8 ms·

Weebly (YC 07) Launches Whitelabel Platform for Designers

87 points by drusenko 15y ago

ujeezy 15y ago
"Weebly powers around 2% of sites on the web" – wow, really? I did some quick Googling, but couldn't find the survey. Someone got it handy?
- drusenko 15y ago
  Here it is: http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2011/07/08/july-2011-web-server-survey.html http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2011/07/08/july-2011-web-s...
  - ujeezy 15y ago
    Thanks David, but I actually still don't see it on there. No biggie; it's just such an impressive stat that I want to see it with my own eyes :)
    - drusenko 15y ago
      "In the July 2011 survey we received responses from 357,292,065 sites." We're using the total published sites on the Weebly platform divided by that number to get our percentage of the total. We could probably use active sites and put up a higher percentage, although that number is much harder to calculate...
      - ujeezy 15y ago
        Gotcha – very cool, and well done!
d0m 15y ago
A little bit like emacs, it seems to do everything? : )
- drusenko 15y ago
  I'm actually a vim user :) So we're trying to tackle all of the hard problems with creating a website. Sometimes that means we develop very specific tools that just don't have a good solution yet, like our written-from-scratch ImagePerfect image editor. In this case, we think designers still have it a bit rough. They end up doing a lot of things that aren't related to designing, like managing a hosting environment, or upgrading Wordpress when new vulnerabilities come out (or recovering from a hacked site). Then they have to continue doing inane little tweaks to the website on an unrealistic budget. We're trying to make the designer's life easier with an integrated solution, and their clients happier by letting them log on and update their website themselves.
fourspace 15y ago
This looks fantastic, just what my company was looking for to quickly develop websites for the small business clients we deal with. They all want a CMS, but the value proposition just isn't there for us for a $2,000 project that requires all custom design work. Nice work! Signed up immediately.
OmarIsmail 15y ago
Wow, this is pretty huge. There's a big gap between designers and developers particularly in the smb market. Youll have designers that don't know how to develop make brochure-style sites that business owners don't know how to develop. Or you'll have developers make an editable site that looks like crap. If you want both you have to pay a lot of money. For designers Weebly now takes the place of the developer and gives the designer the ability to make a great looking site that is easy to maintain and manage. This is genius and is going to be very big.
- lovskogen 15y ago
  Problem is some companies wants to go outside the 'template', and that's where direct manipulation gets really tricky when you got a different customer every month. I work as a product designer for a norwegian CMS, and I would die to make it drag'n'drop direct manipulation-icious. But almost all of our BigCo customers demands solutions outside the regular blog/template, which then would give us two options. a) Customize direct manipulation for each customer (expensive) b) Semi-direct manipulation which launches TinyMCE and other micro controls when a users clicks a particular part of content.
  - bobfunk 15y ago
    You should checkout http://www.webpop.com http://www.webpop.com (disclaimer, I'm the co-founder). We've managed to make a dead simple on-site editing interface that works with any design, without any need to stick to any 'template'. Our goal is to allow designers with a knowledge of HTML and CSS to make completely custom designed websites that a client can easily (and safely) keep up to date.
    - lovskogen 15y ago
      That's what I meant with b), which is how we do it too. But it's not the best solution, which is direct manipulation – no 'form window' to edit the content of a page. Which, as stated, is hard when you got demanding customers with very different needs for a website.
sahillavingia 15y ago
Weebly is the most under hyped YC company.
petenixey 15y ago
Beautiful work guys. This going to be such a big deal.
- dannyv 15y ago
  Thanks Peter! We're stoked to have this out the door and excited by the potential.
mistermustard 15y ago
Well done, Dave. This looks like an amazing solution for designers looking to jump right into client work, and at an incredible price point, too.
luke_osu 15y ago
This seems very similar to a product called LightCMS, which I have used before. Weebly seems to have better pricing though.
kyro 15y ago
(Your 'About Us' link from the designer blog isn't working.)
- drusenko 15y ago
  Whoops, thanks for the heads up. Fixed!
arkitaip 15y ago
Seems like you've created a very polished control panel. I'm working on a wysiwyg web editor so I'm curious to know which javascript/css frameworks you've used.
- drusenko 15y ago
  We started in 2006 and Prototype was the dominant framework back then, so we're still using that for the editor. Everything else is custom written.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
noodle 15y ago
the only feature i'd like to see is the ability to plug in functionality, like the ability to create your own front- or back-end plugins or an app store type of thing similar to shopify. of course, i know that this isn't a simple request or even a likely one, as it causes all kinds of issues, but i'd start using this immediately if it were provided.
pdelgallego 15y ago
Are you planning to have a market where designers can buy and sell themes/templates or even components?
inthewoods 15y ago
How does Weebly make money? I guess this Designers platform is the first step?
- drusenko 15y ago
  Weebly has been profitable since 2008. We make money by selling Pro accounts and domain names.
  - inthewoods 15y ago
    Where are the pro accounts? I can't find a pricing page on your website (by design I assume).
klbarry 15y ago
This would have been soo helpful years ago when I started out doing web work for small businesses. Instead I used trash like webstarts.com
gustaf 15y ago
This is awesome! You're killing it!
rlpb 15y ago
Is there any plan for a designer API? I'd love to automate some of the functions on the designer platform for an idea I have.
- drusenko 15y ago
  Absolutely, it's in the pipeworks!
quizbiz 15y ago
This compelled me to play around with Weebly for the first time. I created a quick landing page (http://prototypecases.weebly.com/ http://prototypecases.weebly.com/). Easy to add built in contact forms, integration with Google's web fonts was nice, built in SEO tags to paste html. Tons of layouts to pick from and a super easy way to add images. I was very impressed by how easy it was to put together and how fast customizing the site is. Classically, when it comes to this sort of thing, I think Wordpress but drag and drop is a very marketable feature for Weebly. I'm impressed. I do have to note that the control panel timed out and the site displayed some sort of app disconnection error several times.
BvS 15y ago
I'm not sure if I get the pricing right: using Weebly pro I'm paying 4,58 US$ a month max. and can use it on 10 Domains. If I use Weebly Designers I pay up to 24,95 US$ for a single domain. So the possibility for my own branding justifies a price increase of up to 50x or am I missing something?
- lovskogen 15y ago
  Is that alot of cash to whitelabel the CMS as your own? I don't think so.
- orangeturtle 15y ago
  I'm with you...with this price structure, I don't think the whitelabel upside is worth the extra cost. I'd rather create my client his/her own website in a Pro account and let them worry about the reoccurring annual fee. Plus, it appears that the designer is billed, when I'd much rather it be direct billing to the client.
dennisgorelik 15y ago
http://www.quantcast.com/weebly.com http://www.quantcast.com/weebly.com "Traffic data has been hidden by the owner." Could the founders explain why it's hidden?

87 points by drusenko 15y ago

"Weebly powers around 2% of sites on the web" – wow, really? I did some quick Googling, but couldn't find the survey. Someone got it handy?

drusenko 15y ago
Here it is: http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2011/07/08/july-2011-web-server-survey.html http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2011/07/08/july-2011-web-s...
- ujeezy 15y ago
  Thanks David, but I actually still don't see it on there. No biggie; it's just such an impressive stat that I want to see it with my own eyes :)
  - drusenko 15y ago
    "In the July 2011 survey we received responses from 357,292,065 sites." We're using the total published sites on the Weebly platform divided by that number to get our percentage of the total. We could probably use active sites and put up a higher percentage, although that number is much harder to calculate...
    - ujeezy 15y ago
      Gotcha – very cool, and well done!

d0m 15y ago

A little bit like emacs, it seems to do everything? : )

drusenko 15y ago
I'm actually a vim user :) So we're trying to tackle all of the hard problems with creating a website. Sometimes that means we develop very specific tools that just don't have a good solution yet, like our written-from-scratch ImagePerfect image editor. In this case, we think designers still have it a bit rough. They end up doing a lot of things that aren't related to designing, like managing a hosting environment, or upgrading Wordpress when new vulnerabilities come out (or recovering from a hacked site). Then they have to continue doing inane little tweaks to the website on an unrealistic budget. We're trying to make the designer's life easier with an integrated solution, and their clients happier by letting them log on and update their website themselves.

fourspace 15y ago

This looks fantastic, just what my company was looking for to quickly develop websites for the small business clients we deal with. They all want a CMS, but the value proposition just isn't there for us for a $2,000 project that requires all custom design work. Nice work! Signed up immediately.

OmarIsmail 15y ago

Wow, this is pretty huge. There's a big gap between designers and developers particularly in the smb market. Youll have designers that don't know how to develop make brochure-style sites that business owners don't know how to develop. Or you'll have developers make an editable site that looks like crap. If you want both you have to pay a lot of money. For designers Weebly now takes the place of the developer and gives the designer the ability to make a great looking site that is easy to maintain and manage. This is genius and is going to be very big.

lovskogen 15y ago
Problem is some companies wants to go outside the 'template', and that's where direct manipulation gets really tricky when you got a different customer every month. I work as a product designer for a norwegian CMS, and I would die to make it drag'n'drop direct manipulation-icious. But almost all of our BigCo customers demands solutions outside the regular blog/template, which then would give us two options. a) Customize direct manipulation for each customer (expensive) b) Semi-direct manipulation which launches TinyMCE and other micro controls when a users clicks a particular part of content.
- bobfunk 15y ago
  You should checkout http://www.webpop.com http://www.webpop.com (disclaimer, I'm the co-founder). We've managed to make a dead simple on-site editing interface that works with any design, without any need to stick to any 'template'. Our goal is to allow designers with a knowledge of HTML and CSS to make completely custom designed websites that a client can easily (and safely) keep up to date.
  - lovskogen 15y ago
    That's what I meant with b), which is how we do it too. But it's not the best solution, which is direct manipulation – no 'form window' to edit the content of a page. Which, as stated, is hard when you got demanding customers with very different needs for a website.

sahillavingia 15y ago

Weebly is the most under hyped YC company.

petenixey 15y ago

Beautiful work guys. This going to be such a big deal.

dannyv 15y ago
Thanks Peter! We're stoked to have this out the door and excited by the potential.

mistermustard 15y ago

Well done, Dave. This looks like an amazing solution for designers looking to jump right into client work, and at an incredible price point, too.

luke_osu 15y ago

This seems very similar to a product called LightCMS, which I have used before. Weebly seems to have better pricing though.

kyro 15y ago

(Your 'About Us' link from the designer blog isn't working.)

drusenko 15y ago
Whoops, thanks for the heads up. Fixed!

arkitaip 15y ago

Seems like you've created a very polished control panel. I'm working on a wysiwyg web editor so I'm curious to know which javascript/css frameworks you've used.

drusenko 15y ago
We started in 2006 and Prototype was the dominant framework back then, so we're still using that for the editor. Everything else is custom written.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]

noodle 15y ago

the only feature i'd like to see is the ability to plug in functionality, like the ability to create your own front- or back-end plugins or an app store type of thing similar to shopify. of course, i know that this isn't a simple request or even a likely one, as it causes all kinds of issues, but i'd start using this immediately if it were provided.

pdelgallego 15y ago

Are you planning to have a market where designers can buy and sell themes/templates or even components?

inthewoods 15y ago

How does Weebly make money? I guess this Designers platform is the first step?

drusenko 15y ago
Weebly has been profitable since 2008. We make money by selling Pro accounts and domain names.
- inthewoods 15y ago
  Where are the pro accounts? I can't find a pricing page on your website (by design I assume).

klbarry 15y ago

This would have been soo helpful years ago when I started out doing web work for small businesses. Instead I used trash like webstarts.com

gustaf 15y ago

This is awesome! You're killing it!

rlpb 15y ago

Is there any plan for a designer API? I'd love to automate some of the functions on the designer platform for an idea I have.

drusenko 15y ago
Absolutely, it's in the pipeworks!

quizbiz 15y ago

This compelled me to play around with Weebly for the first time. I created a quick landing page (http://prototypecases.weebly.com/ http://prototypecases.weebly.com/). Easy to add built in contact forms, integration with Google's web fonts was nice, built in SEO tags to paste html. Tons of layouts to pick from and a super easy way to add images. I was very impressed by how easy it was to put together and how fast customizing the site is. Classically, when it comes to this sort of thing, I think Wordpress but drag and drop is a very marketable feature for Weebly. I'm impressed. I do have to note that the control panel timed out and the site displayed some sort of app disconnection error several times.

BvS 15y ago

I'm not sure if I get the pricing right: using Weebly pro I'm paying 4,58 US$ a month max. and can use it on 10 Domains. If I use Weebly Designers I pay up to 24,95 US$ for a single domain. So the possibility for my own branding justifies a price increase of up to 50x or am I missing something?

lovskogen 15y ago
Is that alot of cash to whitelabel the CMS as your own? I don't think so.
orangeturtle 15y ago
I'm with you...with this price structure, I don't think the whitelabel upside is worth the extra cost. I'd rather create my client his/her own website in a Pro account and let them worry about the reoccurring annual fee. Plus, it appears that the designer is billed, when I'd much rather it be direct billing to the client.

dennisgorelik 15y ago

http://www.quantcast.com/weebly.com http://www.quantcast.com/weebly.com "Traffic data has been hidden by the owner." Could the founders explain why it's hidden?