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Show HN: Stacker – build web apps in your browser, without code

31 points by skellystudios 8y ago

skellystudios 8y ago
Co-founder here. I've been working on this for about a year. I had been building platforms for several marketplace-type startups in a row, I realised that I was literally just reimplementing the same easy stuff again and again. So I quit, and built this so that the founders/product team could build whole features without needing to call me. So far we've got a few real apps running live – a social network, a platform business, a fact-checking portal, as well as demos of a few other apps on Stacker.
danub 8y ago
I really like the demos, are they all purely built with Stacker?
- skellystudios 8y ago
  All the products featured are real, functioning apps. No tricks or photoshop ;) A few of our showcase customers are still in beta, so you can just see their landing pages.
SamiTriki 8y ago
How well does it work for responsive websites? Do you have an open roadmap?
- danub 8y ago
  From what I can gather from the demo video, it looks like it's responsive out of the box.
- skellystudios 8y ago
  Making the apps you build work really well on mobile was one of our main aims. We allow mobile overrides for everything, and by using flexbox for layout, which means that 90% of the time it looks pretty great by default. Re: Open roadmap – no, but I'd really like to add that.
curiousest 8y ago
Does stacker generate a new set of APIs for each project? Does it have a base set of API objects/endpoints that are used across projects? Is there some mix of both?
- skellystudios 8y ago
  Yes! As well as being able to build in the visual web builder, Stacker generates and hosts a flexible backend for you, so you can hook up, say, a native mobile app via REST.
tomhosking 8y ago
This looks pretty neat, kinda like a flatpack build-your-own app. Can you use it with custom backend APIs?
manoj-nathwani 8y ago
This looks awesome! How would it work with existing databases? For example - I already have a mysql database and I want to build dashboards on the data using stacker. Is that possible? Also, how does the opposite work? Is there a python or node library to connect existing apps to stacker to send it data? Or is it all through REST?
- davyson 8y ago
  Hey! Co-founder here, we don't support external databases today but we're working on it! We hope this makes it easier to dip into Stacker. The opposite works already, each app created in Stacker has a REST API.
sk24iam 8y ago
Your pricing is pretty expensive compared to Bubble.is. How is your product different? Is there a support community yet for Stacker builders? Also, here is a good place to submit tutorials if this takes off... www.stakk.co
- davyson 8y ago
  We’re more expensive than Bubble for individuals, but for teams we are pretty competitive I think. In Stacker apps are made out of bigger building blocks than in Bubble so eg. not everyone has to build their own news feed from scratch. We also use flexbox rather than absolute positioning so our apps can be more responsive on different screen sizes. No support community yet, thank you for the link, we’ll add our tutorials in there.
deleted 8y ago
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31 points by skellystudios 8y ago

Co-founder here. I've been working on this for about a year. I had been building platforms for several marketplace-type startups in a row, I realised that I was literally just reimplementing the same easy stuff again and again. So I quit, and built this so that the founders/product team could build whole features without needing to call me. So far we've got a few real apps running live – a social network, a platform business, a fact-checking portal, as well as demos of a few other apps on Stacker.

danub 8y ago

I really like the demos, are they all purely built with Stacker?

skellystudios 8y ago
All the products featured are real, functioning apps. No tricks or photoshop ;) A few of our showcase customers are still in beta, so you can just see their landing pages.

SamiTriki 8y ago

How well does it work for responsive websites? Do you have an open roadmap?

danub 8y ago
From what I can gather from the demo video, it looks like it's responsive out of the box.
skellystudios 8y ago
Making the apps you build work really well on mobile was one of our main aims. We allow mobile overrides for everything, and by using flexbox for layout, which means that 90% of the time it looks pretty great by default. Re: Open roadmap – no, but I'd really like to add that.

curiousest 8y ago

Does stacker generate a new set of APIs for each project? Does it have a base set of API objects/endpoints that are used across projects? Is there some mix of both?

skellystudios 8y ago
Yes! As well as being able to build in the visual web builder, Stacker generates and hosts a flexible backend for you, so you can hook up, say, a native mobile app via REST.

tomhosking 8y ago

This looks pretty neat, kinda like a flatpack build-your-own app. Can you use it with custom backend APIs?

manoj-nathwani 8y ago

This looks awesome! How would it work with existing databases? For example - I already have a mysql database and I want to build dashboards on the data using stacker. Is that possible? Also, how does the opposite work? Is there a python or node library to connect existing apps to stacker to send it data? Or is it all through REST?

davyson 8y ago
Hey! Co-founder here, we don't support external databases today but we're working on it! We hope this makes it easier to dip into Stacker. The opposite works already, each app created in Stacker has a REST API.

sk24iam 8y ago

Your pricing is pretty expensive compared to Bubble.is. How is your product different? Is there a support community yet for Stacker builders? Also, here is a good place to submit tutorials if this takes off... www.stakk.co

davyson 8y ago
We’re more expensive than Bubble for individuals, but for teams we are pretty competitive I think. In Stacker apps are made out of bigger building blocks than in Bubble so eg. not everyone has to build their own news feed from scratch. We also use flexbox rather than absolute positioning so our apps can be more responsive on different screen sizes. No support community yet, thank you for the link, we’ll add our tutorials in there.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]