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Show HN: My new SaaS side-project, after years of open source

229 points by artf ↗ HN
Hi guys, I've created an open source web builder framework (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). 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.

103 comments

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dhumph
One 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
I put it on my to-do list :) Thanks
lordldx
Same opinion here. Was going to try it out, but got scared away by the registration form
artf
Is it your general feeling about registration forms or there is something particularly wrong with my form? Thanks
brandoncordell
Not 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
I 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
Thanks for sharing, did you figure out the reasons for such a poor rate?
ehnto
My 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
Our corporate firewall blocks your url as "porn"

The fact that your ssl cert is not working is also a concern

artf
I 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)
Gigablah
Your domain name might just be triggering a word blocklist.
speps
Better change the name now then rather than later. Such a shame that firewalls would do that though.
realty_geek
Awesome, congratulations. Really like what you've done with grapesjs - thanks for all the hard work!!!
artf
Thank you very much, glad to hear that :)
slow_donkey
Looks 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
Thank you, let me know then
martinpinto
This looks amazing! This is how a side-project should look like!
artf
Thank you :)
encoderer
1. 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
Great 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
My 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
What value could they create from using your setup?
artf
Just 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
What separates you from Squarespace or Wix? Answer that question and make the answer prominent on your page.
matt_the_bass
I was just about to ask this. “Why does the world need another web site publisher” is a general version of that question. I think you should answer both.

FYI build some alternate landing pages that are SEO’ed for “square space alternative”, etc.

artf
Thanks for such a good feedback. Honestly, I'm a still bit confused how exactly to proceed with the point 1 but I'll try to figure that out. Thanks
ainiriand
If you want I can forward you the contact of a person that does exactly what you need. Just throw me an email and I'll set you up.
encoderer
Looking in you niche, carrd And instapage do this pretty well.
epaga
Yay 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
Thank you, now I know what I should not change :)
fabricexpert
Unfortunately, you might end up changing that if it increases your conversions...
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sigi45
Nice! But why is free without tls? :|
artf
With the free account, you can choose any subdomain and you have automatically the HTTPS enabled
fabricexpert
This 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
You 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
You 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
Thank you very much for the advice, I'll try to make it more clear
hguhghuff
I 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
pretty cool though, within a few hours he's got a ton of advice and has some reasonably big plot holes in his messaging highlighted.
artf
A good reason to start share your stuff as soon as possible :)
stanislavb
Good job and good luck, mate! I've submitted it to SaaSHub. Who would you name as your top competitors?
nwsm
There are tons of quick site makers.

Wix, Wordpress, Mendix, Microsoft Dynamics, etc

marc_io
Also Webflow, Duda, Mozello.
gboone
Regarding 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
Thanks 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
Looks 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
FYI 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?"

artf
I use Sparkpost to send emails, seems just like their links got a bad reputation, so in this case, it's just a false positive. I submitted a ticket
timdavila
I use them as well. You can avoid this issue entirely by creating a "click" domain. All you have to do is set a CNAME and then your links go to your own domain instead of go.sparkpostmail1.com
artf
Yeah thanks, this is exactly what I've done :)
artf
Should be fixed now
milanmot
I 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
Thank you very much. About the font, can you share what browser/device/OS do you use?
goddamnsteve
This 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

teknopurge
looks great - keep up the solid work.
hardwaresofton
Grapesjs 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/

- http://macaw.co/ (not really)

- 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
Thank 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
Forever 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
Yeah I think I got the point, it sounds good but it's pointless
hardwaresofton
Totally 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
Great product. I love the fact it's free and open source. Thank you!
burnt1ce
*I love the fact you're offering GrapeJS as a free and open source project
factsaresacred
Nice 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
I 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
Your 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
Or better yet, "Build your projects and instantly publish them online", for ease of parsing.
benatkin
How about "Build your projects online and publish them instantly"?
swlkr
How about "Instantly build and publish your projects online" ?
jwdunne
I reckon "Build online. Publish instantly" has a nice ring to it.
userSumo
hi, 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
> 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 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
I really like grapesjs, using it as a newsletter builder. Good luck on grapedrop.
simplify
Since 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
I 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
I 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.