
Introducing Bootstrap Studio - 2a0c40
https://bootstrapstudio.io/
======
PhilWright
Great job, it looks really useful and something I would be interested in using
in the future. Some feedback...

1 - The webpage could make it more obvious that the paid for version is a
NodeJS based application. It took me a little time to work this out because I
read the start of the page and immediately went to the online demo.

2 - Provide an option to choose between Bootstrap 3 and 4, even when 4 is
fully released there will still be people stuck on 3 for quite some time. The
ability to create/edit projects with either will help you a lot.

3 - Raise you price to at least $99. Any professional freelancer or design
company will not think twice about this price point and can see it saves a lot
more than this in time on just the first project. I think you should be aiming
at professionals and not hobbyists. Odd though it sounds, the less people pay
the more they complain about a product and the more demanding the support they
ask for. Trust me, you could offer this for $10 and someone will still
complain that your 100's of hours of hard work is worth only $5.

4 - Always specify a time limit of a special offer. This creates a sense of
urgency and is the reason that offers work. Mention on your site when the
offer expires, otherwise people don't know and so they will wait. Then they
will miss the deadline and are either upset decide not to buy because they
wanted the cheaper price.

5 - If you have a roadmap of additions then mention some of the changes to be
released in the next year. This shows it is being actively developed and some
of the new features might be the ones people are waiting for before buying.

------
sam_goody
I know this is a Bootstrap tool, which means it has baggage.

But if something like this existed for email, I would buy it in a snap. I have
yet to find a desktop tool that can make decent responsive html emails, and
that is one of the main strengths that Bootstrap should offer. Skip the JQ
efects.

Perhaps you can make a email mode that is JS free, strips out the unused CSS,
and inlines the remaining rules?

~~~
rodriguezcommaj
You should look into [http://www.stampready.net](http://www.stampready.net) \-
along with Campaign Monitor's email builder
([https://www.campaignmonitor.com/features/create-custom-
email...](https://www.campaignmonitor.com/features/create-custom-emails/)),
it's one of the best drag-and-drop tools for creating really good, responsive
emails. The problem with any of these tools is that they still spit out
sometimes convoluted code, but that can't really be avoided since they need to
cover their asses in literally dozens of different popular email clients.

If you're looking to code, you should check out Litmus Builder
([http://litmus.com/email-builder](http://litmus.com/email-builder)), a code
editor specifically built for email design. Has a bunch of templates
available, instant previews in a bunch of different clients, email-specific
CSS inlining, etc. Full disclosure: I work at Litmus, but even if I didn't,
I'd still use Builder for the previews alone.

~~~
poxrud
Thanks. Do these support responsive emails on the gmail android client?
Unfortunately the gmail client does not support media queries, which makes
building a responsive email for it very difficult.

~~~
rodriguezcommaj
That's a good question. I'm not sure about StampReady, but Campaign Monitor
has a few of the best email designers in the biz working there (namely Nicole
Merlin and Stig Morten Myre) who strive for really robust templates. Nicole in
particular has written about her approach (typically called 'hybrid' or
'spongey' development), which works without media queries. It's basically
using fluid tables, max-width, and MSO conditional tables to get things
working and is the best approach around these days. You can read more about it
here: [http://webdesign.tutsplus.com/tutorials/creating-a-future-
pr...](http://webdesign.tutsplus.com/tutorials/creating-a-future-proof-
responsive-email-without-media-queries--cms-23919)

I wouldn't be surprised if Campaign Monitor's email templates built in their
builder follow the same approach. MailChimp's too, for that matter. The team
there use similar techniques.

------
kas0
[http://pingendo.com/](http://pingendo.com/) : good free alternative.

~~~
tuananh
Nice. Bootstrap 4 demo is available at:
[http://v4.pingendo.com/playground.html](http://v4.pingendo.com/playground.html)

~~~
levosmetalo
I got welcomed with the "Your browser is not supported, please use either
Chrome or Safari".

Sorry guys, but if your little app doesn't work in Firefox, I don't care about
it, it's probably not worth time to even look at it.

~~~
yoavm
I gave it a 30 seconds test with Firefox and it seemed to work. Probably not a
deep enough test to say that it works, but I guess it's not far from working.
I tried the Bootstrap 4 version.

------
flexie
Looks super cool and very useful. If anyone thinks that $25 or $50 is
expensive for 3 installs, they are just being disingenuous. That's less than
most devs charge their clients per hour and tools like this easily save a few
hours on each project.

And good to see another Bulgarian venture :-)

~~~
avighnay
$50 is nothing for such a tool for a one time payment! Even at that price it
is very difficult for the tool to make a profitable full time business model.
I want to also add that the 50% discount is not a helpful message either.

I always ask my team, how is that as developers we always want free software
but yet want a salary hike every year as a software programmer!

~~~
SeeDave
>I always ask my team, how is that as developers we always want free software
but yet want a salary hike every year as a software programmer!

A lot of people are short-sighted and self-centered. It's completely and
totally rational to buy this product if you're billing at $75/hr and this tool
saves you 10+ hours that you couldn't justify billing.

Some people just don't "get it" \- that you must produce something of value
before you can consume, and that every exchange must leave everyone better
off. This is what used to upset me about the software pirates, torrenters,
etc. It'll all catch up in the end though, so no need to over-analyze people
like this.

~~~
true_religion
I think a lot of people are not billing 75/hour or billing at all.

When you're at work, you typically just have to use the tools the rest of the
team does. Then when you are at home, working on a side project... it's
essentially a hobby and saving time in a hobby is just a 'nice to have'.

------
RobbyMcCullough
Wow this is gorgeous! Nice work.

I have a product in a similar space, Beaver Builder
([https://www.wpbeaverbuilder.com](https://www.wpbeaverbuilder.com)). A few
differences being that it's an in-browser tool and it's a WordPress plugin.

Who is your target customer? Are you hoping to improve workflows for frontend
developers or enable non-developers to build web pages? Also, what are your
thoughts on maintaining a Bootstrap Studio site?

FWIW, we hit a nice niche with freelance web designers and web agencies. Drag
and drop streamlines the development process and it also enables more tech-
savvy clients to jump in and make their own edits and updates.

~~~
Schrum
Sorry to go off topic, but i've been interested in your product for a couple
of weeks. I recently created a site for young people interested in horses. I
built it with a theme called KLEO that included Visual Composer. VC is having
insane load times, partially because of admin-ajax.php. Does BeaverBuilder
also make use of admin-ajax.php? Visual Composer is clearly too heavy and
unoptimised for us, so i'd be more than likely to go with BeaverBuilder.

~~~
RobbyMcCullough
You've heard of us!? No kidding!? That's awesome to hear. :)

We use a lot of ajax when the actual page builder is in use, but we do our
best to ensure that page load times for published pages are low as possible.

Outputting lean and efficient auto-generated markup (relative to what was out
there) was one of our big goals from the start.

We have a free version of the software in the WordPress repo:
[https://wordpress.org/plugins/beaver-builder-lite-
version/](https://wordpress.org/plugins/beaver-builder-lite-version/)

You can demo the tool, peek at the markup, and see how it well it plays with
your WP theme/install with the free version.

~~~
Schrum
Hey Robby, thanks for the reply. Yeah, I saw it mentioned a couple of times on
/r/webdev and /r/wordpress in threads where people were bashing VC while
talking positively about your plugin ;-)

I'll try out the lite theme and hopefully find it fitting to our site. Once
again, thanks for replying to my off-topic comment. I just had to take the
chance since i've been considering your product lately!

~~~
RobbyMcCullough
My pleasure. Feel free to shoot me an email anytime, too:

robby [at] fastlinemedia [dot] com

------
bpatrianakos
Is there a big market for WYSIWYG apps for developers? I think this is a great
application but might it be better targeted toward non-technical people?
Remember iWeb? This reminds me of a more developer-centric, flexible version
of that. But no developer would actually build with it. It was for the people
who now use Wix, Weebly, and Squarespace for their websites.

Developers should be able to put together a Bootstrap front end just as easily
in code and probably prefer working in code.

Maybe there's a huge developer market for this and I just happen to not know
anyone who'd be into this.

~~~
teleclimber
There is a whole spectrum of people who work "on the web" in some form or
another: hard-core developers, front-end coders, designers, small business
owners, content creators, etc... So any tool from Squarespace to
BootstrapStudio to Emacs is potentially useful to a subset of the market.

~~~
bpatrianakos
But this is specifically marketed toward developers and designers. So my
question is are there really enough of those developers and designers
interested in a WYSIWYG took or would it be better to drop the Bootstrap focus
and focus on the small business owners and content creators?

~~~
teleclimber
> But this is specifically marketed toward developers and designers.

"Developers and designers" encompasses quite a range of skills. Many designers
don't know how to code or don't want to deal with it, or would rather do it in
a visual editor rather than in a text editor.

On the other side, there are developers who aren't proficient in modern HTML,
CSS, web technologies, and the obnoxious-to-set-up modern web tool chain. A
GUI like this could be a handy way of bypassing some of these problems so they
can get that website built quickly without it looking like it belongs on the
1990s web. (I admit this case is more rare.)

> would it be better to drop the Bootstrap focus and focus on the small
> business owners and content creators?

I agree with you there, and that's actually what I'm working on. In my
application the web developer/designer can create custom "components" with
HTML and CSS and some rules on how these components can fit together, and the
site owner / small business person / content creator can manipulate their site
in a completely visual, drag-and-drop, edit-in-place environment. There are no
mandatory tie-ins with any frameworks or libraries, and the system doesn't
alter your markup or insert additional junk. Any valid HTML and CSS the
developer puts in will work and will come out essentially as entered.

------
jitix
IMO this is another example of unnecessary fragmentation of the dev tools
ecosystem. Why do we need a whole IDE for Bootstrap? Can't we instead make a
plugin for an existing IDE to accomplish the same thing?

~~~
detaro
Are there any widely used WYSIWYG web editors left that this could be a plugin
for? I can't remember seeing one of those in ages.

~~~
true_religion
Good question. Most designers I know use Sketch and I'm pretty sure Sketch
doesn't output HTML or CSS.

------
unusximmortalis
I salute this initiative. A free 3-7 days trial would be so welcomed though,
dispite the online demo which I assume it is not entirely the same as the
desktop app. Looks good otherwise, and love the comments from other people as
well. Love the price too.

------
codegeek
There is one more alternative that I tried before. Decent.
[http://www.pinegrow.com](http://www.pinegrow.com)

------
andrewingram
I find the existence of this kind tool to be strange, but that may just be
because of my preferred way of working. Despite the fact that i'm not hugely
keen on Bootstrap, I recognise that people find it useful. But do people
really love it so much that they build an ecosystem and actual paid apps
around it? It just seems like such a weird thing to focus your energy on.

~~~
assocguilt
Are you kidding? There are plenty of devs that build bootstrap front ends - if
this makes life easier for them and saves time / effort, it's an easy decision
to purchase this. There are other front end frameworks that with IDE's that
people pay for too such as vaadin. You're probably not in the target audience
for this.

------
elyase
Not Bootstrap specific but Macaw 1.6 [1] is now a free alternative since they
were bought by InVision.

[1] [http://macaw.co](http://macaw.co)

~~~
wx196
"Will you still be updating Macaw? Version 1.6 will be the last update to
Macaw."

------
dandare
This looks promising but I would need a free trial before paying for it.

~~~
yelnatz
I was actually hyped a little bit until I saw your comment. Forgot about the
price.

$50 for 1 year free updates and only 3 installs is a little bit steep.

~~~
chrisbennet
How much would you charge - if _you_ made it?

~~~
yelnatz
Same $50 but lifetime updates and no limited installs.

Charge me again for Bootstrap studio 3 or something but don't end updates for
2 after 1 year.

------
ryanmarsh
Wow. Very impressed. I'm a big fan of Webflow
([https://webflow.com](https://webflow.com)). I would love if I could use
Bootstrap in Webflow's visual designer but this is great.

~~~
samuell
Isn't Webflow based on bootstrap?

------
ksoul1
Love it.

I'm very bad at website design and at 25$ this is a no brainer . Can see
myself using this for small websites

~~~
siquick
^^this

Pretty confident that i'll get my $25 from it...

------
mixmastamyk
Pretty. I hope it doesn't mangle markup like GUI tools (that tackled the
problem) in the distant past did. Frontpage or Netscape Composer anyone?

~~~
geerlingguy
GoLive, Dreamweaver too. It's hard to convey semantic intent and create
efficient structures in markup when your tool has to be generic enough to have
a flexible GUI.

It still comes down to how skillful the creator is, to not end up with nested
divs and classes like "rt-col1-flex-span-head".

~~~
jqm
Adobe Contribute... i.e. Adobe code mangler.

That's been my experience in the past with these kind of tools as well. Its
easy to make a mess.

------
siquick
This is fantastic. Got more done in 5 minutes than I usually do in an hour of
trial and error.

Any keyboard shortcuts available? At least a shortcut for Duplicate would be
good.

Edit: Shortcuts here > [https://bootstrapstudio.io/pages/keyboard-
shortcuts](https://bootstrapstudio.io/pages/keyboard-shortcuts)

------
nevi-me
$25! Thank you! I'm buying me a copy right now! Someone was saying you should
charge $99 as freelance developers would buy it at that price, but as a
hobbyist who $99 is how much I spend on almost monthly groceries because of
the exchange rate, I'm glad that the price is at reach.

From looking at the site, this looks awesome, especially since I can import my
own Bootstrap themes. I haven't used a visual CSS editor in over half a
decade, and after the page refreshes that I spent time on just last night, I
hope this will be a great tool for me to use.

Thanks again :)

EDIT: I see it comes bundled with Bootswatch themes, this is awesome as I use
some of them! Great tool so far!

------
RaleyField
I'm not a web dev, but I had a plan for some time now for a small sideproject
and this seems it has a potential to accelerate things for me. Does it
generate fairly vanilla/idiomatic bootstrap? I would take the generated html
to the backend, but if I later decided to edit html directly I wouldn't want
to deal with weirdness left by your software. What are your payment options?
They seems to be hidden behind email form. Any weird drm? I seem to
format/reinstall OS more frequently and wouldn't want to deal with problems
arising from the software refusing to run when I change my distro.

~~~
georgel
I bought it about an hour ago. The code generation looks fairly standard. You
get 3 installs, but you can deactivate them to use elsewhere (it seems)

------
GFischer
Looks like a very useful product, I've tried and want to use these kinds of
tools.

So far I tried Pinegrow and Bootply, I'm certainly going to give this one a
try.

[http://pinegrow.com/](http://pinegrow.com/)

[http://www.bootply.com/](http://www.bootply.com/)

------
ddutra
I just made the purchase.

This tool will hopefully make my life easier. I'll still code everything
carefully by hand but I have a hard time imagining how the UI will look like
and I find myself spending quite some time coding and F5 repeatedly only to be
disappointed by the result.

These thigs come with experience. I believe people that dedicate their time
mostly to UI get real good and would not need a tool like this but for me I
believe it'll do wonders.

------
joeblau
This looks really cool. It seems like you have a lot of granular control over
the elements and layout. That being said, most of the websites I build these
days don't need this level of customization. I've found that Blocs[1] is more
my tempo. I just really want to organize structure at a high level, add
content, polish, and export.

[1] - [https://www.blocsapp.com](https://www.blocsapp.com)

~~~
mixmastamyk
Nice, but Mac only. :/

------
GFischer
Just a FYI, Chrome is giving me a warning on the HTTPS certificate (vulnerable
SHA1 certificate), try to get one from LetsEncrypt or make an update to your
StartSSL one.

------
lightlyused
Cool. When I added a new page (untitled.html) and renamed it the page name
change wasn't reflected back. Also, There appears to be a page tab for the
page editor, but I'm only getting one tab while I have more than one page
defined in the design.

------
CamatHN
I have enjoyed layoutit.com for simple free wireframing.

You can define your layout pretty quickly if you have ever made a bootstrap
layout before.

I know there are other alternatives as well but does anyone have any
significant experience with this?Is this a lot better, is this the best one
out there?

~~~
gadders
I'm no great designer and only doing hobby sites but I've found PineGrow
([http://pinegrow.com/](http://pinegrow.com/)) quite nice.

~~~
sp00ls
I tried using Pinegrow for my hobby stuff. It seems to work great but the
price is a little steep for someone who is just playing around with side
hobbies.

They hooked me on the $49 price when I started playing around and I was ready
to buy until I saw that the price jumps to $99 if I want master page support
and some other nice things.

I realize it is well worth it but I just can't justify a $100 editor for my
hobby projects. I just purchased this tool for $25 as its pricing aligns with
what I'm willing to spend much better.

------
mrlinx
Trial is crucial before buying.

------
kbenson
Part of me really wants to hand this to the users I program an internal webapp
for and let them spec the basic layout of the the pages, another part of me
knows that is a no good, very bad, horrible idea. :/

------
eruditely
I can't believe the negativity in the comments.

This looks great and I'll probably be looking to purchase this. I assume that
this would help me out when i'm fiddling around trying to make stuff look good
in react.

------
jorgecurio
bought it a short while ago

please tell me there's a code you are using for that wonderful checkout.
email-->entering postal code --> entering card --> done.

any reason why you are capturing postal code first?

I will post another comment with a review later

is this built using electron? where can you find a boiler template project
complete with installation wizard?

edit: just realized you can't even import HTML files or I'm dumb. I clicked
open but it only lets you select some proprietary file. This is a HUGE MINUS
because I was looking forward to editing existing bootstrap template and you
can't!

~~~
manigandham
The checkout form is Paddle:
[https://www.paddle.com/features/checkout/](https://www.paddle.com/features/checkout/)

Stripe also has the same thing:
[https://stripe.com/checkout](https://stripe.com/checkout)

------
tuananh
i think this can be achieved by a bootstrap snippet set; a decent text editor
with live reload/files watch setup.

a dedicated app is not needed.

~~~
smacktoward
It's $25. How much time would it take someone starting from scratch to gather
those snippets, choose a text editor, get it installed and configured, and set
it up to use the snippets, watch files, etc.? If their time is worth anything
at all I can understand the attraction of paying $25 to skip straight to the
part where they're doing the actual work people pay them to do.

~~~
tuananh
if you're a web developer, you should probably have those already.

------
ph4
We've been using this for about 6 months to bang out prototypes very quickly.
Happy with it so far.

------
nevir
It looks really interesting

\---

But:

"Bootstrap Studio is a desktop application filled with powerful features."

That line tells me absolutely nothing about it

------
lucaspiller
What CSS framework are they using for the app [0]? It doesn't look like
Bootstrap.

[0]
[https://bootstrapstudio.io/demo/assets/css/styles.css](https://bootstrapstudio.io/demo/assets/css/styles.css)

------
envy2
Just bought it after being quite impressed with the online demo, and figured
it was worth a shot for $25.

First impression after downloading: an unsigned OS X app? Really? This is
commercial software; it's not that expensive to get a dev certificate.

------
wizzy
Which is the OS they use in the video?

------
johnjackamend
Looks like a watered down Webflow

------
stylinggo
great resource for developers to work on bootstrap. It would have more been
interesting if free version was available.

------
CodingGuy
Only Chrome? Firefox please!

~~~
andreashansen
"Only Chrome" is just the demo. I assume the limitation is due to
BootstrapStudio being built with Electron (I believe).

------
sccxy
> Sorry, our online demo only works in Google Chrome for now.

Sorry, if you don't bother supporting Firefox or Safari, then I don't bother
looking your website either.

(No, I don't ask you to support IE 8)

Edit: Didn't know it was desktop application. Explanation below.

~~~
dyml
In all fairness, it's a desktop application, not a browser application. So I
wouldn't expect them to support every browser.

(written in Firefox)

~~~
sccxy
I guess big percentage of users who visit that page never get idea that it is
desktop app.

First lines (1200px height) don't mention desktop app.

>Introducing Bootstrap Studio

>A powerful web design tool for creating responsive websites using the
Bootstrap framework.

Then there is call to action button, which says that we don't support you.

Most users then close tab.

------
radicalbyte
Guys you need to get a trial version up ASAP. Few people will risk real money
on a tool from an unknown team without being able to try it out.

Now you're just wasting your marketing..

------
mattiemass
It's unfair of me, but I'm always turned off when I see a desktop app that
works on multiple platforms. That irrationally soured my first impression,
because I think it otherwise looks like a great tool.

~~~
fsloth
What? How on earth multiplatform support could be a bad thing?

~~~
sam_goody
If the developer were to have made a swift version for Mac, a C# version for
Windows and a C++ version for Linux, that would be very bad. A startup simply
cannot reliably keep all up to date, and the product would suffer.

If they wrote it in Java and in that way claim multiple platforms, I daresay
it would be even worse, on all platforms.

If they used a tool that did the conversion for them, it would likely be a
security and usability disaster, even though I need sources for that.

So a bias against a multi-platform tool is understandable.

The one exception is a Javascript tool, since things like Chromium have a LOT
of effort put into them by companies with thousands of developers on payroll.
However the number of tools that should run in such a environment is limitted.

~~~
anon2322
Guess what, it is that one exception. Also, now we have lots of apps developed
using electron, so welcome to 2016.

[http://electron.atom.io/](http://electron.atom.io/)

------
rmason
This looks very nice. But please move the video to the top of the page. Always
remember engage first, then offer people a chance to try it out in the
browser.

Also I had to reach the bottom of the page to find out that it was a desktop
app. Is it built in Electron? One last tip if this works as well as it looks
in the demo you could easily double your price.

~~~
Yaggo
The "Run Browser Demo" button engages me much better than video. I very rarely
have patience for linear media.

~~~
spyder
But only in Chrome. So the best would be show the demo button only in Chrome
and the video in other browsers.

~~~
Yaggo
Chrome-only demo is unfortunate in this particular case (I also use another
webkit variant). If you ask me, scrollable page with screenshots is still
better than video.

