WCAGdesk
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WCAGdesk vs Siteimprove.

Siteimprove is a serious, honest enterprise accessibility platform — a different product for a different buyer. If you run a 5,000-page government portal with a procurement department, talk to them. If you're an EU ecommerce operator who wants a timestamped audit trail without an annual contract and a six-week onboarding, WCAGdesk is the shape that fits.

Run a free scan → Compare your last Siteimprove quote →
The honest framing

We're not going to claim Siteimprove is bad. Same axe-core engine under most of their accessibility module. Same WCAG ruleset. A real product with real customers. The difference is shape, scope, and price — and one specific gap that matters under the EAA: durable, independently verifiable evidence of what you tested when. We built around that gap.

Sources: Siteimprove public marketing & support docs · WCAGdesk methodology page
Siteimprove $15K+ Typical annual contract, sales-led. 2–6 week onboarding before the first usable dashboard.
WCAGdesk €149 Month one. Cancel anytime. URL → free scan → signup → first scheduled scan within an hour.
01

Head to head

Dimension Siteimprove WCAGdesk
Buyer Enterprise, public sector, large CMS estates EU ecommerce operators (Shopify / WooCommerce / Shopware / custom)
Engine axe-core + proprietary checks + manual-audit add-on axe-core 4.11 — same as Lighthouse and Chrome DevTools
Pricing Annual contract, sales-led; entry typically $1,000+/mo per property; estates higher €149 / €299 / €599 per month · cancel anytime · no demo required
Onboarding Sales call → contract → kickoff → typically 2–6 weeks to first usable dashboard URL → free scan → signup → first scheduled scan within an hour
Currency / billing USD or DKK invoicing; VAT handled through their entity EUR via Paddle (merchant of record); EU VAT, OSS, B2B reverse charge handled
Evidence artifact Scheduled PDF report; no public hash chain or RFC 3161 timestamp by default PDF/A-2b + RFC 3161 timestamp + SHA-256 Merkle root anchored to Polygon
EU-specific workflows Generic accessibility statement; EU specifics via consulting add-ons EAA Art. 4 statement generator (EN/DE), Abmahnung response packet, Fachanwalt list
Account management Dedicated CSM (good if you want one) Email support; founder reachable directly
02

Where Siteimprove genuinely wins

  • Large multi-site, multi-brand, multi-language estates with central governance.
  • SEO, content quality, analytics, and policy in one suite — if you need those modules alongside accessibility.
  • Procurement teams that require a named account manager, SLA, and annual contract before they'll sign.
  • Sectors where the manual-audit add-on (their human experts) is part of the required engagement.

If that's you, we'd genuinely rather you talk to them than over-fit our product. We are not built for 5,000-page estates with a procurement department.

03

Where WCAGdesk genuinely wins

  • Price-to-defensibility ratio. €149–€599/mo gets you the timestamped, hash-chained evidence layer that holds up in a German Abmahnung response. Siteimprove charges enterprise rates partly because they ship the rest of the suite — you pay for SEO and analytics you may not need.
  • EU-specific defaults. EAA Article 4 statement generation, German Abmahnung response workflow, EU lawyer network on Counsel tier, EUR pricing with Paddle MoR. We assume your buyer is in the EU and act like it.
  • Independently verifiable evidence. Our weekly Merkle root is on Polygon mainnet. You don't have to trust us to verify the timeline — anyone with the per-scan hash path can reconstruct the root and check it on Polygonscan.
  • No sales call to start. Free scan → signup → schedule. If you don't like it, click cancel.
04

The "same engine" question

Siteimprove's accessibility module is built on axe-core with some proprietary rules layered on top. WCAGdesk runs axe-core 4.11 directly with the standard WCAG 2.1 AA ruleset. The implication: for the WCAG criteria automation actually covers (about 30–40%, per Deque's own published research), the two products will find largely the same issues on the same page. The differences live in scheduling, evidence chain, statement generation, EU workflows, and price.

05

What WCAGdesk does

  1. Crawls a representative sample of your live URLs on a weekly (Audit) or daily (Defense / Counsel) schedule using a clearly identified user agent.
  2. Runs axe-core 4.11 against the rendered DOM and stores the engine version, ruleset, and per-URL hash with each scan.
  3. Issues a PDF/A-2b report carrying an RFC 3161 timestamp. Each weekly batch rolls into a SHA-256 Merkle tree anchored to Polygon mainnet.
  4. Generates an EAA Article 4 accessibility statement in EN and DE, prefilled with real numbers, refreshed quarterly.
  5. Defense view assembles an Abmahnung response packet: scan history, remediation log, German draft for a Fachanwalt für IT-Recht.
06

Honest disclosures

  • WCAGdesk is automated. axe-core catches roughly 30–40% of WCAG criteria — the ceiling for any automated tool. For full BFSG conformance you also want manual expert review; see the methodology page.
  • Until Q3 2026 our RFC 3161 timestamps come from FreeTSA (publicly trusted, not a qualified TSA under eIDAS Art. 41). Qualified TSA via Sectigo and AdES PDF sealing are on the roadmap.
  • We are not lawyers. The evidence WCAGdesk produces supports a defence; a Fachanwalt runs the actual defence.

See what a self-serve EU audit trail looks like.

One free scan, no sales call, axe-core 4.11. Compare what you get for €149/mo against what your last Siteimprove quote was.

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