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Anyone remotely familiar with Wix should not be surprised by this, or be happy that they are familiar with Wix. The maintainability of the output of your avera

Anyone remotely familiar with Wix should not be surprised by this, or be happy that they are familiar with Wix. The maintainability of the output of your average vibe coder is going to enormously exceed that of your average Wix site. LLMs are a massive threat to their whole model which relies on increasing levels of esotericism.

cj 1y ago
I think the implication here is that the Wix platform sets the bar so low, that even a vibing LLM can surpass it. Companies like Squarespace set the bar much higher. Wix has always been a nightmare to use and customize.
- fidotron 1y ago
  > I think the implication here is that the Wix platform sets the bar so low, that even a vibing LLM can surpass it. I'm not implying anything! Wix is clearly actively designed to be that way.
- wintermutestwin 1y ago
  >Companies like Squarespace set the bar much higher. When I was evaluating user friendly web platforms for several non-profits, I ended up choosing Wix over Squarespace because Squarespace didn't provide backup>restore functionality. That's a pretty low bar...
  - pc86 1y ago
    Just because they didn't prioritize a feature that most of their users won't care about doesn't mean its a low bar, it just means you care about something they don't.
    - talkin 1y ago
      Backup/restore tends too look less important until it isn’t. ;)
    - Jackpillar 1y ago
      All of the existing WYSIWYG site builders are walled garden garbage.
      - Marsymars 1y ago
        What’s the best option if you’re a non-tech-savvy small business owner, you need a web presence, and you can’t afford to hire someone to do it for you?
        haiku2077 1y ago
        If you can't hire someone overseas to make a website, probably run your business off a facebook/instagram page. A lot of small businesses around me do that.
        wintermutestwin 1y ago
        I hate this response! Businesses that rely on shitty facebook crap don’t get my business. And hiring someone to make a brochureware website is a maintenance nightmare. Do you work with small businesses much?
        haiku2077 1y ago
        I'm not advocating for it, I'm just saying what people in my community do. Many of the best (and successful) restaurants near me don't have websites, for example. In some places people run their businesses almost entirely through chat apps like whatsapp or wechat. Works great for businesses based around client relationships.
        Marsymars 1y ago
        Isn’t that still walled-garden garbage, just without the WYSIWYG part?
        southernplaces7 1y ago
        If you're going to answer their question then why not suggest a solution that results in a website one controls, instead of some very basic "use facebook" suggestion. Facebook and other social media for a business are all good ideas, because as a business, eyeballs is what you want and that means putting up your presence wherever they're found in a way that's relevant to you. However, any self respecting business owner planning for a stable long-term presence should absolutely also have their own website, and have it made to be as independent, simple and easy to maintain as possible in the context of its technical needs.
    - wintermutestwin 1y ago
      What??? It is trivially easy to mess up a website in a builder like this. I am reasonably technical and I have to restore many times when making structural edits.
- hombre_fatal 1y ago
  This isn't a good analysis of the value here. My dad has a Shopify site. He'll sometimes accidentally break his theme by making simple modifications in the editor, and it's not obvious why. Maybe a missing quotation mark or a wrongly nested closing tag. He usually had to revert it or even ask for help. 99% of the things he wants to change about his Shopify site would be better done by asking an LLM to change the template for him. Frankly, I don't want to be editing HTML by hand to make simple edits, either. I just get Cursor or Claude to do it. If I were using a platform like Shopify or Wix where I don't have the templates sitting in my filesystem, I'd like an LLM integration there too. Almost all of us have an LLM integrated into our code editor, yet when people want to integrate an LLM into the workflows of non-software-devs, suddenly there's cynicism.
- nikcub 1y ago
  > Companies like Squarespace set the bar much higher. Wix has always been a nightmare to use and customize. Funny - with a non-profit I help out I was so frustrated with our Squarespace site that I ended up replacing it with a custom site I vibe-knocked out in less than a day. Better design, faster performance, integrated into mailchimp and volunteer backend, better donation flow also integrated, custom page type templates, better cms (sanity), hosted for free now etc. etc. Having a semi-decent developer crack open Cursor / Claude Code and spend a day just building _really_ is a threat to all of the hosted website and CMS providers. I'd definitely include Wordpress in that too.
csomar 1y ago
What's the game plan here? Buy every chatbot LLM SaaS?
- fidotron 1y ago
  Prior to the AI boom Wix had developed a niche in very small businesses with events and sales, where it has a lot of the tedious stuff around that in a state where you can no code it into place very fast. The problems begin when you try to do things slightly different, and this is almost entirely down to the staggering levels of inconsistency in their core APIs. (Genuinely impressively so). Their business model relies on the useful pieces being opaque enough and irregular enough that you cannot move off without overcoming a big migration effort. Consequently their interest will be in two areas: can they use LLMs to get people to use those existing modules and get locked in faster? Can they own the funnel of people using LLMs to attempt to create this sort of functionality for their existing market? This acquisition helps on both levels, so it makes perfect sense for them.

cj 1y ago

I think the implication here is that the Wix platform sets the bar so low, that even a vibing LLM can surpass it. Companies like Squarespace set the bar much higher. Wix has always been a nightmare to use and customize.

fidotron 1y ago
> I think the implication here is that the Wix platform sets the bar so low, that even a vibing LLM can surpass it. I'm not implying anything! Wix is clearly actively designed to be that way.
wintermutestwin 1y ago
>Companies like Squarespace set the bar much higher. When I was evaluating user friendly web platforms for several non-profits, I ended up choosing Wix over Squarespace because Squarespace didn't provide backup>restore functionality. That's a pretty low bar...
- pc86 1y ago
  Just because they didn't prioritize a feature that most of their users won't care about doesn't mean its a low bar, it just means you care about something they don't.
  - talkin 1y ago
    Backup/restore tends too look less important until it isn’t. ;)
  - Jackpillar 1y ago
    All of the existing WYSIWYG site builders are walled garden garbage.
    - Marsymars 1y ago
      What’s the best option if you’re a non-tech-savvy small business owner, you need a web presence, and you can’t afford to hire someone to do it for you?
      - haiku2077 1y ago
        If you can't hire someone overseas to make a website, probably run your business off a facebook/instagram page. A lot of small businesses around me do that.
        wintermutestwin 1y ago
        I hate this response! Businesses that rely on shitty facebook crap don’t get my business. And hiring someone to make a brochureware website is a maintenance nightmare. Do you work with small businesses much?
        haiku2077 1y ago
        I'm not advocating for it, I'm just saying what people in my community do. Many of the best (and successful) restaurants near me don't have websites, for example. In some places people run their businesses almost entirely through chat apps like whatsapp or wechat. Works great for businesses based around client relationships.
        Marsymars 1y ago
        Isn’t that still walled-garden garbage, just without the WYSIWYG part?
        southernplaces7 1y ago
        If you're going to answer their question then why not suggest a solution that results in a website one controls, instead of some very basic "use facebook" suggestion. Facebook and other social media for a business are all good ideas, because as a business, eyeballs is what you want and that means putting up your presence wherever they're found in a way that's relevant to you. However, any self respecting business owner planning for a stable long-term presence should absolutely also have their own website, and have it made to be as independent, simple and easy to maintain as possible in the context of its technical needs.
  - wintermutestwin 1y ago
    What??? It is trivially easy to mess up a website in a builder like this. I am reasonably technical and I have to restore many times when making structural edits.
hombre_fatal 1y ago
This isn't a good analysis of the value here. My dad has a Shopify site. He'll sometimes accidentally break his theme by making simple modifications in the editor, and it's not obvious why. Maybe a missing quotation mark or a wrongly nested closing tag. He usually had to revert it or even ask for help. 99% of the things he wants to change about his Shopify site would be better done by asking an LLM to change the template for him. Frankly, I don't want to be editing HTML by hand to make simple edits, either. I just get Cursor or Claude to do it. If I were using a platform like Shopify or Wix where I don't have the templates sitting in my filesystem, I'd like an LLM integration there too. Almost all of us have an LLM integrated into our code editor, yet when people want to integrate an LLM into the workflows of non-software-devs, suddenly there's cynicism.
nikcub 1y ago
> Companies like Squarespace set the bar much higher. Wix has always been a nightmare to use and customize. Funny - with a non-profit I help out I was so frustrated with our Squarespace site that I ended up replacing it with a custom site I vibe-knocked out in less than a day. Better design, faster performance, integrated into mailchimp and volunteer backend, better donation flow also integrated, custom page type templates, better cms (sanity), hosted for free now etc. etc. Having a semi-decent developer crack open Cursor / Claude Code and spend a day just building _really_ is a threat to all of the hosted website and CMS providers. I'd definitely include Wordpress in that too.

csomar 1y ago

What's the game plan here? Buy every chatbot LLM SaaS?

fidotron 1y ago
Prior to the AI boom Wix had developed a niche in very small businesses with events and sales, where it has a lot of the tedious stuff around that in a state where you can no code it into place very fast. The problems begin when you try to do things slightly different, and this is almost entirely down to the staggering levels of inconsistency in their core APIs. (Genuinely impressively so). Their business model relies on the useful pieces being opaque enough and irregular enough that you cannot move off without overcoming a big migration effort. Consequently their interest will be in two areas: can they use LLMs to get people to use those existing modules and get locked in faster? Can they own the funnel of people using LLMs to attempt to create this sort of functionality for their existing market? This acquisition helps on both levels, so it makes perfect sense for them.