# TulipLot > TulipLot is a browser dashboard that shows up to six live websites side by side in a fixed 3×2 grid, in one browser tab. Full text of every guide and blog post. llms.txt lists the same pages with one line each. # Getting started with TulipLot Source: https://tuliplot.com/guides/getting-started/ Published: 2026-08-01 ## What you'll have in five minutes By the end of this guide you'll have a browser dashboard: one tab holding a fixed 3×2 grid, with your five most-used apps within reach at once. Some load right there in the grid, live. Others — Gmail and Google Calendar are the common ones — are one click from opening in their own tab instead, and [Gmail and Google Calendar side by side](/blog/gmail-and-calendar-side-by-side) covers exactly how that pairing works day to day. Either way, you stop digging through tabs to find the thing you were just looking at — which is [the whole point](/blog/why-we-built-tuliplot). Set up takes about five minutes. Here's the whole path, start to finish. ## 1. Create your account Sign up with email and a password, or use Sign in with Google — either takes under a minute. The free plan needs no credit card, so there's nothing to cancel later if TulipLot isn't for you. Once you're in, you'll land on an empty grid: six cells, all blank, waiting for you to add apps. That's the next step. ## 2. Add your first apps Click the + on any empty cell. You'll get two ways to fill it: pick from the built-in catalog, or paste any HTTPS URL and TulipLot will load it directly. The catalog is grouped by category — email, productivity, news, media — and covers the apps most people reach for first: Gmail and Outlook, Trello and Notion, Hacker News, and more, each already addressed so you don't have to hunt for the right URL. Paste-a-URL covers everything else: your team wiki, a status page, a site the catalog doesn't have yet. One rule either way: the URL has to be HTTPS. Plain http is rejected, because a dashboard that mixes secure and insecure pages in the same tab isn't one you can trust. Not every app behaves the same once it lands in a cell, and TulipLot is upfront about which is which. Some sites — Trello is one — load live in the grid with nothing extra to do. Some, like Notion and Hacker News, need the TulipLot Companion extension before they'll embed; the cell walks you through it — a button to install the Companion from the Chrome Web Store, then a second click back in the cell, "Enable for this site," once it's installed. And sites that insist on their own login window, like Gmail and Google Calendar, open in a new tab instead of framing in the grid — still one click away, just not embedded. All three are useful; you'll just meet them a little differently. If you're not sure where to start, a solid first five looks like this: Gmail for mail, Google Calendar, Trello for boards or tasks, Hacker News for a news source, and Notion for notes and docs. That mix touches all three behaviors above, so you'll see how each one works from day one. It fills five cells and leaves the sixth for whatever you add next — or for Premium later. ## 3. Arrange the grid Once you've got a few apps in, drag any two cells onto each other to swap their positions. There's no free-floating or resizing — the grid stays fixed at six cells, which is the point. A fixed layout means your eyes learn where things are and stop having to check. Open the dashboard on Monday and mail is still top-left, calendar is still next to it — no relearning, no misclicks. That's spatial memory doing the work instead of your attention. Since the layout is fixed, it's worth being deliberate about where things go. Put whatever you glance at most — mail, chat, whatever pulls at you all day — in the top-left cell, since that's where your eyes land first. Everything else can follow. ## 4. Every cell control, explained A cell that's loading live in the grid gets the full toolbar. A cell that opens in its own tab instead — Gmail and Calendar, from the starter five above — shows a simpler three: open in tab, edit, remove. A cell still waiting on the Companion shows that same simpler three until you enable it, then picks up the rest. Either way, there's no in-grid frame yet to reload, expand, or put to sleep, so those controls just don't apply. Here's what each one does, and where you'll see it. **Reload** refreshes just that cell, the same as hitting refresh on a single tab — handy when a site's gone stale but you don't want to touch anything else on the grid. Live cells only. **Expand** puts one cell into focus mode, filling the browser window so you can work in it without the other five competing for space. Press Esc to exit and return to the full grid. Live cells only. **Open in tab** launches that cell's site in a normal browser tab, with its full URL bar and browser chrome. Every cell has this one — it's how the tab-only apps like Gmail and Calendar get used day to day. **Edit** swaps the site loaded in a cell without disturbing its position. Change your mind about which calendar app you want? Edit the cell and the new site takes over the same slot — no rebuilding the grid. Works on every cell. **Sleep** pauses a live cell — it stops refreshing and its background noise goes quiet. **Wake** brings it back exactly where you left off. Useful for a cell you need in view but don't need active every minute. **Remove** clears a cell back to empty, ready for something new. Works on every cell. ## 5. When a site won't load Some sites send headers that tell browsers not to embed them elsewhere — a security setting many banks and login pages use. When TulipLot detects one of these, it doesn't show you a broken frame. Instead it offers the TulipLot Companion, an optional Chrome extension that can unlock the site, or an open-in-tab option so you can use the site normally in its own window. Read the full guide: [Adding sites that refuse to be framed](/guides/add-any-site). ## Try, free, and Premium in one minute Not ready to create an account? [Try TulipLot](/try) first: two live cells, no signup, saved to this browser only. The free plan gives you five usable cells plus one ad in the sixth, and it costs nothing — no credit card required. Premium is $4 a month, removes the ad, and unlocks all six cells for your own apps. Everything else — the catalog, custom URLs, drag-to-swap, the Companion — works the same across all three. See the full breakdown: [Premium vs Free](/guides/premium-vs-free). ## Common first-day questions ### Do I need the extension? No — most sites load straight into your grid with no extension at all. The TulipLot Companion only matters for stubborn sites that actively block embedding; install it if and when you hit one. ### Does it work outside Chrome? TulipLot is built Chrome-first and works best there. The Companion extension is Chrome-only, so if you're on a different browser, sites that need it will open in a tab instead of unlocking in the grid. ### Can I change apps later? Any time. Use edit to swap the site in a cell without losing its position, or remove it and add something new. Nothing about your layout is permanent except the six-cell shape. Your dashboard is ready whenever you are. [Get started free](/register) and have your five-minute setup done before your coffee's cold. --- # Adding sites that refuse to be framed Source: https://tuliplot.com/guides/add-any-site/ Published: 2026-08-01 Updated: 2026-08-16 Paste almost any HTTPS URL into a cell and it loads. But every so often you'll add a site and the cell says the site refuses to connect, or that it won't load here. That's not a TulipLot bug — it's the site itself, and there's a fix for most of them. ## Why some sites refuse to load Browsers let any site send an instruction that means "don't let other pages frame me." It comes through as a response header — [`X-Frame-Options`](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Reference/Headers/X-Frame-Options) or a `Content-Security-Policy` with [`frame-ancestors`](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Reference/Headers/Content-Security-Policy/frame-ancestors) — for a real reason: without it, someone could load your bank's login page inside a hidden frame on their own site and trick you into typing your password into what looks like the real thing. Blocking embedding stops that cold; [the full explanation of why sites refuse to be embedded](/guides/why-sites-wont-load) covers the headers involved and what does and doesn't fix it. The same header also blocks harmless embedding, like a cell in your grid. The browser can't tell a malicious overlay from a dashboard you built on purpose — it just sees "don't embed me" and obeys, and TulipLot can't override that at the page level. So instead of pretending it can, it tells you what happened and gives you a real option, rather than a broken pane. ## What TulipLot shows you instead When a site blocks embedding, the cell shows you one of three states, depending on what that particular site allows: - **Needs the Companion.** The site can be unlocked, but only with the Companion extension installed and turned on for it — Notion and Hacker News are common examples. The cell shows three buttons: **Install TulipLot Companion**, **Enable for this site**, and **Open in a tab instead**. - **Opens in its own tab.** Some sites — Gmail, Outlook, and Google Calendar are common examples — never embed, Companion or not. Their protections run deeper than a header. The cell just offers to open the site in a normal tab. - **Load-failed with Retry.** A site tried to load and didn't. Often it's a Companion-eligible site that isn't granted yet; sometimes it's just a slow server or a timed-out connection. Either way, the cell shows a Retry button, and there's more on sorting out which is which below. None of these is a dead end — each gives you the fastest working path for that particular site. ## Install the TulipLot Companion The TulipLot Companion is a free, optional Chrome extension, and it's the reason most stubborn sites end up embedding anyway. What it does is narrow: it [adjusts frame-blocking headers](https://developer.chrome.com/docs/extensions/reference/api/declarativeNetRequest) only for sites you've explicitly enabled, one at a time. It doesn't touch any other site, and it collects nothing about you or your browsing. To install it, click **Install TulipLot Companion** on any cell that needs it. That opens the Chrome Web Store listing, where installation happens the normal Chrome way. Once it's installed, come back to your dashboard — the cell is still waiting for the second step. The Companion is Chrome-only, since it relies on Chrome's extension APIs. On a different browser, sites that need it fall back to opening in a tab. ## Enable a stubborn site Installing the Companion doesn't unlock anything by itself — it just makes unlocking possible, site by site. A browser won't let a page grant itself permission to relax another site's security headers, so the enabling step happens deliberately, one click at a time, back in the cell: 1. **Install TulipLot Companion**, if you haven't already — opens the Chrome Web Store listing, where installation happens. 2. Back in the cell, click **Enable for this site** — the required second step, specific to that one site. 3. The cell retries and, for most sites, loads live in the grid from then on. The cell checks each site's grant, so the button is never lost: install the Companion, reload your dashboard, and every stubborn cell shows its own **Enable for this site** button — one click each. Add another stubborn site later and its cell asks the same way. Prefer Chrome's settings? Open `chrome://extensions`, click **TulipLot Companion**, go to **Site access**, and add the site there — same permission, same one-at-a-time scoping, just requested from the other side. ## What still can't be embedded Not every site gives in, even with the Companion enabled — worth saying plainly, rather than letting you assume you did something wrong. Many banks and some login flows, including Gmail, Outlook, and Google Calendar, refuse to embed no matter what. Their protection runs deeper than the header the Companion adjusts, often tied to how login and session cookies work in a top-level window. The Companion genuinely can't unlock them, and it's honest to say so instead of promising a fix that doesn't exist. Those cells aren't wasted, though. They get a reduced toolbar of three controls — open in tab, edit, remove — and **open in tab** does the real work: one click and the site opens in its own tab, fully itself. Sites like Trello need none of this — they embed live in the grid the moment you add them. ## Troubleshooting ### Reload the cell If a site that normally loads fine shows a blank cell, try reload first. A stale connection or a slow response is the most common cause, and reloading clears it without touching the rest of the grid. ### Re-grant the site If a stubborn site stops embedding — say its permission was removed — its cell falls back to **Enable for this site**. Click it, approve Chrome's prompt, and the cell loads again. The manual path works too: open `chrome://extensions`, click **TulipLot Companion**, open **Site access**, and re-add the site there. Neither touches your other sites. ### Load-failed → Retry A load-failed cell means the site had its permission and started to load, but didn't finish — usually a slow server or a timeout, and a second Retry clears it. Still stuck, check the site in a regular tab; it may just be down. And if the cell shows **Enable for this site** instead, that's not a failure — the site just hasn't been granted yet, and the button is the fix. ### When in doubt, open in a tab If a cell isn't behaving as expected and nothing above clears it, **open in tab** always works as a fallback. It's on every cell, live or not, and it gets you to the actual site with zero troubleshooting. ## Safety questions, answered ### Is loosening those headers safe? Yes, because of how narrow the change is. The Companion adjusts embedding headers only for the specific sites you chose, only inside your own browser, and only while it's installed. It never touches sites you haven't enabled, and never changes how those sites behave for anyone else. ### Why is it a separate extension? Because a web page isn't allowed to grant itself that power — it's a browser rule, not a TulipLot limitation. Only an installed extension, one you explicitly add and that asks Chrome for permission, can adjust how a site's headers get handled for you. Splitting it out keeps the unlock opt-in and visible, not hidden in the page. ### Does it read my browsing? No. The Companion collects nothing — no browsing history, no page contents, no analytics. Its only job is adjusting embedding headers for sites you've enabled; there's nothing else it does. Most sites need none of this — they just work. For the ones that don't, now you know what "refused to connect" means and what to click next. Haven't set up your grid yet? [Get started](/guides/getting-started) or [create a free account](/register) and add your first stubborn site today. --- # Premium vs Free — what you get Source: https://tuliplot.com/guides/premium-vs-free/ Published: 2026-08-01 Every TulipLot account starts on the free plan, and for plenty of people that's the whole story — five live cells and the full toolbar cover a normal day just fine. Premium exists for one reason: you want that sixth cell for something of your own, and you'd rather not look at an ad to get it. Here's exactly what changes, what stays the same, and what happens to your grid if you switch either direction. ## At a glance | | Try (no account) | Free | Premium | |---|---|---|---| | Usable cells | 2 | 5 | 6 | | Ad cell | 1 | 1, bottom-right | None | | Price | $0, no signup | $0, forever | $4/month | | Saved to | This browser only | Your account | Your account | | Catalog + custom URLs | Yes | Yes | Yes | | Drag-to-arrange, focus, sleep | Yes | Yes | Yes | | Companion support | Yes | Yes | Yes | ## Try it before you sign up Before you commit to either plan, there's a third option: [try TulipLot](/try) with no account at all. Two cells load live immediately — pick from the catalog or paste any HTTPS URL, and they render in the grid exactly like a Free or Premium cell would. Three more cells sit locked behind a Create free account prompt, and the sixth carries an ad, so the 3×2 grid looks complete from the first click, even though only two cells are yours to fill. Everything about those two cells works the same as on Free: drag to rearrange, expand into focus mode, sleep, edit, remove, the Companion for stubborn sites, all of it. The only catch is where they live. Your cells stay in that browser's local storage, not synced to any account, so a different device or a cleared browser starts over. Sign up, though, and whatever you built carries straight into your new account's grid, no rebuilding required. ## What free actually includes Free isn't a trial with a countdown — it's a complete, permanent version of TulipLot. Five cells load live apps from the moment you sign up, and every one of them gets the full catalog: email, productivity, news, media, and anything else the built-in list covers. If the catalog doesn't have what you want, paste any HTTPS URL into a cell yourself and it loads the same way. Every cell control works identically to Premium, too. Drag any two cells to swap positions, reload a single cell without touching the rest, expand one into focus mode, edit a cell to swap in a different site, sleep a cell you're not using right now, remove one you're done with. None of that is gated behind payment — it's the same toolbar either way. The one difference sits in a single spot: the bottom-right cell carries an ad. It's fixed there, it doesn't move around the grid, and it doesn't shrink your other five cells to make room. Free needs no credit card to start and has no time limit — you can run five cells and an ad indefinitely and never see a prompt to upgrade. ## What Premium adds Premium adds exactly one thing: the sixth cell, with zero ads anywhere in the grid. That's the entire difference. The catalog is the same, custom URLs work the same, every cell control behaves the same, and Companion support for stubborn sites is identical on both plans. Premium doesn't unlock a hidden feature — it unlocks space. Who reaches for that space varies, but a common pattern is one more thing that doesn't quite fit into the first five: a music player running quietly in the corner, a group chat you want visible without alt-tabbing, or a second calendar sitting next to your main one. If your first five cells already cover the essentials and you keep eyeing a sixth thing you'd add if you could, that's the plan Premium is built for. It's $4 a month, and that's the only cost — no setup fee, no per-cell pricing, no tiers above it. ## How billing works Billing runs entirely through Freemius. To upgrade, go to Settings and click **Go Premium** — that takes you to an upgrade page where you enter payment details directly with Freemius. TulipLot never sees your card number; there's no card form built into the app itself, because the app never needs to touch it. Managing or canceling works the same way, any time you want: Settings → **Manage billing** opens the Freemius customer portal. That's where your payment method, invoices, and cancellation all live — TulipLot hands the whole job to Freemius rather than building a second version of it. Before you confirm anything, the portal shows you exactly when your subscription ends, so there's no guessing about timing. Premium bills monthly, with no annual contract. ## What happens when you cancel Cancellation itself happens in the Freemius customer portal, and it tells you exactly when your subscription ends before you confirm. When that date arrives, your account reverts to the free plan automatically — no extra step required from you. Reverting means the bottom-right cell becomes the ad slot again. What happens to whatever was in your sixth cell depends on the rest of your grid at that moment: - **Sixth cell was empty.** There's nothing to move — it just becomes the ad cell, and your other five cells stay exactly where they are. - **Sixth cell had an app, and at least one of your other five cells was empty.** That app moves automatically into the first empty slot it finds. Your other cells don't shift; only the displaced app relocates. - **All six cells were full.** There's no empty slot to move it into, so TulipLot doesn't just delete it. Instead, it's parked, and you get a prompt to place it into a different slot — replacing whatever's there — or discard it if you'd rather not keep it. Either way, it's your call to make, not something that happens silently in the background. ## Questions before you decide ### Can I switch back and forth? Yes, any time, in either direction. Upgrade, downgrade, upgrade again later — there's no limit on how often you change plans, and no penalty for switching back after canceling. ### Do I lose my layout when upgrading? No. Upgrading leaves your existing five cells exactly where they are. The ad cell simply turns into a normal, usable sixth cell — nothing gets rearranged, and nothing you've already set up moves. ### Is there a trial? Two, really. [The try page](/try) needs no account at all: two live cells, no time limit. Free is the longer trial, and it doesn't expire either. Five full cells, the entire catalog, custom URLs, every cell control, no credit card required — you can run that setup for as long as you like before deciding whether the sixth cell is worth $4 a month to you. If you haven't built your grid yet, start with [Getting started with TulipLot](/guides/getting-started) — five minutes gets your first five cells filled, and you can decide about the sixth whenever you're ready. [Create a free account](/register) — no card, no deadline. --- # Why some sites won't load in a dashboard Source: https://tuliplot.com/guides/why-sites-wont-load/ Published: 2026-08-02 Updated: 2026-08-16 ## What "refused to connect" actually means Most tools that show one website inside another, including dashboards and widgets, do it through something called an iframe: a small window that displays one webpage inside another page, the same way a picture-in-picture video sits inside a bigger screen. If you've ever pasted a URL into one of these tools, you may have run into a page that won't load in an iframe at all: a message like "refused to connect" or "refused to display in a frame" instead of the site you expected. Here's the short version: that's not the tool breaking. It's the site you tried to load, saying no. Plenty of sites are perfectly happy to be shown this way. A specific minority send back an instruction first, one that tells the browser: do not display me inside anyone else's page. When that instruction arrives, the browser follows it and blocks the frame, and "refused to connect" is simply what that block looks like on your screen. Nothing you did caused this. The tool tried to load the site the normal way, the site's own instruction refused that request, and the browser respected the refusal instead of overriding it, because browsers aren't built to ignore it. The failure you're looking at is the site working exactly as its owner designed it, not a bug in whatever you were using to load it. The rest of this guide covers why sites that block embedding do it, what actually fixes it, and what stays out of reach no matter which tool you're using. ## The two headers behind it That refusal travels as a header: a small piece of information a website sends back alongside its page, invisible on the page itself but read by your browser before anything is displayed. Two different headers can carry this particular instruction, and knowing which one you're dealing with helps make sense of what you're seeing. [`X-Frame-Options`](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Reference/Headers/X-Frame-Options) is the older of the two, and it's blunt on purpose. A site sets it to one of two values: `DENY`, which blocks every attempt to frame it with no exceptions, or `SAMEORIGIN`, which allows framing only by pages on that exact same site. There's no middle ground and no list of trusted outsiders, just those two settings. [`Content-Security-Policy: frame-ancestors`](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Reference/Headers/Content-Security-Policy/frame-ancestors) is the newer replacement, and it works more like a guest list. Instead of an on-or-off switch, a site names the exact sources allowed to frame it, anything from nobody at all to a short list of specific approved sites. A site that wants to block embedding entirely can still use it; it just leaves that list empty. ## Why sites do this — and why it's mostly reasonable These headers exist because of an attack called clickjacking. An attacker builds an ordinary-looking page, maybe one promising a prize or a video, and secretly loads a real site underneath it in an invisible frame, positioned exactly over a fake button. You think you're clicking "claim your prize." What you're actually clicking is the real site's own button, hidden right below the decoy: confirm a purchase, change a setting, approve a login. Your click is genuine. You just have no idea what it actually landed on. Blocking embedding shuts that down at the source. If a site refuses to be framed at all, there's no invisible layer for an attacker to hide underneath, and the trick has nothing left to work with. That's why the sites most likely to refuse are the ones with the most to lose from a stolen click: banks, anything tied to a login, anything that moves money or changes an account setting. Framing rules are a genuine defense against a real attack, aimed at attackers, not at dashboards. Tools that embed other sites just happen to sit on the other side of the same rule. ## The three things you'll see instead Strip away any particular tool, and every embedding attempt lands in one of three places. A site loads live, framed normally, and behaves like the real thing shrunk into a smaller window. A site needs a helper before it will embed: a browser extension you install once and then turn on for that specific site, after which it behaves like the first case. Or a site refuses no matter what, and the tool's only honest option is to hand you a one-click way to open it in its own tab instead. TulipLot mirrors those three outcomes exactly, and it's upfront about which sites land where. Trello is a catalog example of the first case: add it and it loads live in the grid with nothing extra to do. Notion and Hacker News are catalog examples of the second: they need the free TulipLot Companion extension installed once and enabled for that specific site before they'll embed. Gmail, Outlook, and Google Calendar are catalog examples of the third: they never embed, Companion or not, and each opens in its own tab as a one-click launcher instead. None of the three is a failure state. A cell that opens a launcher tab is doing exactly what that particular site allows, and it still gets you to the real app in one click. ## What actually fixes it (and what doesn't) For the second category, sites that need a helper, the fix is real and it works: a browser extension that adjusts those two headers, but only for the specific sites you choose. TulipLot's Companion is one example. It's free, Chrome-only, installed once from the Chrome Web Store, then switched on per site rather than granted blanket access to everything you visit. It changes the headers only on frames your own dashboard is loading, so an enabled site still behaves completely normally if you open it in an ordinary tab on its own, and it collects nothing about you or your browsing while it does it. For the third category, sites that refuse no matter what, nothing fixes it, and it helps to know why. Those sites layer protections well below the header level: login flows that check whether they're running as the top-level page, session cookies that only behave correctly outside a frame, scripts that detect framing and break themselves on purpose. An extension that edits response headers has nothing left to act on there. It's worth naming the workaround people reach for anyway: routing the site through a proxy, a middleman server that fetches the page for you and passes it along, stripping the blocking header before it arrives. That can work for a static page with nothing to log into. For a logged-in app, it doesn't. Your session, your cookies, and any two-factor check are tied to talking to the real site directly, so a proxy either leaves you logged out or asks you to hand your credentials to a server that isn't the app you're trying to use. Neither one is a fix. A launcher tab that opens the real, unmodified site is the honest answer for that category, not a proxy. ## The honest limits Some sites will never embed anywhere, in any tool, no matter which extension you install. Banks are the obvious case. Most Google properties are too, and Microsoft's Outlook behaves the same way, which is why Gmail, Outlook, and Google Calendar all open in their own tab rather than a frame. Some single sign-on flows, the shared login systems that let one account cover several separate apps, behave the same way, because the same deep protections that keep your session safe also keep it from working inside a frame. A launcher cell that opens a site in its own tab isn't a downgrade from the "real" experience. It is the real experience, one click away, with the site's own login and security fully intact instead of routed through something else. TulipLot would rather say that plainly than suggest a future update might unlock Gmail, because it won't: the limits described here aren't a gap waiting to be closed, they're the same protections keeping your accounts safe everywhere else you already use them. ## Common questions ### Is bypassing X-Frame-Options safe? Adjusting it the way a scoped browser extension does, one site at a time, inside your own browser only, is safe because of how narrow the change is. It doesn't touch the site for anyone else, it doesn't change how the site behaves for you outside that one dashboard, and it stops the moment you disable the site or remove the extension. What's genuinely risky is a general "turn off security headers everywhere" setting with no scoping at all, which is a much broader thing than what an extension like the Companion does. ### Why can't a website just fix this itself? In a real sense, it already has: refusing to be framed is the fix, not a bug waiting to be patched. A site could switch from a blanket `DENY` to a specific guest list under `frame-ancestors`, but maintaining that list is ongoing work, and one mistake in it reopens the exact clickjacking risk the header exists to close. Plenty of sites decide the simpler, blunter setting is worth the occasional dashboard inconvenience. ### Does this break the site's own security? No. A scoped extension changes headers only on frames that your own dashboard is loading, for sites you specifically enabled, inside your own browser. Anyone visiting that site directly, or using it on a different device, sees the exact same protections as before. Nothing about the site's actual defenses changes for anyone but you, and only inside the one tool you enabled it for. ### Will Gmail ever load in a dashboard? Not through TulipLot, and not through any tool that plays by the same rules, because Gmail's protection isn't only the header. It's built into how its login and session behave when it isn't the top-level page in your browser. That's not a limitation TulipLot is waiting to lift; it's why Gmail is a permanent one-click launcher instead, opening in its own tab with its real login fully intact. Most sites you add don't need any of this: they load live, on the first try, no extension and no explanation required. For the ones that do, [adding sites that refuse to be framed](/guides/add-any-site) walks through installing and enabling the TulipLot Companion, cell by cell. Haven't built a grid yet, or still sorting out how a dashboard differs from [what a browser start page is](/blog/what-is-a-browser-start-page)? [Getting started](/guides/getting-started) covers your first five minutes. And if you'd rather just see which of the three outcomes your own favorite sites land in, [create a free account](/register) and add them yourself. --- # The best start pages in 2026 Source: https://tuliplot.com/blog/best-start-pages-2026/ Published: 2026-08-02 "Best browser start page" searches turn up lists that all do the same thing: rank five or six tools by opinion and call it done. That's not very useful, because these tools aren't actually competing for the same job. Some save tabs you'll reopen later. Some group tabs into projects you save and restore. Some build a page out of bookmarks and widgets. One renders the actual sites live, all at once, in a fixed grid. So instead of a ranked list, here's a list organized by what you're actually trying to do, with real prices and real limits for each tool, not marketing copy. One of the entries below is ours. We'll say so plainly when we get there, and it isn't first. ## Start with what your browser already gives you Before installing anything, know what's already free. Every major browser lets you set a start page, a home page, or a new tab page in its own settings, no extension required, and pinning a tab or bookmarking a handful of sites covers plenty of people's actual routine. If your day genuinely comes down to two or three sites, that built-in setup is the right answer, and everything below is solving a problem you may not have. [What is a browser start page](/blog/what-is-a-browser-start-page) covers the differences between those three browser settings in more detail if you want it. ## If you save more tabs than you use: Toby Toby's own pitch is "Stop Drowning in Tabs," and that's an honest description of the job: you save a tab's link into a Toby collection, close the tab, and reopen the saved link whenever you actually need it again. It's a tool for people whose browser fills up with research links, articles, and reference tabs faster than they can use them. The free "Starter" plan costs nothing and lets you save and manage up to 60 tabs across all your collections, with no cap on how many members can join the account. Past that limit, Productivity is $6 per member per month, or $4.50 per member per month billed yearly ($54/year), and removes the 60-tab ceiling along with adding advanced search and duplicate removal. Team runs $10 per member per month, or $8 billed yearly, and adds SSO and centralized billing. Toby prices per seat because it's built as a collaboration tool, so those team-tier numbers scale with how many people share your collections, not with what one person alone would pay. ## If you're juggling several ongoing projects: Workona Workona's framing is "Get your tabs under control," and it does that by grouping a project's tabs into a Space that auto-saves as you work and syncs across your devices, so you can close it down and pick it back up later. It's built for people running more than one active project at a time, each with its own cluster of tabs worth keeping organized rather than scattered across the tab bar. The free plan is real, tucked into a pricing-page FAQ rather than shown as its own plan card, and capped at 5 spaces; Workona's own FAQ says it "can be used forever" below that cap, it just won't let you create a new space once you hit it. Pro is listed as "Starting at $7 / month," confirmed to be the annual-billed rate, and adds unlimited spaces, 90-day session backups, and integrations. Team starts at $8 per user per month with a 3-user minimum, again priced for groups rather than one person. ## If you want a tidy page of links and widgets: start.me start.me calls itself, in its own title tag, a "Bookmark Manager, Custom Start Page & New Tab," and its hero line sums up the pitch: "All your important links, one click away." You build a page out of widgets (weather, RSS feeds, notes, mostly first-party) plus bookmarks alongside them. A July 2026 changelog alone shipped a bookmark clean-up tool, a rebuilt Notes editor, new timer and page-introduction widgets, 7-column layouts, and AI-driven site suggestions. The free plan costs nothing, includes advertising by start.me's own description, and caps you at three personal start pages, though widgets and bookmarks inside those three pages are unlimited. Personal PRO is $25 a year (about $2.08 a month), removes the ads, unlocks unlimited pages, and adds 27 PRO-only features and widgets. Team is $25 a month billed annually for 10 users, a different, group-priced product. ## If you want a handful of sites live and visible all day: TulipLot This one's ours, so take the framing with that in mind: TulipLot doesn't save tabs, group them into projects, or build a page out of widgets. It renders. A TulipLot dashboard is a fixed 3×2 grid, six cells, and whatever sits in a cell is a live, interactive version of that actual site: an inbox showing new mail as it arrives, a calendar you click straight into, not a saved link or a bookmark pointing at either one. Free accounts get five usable cells plus one ad cell fixed in the bottom-right slot; Premium drops the ad and unlocks all six for $4 a month. You can also try it with no account at all: two live cells load immediately at [/try](/try), saved to that browser only, and they carry into your dashboard automatically if you sign up later. Every cell fills from a built-in catalog or from any HTTPS URL you paste in yourself, and the free TulipLot Companion, a Chrome extension, unlocks embedding for many sites that would otherwise refuse to load in a frame. Not every site can be embedded this way, though: a handful of major login-gated services, Gmail and Google Calendar among them, never allow embedding under any circumstances and become one-click launchers instead, a cell you click to open the site in its own tab rather than seeing it live inline. If your problem is a small set of sites you check constantly rather than a growing pile of things to save, that's the job this fills. ## Single-user pricing, side by side These four charge for genuinely different things, so treat this as a price reference, not proof any one is a better deal. A "60 tabs vs 5 spaces vs 3 pages vs 5 cells" row would count four unrelated things as if they were the same unit, so free-tier specifics are covered in each section above instead; this table sticks to price, where a single-user comparison is fair. Toby and Workona price per team member, so the figures below are what one person alone would pay on each vendor's cheapest paid plan, not the team price. | Tool | Free plan | Paid plan, single user | |---|---|---| | Toby | $0 | Productivity: $6/month, or $4.50/month billed yearly ($54/year) | | Workona | $0 | Pro: starting at $7/month, annual-billed | | start.me | $0, includes advertising | Personal PRO: $25/year (about $2.08/month) | | TulipLot | $0, includes one ad cell | Premium: $4/month | ## How to pick If your problem is too many tabs piling up faster than you can use them, Toby solves that. If it's several ongoing projects each needing their own saved, restorable set of tabs, that's Workona's job. If you want a tidy home page of organized links, weather, and notes, start.me does that well. And if the problem isn't saving or organizing anything, it's wanting a handful of specific sites open and live at the same time every day, that's what TulipLot is for. None of these are mutually exclusive; plenty of people reasonably run two at once, one for what they're not actively using and one for what they check constantly. ## How we'll keep this current Prices and free-tier limits change, and a stale "best of" list is worse than no list at all. We review this page quarterly and re-verify every price and limit against each vendor's own site before touching a word. ## Questions people ask ### What's the best free start page? It depends on what you're trying to do, not which one wins outright. Toby's free plan gives you 60 saved tabs and unlimited members; Workona's free plan gives you 5 project spaces used forever below that cap; start.me's free plan gives you three ad-supported start pages with unlimited widgets and bookmarks; TulipLot's free plan gives you five live cells plus one ad. All four cost nothing to start, and the right one depends on which job matches your day. ### Do any of these work without creating an account? TulipLot does: [the try page](/try) gives you two live cells with no account required, saved to that browser only, and it carries into your account automatically if you sign up later. That's the one entry on this list we can confirm doesn't need a signup, because it's ours and we control the page. ### Is a browser start page still worth using in 2026? For plenty of people, yes, though not always in the portal-page sense the term used to mean. If your day is a handful of sites you check constantly, a dashboard or start page keeps them in one predictable place instead of buried in a pile of tabs. If it's genuinely just two or three sites, your browser's built-in start page or a couple of bookmarks already covers it, and none of the tools above are solving a real problem for you. Whichever job matches your day, pick the tool built for it rather than whichever one ranks first on a list. If that's a handful of sites you want open and live at once, [try TulipLot](/try) with no account, or see exactly what [Free and Premium](/guides/premium-vs-free) each include before deciding. --- # Gmail and Google Calendar side by side Source: https://tuliplot.com/blog/gmail-and-calendar-side-by-side/ Published: 2026-08-02 ## The short answer Short answer: you can't put Gmail and Google Calendar inside the same page, because Google won't let either one load inside a frame on someone else's site. "Side by side" here means a panel, a second window, or a launcher, not two panes stitched into one webpage. Three options get you there, and each is worth knowing before you pick one. ## Option 1: Gmail's built-in side panel Google already built this one. Open Gmail on the web and you'll find a side panel that shows your calendar without leaving your inbox. It's free, it's already there, and it's the first thing worth trying before you install anything else. The catch is size and scope. The panel is narrow, built for a glance rather than planning a full week. And it's Gmail-first: open Calendar on its own and there's no equivalent panel showing your inbox back. It solves the problem from one direction only. ## Option 2: two windows, snapped The other free option is your operating system. Snap Gmail to one half of the screen and Calendar to the other: Windows Snap or macOS Split View, both a drag or a keyboard shortcut away. Nothing to install, and you get two full, unrestricted windows instead of one narrow panel. The tradeoff is that it doesn't stick. Close the windows, restart your computer, or just open a fresh browser session, and the split is gone. It's a real fix for right now, rebuilt from scratch the next time you need it. ## Option 3: a dashboard with launcher cells TulipLot takes a different approach: a fixed grid where Gmail and Calendar each get their own cell, in the same spot every time you open it. Neither one loads live inside that cell. Click it, and it opens the real Gmail or the real Calendar in its own browser tab, exactly as if you'd typed the address yourself. That's not embedded mail, and it isn't pretending to be. What you get instead is one predictable place to click from, sitting next to cells that do load live: a Trello board, a project tracker, whatever else you check in the same few minutes. Gmail and Calendar become two fixed spots in your daily lineup instead of two tabs buried among the rest. ## Why neither one embeds Gmail and Calendar refuse to load inside anyone else's page on purpose. It's the same defense banks use, aimed at an attack called clickjacking, where a hidden frame tricks you into clicking something you never meant to click. Google isn't being difficult here; it's protecting the account that guards your email and your schedule. That protection runs deeper than a header any extension could strip. [Why some sites won't load in a dashboard](/guides/why-sites-wont-load) covers the full mechanics, but the short version is that Gmail checks whether it's the top-level page in your browser, not just whether a header allows framing. No tool gets around that, and none honestly should try. ## Questions ### Can I put Gmail inside a dashboard cell? No. Gmail sends back an instruction telling every browser to refuse displaying it inside another page, with no exception for any dashboard, extension, or tool. A Gmail cell always opens the real Gmail in its own tab instead of loading it live, and that's true everywhere, not just in TulipLot. ### Does the TulipLot Companion unlock Gmail? No. The Companion is a free extension that strips embedding headers for sites blocked only at that level, which is what unlocks catalog sites like Notion once you turn it on. Gmail's protection goes past headers into how its login and session behave outside a top-level page, and no extension reaches that deep. Gmail stays a one-click launcher whether or not the Companion is installed. Want both in view without hunting through tabs? [Create a free TulipLot account](/register), put Gmail and Calendar in fixed cells next to the tools you actually work in, and see [more ways to view multiple sites at once](/blog/view-multiple-websites-at-once) if split screen and side panels aren't cutting it. --- # TulipLot vs start.me: widgets and links, or live sites? Source: https://tuliplot.com/blog/tuliplot-vs-start-me/ Published: 2026-08-02 Updated: 2026-08-16 **Key facts** - start.me is a bookmark manager and custom start page built from links and widgets. Its own title tag: "Bookmark Manager, Custom Start Page & New Tab." - start.me's free plan is $0, allows a maximum of 3 start pages, and includes advertising. - start.me Personal PRO is $25 per year, with unlimited start pages and no ads. - TulipLot renders live sites, not bookmarks or widgets, in a fixed grid: Try is 2 cells with no account, Free is 5 cells plus 1 ad cell at $0, Premium is 6 cells with no ad at $4/month. start.me builds you a start page out of bookmarks and widgets. TulipLot renders a fixed grid of real sites, live. That's the core distinction, worth stating first, because most people searching "start.me alternative" aren't yet sure whether they want a better bookmark page or something that keeps actual apps open and clickable. start.me's own title tag calls it a "Bookmark Manager, Custom Start Page & New Tab," and the hero line on their homepage is "All your important links, one click away." You build a page out of widgets — weather, RSS feeds, notes, mostly first-party — plus bookmarks alongside them. TulipLot doesn't build a page out of widgets at all; a TulipLot cell renders the actual third-party site, live and interactive, in place. Want a tidy page of organized links, weather, and notes? start.me does that, and does it well. Want your inbox and calendar actually visible and clickable without leaving the grid? That's TulipLot's job, and start.me's widgets don't attempt it. ## What start.me does well start.me is a mature start page and bookmark manager, and it isn't standing still. Their July 2026 changelog alone shipped a bookmark clean-up tool, a rebuilt Notes editor, timer and page-introduction widgets, 7-column page layouts, and AI-driven site suggestions. That's active, ongoing product work, not a page that shipped once and stopped. The free plan is real and genuinely usable: it costs nothing, and the only hard cap is on start pages themselves — start.me's help centre says "Free users can create only three personal pages." Widgets and bookmarks within those three pages are unlimited; you can pack each page as full as you want, with only basic widgets available until you upgrade. The free plan also, in start.me's own words, "Includes advertising." If what you want is a tidy home page of organized links, weather, notes, and RSS feeds, start.me is the better tool for that job, and it's more mature at it than TulipLot is. TulipLot has no widget library at all, first-party or otherwise — it wasn't built to have one. ## What TulipLot does differently TulipLot doesn't build a page out of widgets, it renders the sites themselves. A TulipLot dashboard is a fixed 3×2 grid, six cells, and whatever sits in a cell is a live, interactive version of that actual site: an inbox showing new mail as it arrives, a calendar you click straight into, not a bookmark pointing at either one and not a first-party widget standing in for it. Free accounts get five usable cells plus one ad cell fixed in the bottom-right slot; Premium drops the ad and unlocks all six for $4 a month. You can also try it before creating an account: two live cells load immediately at [/try](/try), saved to that browser only, and they carry into your dashboard automatically if you sign up later. Every cell fills from the built-in catalog or from any HTTPS URL you paste in yourself, and the free TulipLot Companion, a Chrome extension, unlocks embedding for many sites that would otherwise refuse to load in a frame. Not every site can be embedded this way, though: a handful of major login-gated services, Gmail and Google Calendar among them, never allow embedding under any circumstances, Companion or not, and become one-click launchers instead — a cell you click to open the site in its own tab rather than seeing it live inline. That's the tradeoff for rendering actual interactive sites instead of linking out to them. ## Price, and the one where start.me wins This is the one page in this series where the ad comparison is actually fair. start.me's free plan "Includes advertising," stated plainly on their own pricing page, the same way TulipLot's free plan carries one ad cell. Toby and Workona don't describe their free tiers as ad-supported at all, so that comparison doesn't apply to them — but it applies here, and it's a genuine point of similarity between the two products rather than a stretch. Above free, the honest number is one that doesn't flatter TulipLot: [start.me's Personal PRO plan](https://start.me/pricing) is $25 per year, about $2.08 a month, and it removes ads entirely, unlocks unlimited start pages, and adds 27 PRO-only features and widgets plus AI tools. TulipLot Premium is $4 a month, with no annual option. Compared however you like, start.me's paid tier is cheaper than TulipLot's, and that's worth stating plainly rather than talking around it. (start.me's Team plan, $25/month billed annually for 10 users, is a different product built for groups and isn't part of this single-user comparison.) What TulipLot's $4 buys instead is the sixth live cell, not a cheaper way to organize more bookmarks — the two plans aren't priced for the same job. But a reader weighing two subscription numbers deserves the real ones, not a comparison that quietly flatters whichever page they're reading. ## TulipLot vs start.me at a glance | | start.me | TulipLot | |---|---|---| | What it is | Start page combining bookmarks with first-party widgets (weather, RSS, notes) | Live grid of real, interactive third-party sites | | Third-party sites rendered live | No — widgets are mostly first-party | Yes, up to 6, live and simultaneous, in a fixed grid | | Free tier ad-supported | Yes — free plan "Includes advertising" | Yes, one ad cell on the free plan | | Single-user paid price | $25/year (≈$2.08/month) | $4/month | | Team / collaboration | Yes, $25/month billed annually, 10 users | No built-in team or collaboration features | ## Which should you pick? Pick start.me if you want a home page: a tidy, organized collection of bookmarks, weather, notes, and RSS feeds. It's a mature product that shipped a wave of new widgets and editor upgrades in its July 2026 changelog, and at $25 a year it's a cheap way to get there. Pick TulipLot if the problem isn't organizing links, it's needing a handful of specific sites open, live, and clickable at the same time — an inbox, a calendar, a project board, not a bookmark to any of them. If your workflow is "check five things constantly" rather than "keep a tidy page of things I might click," a live grid does that in a way a widget-based start page structurally can't, no matter how many PRO widgets get added to it. Plenty of people could reasonably run both: start.me as the home page for links and reading you don't need live, TulipLot for the handful of things you watch constantly all day. They're not really built for the same job, so there's no real conflict in running both. ## Questions people ask ### Is TulipLot a start.me alternative? Only if what you actually want differs from what start.me offers: bookmarks and widgets organized on a page, instead of the actual third-party sites rendered live. TulipLot doesn't build start pages, manage bookmarks, or offer a widget library; start.me does all of that well and TulipLot makes no attempt to. If your problem is organizing links, weather, notes, and RSS feeds into a tidy page, start.me solves it and TulipLot won't. TulipLot fits when you want a handful of sites visibly live and clickable all the time, not a place to collect links. ### What is start.me's free plan limit? start.me's free plan is capped at three personal start pages — their help centre states "Free users can create only three personal pages" — and it includes advertising. Widgets and bookmarks within those three pages are unlimited, with only basic widgets available; only the page count itself is capped. Personal PRO removes both the page cap and the ads, and adds 27 PRO-only features and widgets, for $25 per year. ### Is start.me cheaper than TulipLot? Yes, on the paid tier. start.me's Personal PRO plan is $25 per year, about $2.08 a month, against TulipLot Premium at $4 a month. Both free plans cost nothing and are ad-supported. Above free, start.me's single-user price is the lower one. ### Can I use TulipLot without signing up? Yes. The [try page](/try) gives you two live cells with no account required: pick a site from the catalog or paste any HTTPS URL, and it loads the same way a Free or Premium cell would. Those two cells stay saved to that browser only; creating a free account carries them into your dashboard and raises you to five usable cells. If a tidy page of organized links, widgets, and bookmarks is what you're after, [start.me](https://start.me) is the better tool, plain and simple, and the cheaper one too. If you want a handful of sites live and visible all day instead, [try TulipLot](/try) with no account, or see exactly what changes between [Free and Premium](/guides/premium-vs-free) before deciding. --- # TulipLot vs Toby: which one fits how you actually work? Source: https://tuliplot.com/blog/tuliplot-vs-toby/ Published: 2026-08-02 Updated: 2026-08-16 **Key facts** - Toby is a visual workspace that saves and organizes browser tabs and links into collections. Its own words: "Stop Drowning in Tabs." - Toby's free Starter plan is $0 and allows up to 60 saved tabs across all your collections. - Toby Productivity is $6 USD per member per month, or $4.50 per member per month billed yearly ($54/year). - TulipLot does not save tabs. It keeps up to six sites live in a fixed grid: Try is 2 cells with no account, Free is 5 cells plus 1 ad cell at $0, Premium is 6 cells with no ad at $4/month. Toby saves tabs. TulipLot renders sites live. That's the whole distinction, and it's worth stating before anything else, because most people searching "tuliplot vs toby" aren't sure yet which category they actually need. Toby is a bookmarking-and-collections tool: you save a tab's link into Toby, close the tab, and reopen the saved link later when you want it again. TulipLot is a rendering tool: it keeps up to six real, interactive sites open at once, all the time, in a fixed grid, with nothing to reopen because nothing closed in the first place. Want to stash forty research links and come back to them next week? Toby does that; TulipLot doesn't do it at all. Want your inbox, calendar, and project board visibly live at the same time, no switching? That's TulipLot's job, and Toby doesn't do that either. ## What Toby does well Toby is a genuinely good tool for what it's built to do: saving and organizing browser tabs and links into collections so you can find them again later. ("Stop Drowning in Tabs" is their own pitch, and it's an honest one.) Toby's free Starter plan lets you save and manage up to 60 tabs across all your collections, with no limit on how many members can join the account — a free Toby workspace supports a whole team, not just one person. If a session regularly ends with thirty open tabs you want captured into collections instead of lost the moment the browser closes, Toby solves that cleanly, and TulipLot isn't a substitute for it. TulipLot has no concept of "saved for later" at all; a cell only ever shows what's live right now, not a link to something you'll open eventually. ## What TulipLot does differently TulipLot doesn't save anything for later, it renders. A TulipLot dashboard is a fixed 3×2 grid, six cells, and whatever sits in a cell is a live, interactive version of that site: an inbox showing new mail as it arrives, a project board updating as teammates move cards, a calendar you click straight into, not a link to any of those things. Free accounts get five usable cells plus one ad cell fixed in the bottom-right slot; Premium drops the ad and unlocks all six for $4 a month. You can also try it before creating an account: two live cells load immediately at [/try](/try), saved to that browser only, and they carry into your dashboard automatically if you sign up later. Every cell fills from the built-in catalog or from any HTTPS URL you paste in yourself, and the free TulipLot Companion, a Chrome extension, unlocks embedding for many sites that would otherwise refuse to load in a frame. Worth saying plainly, though: not every site can be embedded this way. A handful of major login-gated services, Gmail and Google Calendar among them, never allow embedding under any circumstances, Companion or not, and become one-click launchers instead: a cell you click to open the site in its own tab rather than seeing it live inline. That's a real limitation, and it's the tradeoff for rendering actual interactive sites instead of storing links to them. ## Price, single-user [Toby's free Starter plan](https://www.gettoby.com/pricing) is $0 with up to 60 saved tabs across your collections. Productivity is $6 USD per member per month, or $4.50 per member per month billed yearly ($54/year), and adds unlimited saved tabs, advanced search, and duplicate removal. Team is $10 USD per member per month, or $8 billed yearly ($96/year), and adds SSO, priority support, and centralized billing. Toby prices per member because it's built as a collaboration tool: the cost scales with how many teammates share your collections. TulipLot prices per person, not per seat, since a TulipLot dashboard has no team or collections concept the way Toby does. You can try it with no account, move to a free account with five usable cells and one ad, or go Premium for all six cells with zero ads at $4 a month. Compared single-user to single-user: one person on Toby's Productivity tier pays $4.50–$6 a month, and one person on TulipLot Premium pays $4 a month. ## TulipLot vs Toby at a glance | | Toby | TulipLot | |---|---|---| | What it stores | Links to tabs, saved into collections | Nothing — cells render live sites, not saved links | | Sites visible at once | None; Toby stores links to tabs you reopen later, not live views | Up to 6, live and simultaneous, in a fixed grid | | Free tier ad-supported | Not described as ad-supported | Yes, one ad cell on the free plan | | Single-user paid price | $6/mo, or $4.50/mo billed yearly ($54/yr) | $4/month | | Team / collaboration | Yes, unlimited members even on the free Starter plan | No built-in team or collaboration features | ## Which should you pick? Pick Toby if you collect more than you use at any given moment: research links, articles to read later, a growing pile of reference tabs you'd rather have organized into collections than buried in your tab bar. The 60-tab free limit is generous for casual collecting, and Productivity removes that ceiling entirely once you outgrow it. Pick TulipLot if the problem isn't too many tabs, it's needing a handful of specific sites open and visible at the same time, every day: an inbox, a calendar, a project board, a chat, glanced at constantly rather than reopened occasionally. If your workflow is "check five things all day" rather than "save fifty things for later," a live grid solves that in a way a saved-links tool structurally can't. Plenty of people reasonably want both. Toby for what you're not using right now, TulipLot for what you're using constantly. They don't compete for the same job, so there's no real conflict in running both. ## Questions people ask ### Is TulipLot a Toby alternative? Only if what you actually want differs from what Toby offers: sites open and live at once, instead of links saved for later. TulipLot doesn't save tabs, organize them into collections, or search across them; Toby does that well and TulipLot makes no attempt to. If your problem is losing track of dozens of tabs, Toby solves it and TulipLot won't. TulipLot fits when you want a handful of sites visibly live all the time, not when you want a place to store links for later. ### What is Toby's free plan limit? Toby's free "Starter" plan lets you save and manage up to 60 tabs across all your collections, with no cap on how many members can join the account. That 60-tab limit arrived when Toby retired its older single free plan; existing free users were moved onto the new Starter limits by 12 November 2024, according to Toby's own FAQ. Past 60 saved tabs, Toby's paid Productivity plan removes the limit entirely. ### Can I use TulipLot without signing up? Yes. The [try page](/try) gives you two live cells with no account required: pick a site from the catalog or paste any HTTPS URL, and it loads the same way a Free or Premium cell would. Those two cells stay saved to that browser only; creating a free account carries them into your dashboard and raises you to five usable cells. If you save more than you use, [Toby](https://gettoby.com) is the better tool, plain and simple. If you want a handful of sites live and visible all day instead, [try TulipLot](/try) with no account, or see exactly what changes between [Free and Premium](/guides/premium-vs-free) before deciding. --- # TulipLot vs Workona: project spaces or a live grid? Source: https://tuliplot.com/blog/tuliplot-vs-workona/ Published: 2026-08-02 Updated: 2026-08-16 **Key facts** - Workona is a tab and project workspace manager: tabs go into per-project Spaces with auto-save and cross-device sync. Its own words: "Get your tabs under control." - Workona's free plan is $0 and is capped at 5 spaces. Workona's FAQ says it "can be used forever." - Workona Pro is listed as "Starting at $7 / month," which is the annual-billed rate. - TulipLot does not save or restore sessions. It keeps up to six sites live in a fixed grid: Try is 2 cells with no account, Free is 5 cells plus 1 ad cell at $0, Premium is 6 cells with no ad at $4/month. Workona organizes tabs into Spaces you save and restore. TulipLot keeps a fixed grid of sites rendered live, all at once. That distinction is worth stating up front, because "workona alternative" searches split into two different needs: people who want a better way to save and restore project sessions, and people who want a handful of sites visibly live at the same time without switching between them. Workona is a project-based session manager: you group a project's tabs into a Space, it auto-saves as you work, and it syncs across your devices so you can close it down and pick it back up later. TulipLot is a live-rendering tool: it keeps up to six real, interactive sites open continuously in a fixed grid, with nothing to restore because nothing was ever closed. Want a dozen project workspaces you can name, save, and reopen weeks from now? Workona does that; TulipLot doesn't attempt it. Want your inbox, calendar, and a project board all visibly live at once, no switching, no restoring? That's TulipLot's job, and Workona doesn't do that either. ## What Workona does well Workona is genuinely good at project-based session management. Their own framing is "Get your tabs under control": tabs get grouped into per-project Spaces, saved automatically, and synced across devices, so a project you set aside on Monday reopens Thursday. The free plan is real, if a little hidden — it's documented in a pricing-page FAQ accordion rather than shown as its own plan card, and it's capped at 5 spaces. Workona's FAQ says the free plan "can be used forever," it just stops letting you create new spaces once you hit that cap until you upgrade. If you're running several ongoing projects at once, each with its own cluster of tabs you want saved, closed down, and restored later, Workona is built for exactly that, and TulipLot isn't a substitute for it. A TulipLot cell doesn't save a session or restore one; it only ever shows what's live in that cell right now. ## What TulipLot does differently TulipLot doesn't save sessions or restore them — it renders. A TulipLot dashboard is a fixed 3×2 grid, six cells, and whatever sits in a cell is a live, interactive version of that site: an inbox showing new mail as it arrives, a calendar you click straight into, a dashboard updating in real time, not a saved reference to any of those things. Free accounts get five usable cells plus one ad cell fixed in the bottom-right slot; Premium drops the ad and unlocks all six for $4 a month. You can also try it before creating an account: two live cells load immediately at [/try](/try), saved to that browser only, and they carry into your dashboard automatically if you sign up later. Every cell fills from the built-in catalog or from any HTTPS URL you paste in yourself, and the free TulipLot Companion, a Chrome extension, unlocks embedding for many sites that would otherwise refuse to load in a frame. Worth saying plainly, though: not every site can be embedded this way. A handful of major login-gated services, Gmail and Google Calendar among them, never allow embedding under any circumstances, Companion or not, and become one-click launchers instead: a cell you click to open the site in its own tab rather than seeing it live inline. That's a real limitation, and it's the tradeoff for rendering actual interactive sites instead of saving references to them. ## Price, single-user [Workona's free plan](https://workona.com/pricing/) is $0, capped at 5 spaces, usable forever below that cap. Pro is listed as "Starting at $7 / month," confirmed to be the annual-billed rate — Workona's checkout resolves to the annual term by default, and a separate monthly-only price isn't displayed distinctly anywhere on their site, so there's no monthly figure to quote here. Pro adds unlimited spaces and sections, 90-day session backups, integrations, and templates. Team is "Starting at $8 / user / month," with a 3-user minimum and room for up to 25 users; Enterprise is contact-sales only. Workona prices per seat because it's built as a collaboration tool — the Team plan requires at least three people by design. TulipLot prices per person, not per seat, since a TulipLot dashboard has no team or collaboration concept the way Workona's Spaces do. Compared single-user to single-user: one person on Workona Pro pays $7 a month (annual-billed), and one person on TulipLot Premium pays $4 a month. ## TulipLot vs Workona at a glance | | Workona | TulipLot | |---|---|---| | What it stores | Project Spaces — tabs grouped, auto-saved, restored later | Nothing — cells render live sites, not saved sessions | | Sites visible at once | None; Spaces store tab references you reopen, not live views | Up to 6, live and simultaneous, in a fixed grid | | Session auto-save & restore | Yes, across devices | No — there's no session to save or restore | | Free tier ad-supported | Not described as ad-supported | Yes, one ad cell on the free plan | | Single-user paid price | $7/month, annual-billed | $4/month | | Team / collaboration | Yes, $8/user/month, 3-user minimum, up to 25 users | No built-in team or collaboration features | ## Which should you pick? Pick Workona if your problem is project sessions, not a live view: a handful of ongoing projects, each with its own set of tabs you want grouped, auto-saved, and restored on whatever device you sit down at. That's the job Workona is built for, it does it well, and for someone who wants a dozen restorable project workspaces, it's the better tool — full stop. Pick TulipLot if the problem isn't sessions to reopen, it's a handful of specific sites you want open and visible at the same time, every day: an inbox, a calendar, a dashboard, glanced at constantly rather than restored occasionally. If your workflow is "watch five things live all day" rather than "save a dozen project sessions to reopen later," a fixed live grid solves that in a way a session manager structurally can't. Plenty of people could reasonably want both. Workona for the projects you're not actively looking at right now, TulipLot for the handful of things you watch constantly. They're built for different jobs, so there's no real conflict in running both. ## Questions people ask ### Is TulipLot a Workona alternative? Only if what you actually want differs from what Workona offers: project Spaces you save and restore later, instead of sites rendered live and simultaneously. TulipLot doesn't group tabs into projects, auto-save sessions, or sync them across devices; Workona does that well and TulipLot makes no attempt to. If your problem is juggling several ongoing projects that each need their own saved set of tabs, Workona solves it and TulipLot won't. TulipLot fits when you want a handful of sites visibly live all the time, not a place to save and restore project sessions. ### What is Workona's free plan limit? Workona's free plan is capped at 5 spaces, documented in a pricing-page FAQ accordion rather than shown as its own plan card. Once you reach that limit, you can't create additional spaces until you upgrade to Pro. Workona's own FAQ describes the free plan as something that "can be used forever" below that cap — it's space-limited, not time-limited. ### Can I use TulipLot without signing up? Yes. The [try page](/try) gives you two live cells with no account required: pick a site from the catalog or paste any HTTPS URL, and it loads the same way a Free or Premium cell would. Those two cells stay saved to that browser only; creating a free account carries them into your dashboard and raises you to five usable cells. If you're juggling a dozen ongoing projects and want them saved and restorable, [Workona](https://workona.com) is the better tool, plain and simple. If you want a handful of sites live and visible all day instead, [try TulipLot](/try) with no account, or see exactly what changes between [Free and Premium](/guides/premium-vs-free) before deciding. --- # How to view multiple websites at once Source: https://tuliplot.com/blog/view-multiple-websites-at-once/ Published: 2026-08-02 Updated: 2026-08-16 Two situations send most people searching for this. You're comparing two things directly: two flight prices, two apartment listings, two drafts of the same document, and switching back and forth between tabs makes it hard to hold both in your head at once. Or you're watching one thing while working in another: a dashboard you want visible while you answer email, a video call running next to your notes. Either way, the goal is the same. You want to see two websites at the same time, not alternate between them all day. There are five real ways to open two websites side by side, and this guide covers all five honestly, weaknesses included. Pick whichever fits how you actually work. You don't need to read past the one that solves your problem today. ## Can you see two websites at the same time in one browser? Yes, in more than one way, and you likely already have what you need for the simplest version. Your operating system, your browser, and browser extensions can each put two sites on screen together, no new software required for the first two methods. Here's the short version of all five, in order from least to most permanent: 1. Your operating system's built-in split screen 2. Two separate browser windows, arranged by hand 3. A split-screen browser extension 4. A browser that tiles or splits tabs natively 5. A fixed dashboard grid, like TulipLot The first four live inside whatever browser you already use. The fifth is a different kind of tool entirely, and it's worth understanding what it trades away before you get there. ## Method 1: your operating system's split screen Windows has [Snap](https://support.microsoft.com/en-US/Windows/Experience/snap-your-windows): drag a window to either edge of the screen, or press the Windows key plus an arrow, and it fills exactly half, with a menu offering to fill the other half with a second window. macOS has [Split View](https://support.apple.com/en-us/102573): hold down the green button in a window's top-left corner and choose a side, or drag one window to the edge while another sits ready to fill the rest. Both take about ten seconds and need nothing installed. This is genuinely the fastest way to get two websites in view right now. It's built into the computer you already have, it costs nothing, and it works with any two windows, not just a browser, so the same trick handles a browser next to a spreadsheet just as easily as two browser windows. The weakness is that it doesn't stick. Close the window, restart your computer, or just open a fresh browser session, and the split is gone. You're dragging to the edge again next time. And because a snapped window is still one whole browser window, if you've got other tabs open in it, one stray click on the wrong tab swaps out the site you were just comparing. Who it suits: a quick, one-off comparison you won't need again tomorrow. ## Method 2: two browser windows side by side This is the manual version of method 1. Instead of letting Snap or Split View decide the split, open a second browser window (not a new tab, a genuinely separate window: Ctrl+N or Cmd+N), drag it next to the first, and resize both by hand until you like the balance. The upside over an automatic split is control. You can give one site 70% of the screen and the other 30%, stack them instead of placing them side by side, or spread them across two monitors if you have them. If you're comparing a wide spreadsheet against a narrow reference page, an even split rarely looks right, and this method fixes that. The weakness is the same one as method 1, plus more of your own effort. You're rebuilding this every session, and now you're doing the resizing by hand instead of letting a keyboard shortcut do it for you. On a single small laptop screen, two full windows side by side often leaves each one too narrow to read comfortably, and you end up scrolling sideways on both. Who it suits: anyone who wants exact control over the split and doesn't mind rebuilding it. ## Method 3: a split-screen browser extension A category of browser extensions exists specifically to keep two sites inside one browser window, panes side by side, without needing two separate OS windows at all. Installed and set up once, some of these are genuinely useful: fewer windows to manage than method 2, and the split lives inside your normal browsing session instead of off to the side of it. Here's the part worth knowing before you install one. Look closely at how a lot of these extensions actually work, and you'll notice many of them don't embed the second site inside the first pane at all. Instead they open it in a real, separate browser window, positioned and sized to look like a single split view. That's not a bug in the extension. It's because a real portion of the web refuses to be displayed inside another page under any circumstances, for a genuine security reason, and no extension can override that refusal. [Why some sites won't load in a dashboard](/guides/why-sites-wont-load) goes into exactly why that happens and what does and doesn't get around it, since the same rule shows up again later in this guide. That's the honest weakness of this method: results depend heavily on which sites you're trying to split, not just which extension you pick. Some pairs of sites split cleanly. Others quietly fall back to a plain second window, which is functionally method 2 with an extra piece of software watching your browsing to make it happen. Worth weighing before you grant any extension that kind of access. Who it suits: people happy staying inside one browser, comfortable granting an extension that access, whose particular sites happen to cooperate. ## Method 4: a browser that splits tabs natively A handful of browsers build tab splitting straight into the browser itself, letting you drag one tab next to another so both are visible in the same window, no extension required. If you already use one of those browsers, this is close to free: the feature is just there, waiting. The catch is right there in that sentence: it only helps if you're already using that browser, or willing to switch to one that has it. Switching your everyday browser is a bigger decision than installing an extension, mostly because of everything that comes along with it: saved passwords, bookmarks, other extensions, the dozens of sites that recognize you because you're already logged in there. None of that necessarily follows you cleanly to a new browser, and giving up your current setup just to get tab splitting is a real cost, not a minor one. Who it suits: someone who already uses, or is genuinely happy to adopt, a browser that tiles tabs natively. ## Method 5: a fixed dashboard grid Every method above shares one thing: you rebuild it. New session, new reboot, new week, and you're snapping, dragging, or re-splitting again, because none of the first four remember what you had open yesterday. That's fine for a comparison you'll only need once. It wears thin fast if it's the same two or three sites, every single day. That's the gap TulipLot is built to close. It turns one browser tab into a fixed 3×2 grid, six cells, that looks exactly the same every time you open it. Put your project board top-center and your inbox top-left once, and they're still there tomorrow, and the week after, with nothing to rearrange each morning. Free covers five usable cells plus one ad cell in the bottom-right corner; Premium is $4 a month for all six cells with no ads. Free needs no credit card and has no time limit either way. What actually happens when you add a site depends on the site, the same way it did in method 3, and it's worth being just as upfront about it here. Trello is a catalog example that loads live in the grid the moment you add it, nothing extra required. Notion and Hacker News are catalog examples that need a nudge first: the free TulipLot Companion, a Chrome extension you install once and then turn on for that specific site, after which they load live too. And Gmail, Outlook, and Google Calendar are catalog examples that never embed, Companion or not; each opens in its own browser tab as a one-click launcher instead, because their own protections run deeper than anything the Companion can adjust. The tradeoff, stated plainly: methods 1 through 4 need nothing but what's already on your computer, and you can start using any of them in the next thirty seconds. Trying TulipLot needs nothing either — two cells load with no signup at [/try](/try) — though building out the full grid means creating a free account and spending a few minutes arranging it. What you get in exchange is that you stop spending those thirty seconds every single day. ## Which one should you use? | Method | Best for | Setup | Sticks between sessions | |---|---|---|---| | OS split screen | A quick, one-off comparison | None | No | | Two browser windows | Full manual control over the split | A few seconds, every time | No | | Split-screen extension | Staying inside one browser window | One-time install | No | | Tab-splitting browser | Anyone who already uses one | None, if you're already using it | No | | Fixed dashboard grid | The same sites, day after day | A few minutes, once | Yes | ## Questions people ask ### Is there a website that shows multiple websites at once? Not one that works for every site, no. Tools that try, TulipLot included, run into the same rule: a site can tell browsers not to display it inside another page, and browsers obey. Some sites allow it, some need a browser extension first, and a handful refuse outright no matter which tool is asking, because that choice belongs to the site itself, not to whatever's trying to display it. What you can find, and what's worth looking for, are tools that are upfront about which case each of your sites falls into instead of quietly showing a broken pane and leaving you to guess. ### Why won't some sites open side by side? Because the site itself said no, not because anything you're using is broken. Browsers honor an instruction that some sites send back, blocking any other page from displaying them inside a frame, a genuine security measure meant to stop a trick called clickjacking, where a hidden frame tricks you into clicking something you never meant to. That decision happens before any split-screen extension or dashboard ever gets a say, which is why the same extension can work perfectly on one site and fail completely on the next. It's the site's own security choice, consistent across every tool, not a bug in whichever one you happen to be using. ### Does viewing multiple sites slow my computer down? A little, but usually less than you'd expect. Two live webpages use more memory than one, the same way two browser tabs use more than a single tab does, but the difference between that and a single window is small on any computer bought in the last several years. What actually slows a machine down is a page that's heavy on its own, autoplaying video or a chat app refreshing nonstop, far more than the raw number of sites on screen. If one of your sites is like that, put it to sleep or close it when you're not using it, and everything else stays just as responsive. Most people land on one of these five without ever needing the others, and any of them beats the alt-tab shuffle you started with. If your day involves the same handful of sites on repeat, [five ways to lay out a productive dashboard](/blog/dashboard-productivity-tips) is worth a look once you've picked your five (or six). And if a fixed grid sounds like the fit, [create a free account](/register) and see which of your own sites load live. --- # What is a browser start page (and do you still need one)? Source: https://tuliplot.com/blog/what-is-a-browser-start-page/ Published: 2026-08-02 "Start page," "home page," and "new tab page" get used like synonyms, and most people never notice they're three separate settings until one of them stops doing what they expect. All three are worth defining properly, because the differences explain a lot of what happened to the sites that used to live there, and what's worth using in their place today. ## Start page, home page, new tab: three different things A start page is whatever loads when you launch the browser from fully closed, a cold start. It's controlled by your browser's startup setting, usually a choice between a blank page, one specific URL, or picking up your previous tabs right where you left off. In Chrome and Edge, that setting is launch-only: opening a fresh window while the browser is already running shows the New Tab page instead, not your configured start page. A home page is what loads when you click the Home button, the small house icon some browsers still show next to the address bar. In Chrome and Edge, that's a separate setting from startup, one most people configure once and never touch again, and plenty of people have turned the Home button off entirely without realizing the setting underneath it is still there. Firefox draws the line differently: its single "Homepage and new windows" setting covers the Home button and the startup page together, so the two-setting split described here collapses into one there. A new tab page is whatever appears every time you press Ctrl+T or Cmd+T. It's usually the browser's own screen of shortcuts and thumbnails, but it can be swapped out for something else, typically by installing an extension built for exactly that. All three can point at the same URL, or three completely different ones. In Chrome and Edge, the settings are independent; in Firefox, the start page and home page are the same setting, and only the new tab page is separate. Either way, that overlap is exactly why the terms get confused with each other: once you've landed on one, it looks identical to whatever page happens to be showing in the tab. What changes is how you got there. | Term | Opens when | Set in | |---|---|---| | Start page | The browser launches from a cold start | Startup settings | | Home page | You click the Home button | Home-button settings (Chrome, Edge) | | New tab page | You open a new tab | New Tab settings, often via an extension | That's the shape in Chrome and Edge. Firefox combines the first two rows into one "Homepage and new windows" setting, so check there first if you're on Firefox and only one of these seems to exist. ## What start pages were for Before "start page" meant a mostly blank new-tab screen, it meant something closer to a personal portal. Sites like iGoogle and Netvibes let you build one page out of small widgets: a weather box, a stock ticker, an inbox preview, a grid of RSS feeds pulling headlines in from wherever you pointed them. You set the result as your actual browser start page, and every time you opened the browser, that whole wall of information loaded before you did anything else. The pitch made sense for its moment. Search engines were still catching up to being reliably good, so a page that pre-loaded the ten things you checked daily could genuinely save time over typing a query and picking through results. And most of what you wanted to check wasn't its own standalone app yet. Email lived in a browser tab, and so did nearly everything else worth checking: news, weather, sports scores, whatever your feeds pulled in. A portal start page wasn't competing against dedicated apps, because dedicated apps for most of that didn't really exist yet. That's the part worth remembering before writing the whole category off as dated. The portal wasn't a workaround for anything. For a stretch of years, it was the most direct route to "everything in one place" that the web had on offer. ## Why the classics kept shutting down iGoogle shut down in 2013. Netvibes has, since then, wound down the free version of its consumer product, the one regular people used without a company card attached to it. Neither closure needs a conspiracy theory to explain it, and the same two shifts run underneath both. Search got good enough that pre-loading ten links and hoping one of them was useful stopped being faster than typing three words into a search box. And the things people actually wanted to check, email, calendars, project boards, chat, moved off feeds and static widgets and into dedicated apps with their own notifications, their own logins, their own reasons to be opened as a full tab instead of glanced at inside a box. A page built for skimming headlines doesn't have much left to offer once the things you check are apps you actually use, not summaries you skim past. That's the pattern across the whole portal category, not just these two names specifically: build a page to aggregate a web that ran on RSS and static links, and it runs out of good answers once the web it was built for moves on without it. ## What people actually want now Nobody's asking for that wall of widgets back, and it's worth being honest about why: feeds lost. RSS never fully disappeared, but it stopped being how most people track the things that matter to them day to day. Ask most people what they actually check throughout the day and you get a short list, not a wall of links: email, a calendar, one or two chat tools, a project board, maybe a single news source they trust. Five or six things, at most, and every one of them is a full destination now, not a headline to glance at and move past. Nobody wants a summary of their inbox anymore. They want their inbox. That's a different job than the old portal did. The portal's job was surfacing more than you'd ever click. The job now is holding the handful you already open every day, in the same place, so you stop hunting for them. ## Start page vs dashboard That shift in what people actually want is exactly where "start page" stops being the right word for some of today's tools, TulipLot included. A start page, by definition, is a place you leave. You land there when the browser opens, click through to wherever you're actually going, and its job is done until you close the browser fully and launch it again. Even the old portals worked this way underneath the widgets: useful for the first thirty seconds, then out of the picture. A dashboard is a place you stay. TulipLot is built as a fixed 3×2 grid, six cells, each holding one app, and instead of a launch pad, it works more like a permanent workspace. Free accounts get five usable cells plus an ad cell in the corner; Premium is $4 a month for all six cells with no ads. Free needs no credit card and has no time limit either way. Add a site from the catalog or paste any HTTPS link, and drag two cells to swap them whenever your routine shifts. The grid stays exactly where you left it, tomorrow and the week after, because you're not passing through it. You're working inside it, same layout, same six spots, every day. That's the real distinction, and it has nothing to do with widgets versus apps. A start page hands you a launch pad and steps aside. A dashboard doesn't step aside. We wrote more about that choice in [Why we built TulipLot](/blog/why-we-built-tuliplot), and if six fixed cells sounds like the wrong shape for how you compare things side by side, [how to view multiple websites at once](/blog/view-multiple-websites-at-once) covers the other ways people handle that instead. ## Do you still need one? It depends entirely on your day, and it's worth answering honestly instead of assuming everyone needs the same setup. If your actual routine is two sites, an inbox and one other tab, you don't need a start page, a dashboard, or anything layered on top of what your browser already does by default. Bookmark the two, or pin the tabs, and you're done. Adding a tool to manage two things solves a problem you don't have. If you're checking five or six things all day, every day, and you keep catching yourself hunting through a pile of tabs to find the one you actually need, that's a different situation. A fixed layout, the same spot every time you look, beats re-finding the same handful of tabs over and over, day after day. At that point the apps aren't the problem. Where they live is. [Try TulipLot free](/try), no credit card required, and see whether your five or six actually settle into a place that sticks. ## Questions ### What's the difference between a start page and a home page? In Chrome and Edge, a start page loads when you launch the browser from fully closed, a cold start, controlled by the browser's startup setting, while a home page loads only when you click the dedicated Home button next to the address bar, a separate setting most people configure once and rarely revisit. Firefox is the exception: its single "Homepage and new windows" setting covers both, so there's no separate start-page setting to distinguish there. In Chrome and Edge, where the two settings are separate, they can still point at the same URL, which is part of why the terms get confused even though they're triggered by two different actions. ### Is there a modern replacement for iGoogle? Not really, not as a direct swap. Nothing aggregates feeds and widgets onto a single page quite the way iGoogle did, because the model it was built for, RSS boxes and headline skimming, isn't how most people track things anymore. What replaced it wasn't one site; it was a wider shift toward checking dedicated apps directly. If what you actually miss is the "everything in one place" feeling rather than the feed format itself, a fixed dashboard like TulipLot is the closer modern equivalent, holding your real apps instead of summaries of them. ### Do I need an extension to use a start page? No. Setting a start page is a native browser feature, built into every major browser's settings with no extension required. Some dashboard-style tools offer an optional extension for sites that actively resist being displayed inside another page, TulipLot's free Companion is one example, but that's a workaround for a specific slice of sites, not a requirement for using the tool at all. --- # Five ways to lay out a productive dashboard Source: https://tuliplot.com/blog/dashboard-productivity-tips/ Published: 2026-08-01 A fixed 3×2 grid only pays off if you arrange it around how you actually work. Six cells look the same empty, but a productive dashboard for someone glued to a support queue looks nothing like one for someone deep in a single project all day. The apps matter less than the dashboard layout: where each sits, what's asleep, and what earns the cell your eyes hit first. A grid isn't the only way to do this, either; if you're still weighing your options, [other ways to view multiple websites at once](/blog/view-multiple-websites-at-once) covers the rest. Below are five layouts, each built for a different way of working. Pick whichever sounds like your day, or borrow pieces from two. Every layout fits a real 3×2 grid; one uses Premium's sixth cell, and says so. ## 1. The communicator If your day runs on messages, build the grid around staying reachable without living inside any one app. Top row, left to right: mail, calendar, team chat. Mail and calendar (Gmail, Outlook, or Google Calendar) open in their own tab the moment you click the cell. They're one-click launchers, not panes you stare into. Team chat depends on the tool; add it and the cell tells you within seconds how it behaves. Bottom row: tasks, notes such as Notion, and a news source such as Hacker News. Notion and Hacker News need the TulipLot Companion first — install it once, then enable it for each site separately (Notion and Hacker News are two separate grants), and both load live from then on. Tasks can be whatever you already use. That's six named apps, so this layout leans on [Premium's sixth cell](/guides/premium-vs-free). On the free plan, drop the news cell — mail, calendar, chat, tasks, and notes still fill five cells cleanly, with the ad sitting quietly in the sixth. Who it suits: support, sales, management — any role where being reachable is most of the job. ## 2. The maker If most of your day is spent creating — writing, designing, building — the grid should say so. One cell carries the weight of your actual work; everything else is support, and it should stay out of your way until you invite it in. Top-left: mail (Gmail or Outlook), a one-click launcher you check between tasks, not during them. Top-center: your main work surface — a Trello board, which embeds live, or a Notion doc, which needs the Companion installed and enabled for that site. This is the cell you expand into focus mode when you're deep in it. Top-right: team chat, same as above. Bottom-left: calendar (Google Calendar), another one-click launcher. Bottom-center: a reference doc or notes app for quick lookups without leaving the grid. Bottom-right: the free plan's ad cell, or a second reference app on Premium. The trick is the sleep control, and it only applies where there's live content to quiet: if your chat tool loads live in its cell, put it to sleep while you work and wake it on breaks, instead of letting notifications pull you out mid-thought. Mail and calendar need no such treatment. As launcher cells, they're already quiet until you click in, with no live content to interrupt you. Five named apps, so this one runs comfortably on free. Who it suits: writers, designers, developers — anyone whose best hours need one thing in front of them and everything else held at arm's length. ## 3. The monitor If your job is watching for change, the layout should be built for glancing, not reading. Nothing here needs your full attention every minute — just enough visibility that you notice when something shifts. Top row: your three glance-first panes — a status page, an analytics tool, and a second dashboard or uptime monitor, each added as a custom URL. The cell tells you within seconds whether a given one loads live, needs the Companion, or opens in its own tab instead. Keep these along the top, the row your eyes cross most. Bottom-left: a news source such as Hacker News, which needs the Companion before it embeds live. Bottom-center: your calendar (Google Calendar), a one-click launcher rather than a live pane. Bottom-right: the ad cell on free, or a sixth glance target on Premium. None of these cells are where you do the work. When a number moves, expand that cell into focus mode, dig in, then hit Esc and you're back to glancing across all six. Who it suits: on-call engineers, support leads — anyone whose job is noticing before it's a problem, not sitting inside one app all day. ## 4. The researcher Research work rotates through sources around a few things that stay put — your notes chief among them. Layout around what's stable, not what's currently open. Top-left and top-center: two reference sites side by side, added as custom URLs for comparing passages or data without alt-tabbing; each is upfront on add about whether it embeds live, needs the Companion, or opens in its own tab. Top-right: your notes — Notion works well here (install the Companion, enable it for the site, and it embeds live), or any notes app you prefer. Bottom-left: a search engine or library database for pulling in new sources. Bottom-center: your calendar (Google Calendar), a one-click launcher for keeping research time on the schedule. Bottom-right: the free plan's ad cell, or a third reference site on Premium. The move that makes this layout hold up over weeks: when a source stops being useful, don't delete the cell and rebuild — use edit to swap the new site into the same slot. The position stays fixed, so your notes cell stays exactly where it was relative to your sources, and you never lose the habit of reaching top-left for "current source A." Who it suits: students, analysts — anyone whose sources change constantly but whose workflow shouldn't. ## 5. The minimalist Not everyone wants six things running. If three apps cover your whole day, the other cells don't need to be empty — they need to be asleep. Top row: your three actives. Mail and calendar (Gmail, Outlook, or Google Calendar) are one-click launchers that open in their own tab; the third slot holds one live app, such as a Trello board. Bottom row: two more occasional apps — notes, a second chat, whatever earns a spot but not constant attention — added once and put to sleep. A slept cell stays exactly where you left it and shows nothing new until you wake it: not gone, just quiet. Bottom-right is where the tiers differ. On free, that's the ad cell, and it was never going to hold one of your three actives anyway, so it stays out of the way. On Premium, it's a third sleeping cell — or leave it empty; an empty cell costs nothing. Who it suits: anyone who tried a crowded grid and found it noisier than the tab wall it replaced. ## Placement rules that make any layout stick A few rules cut across all five layouts, whichever one you start from. **Top-left goes to whatever you check most.** Eyes land there first on every screen, every time, so give it to your highest-frequency check — inbox, chat, whatever pulls at you all day — not to whatever feels most important on paper. **Group by how often you glance, not by app type.** A status page you check every few minutes doesn't belong next to a report you open once a week, even if both count as "analytics." Sort by rhythm first, category second. **Sleep what you check hourly.** If a cell earns a glance every hour or two rather than constantly, put it to sleep between checks and wake it deliberately, instead of letting it refresh for no one. **Expand what you work in, not what you watch.** Focus mode suits cells you're actively producing inside — a doc, a board, a ticket — not monitoring, which wants peripheral vision more than a full screen. None of this is fixed forever. Drag two cells to swap them the moment your day changes shape, and the grid catches up instantly. Layout is the cheapest lever you have. The apps barely change; where you put them changes how the day feels. Still deciding which five — or six — apps deserve a seat? [Getting started with TulipLot](/guides/getting-started) walks through the whole setup, cell controls included. Curious why we built a fixed grid instead of another tab manager? Read [Why we built TulipLot](/blog/why-we-built-tuliplot). And if you don't have a grid yet, [create a free account](/register) — no card required — and have one of these layouts running before your coffee's gone cold. --- # Why we built TulipLot Source: https://tuliplot.com/blog/why-we-built-tuliplot/ Published: 2026-08-01 ## The tab pile: what too many browser tabs actually costs You know the pile. It starts with a couple of tabs in the morning, and by the afternoon you've got too many browser tabs open at once — a wall of them, and somewhere in there is the doc you were editing earlier, except now it's drifted somewhere to the left of where you last saw it, next to another tab from the same site that you opened because you couldn't find the first one. The favicons blur together after a while. You hover, wait for the tooltip, hover the next one, wait again. You've got a duplicate of the same dashboard open because you forgot you already had it. The tab you actually need is the one that always seems to have wandered off, and you spend stray moments, over and over, just relocating things you already opened once. None of that is a discipline problem. Nobody fails at tabs. The browser tab bar was built to hold pages you're skimming for a minute and then closing, not the handful of apps you live inside all day, every day, for months on end. Ask it to be a home for your workflow and it's going to sag under the weight, no matter how careful you are about closing things. ## Why the usual fixes didn't stick for us We tried the standard advice, same as you probably have. Tab groups color-code the pile into sections, which helps for about a day, until the sections themselves start multiplying and you're back to hunting, just within a smaller haystack. Tab managers and tree-style extensions impose more structure on top, but the structure lives inside the same bar, competing for the same sliver of horizontal space. It's still a pile. It's just a pile with labels. Splitting apps across separate browser windows helps for exactly the apps you keep in view, and fragments everything else. Now you're alt-tabbing between windows instead of tabs, which is the same problem wearing a different hat. And more monitors don't solve it either, not really. A second or third screen just gives the pile more room to spread out. You still can't find the one tab you need, you can just fail to find it across a wider desk. Every fix we tried treated the symptom. The tabs kept accumulating because nothing changed about where things lived. ## A fixed place for everything So we stopped trying to organize the pile and got rid of it instead. TulipLot turns one browser tab into a 3×2 grid: six fixed cells, each holding one app, each cell staying exactly where you put it. The bet is on spatial memory over search. You don't search for your keys every morning, because they live in the bowl by the door. Once you decide mail goes top-left, it stays top-left, tomorrow and the week after. You stop reading labels and start just reaching for where things are. Drag any two cells to swap them if your workflow changes, and the grid still stays fixed at six, so there's no fresh pile to manage in its place. That's the whole trade. You give up the infinite, anything-goes tab bar for six spots you actually remember. For the handful of apps most of us live in daily, that's a fair trade to make. ## Built for the real web Here's the part we won't dress up: a lot of the web doesn't want to be put in a box like this, and that's the site's call to make. Some sites send an explicit signal telling browsers not to frame them elsewhere, full stop. That's a real security choice by real teams, and when a site refuses outright like that, TulipLot isn't in the business of overriding it. What we can do is be honest about which case you're in, cell by cell. Add a site and one of three things happens. Plenty of the catalog, and plenty of custom HTTPS URLs, just embed and load live right there in the grid. Some sites need a nudge: install the free TulipLot Companion extension once, then flip it on for that specific site, and the cell unlocks. It only touches the sites you explicitly enable, one at a time, and it isn't a bypass for everything. A handful of sites, Gmail and Google Calendar are the common examples, stay outside the grid no matter what you enable. The Companion doesn't change that. For those, the cell becomes a one-click launcher: click it, and the app opens in its own tab the way it always has. We'd rather show you which of those three is true the moment you add a site than fake an embed that breaks the first time you click something inside it. ## What we deliberately left out We left things out on purpose, and we want to say which, because the constraint is the actual point. The grid is fixed at 3×2. No resizing panes, no dragging the borders wider, no seventh cell you unlock by rearranging harder. Six is the number. There are no tabs inside a cell either. Each cell holds one app, not a stack of them. Opening a second tab inside a cell just rebuilds the pile you came here to leave, one cell at a time, and we're not interested in shipping that. And there's no feed. No aggregated timeline pulling content from all six apps into one scroll. TulipLot shows you where your apps live. It doesn't try to read them for you. Every one of those is a deliberate no, not a missing feature. A dashboard that does everything is just a tab bar with worse ergonomics. ## Where it's going We're still early, and the roadmap gets shaped by what people actually run into, not by what looks good on a features page. If you want to see the grid in the shape other people have already found useful, we wrote up [five ways to lay out a productive dashboard](/blog/dashboard-productivity-tips) with real cell-by-cell examples. If you've got five minutes, our [getting started guide](/guides/getting-started) walks the whole setup, first app to sixth cell. And if something about TulipLot doesn't fit the way you actually work, or you've got an idea for what should, we'd rather hear it than guess. Reach us through [About](/about). Otherwise, the fastest way to see whether the fixed-grid bet pays off for you is to [try it with no account](/try): two live cells, no signup. Ready for the full grid? [Create a free account](/register), no credit card, and put your first five apps somewhere they'll actually stay. ---