Scilio vs. Owlstown
Looking for an Owlstown alternative for your academic website?
Owlstown is a well-established website builder for academics — and for some people it's the right choice. Scilio solves a narrower problem: a beautiful, zero-maintenance portfolio of your publications and projects, without building and managing a whole website. Here is an honest comparison so you can pick the right tool.
| Scilio | Owlstown | |
|---|---|---|
| Built for | Researchers who want a focused portfolio of their publications and projects | Academics who want a full personal website — pages, blog, courses, lab members |
| Free plan | Full editor, unlimited entries and free publishing at a scilio.app/yourname address | Published website on a free owlstown.net address, 20 MB storage |
| Paid plans | One plan: €5/month, or €4/month billed yearly (€48) — adds your own domain, themes and visitor analytics | Three tiers: $4–8/month billed yearly ($5–10 billed monthly), mainly adding domains, storage and analytics |
| Publications | Structured entries with authors, abstracts, tags and dates — plus DOI autofill and BibTeX import with a duplicate-flagging review step | Publication lists with BibTeX import/export and Semantic Scholar search |
| Projects | Yes — with descriptions, partners and links | Yes |
| Themes | 20 hand-crafted themes — switch your whole portfolio with one click | 10 themes with customizable colors and fonts |
| Blog, courses, lab pages | No — Scilio is deliberately portfolio-only | Yes — blog posts, courses, people pages, news, custom pages |
| Custom domain | Yes, with Pro — enter your domain and DNS + SSL are handled for you | Yes, on the higher tiers |
| Visitor analytics | Yes, with Pro — anonymous, cookie-free views with trends, top sources and countries | Yes, on the higher tiers |
| Hosting & maintenance | Fully managed — edits go live instantly | Fully managed |
Owlstown facts checked on owlstown.com on July 21, 2026. Spotted something outdated? Tell us at support@scilio.appand we'll correct it.
What makes Scilio different
A portfolio, not a website project
There are no pages to arrange and no site structure to plan. You add publications and projects into a purpose-built editor, and the layout is always handled for you.
Design-first themes
Every Scilio theme is hand-crafted as a complete look and applies to your whole portfolio with one click — you never tune colors and fonts to get something presentable.
Built to be found by name
Every published portfolio ships with Person structured data (schema.org), the markup search engines use to connect a page to a researcher's name.
Your publication list imports itself
Paste a DOI to autofill a single paper, or import your whole list from a BibTeX file — with a review step that flags likely duplicates before anything is added. Both are included in the free plan.
When Owlstown is the better choice
An honest comparison cuts both ways. Pick Owlstown over Scilio if:
You want a custom domain on a free plan — with Scilio it comes with Pro
You're building a site for a lab or group, with courses, a blog or team pages
Keep reading
Try Scilio for free
Build your entire portfolio — publications, projects, profile — and publish it at scilio.app/yourname without paying a cent. Pro adds your own domain, themes and visitor analytics.