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Show HN: My new SaaS side-project, after years of open source
Hi guys, I've created an open source web builder framework (https://grapesjs.com https://grapesjs.com) years ago, which I'm still maintaining, and now I'm excited to publish a side project based on it, Grapedrop (https://grapedrop.com https://grapedrop.com). It's a simple web page builder which allows you to design and publish your web pages very quickly. The project is still in beta with a lot of stuff to improve but I'd really like to share it and hear what people think about it and maybe also get some constructive feedback.
- dhumph 8y agoOne quick bit of feedback - i'm not as likely to try it out if i have to register first. Create a demo area where i can play, but not save and use that as bait for registration.
- artf 8y agoI put it on my to-do list :) Thanks
- lordldx 8y agoSame opinion here. Was going to try it out, but got scared away by the registration form
- artf 8y agoIs it your general feeling about registration forms or there is something particularly wrong with my form? Thanks
- brandoncordell 8y agoNot the original commenter but I rarely sign up for things just to try out a product unless I'm already sure it's going to solve my problem. I don't know how they're going to use my email. Are they going to send me useless emails in the future even if I decide that I'm not interested in the product? Are they going to make me confirm my email instead of letting me right in to try it? If I don't like the product can I delete my account or do I just have to forget about it? I like when I can try out a product with as little friction as possible. To be completely honest when this happens it can sway my decision to use the product.
- ehnto 8y agoI was always pretty proud of my now defunct side project's flow. You could build the whole page right from the homepage, but to save it you had to register (otherwise who would the page belong to). It had a really great conversion rate from click to account, but a poor rate from account to paid customer hence why it didn't work out.
- artf 8y agoThanks for sharing, did you figure out the reasons for such a poor rate?
- ehnto 8y agoMy paid feature tiers really targeted commercial and heavy traffic users and I simply never had any of them sign up because the actual platform functionality targeted individual free users. There are some hard to answer questions around the type of users that need dynamic pagebuilders, and you need your paid tier to target the specific pain points of people who would pay, not just arbitrary limits on free feature usage. I built the platform for free users so that's all I ever attracted. If I did it again, I would focus on things businesses need like product widgets, contact forms, store maps, opening hours, social integration and so on.
- dawie 8y agoOur corporate firewall blocks your url as "porn" The fact that your ssl cert is not working is also a concern
- artf 8y agoI really have no idea... The cert is issued by Let's Encrypt and so far it works pretty well (but maybe that might be an issue for that firewall)
- jasonwen 8y agoProbably your firewall regexes “rape”
- breakingcups 8y agoAh, the old Scunthorpe problem. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scunthorpe_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scunthorpe_problem
- ltc5505 8y agoThat was an amazing read.
- artf 8y agoSo I guess even https://analytics.google.com/ https://analytics.google.com/ would be a problem there
- realty_geek 8y agoAwesome, congratulations. Really like what you've done with grapesjs - thanks for all the hard work!!!
- artf 8y agoThank you very much, glad to hear that :)
- slow_donkey 8y agoLooks really cool. Will have to check out when I'm not on mobile but at first glance seems like a great prototyping too as well
- artf 8y agoThank you, let me know then
- martinpinto 8y agoThis looks amazing! This is how a side-project should look like!
- artf 8y agoThank you :)
- encoderer 8y ago1. Your homepage should give me a better sales pitch about what I can do with your product and why I need it, not just how I do it. Explain your value. 2. All content is focused at English audience except the pricing details. Use a dot decimal sign $12.34 not $12,34 3. I would make the connection to your open source project explicit. It’s an asset. Sentry.io does this well Congrats on shipping!
- Agnosco 8y agoGreat feedback. I was just about to write a comment regarding 1. above - it feels like you might have brought a bit too much of your open source roots into the presentation and too little of your business oriented foundation. Of course this depends also on who you want to target as potential customers - who do you want to target?
- artf 8y agoMy main target, at the moment, should be "small businesses", so from freelancers to startups. Not sure if I'm doing that right, but I'm willing to learn
- Agnosco 8y agoWhat value could they create from using your setup?
- artf 8y agoJust to point few of them: 1. Quick deploy of the site (I mean you don't need to deal with servers, installations, and stuff) 2. They can start collecting leads easily
- jaxtellerSoA 8y agoWhat separates you from Squarespace or Wix? Answer that question and make the answer prominent on your page.
- epaga 8y agoYay for upfront pricing!!! Reminds me of how much I HATE it when I arrive at a site only for them to be super coy about their pricing model. You did it the way I wish everyone did.
- artf 8y agoThank you, now I know what I should not change :)
- fabricexpert 8y agoUnfortunately, you might end up changing that if it increases your conversions...
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- sigi45 8y agoNice! But why is free without tls? :|
- artf 8y agoWith the free account, you can choose any subdomain and you have automatically the HTTPS enabled
- fabricexpert 8y agoThis looks awesome, I actually used grapesjs in a project earlier this year and it was really cool. However I don't understand what this is? What's the output? A hosted website or some html? What would I use this for?
- artf 8y agoYou build your webpage (like you'd do it in grapesjs), which might be even your personal page, then you can decide to export it or just assign a subdomain (custom domains are not available in free accounts) and view it online
- fabricexpert 8y agoYou should make it clear that you can host it on there. Just something really simple 2 steps with big icons and text under them: 1. Design your page using our simple page builder 2. We host it for you in one click (or you can choose to export it and host yourself)
- artf 8y agoThank you very much for the advice, I'll try to make it more clear
- hguhghuff 8y agoI dread releasing my next project and having these questions asked. It should be simple but it’s so hard for the developer to see they have not explained the basics. And if your project don’t explain the basics fast, people leave in seconds.
- keithnz 8y agopretty cool though, within a few hours he's got a ton of advice and has some reasonably big plot holes in his messaging highlighted.
- 8y ago
- stanislavb 8y agoGood job and good luck, mate! I've submitted it to SaaSHub. Who would you name as your top competitors?
- gboone 8y agoRegarding the "number 1" value proposition, and given your audience is the small-business type, creating the "why" from the "what" is normally a small step. For example, the "what" is "free forever", so the "why" is "save money and not increase monthly software subscription fees, keep my budget in line with the size of my business, grow with you, etc." Just change the point of view, and you'll get your why. The "what": super cool features that provide enough flexibility for the credit, but simple interface. The "why": because small business is about ideas, and ideas need a voice and a face. And sometimes the idea is a quick one and I only have a few hours this weekend and the site needs to be done ASAP. Hope this helps you get the wheels turning. My other feedback is styling: make the text not be aligned or sized so one word is left hanging below a full line. Check different phone screen layouts maybe? Just bugs me to look at. But I do like the overall color a lot. Nice!
- artf 8y agoThanks for your feedback, especially for the what/why approach, it's somehow natural to think about it but showing it more explicitly might be a great point for the potential customer
- HyprMusic 8y agoLooks great, I love the demo of using it for building email newsletters. Perhaps that could be a nice use to target in your marketing, maybe even integrate with some other email tools (i.e. Litmus).
- artworx 8y agoFYI I got a "Suspicious link" popup from google when I clicked verify my email address. "Malicious emails often link to this site. Are you sure you want to proceed to go.sparkpostmail1.com?"
- milanmot 8y agoI really like the website and the concept. All the best for it. Just one feedback. The font on the pricing section is too blurred and not readable.
- artf 8y agoThank you very much. About the font, can you share what browser/device/OS do you use?
- goddamnsteve 8y agoThis is beautiful, and love the concept. Of course, the sales pitch and the product design could be improved. Might want to add them here: https://hellonext.co https://hellonext.co
- teknopurge 8y agolooks great - keep up the solid work.
- hardwaresofton 8y agoGrapesjs is awesome software thanks for making it! I've been looking for a chance to use grapesjs in some projects but haven't had the chance to yet but it looks fantastic -- it's been bookmarked for a long time :). I think it might be a good idea to further limit your free tier to a time trial (a week?) maybe rather than # of projects, and maybe adding a cheaper tier -- the ability to make a website with only drag and drop. Some that you might consider competitors: - https://www.launchaco.com/ https://www.launchaco.com/ - http://macaw.co/ http://macaw.co/ (not really) - https://landingi.com/pricing https://landingi.com/pricing Also, I'm not sure who your main audience is, but using ',' for a decimal point is not commonplace in the USA. I doubt any worthwhile customer would think it was $1,490 a month, but just saying.
- artf 8y agoThank you very much, really appreciate your kind words. BTW I'd rather prefer to keep the "forever free" tier, there you have to use the subdomain and there also "Made with Grapedrop" label, so more people will use the free tier more visibility I gain, at least this is what I think. ps. the price format should be solved :)
- blihp 8y agoForever is a very long time. You should really consider changing that from 'free forever' to just 'free'. It's great that your plan is for it to be free forever, but as the saying goes life is what happens while you're busy making plans. (i.e. things could change and you don't want the backlash of having burned the 'forever' part in people's minds) Under promise, over deliver.
- artf 8y agoYeah I think I got the point, it sounds good but it's pointless
- hardwaresofton 8y agoTotally reasonable! All the power to you for keeping the free tier! The free advertising is indeed a good addition. Thank you very much for making such cool tools, best of luck with the product
- burnt1ce 8y agoGreat product. I love the fact it's free and open source. Thank you!
- burnt1ce 8y ago*I love the fact you're offering GrapeJS as a free and open source project
- factsaresacred 8y agoNice work. But the font on Chrome is painful to read. Font-weight 500 instead of 200 and 16.5px font-size (for example) would be an improvement. Also a example page showing the awesome stuff people can build would be nice.
- Aeolun 8y agoI think it might be a good idea to increase your business/enterprise pricing. As it is, it feels to cheap (e.g. too close to the first paid plan) to be any good. Besides, business users going for the business instead of premium plan are going to be mostly price insensitive anyway (who needs more than 50 websites?!)
- bjohnso5 8y agoYour subheading text "Build and publish instantly your projects online" reads a little strangely to me. I'd recommend re-wording that to "Build and instantly publish your projects online". Looks neat, though!
- ummonk 8y agoOr better yet, "Build your projects and instantly publish them online", for ease of parsing.
- benatkin 8y agoHow about "Build your projects online and publish them instantly"?
- swlkr 8y agoHow about "Instantly build and publish your projects online" ?
- jwdunne 8y agoI reckon "Build online. Publish instantly" has a nice ring to it.
- artf 8y agoThanks to everyone for the advice, what do you think about "Build your projects and publish them instantly online"?
- HeyLaughingBoy 8y agojwdunne nailed it with https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18017791 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18017791
- userSumo 8y agohi, i would just want to ask a few questions if that's ok. i see you use ck editor, how was integrating it with page builder? because i was making something similar some time ago and it was a pain to find a solution for inline editor. and how do you host users projects ? i mean is it all in one one virtual machine or something?
- artf 8y ago> i see you use ck editor, how was integrating it with page builder? I made a plugin for the editor and is open source https://github.com/artf/grapesjs-plugin-ckeditor https://github.com/artf/grapesjs-plugin-ckeditor so try to check it out > how do you host users projects ? i mean is it all in one one virtual machine or something? Yeah, kind of
- killa_kyle 8y agoI really like grapesjs, using it as a newsletter builder. Good luck on grapedrop.
- simplify 8y agoSince GrapesJS is already open source I would seriously consider pointing users to that for the free plan instead of providing free hosting. Your service provides hosting; free is a little too much as it costs you money for likely little gain. Alternatively you could put a time limit. "Free 30 day trial" or something.
- matt_the_bass 8y agoI concur. Use the open source as “proof the product is solid”. It’s a badge of honor and could allow enterprise customers to check off the “ensure we can support it ourselves if needed box”. Likely they would never do that, but they could from a risk management POV.
- benatkin 8y agoI like the idea of freemium for this. There are many page builders out there, and many of them have limited plans that are free or very cheap, especially the WordPress ones. Having a free plan distinguishes this, and I think the limit of 50 form submissions is enough to encourage people who should be paying for it to pay.
- catskul2 8y agoIMO the font choices on the sites include some that are way too narrow/faint. Hard to read on both Chrome and Firefox.
- philprx 8y agoI've used it to build a very small landing page for a project, and here is the gist: 1. Very nice, fluid, rich way to edit. 2. When using Command + <- (back arrow) on mac, equivalent to Alt Back Arrow, you should ask if you want to leave project, regardless if it was saved. First time users wont understand at first that you need to click many times in a text box to select THEN edit it, therefore they will not go to top of word/sentence but instead they will leave the current project and go back to project creation or dashboardm, therefore creating frustation. 3. I had a very bad UX case: I went back to dashboard, and came back to upload logo, just to find that my text had been erased and replaced by the original LOREM IPSUM text (effectively, I LOST my write-up work). I believe this is a history navigation issue, but the result is that I lost my page. I could get around this and correct the damage because I had published the evolved version earlier and did not refresh my published page, but you need to check this as this is a deal-breaker when you're authoring. This is a great tool and if you keep the excellent look and feel, reliability both in UX and hosting if you get it is going to be the make or break part of the equation. Good luck, and count me in if you need debug and assistance.
- artf 8y agoThanks for the great feedback, I'll try to fix issues you mentioned and make it more reliable
- minhaj3 8y agoI remember when I was learning web development and bootstrap particularly, I always used to dream about building something like this.
- schneidmaster 8y agoYou should charge more :) Especially for your business plan -- any service targeted at enterprises should get you bare-minimum three figures of revenue per month, and you should look for a way to make it four or five, or have it scale up for large enterprises. There are a few reasons for this: 1) The difference between $35 a month and $250 a month is a rounding error to most enterprises -- but for you, aggregated across all your business customers, it will make it much, much easier to grow and achieve profitability. 2) It's easy to lower your prices if you receive consistent feedback that people really want your product but think it's 30% too expensive or whatever. It's very difficult to raise your prices once people are locked in at a lower monthly rate (especially if the rate is an order of magnitude lower than what you end up really needing to charge). 3) Businesses are used to paying a lot of money for software (sometimes up to seven or eight figures annually). For large enterprises, there is a counterintuitive psychological factor: they don't trust something that costs $XX a month to reliably store their data and scale to their needs, and you'll actually close more customers at $XXX or $XXXX a month. 4) Selling to enterprises is very costly -- they will (try to) run you through procurement, legal reviews, security reviews, terms of service negotiations, and a litany of other things. Your price point needs to take that cost into account -- you simply can't make a profit from large enterprises if you have to spend a few thousand dollars of time/resources getting them closed, and then you have to make it up $35 at a time. Also, I agree with the other comment saying you shouldn't offer a free plan, especially since your product is open source and they could self-host if they really wanted it. There's an inversion of value -- free users still expect you to support them, and users in free/cheap plans are often actually the noisiest for whatever reason. If I were you, I'd charge about $25/mo for the basic feature set (maybe without the branding and with more than 50 form submissions); $99/mo for the "premium" feature set; and "call me" for enterprises (hundreds to thousands a month depending on scale and commitment).
- matt_the_bass 8y agoYou have some great feedback. Thanks for taking the time to be so thorough. I’m not the OP, but I still think your comments are valuable in general, not just this one case.
- 8y ago
- matt_the_bass 8y agoFollowing up on the comments of many people about not offering a free tier, would it be possible to make your system easy to clone on github AND run from a GitHub hosted site? If so, this could solve the question of you paying to host free accounts.
- willwinger 8y agoI have used GrapeJs, it is a very well architected tool. Your new project will sure be more successful!