WebCatalog Desktop — one window per web app, and the free tier you may not need to leave

• WebCatalog Desktop

  This page

  PricingWebCatalog Desktop leads

  • A free tier that is capped rather than time-limited, at two apps, two profiles and one space — genuinely usable at that size
  • Paid tiers are per user and remove the caps, adding unlimited apps, profiles and spaces
  • A team tier adds shared spaces, centralised billing, an activity log and single sign-on for organisations
  • Billing annually reduces the effective monthly rate, and there is a trial on the paid tiers

• Browser install

  PricingWebCatalog Desktop leads

  • Free, permanently, with no account and no limit on how many apps you install
  • There is no paid option to consider because there is no product to buy
  • The only cost is that multi-account use is awkward, which is the entire reason the paid tools exist

• Shift

  PricingWebCatalog Desktop leads

  • A free tier plus paid subscriptions for individuals and teams
  • Because it is a browser environment, the subscription is positioned against your working day rather than against a utility
  • Team pricing is per user, so the cost scales with headcount like any workspace product

• Rambox

  PricingWebCatalog Desktop leads

  • A free tier plus paid individual and team plans
  • Tiers differ mainly in how many apps, accounts and workspaces you can manage and in the level of support
  • Per-user pricing on the team plan, so it scales the same way the others do

1. WebCatalog Desktop — official page
2. WebCatalog — pricing
3. WebCatalog — app catalogue
4. WebCatalog — documentation
5. WebCatalog — profiles documentation
6. WebCatalog — spaces documentation
7. Chrome — install a web app
8. Shift — official site
9. Rambox — official site

Free tier

Yes

Pricing summary

The structure is refreshingly blunt: there is a free tier, it is capped rather than time-limited, and the caps are specific. Two desktop apps, two profiles and one space. That is enough to learn whether the workflow suits you and enough for some people permanently — if you need two services in their own windows and one pair of accounts separated, you can use this indefinitely without paying, which is a more generous arrangement than most tools in this category offer. Paid tiers are per user and exist to remove the caps: unlimited apps, unlimited profiles and unlimited spaces, along with the extras that make the desktop layer pleasant — an ad-free experience, custom theming and wallpapers, an app lock, and the widget-style utilities such as a world clock and currency converter. A business tier adds the things an organisation needs rather than an individual: shared spaces and pages, centralised billing, an activity log and single sign-on. The honest piece of advice that the product itself cannot give you is that the free tier should be the first thing you try, and that a meaningful share of people evaluating this tool do not need it at all. If your situation is one or two web apps and a single account each, your browser already installs a site as its own window at no cost, and introducing a paid client to do the same thing adds a layer without adding a capability. The specific thing you are paying for is multi-account separation that is actually pleasant to switch between, and the wall arrives quickly once that is your reason for being here. Annual billing reduces the effective rate, the paid tiers carry a trial, and per-user pricing means the team tier costs what the headcount costs — all of which move, so check the published pricing page before planning around a figure.

Reviewed on 19 September 2026 · WebCatalog — pricing

• Turns any website into its own desktop app

  Each app runs in its own window with its own icon and a place in the dock or taskbar, so a service stops being one tab among thirty. There is a large curated catalogue of ready-made apps and you can add any URL yourself, so nothing depends on whether someone has packaged it. The important limitation to understand is that this is a wrapper: the underlying website is unchanged, so there is no offline mode, no added feature and no speed improvement — what you get is a place for the app to live, not a better app.

• Multiple accounts of the same service, signed in at once

  This is the feature the whole product exists for. Profiles keep cookies, sessions and storage separate, so you can stay signed into two or more accounts of the same service and switch between them without signing out. A profile can also be reused across several apps, which is what makes a work identity a coherent thing rather than a per-app setting. It is the capability that the browser’s built-in install genuinely lacks in any convenient form, and the honest justification for paying.

• Spaces, with nested subspaces, for keeping contexts apart

  Spaces group apps, accounts and bookmarks into contexts — work, personal, a specific client, a project — and subspaces add another level so a work space can hold marketing, finance and support as distinct areas. The effect is that switching context is switching a place rather than closing and reopening windows, and nothing from one identity is visible while you are working in another. For anyone with more than two of these contexts, this is the difference between the tool being useful and being merely tidy.

• A home screen with widgets

  Instead of a launcher full of icons, the home screen carries widgets — weather, a world clock, a task list and similar utilities — alongside your apps, so the first thing you open in the morning is a small dashboard rather than a grid. It is the least essential part of the product and the part that makes it feel like an environment rather than a utility, which is not a criticism: the reason people keep using tools like this is that they are pleasant to open.

• Sandboxed apps with ad and tracker blocking

  Each app runs in its own sandbox with blocking applied inside it, so a service that is heavy with third-party trackers is contained in its window rather than sharing a session with everything else you have open. The benefit is partly privacy and partly practical: separating sessions means one site’s cookies and scripts do not follow you into another. It does not change what the wrapped service itself collects about you, and it would be dishonest to suggest otherwise.

• Team setup from a shared configuration

  The business tier adds shared spaces and pages, centralised billing, an activity log and single sign-on, so an organisation can roll out a standard set of apps and let people pick them up from one workspace instead of installing things one by one. It is the feature that turns this from a personal utility into something an operations team can standardise on, and it is also the point at which per-user pricing starts to matter to the decision.

• Available on macOS, Windows and Linux, with sync

  The desktop app runs on all three major desktop platforms, and configuration can sync so your apps, spaces and profiles follow you between machines. Cross-platform support matters more than it sounds for the team use case, since a shared app set is only useful if it reaches everyone rather than only the people on one operating system.

1. 1

   Try the browser’s built-in install first, honestly

   Before installing anything, ask whether your actual problem needs a tool. Install two of your most-used sites as browser apps and live with them for a week. If that is comfortable, you have saved a subscription and a layer — and if you find yourself constantly signing in and out of a second account, you have learned exactly what you would be paying for. That is a better-informed decision than starting with the paid tool and rationalising it afterwards.

2. 2

   Set up profiles before you add apps

   Profiles are the feature that justifies the tool, and they are easier to get right at the start than to retrofit. Decide which identities you actually need — work, personal, and any client that requires separate credentials — create them once, and then assign apps to them deliberately. Adding apps first and sorting identities later is how people end up with a confusing setup they stop using.

3. 3

   Name spaces after contexts, not after apps

   The organising principle that works is the one you switch by: a client, a project, work versus personal. Spaces named after apps quickly collapse into a single space, because apps overlap between contexts and a space that contains everything is not a space. Nest a subspace when a context has genuinely distinct areas, and resist the temptation to build a taxonomy more elaborate than your working life.

4. 4

   Mind the free tier caps and notice when you hit them

   Two apps, two profiles and one space is enough to evaluate properly, and the wall is informative rather than annoying. If you cross it in the first week, the workflow is real for you and the paid tier is a straightforward purchase. If you stay comfortably inside it for a month, you were probably the person the browser feature already served, and that is a useful thing to know about your own habits.

5. 5

   Decide deliberately about what you are signing into

   Wrapping a service in a third-party client means that client holds your session and sits between you and every page you load. That is not a reason to avoid it — it is the same arrangement as choosing a browser — but it should be a decision rather than an accident. Consider which services you are comfortable putting behind it, whether sync is worth the convenience, and whether the team tier is appropriate for accounts with sensitive access.

6. 6

   Do not expect the wrapped app to change

   The most common disappointed expectation is that a desktop version will be faster, work offline, or unlock something the website would not give you. It will not, because it is the same website in its own window. What you gain is containment, identity and organisation. If a web app is slow or limited, the solution is a different service, not a desktop shell around that one.

• Anyone juggling several accounts of the same service

  The clearest fit and the reason the product exists. Two work identities, a personal account and a client login, all needing to stay signed in at once, is a genuinely annoying problem that a browser handles poorly and this handles directly. If that describes your week, the caps on the free tier are the only real question.

• Freelancers and agencies running per-client contexts

  Client work means keeping identities, files, dashboards and logins apart, and spaces with nested subspaces map onto that structure well — a space per client, and the client’s tools gathered inside it. The practical gain is that starting work on a client is switching a place rather than reconstructing a set of logins and tabs every time.

• People who want their working tools out of the browser

  If a handful of web services effectively are your working environment, giving each one its own window and dock icon turns a pile of tabs into something you can alt-tab between like real applications. This is the aesthetic and ergonomic argument for the whole category, and it is a legitimate one: tools you open deliberately get used differently from tabs you keep meaning to get back to.

• Small teams standardising on a shared toolset

  Shared spaces and pages, plus centralised billing and single sign-on, mean an organisation can define the apps people need and have them appear rather than instructing everyone to install things individually. It suits a company without a large IT function that still wants consistency, and it is the use case where the per-user pricing makes obvious sense.

• People who tried browser profiles and gave up

  The built-in answer to multi-account work is browser profiles, and plenty of people have tried it and quietly stopped because switching is too heavy to do casually. That abandonment is the strongest evidence that the problem is real and the built-in solution insufficient — and it is the honest signal that a dedicated client is worth trying.

• Anyone who should not buy it

  Worth stating plainly, because the vendor cannot. If you use one or two web apps with one account each, your browser already does this for free and the wrapper adds a layer for nothing. If your real problem is a slow or limited web app, a different service is the answer, not a shell around the current one. And if you want to replace your browser rather than organise your apps, a workspace browser is the right category and this is not it.

It is a wrapper, not an enhanced version of the site

Each desktop app is the original website displayed in its own window with its own icon and session. Nothing is rebuilt, optimised or extended, which means no offline capability, no features the web version lacks, and no performance gain. Where the site is fast the app is fast; where the site is slow the app is slow. This is worth internalising, because the most common mismatch between expectation and result in this category comes from assuming otherwise.

Session isolation is the real capability

Profiles maintain separate cookies, sessions and local storage, which is what allows multiple accounts of the same service to remain signed in simultaneously, and a profile can be shared across several apps. That is the function the browser’s built-in install does not provide in any convenient form, and it is the honest answer to what you are paying for once the free caps are reached.

The free tier is capped at two apps, two profiles and one space

The limits are structural rather than time-based, so the free tier does not expire and can be used indefinitely at that size. Paid per-user tiers remove the caps and add an ad-free experience, theming, custom wallpapers, an app lock and the widget utilities. A business tier adds shared spaces, shared pages, team management, centralised billing, an activity log and single sign-on. Tiers and prices change, so confirm them at the source.

Platform support and sync

Desktop apps are published for macOS, Windows and Linux, and configuration can sync across devices. Sync is what makes the setup portable between machines and is also the mechanism by which some of your structure leaves the local machine, which is a trade worth making consciously rather than by default. Local session data is what makes profile isolation work, so not every piece of state is synced.

The trust model, stated plainly

The client holds your signed-in sessions and sits between you and every service you wrap, so it sees the pages you load through it. That is the same arrangement you accept when you choose a browser, but it is a different party from the one you already chose, and it is worth a deliberate decision for accounts with sensitive access. Wrapping a site does not change what that site itself collects, and ad and tracker blocking inside the sandbox does not make the service private.

What it does not do

It does not make web apps faster, work offline or gain features. It is not a browser replacement, though there is a companion browser extension for the broader ecosystem. It does not manage local software, only websites. It does not change the terms of the services you wrap, some of which restrict embedding or automated access, and it is not a security boundary against the services themselves — only a container around them.