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Ask HN: Review my startup, mobify.me

41 points by ig0rskee ↗ HN
Hey guys,

We're http://mobify.me - a hosted mobile transcoding service for existing websites. Launching our Open Beta today!

Pain: most sites look and work terrible on mobile. Latest devices (iPhone, Android) work OK as emergency web access tools, but don't provide a proper mobile experience (like http://iphone.facebook.com/ does).

Designing for mobile is time-consuming and expensive, so most sites don't bother.

Current solutions: build a separate mobile site (lots of work), mobilize an RSS feed (not good enough for most sites), use an automatic transcoder (poor look & feel).

Painkiller: Mobify.Me lets you, the web designer, quickly design a "mobile projection" of the existing site by picking content blocks off your site in our web interface, styling it with CSS and deploying via a DNS CNAME. Mobify.Me takes care of device recognition, image resizing (sites download 2x to 10x faster), feature detection, template matching and many other mobile problems.

We're bootstrapped and will be introducing several premium tiers this weekend. There is a completely free limited tier as well.

It would be great to get your feedback! Please let us know what you think.

Here's some examples:

http://m.grousemountain.com (powered by a custom CMS, 3 hrs of work)

http://techvibes.mobify.me (powered by a custom CMS, 3 hrs of work)

http://spin.mobify.me (unofficial mobile version of spin.com, Drupal, 4 hrs of work)

http://momo.mobify.me (unofficial mobile version of mobilemonday.net, WordPress, 2 hrs of work)

Thanks!

Team Mobify.Me

15 comments

[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 37.0 ms ] thread
ktom
Wow spin.mobify.me actually loads faster than spin.com on my iphone.

easier to read too

eli
Shucks, I had pretty much exactly the same idea a year or two ago, but it stalled when I couldn't find anyone to pay me to develop it.

May I ask for details about the platform/architecture?

Also, the usage caps seem low to me, across the board. If I ran a site that I expect to get major mobile traffic, it might make me nervous to see that the top tier is only 10k hits/day (even if in reality I'd never come close to that)

jwesley
You are not the only one. There are a few companies with very similar services, like MoFuse. Is there anything your company offers that can differentiate you from them? If not you might have a hard time gaining traction against VC funded players with a big head start.
ig0rskee
MoFuse is an RSS feed converter. Mobify.Me supports proper URLs, search, forms, sessions, interaction - mobile is a lot more than RSS. There is a big gap in that niche, though RSS converters are definitely very common.
siong1987
I think you may need a better mobile version of your mobify.me website to convince others that your team are good on "mobify" websites.
ig0rskee
Coming right up :)) Been a bit busy helping clients with much more mobile traffic than our homepage.
enej
Amazing work!
TrevorJ
Great idea! Think there is a model for user-submitted "mobified" versions of 3rd-party websites in the future?
s3graham
First screencast was good.

Seems sluggish loading the mobile versions (on desktop, not mobile). Especially images seemed painful, and they don't seem to cache.

Is it common that somewhere like grousemountain.com keeps a web designer on staff? I feel like normally a lot of sites are designed one-off, and updated by a receptionist/nephew/something. Anyway, my wild-ass-guess is that offering to do the mobifying for a few hundred $ (+ future hosting) would be well-received. [edit: oh, duh, didn't see "Expert Design"]

Looks pretty nice overall.

ps. good to see Vancouver representation (I'm guessing, given the samples on the main page :)

ig0rskee
Thanks! Actually the lower tier would be something like a pizzeria and a higher tier - a publisher with 500k uniques a month. We will ofer a wide range of pricing options to serve both.
awk
sleek and well done. like the fact you offer prospective users a chance to try out mobify via the site.
mcantelon
Seems like it'll have great prospects. At a reasonable price many folks will likely go this route as it cuts through the pain of dealing with the current mobile state (which should become more management in the future as smartphones gain all the capabilities of the desktop).
sam_in_nyc
This is really cool! I hope everything works out for you guys.

I hope you guys got the "mobify.it" domain