4 ms·
Hi there HN community :wave: I'm Bryan and along with a close friend, we've built Workload.co Workload is a low-code tool for business process automation. We
by Adalpha 5y ago
Hi there HN community :wave:
I'm Bryan and along with a close friend, we've built Workload.co
Workload is a low-code tool for business process automation.
We started out as consultants - automating various business processes for companies and charging them for our services. That was going well so we built a marketplace, similar to Upwork, where businesses could hire an automation specialist who could set them up on Zapier or Integromat and help them connect and integrate their tools, build workflows, etc.
The marketplace business model wasn't for us. Lots of cumbersome work and overhead to keep it running and it really drained our energy. We peeled back from that idea a bit and decided to talk to the automation specialists to ask them what their ideal automation tool would look like. They all had similar ideas: Low-code editor/workflow builder, uses the entire API of the common software tools, and allows for easy client/team collaboration.
So with that direction, we started building the tool using React on the frontend and a bunch of different python libraries + AWS lambda on the backend. We generally have no clue what we're doing and are not "professional devs".
We're at a point now where the version 1 looks ok, works ok (has bugs), and solves problems for a few basic customer use-cases. I'd love to have feedback on the tool. What should be added? Are we missing obvious things?
Please sign up and play around with it. Unfortunately you have to sign up because if you authenticate and connect any tools, it would be publicly visible if you weren't logged in. We aren't capturing any emails for marketing at the moment and our "free trial" is indefinite unless you actually build an automated workflow and it works for you...then I'll be reaching out to you and asking for a credit card ;)
Thanks to all and much love to this community for inspiring me to take this big leap into building software.
Cheers,
Bryan at workload.co
- mritchie712 5y agoI'd imagine "how are you different from X" needs to be coming up a lot for you. Have you given this thought? In a space with very mature competitors like Zapier, it's great to have a crisp answer for this.
- Adalpha 5y agoThanks for offering that feedback! It doesn't come up as often as you'd think actually. Surprisingly, many people still have never heard of Zapier, although that seems to be rapidly changing. We're mainly different in that Zapier only offers shallow integrations (aka highly opinionated). Workload makes use of the entire API library. Kind of like if Postman and Zapier had a baby.
- mdekkers 5y agoLook awesome, congrats on launching. Just as an FYI, the website has a few issues on IOS on iPhone. The initial animation is seizure-inducing and there are many visual bugs.
- Adalpha 5y agouh oh! Thanks for catching that. I just let Wordpress/Elementor do its thing...I guess I need to spend some time looking at it on mobile. Safari, Chrome, FF or ?