manus.

What do I use Manus for?

Spinning something up start to finish.

Websites, landing pages, decks. It’s an all-in-one that actually goes and does the job rather than handing you pieces to assemble.

The output is good straight out of the gate. Most tools need you to understand what you’re building before they help; this one needs a lot less to go on.

Which feature would I miss most?

The share link.

When it spins up a site or a landing page, I can send a client a link and get feedback before anything goes near production. Approval without a deployment.

Who is Manus for, and who should skip it?

Beginners, and anyone who would rather not steer.

Anything where pretty matters. It’s quietly taking over the work I used to do in Canva.

It’s a forgiving place to learn, too. It fills in the blanks when you don’t know what you don’t know, which makes it a good stop before something like Claude Code.

Skip it if you want creative control. That’s the trade: less steering from you, less say over the details.

How have I used Manus recently?

A talk deck about resumes.

I built the slide deck for my Latinas in Tech talk on resumes in it. Visual, self-contained, needed to look finished. Exactly the shape of job it’s good at.

What do I wish I had known about Manus on day one?

Watch your credits.

It burns through them faster than the other tools at the same price, because it’s doing the whole job instead of one step.

The billing caught me out. Credits reset monthly and they go faster than you’d think. Getting more has meant moving up a plan rather than topping up a little, and the next plan up from mine is double. Running dry mid-deliverable means stopping or paying more, so spend them like they’re finite. They are.

How does Manus fit with my other tools?

One-off jobs, used sparingly.

It has connectors like Claude and ChatGPT do, so it reaches into Drive, Sheets, Docs and Gmail directly.

I don’t reach for it daily. It comes out for a finished thing I need in one pass, or when I want a visual to critique. The credits decide how often, not the quality.

Would I pay for Manus?

Yes. Twenty dollars a month.

I’m on the basic plan and it’s worth it. Just don’t expect the credits to stretch the way they do elsewhere.