to importing sitemaps via a file upload.

This is just a tiny bit more process-intensive because you first have to generate a sitemap file before you can bring it in.

With Slickplan you can import sitemaps with an XML or TXT file and with Rarchy you can do it with XML or CSV formats.

Since XMLs are by far the most popular file type for this, we built an XML sitemap generator that you can use for free.

5. Map sectioning

With both us and them, you can work on sites that have thousands of pages, which is a great feature for large enterprises.

Here’s the thing though, it’s pretty intimidating (not to mention distracting) to look at thousands of pages and a massive sitemap tree, let alone edit it.

On top of that, most sitemap editing is done one part at a time, making sectioning a divine feature.

Think of it as "zooming in" and filling your screen with only the specific section you’re working on.

6. Page search

Whether it’s your first time or your 500th time working on a sitemap, not being able to easily find the page you want to work on is just annoying.

And it only gets worse as your website projects get larger.

Rather than scanning a sitemap endlessly trying to find what you’re looking for, both of our tools include a search bar. Just punch in a page title and you’re there.

7. Collaboration

This is one we both have but you’ll get a different level of collaboration with Slickplan.

First the similarities.

You can invite team members, collaborators and stakeholders to your projects as well as set permissions for who can do what. You’ll also have an in-app chat area and the ability to have convos attached to specific pages.

The differences have to do with both what you can collaborate on and how with Slickplan.

Since we’re a website planning tool for your entire site, you can work together on sitemaps and diagrams plus content and designs.

And when you’re working on those designs together, you’ll have drop pin comments that sync with Figma and be able to see each other’s movements in real time.

Features included only in Rarchy:

8. Screenshots

A unique feature of Rarchy is that it can pull screenshots of pages you’re importing and display them directly on the sitemap. More or less like a cover photo for the sitemap page that you can view in desktop, tablet and mobile formats.

This can be helpful for clients who really need to see the pages that are being moved and edited, not just their titles.

Advanced features found only in Slickplan:

9. Batch editing

If there’s one thing we’ve learned from so many years and Slickplan upgrades, it’s that users need a way to edit more than one page at a time.

Whether it’s moving 37 blog posts to a new section, collecting 15 case studies under a new tab or changing the color of 70 pages to highlight their importance, being able to make those changes all at once and with far fewer clicks is a huge timesaver.

With Slickplan you can, with Rarchy you’ll have to do things page by page.

10. Customization & branding

Customization is about more than just making a sitemap look pretty (although who doesn’t like pretty, aesthetically pleasing things, right?). It can dramatically improve how easy it is to understand a map.

Color coding is something you can do with both our tools but what you can only do in Slickplan is use color themes that automatically color pages according to their map level. The colors are dynamic too so if you move a page from one level to another, the color will change accordingly.

The second component of a custom map is branding. This may seem insignificant but if you’re presenting a client pitch, being able to showcase a proposal branded with their logos and colors, won’t feel insignificant to them.

11. SEO tools & Google Analytics

A core component of revamping any site is making sure it’s optimized for search.

With Rarchy you can extract page titles, meta descriptions, the H1 tag and define keywords but that’s hardly a tool for improving SEO.

In Slickplan, you can pull the same data and migrate it to our Content Planner (more on that soon) where you can then start building out content.

But even that’s only part of SEO.

We also have an XML sitemap validator that checks for errors that may trip up Google. A redirect checker to confirm destinations and transfer of ranking power. An HTTPS/HTTP header checker to verify site-to-server health. As well as a robots.txt generator and UTM builder.

All of those, plus the aforementioned XML sitemap generator — for free.

In addition to that, you can connect Google Analytics directly to your sitemap and bring in important SEO metrics to guide your decision-making and make your site easier to index.

12. Integrations

Ideally, new tools should easily integrate with your current workflow. The less friction in getting things done the better.

That’s why Slickplan comes standard with Slack, Basecamp and Teamwork integrations so you manage your projects while keeping work and comms consolidated.

For design, we have a Figma integration.

And if you don’t use any of those, no worries, we have a developer API so you can quickly create integrations with the tools you’re already using.

As for Rarchy? No integrations, no API.

13. Content Planner

Getting your content right is an integral part of every website project. Rarchy bills itself as a tool that makes website planning easy and they are useful for parts of planning but content is a major blindspot of theirs.

The closest they come to content is offering over 250 wireframe templates for their page covers. They’re not editable so you can’t move anything around or add any real content. You’re just getting a placeholder image that reminds you of what might go there later.

Genuine content planning and creation is something you can do Slickplan however.

Aside from writing the content, you can manage and oversee your entire content operation. From assigning tasks to building layouts with a simple drag and drop editor to adding media, you can go from content idea to finished piece all within our Content Planner.

14. CMS plugins

Content isn’t complete until it’s live.

After you’ve planned and completed it, you need to get that gold into your CMS with the same structure and with media in the same place because there’s no sense in creating it once and then having to do a lot of the same work in a CMS.

With our CMS plugins for WordPress, Joomla!, Drupal, ExpressionEngine and concrete5, content is moved from Slickplan to CMS exactly as you have it.

If you happen to use a different CMS, you already know we have an API for creating custom integrations.

Oh and your SEO data migrates to your CMS too.

Because Rarchy doesn’t deal with content, it makes sense that they don’t have CMS plugins.

15. Design Mockups

Last but not least, design.

Content is king but the UI is right up there in importance because an interface that’s tough to navigate will likely have people bouncing.

Our Figma integration means you can bring your layouts straight into Slickplan where you and your team can discuss them and see the interplay between design, content and user flow in one workspace.

Additionally, any comment you add to a design element in Figma shows up in Slickplan in the same place and vice versa.

Rarchy pros and cons

TL:DR, here are the advantages and disadvantages of Rarchy:

Rarchy advantages

• Includes visual sitemap creator and diagram maker
• Captures screenshots of pages
• Sitemap sectioning
• Always available freemium version

Rarchy disadvantages

• Diagram maker is very basic with limited symbols
• Lacks tools for planning content and design so not a solution to plan your whole website
• Can’t trial paid plans with your team and free version only allows the use of limited a feature set
• No CMS plugins, integrations or API
• No SEO tools
• Support is tiered so it appears that lower-tiered plans wait longer for their issues to be resolved

Rarchy complaints & praise (Rarchy reviews from real customers)

What’s the word on the street about Rarchy?

Reviews of Rarchy are resoundingly on the positive side with the simple UI, ease of use and minimal learning curve needed to produce a sitemap being big pluses. People also seem to like the screenshot feature.

As far as negative Rarchy reviews go, despite the simplicity of the user interface, the tools have shown to be glitchy and buggy for some. Users also found themselves pining for things like content planning.

Review of Rarchy support

As mentioned a moment ago, their support is tiered. The Pro, Team and Agency plans have support labeled as Basic, Priority and High Priority, respectively. So it seems you quite literally get what you pay for in that sense.

That said, everyone is still required to contact them the same way; submitting a ticket with the expectation of getting a reply within 48 hours.

No email or phone number.

Nonetheless, those possible red flags aside, their support has gotten high marks in reviews.

Is Rarchy worth it? Our conclusion

Finally, the big question; is Rarchy worth it?

All in all, we’d say it passes the test. The nice thing about it is that, aside from sitemapping, they include diagram-making as a core functionality. The tool itself may be a bit limited, but from a planning perspective, it’s a great thing to have.

The downside is that those are the only planning tools and for a product that touts itself as something that makes website planning easy, they leave a lot of planning aspects untouched. Namely, content and design.

All Rarchy alternatives do sitemapping, some include diagramming but only Slickplan brings in content and design planning to help you bring your entire site to life.