
Show HN: Weebly 4 – Websites, eCommerce and Email Marketing - drusenko
http://www.weebly.com/4
======
drusenko
Hey everyone, David (founder/ceo) of Weebly here. We’re really excited about
this launch, Weebly is now a platform to power a business online with
websites, ecommerce, and email marketing all under one roof. In case you
haven’t heard of us, we were W07 (one of the first YC batches) — 9 years
later, over 40M people have created their site or store on Weebly, and 325M
people around the world and half of the US population visit those businesses
every month.

Here are some cool things you might not notice: \- We were born pre-AWS and
actually run our own data centers, have an ASN and manage our own network,
host 2PB of data that is geographically replicated in near-real time, and have
successfully defended against 200Gbps+ DDoS attacks.

\- We’ve put a ton of care into bringing all of the pieces together (websites,
ecommerce, email marketing) in a super integrated and seamless way. Check out,
for example, how you can customize all of the store emails with Weebly Promote
(email marketing), when you send out an email campaign you can automatically
track sales generated from that email, how we automatically import and create
smart groups -- like frequent customers who haven’t purchased recently -- or
how we will even recommend pre-created emails based on actions you take adding
new products, putting products on sale, etc.

\- The eCommerce platform has been significantly upgraded, with things like
real-time shipping (UPS, FedEx, USPS, DHL integrations), abandoned carts, gift
cards, a re-built tax & shipping engine, a new store front & checkout, bulk
editing and power seller features, and a whole bunch of other cool stuff.

\- Check out the apps for iOS and Android. It was pretty hard engineering work
to get a full live editing experience with a fast, native UI that need to
ultimately render down to a slow WebView (no one else that we’re aware of has
been able to pull this off like this).

\- We’ve built a web code editor (similar to Mozilla Thimble from a few days
ago) that’s pretty nifty. Create a site, then go to Theme>Edit HTML / CSS
(screenshot:
[https://www.dropbox.com/s/ry5aeykn1l56l17/Screenshot%202016-...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/ry5aeykn1l56l17/Screenshot%202016-09-20%2019.28.40.png?dl=0))

\- Here are some of the cool new themes: [https://highpeak-
theme.weebly.com/](https://highpeak-theme.weebly.com/), [https://verticals-
business-slick.weebly.com/](https://verticals-business-slick.weebly.com/),
[https://pathway-financial.weebly.com/](https://pathway-
financial.weebly.com/), [https://urbandine-
business.weebly.com/](https://urbandine-business.weebly.com/),
[https://jaysims-oasis-merch.weebly.com/](https://jaysims-oasis-
merch.weebly.com/), [https://oikos-test.weebly.com/](https://oikos-
test.weebly.com/)

Our ultimate goal is to create a platform that small to medium creators of all
kinds can use so they can focus on what they love doing, and less on the
business of running their business. Imagine all the time spent learning from
awesome people like patio11 -- what if we could make the whole online side of
running your business a whole lot easier? That’s the dream, this is the first
step in that direction.

Happy to answer any questions and would love your feedback!

~~~
stevoski
I just followed your link on an English-language website (Hacker News) in
response to an English-language comment (yours) on my iPad (running in
English, my mother tongue and main language) while in Spain (where I live)

Your site was presented to me in Spanish. Please don't do this. Don't choose a
language for me based on my location.

~~~
drusenko
This one is really tricky. You'll see this same behavior by Google, Facebook,
and most other major providers. We spent a lot of time looking into this, it's
unfortunately a very complex situation:

1- In theory browser language should be the perfect way to do it, in practice
as often as 25% of the time or more it's set incorrectly. Unfortunately, that
means a lot of people that don't speak English end up with English content.

2- There is more than just language, in several regions we are localized and
not just translated. So it's important to send specific content for the
region, like prices, specific local features (e.g. payment methods), specific
photography to better appeal to the local audience, local user stories &
articles, etc.

3- It's especially hard with English because that is, in essence, the
"default" language. If your browser language is set to Spanish and you live in
Germany, we'll respect that, but it's a bit harder to do with English.

We're definitely open to input on how to handle it better... One step forward
would be to bring the language selector up to the top of the page so it is
much more accessible.

~~~
stevoski
Thanks for your response. It is indeed tricky, as I know from both sides of
the situation. I don't think this behaviour is as prevalent as you suggest.

I just checked Facebook and Google from a newly opened "private browsing" tab
and both gave me English versions.

~~~
drusenko
Interesting. I experienced it differently myself (while I was traveling, both
Google and Facebook would show me local language, regional sites), as have
others we've tested with. We've done a bit of research into how others do it
to come to this point, but it looks like we should dig a bit deeper.

~~~
fergyfresh
[Accepted-Language] in the HTTP header and the location based on the IP
address (Google has a super easy API for this) is the easiest way that I could
think of. Both are pretty easy to implement as I have done both before.

~~~
codegeek
unless you are on a VPN. then what ?

~~~
fergyfresh
You will get localized date formatting among a few other things probably. I am
just saying you could use location from the HTTP header that is meant to tell
the server what languages you speak. The VPN portion could really only be
fixed by allowing you to select and save an address that is originally
defaulted to IP.

------
atourgates
One thing I've noticed on Weebly, Squarespace, Wix and other similar "DIY
without any coding" website platforms is that all their themes depend on
having excellent photography.

Excellent photography is great, but many of the small businesses who are
primarily targeted with these services, don't have it. And stock photography
looks like, well, stock photography.

I'd love to see a service like this embrace themes that don't depend on great
photography. Themes that make good use of typography and other non-image
visual elements.

~~~
swlkr
It would be cool to make a service that does stock photography (or custom
photography for the right price) that integrates with Weebly, Squarespace, Wix
and other similar DIY website platforms.

~~~
scurvy
Weebly has built-in integrations to Getty Images where you can license photos
from their library. Is that what you're asking for?

------
SwellJoe
Weebly is one of the companies from our batch (W07) that I would have wanted
to invest in, if given the opportunity. They just build really cool products
for non-technical folks. I've been recommending them for years (even though
they kinda/sorta indirectly compete with what we build).

I've been surprised by how important and effective email still is to most
small businesses, and it's a hard problem to solve; having it integrated with
the rest of your site and commerce solution is even harder. Ecommerce is a
more obvious need, but has a lot more solutions available, including for non-
technical folks.

Congrats on launching cool new stuff all these years later!

~~~
drusenko
hah, hey Joe! how are things? :)

not too many of us still around from the W07 bach ;)

~~~
SwellJoe
We're still hanging in there. Our Open Source user base keeps growing, but
revenue from our commercial products has been flat for too long; we're working
on some hosted products, to hopefully address that. It's likely a pivot is in
our future. And, on the personal front, I'm still traveling mostly full-time
in an RV (as I've been doing off and on since I left the valley ~7 years ago).

------
inputcoffee
Obviously, this isn't competing with someone who is spinning up their own
Django/Rails/Node solution.

The big questions that come to mind:

1\. How does this compare with hosting Wordpress. I like that with Wordpress,
if some issue comes up, you can find someone who knows the innards and program
what you need. Does the user have that level of access?

2\. How does it compare with WIX, and the other site building competitors?

3\. What if someone has built some great piece of code and I want to install
some of the functionality on my site, can I do it?

It just seems that it is a closed enough system that I have to rely on Weebly
engineers to do everything.

~~~
drusenko
1\. Wordpress is probably better if you really want a platform to build
something very custom off of, so in that sense it would be an alternative to a
Django/Rails/Node solution. The downside is that it's a lot of work to both
build and maintain, worrying about scaling, ongoing security patches and
maintenance, etc.

2\. One, Weebly is a much more intuitive, easy to use platform, two, we have a
powerful ecommerce platform built-in (Wix doesn't have this), three, we have
iOS and Android apps to create or manage everything from (no one else has
that), four, we have a deep developer ecosystem (over 200 third party apps and
integrations, the most of any platform), and five, the website, ecommerce, and
email marketing is deeply integrated, others are more a collection of pieces.

3\. Yes! There are a ton of APIs to build into Weebly, check it out here:
[http://dev.weebly.com/](http://dev.weebly.com/). You can also just copy and
paste any code you want into your site with the embed code element. And if
you're just looking to showcase code on your site, check this out:
[https://www.weebly.com/app-center/code-block?ref=ac-
collecti...](https://www.weebly.com/app-center/code-block?ref=ac-collection)

------
uses
This page slows my browser to a crawl. I had to close the page to type this
comment. Same if I open it in incognito with no extensions.

Chrome Version 53.0.2785.116 m, Windows 10

~~~
imaginenore
Weebly generates absolutely ridiculous code. Tons of CSS files, tons of JS
files, plus random blocks of embedded JS.

I've recently wanted to move a website off of Weebly for a friend, and it's a
nightmare. Instead of simple clean markup you get all kinds of monstrosity.

------
Angostura
The move from Weebly 2 to Weebly 3 seemed to be very rough - lots of unhappy
punters. What lessons did you learn from that move, how did you handle thing
differently this time?

~~~
drusenko
We learned a lot, and things have been completely different this time around.
We were much more careful about managing timelines & deliverables much further
upstream, delivering features in more of a phased approach to prevent on big
last minute merge with unanticipated interaction effects, ensuring adequate
time for internal testing as well as external beta testing to uncover bugs of
all kinds (regressions, usability, etc), and then cutting scope aggressively
if necessary as the deadlines approach to make sure that we maintain a very
high quality bar -- those are just a few of the things we've been able to
improve on.

Very proud of Weebly 4 and the team that made it all happen, it's both our
biggest release ever, as well as our most polished!

------
tucaz
Accessed from Brazil and the content is translated. Very cool. Congrats!

------
slater
I see the HTML that weebly produces now isn't quite as horrendous as it used
to be! :D

~~~
drusenko
Hah, thanks! ;)

Check out our online code editor too
([https://www.dropbox.com/s/ry5aeykn1l56l17/Screenshot%202016-...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/ry5aeykn1l56l17/Screenshot%202016-09-20%2019.28.40.png?dl=0))
-- templates now use Mustache and LESS.

It's a pretty neat environment for editing online and seeing a real-time
preview -- lots of people use this to learn to code. We also have a Ruby gem
that you can plug into a git hook or your favorite IDE for rapid prototyping.

------
kfk
Good, but I live in Germany and I don't speak German, so how do I read the
content?

~~~
drusenko
If you scroll down at the bottom of the page in the lower right, there is an
option to switch to English!

------
triangleman
Glad to hear y'all are keeping up with the industry. I will have to give this
another look.

------
omarchowdhury
This looks fantastic. We are moving our store from an older CRM and looking
for an alternative. We were set on bigCommerce...

Can we bring our own HTML/CSS and integrate with Weebly? Even with custom
payment flows?

~~~
drusenko
Yes! You can absolutely do that and customize quite a bit, although the
payment flow is not fully customizable. Check out the docs here:
[https://dev.weebly.com/use-partials.html](https://dev.weebly.com/use-
partials.html)

------
rubidium
So let's say I'm going to set-up a small business with an online store and
other content (blog, etc...). Let's also say I don't care about the tech stack
or want to be doing custom css/html.

Weebly looks promising for that, and at $25-50/month isn't too bad.

For people more familiar with this area, what other options are there?
Wordpress+shopify? And how do the fees stack up with the different options?

~~~
arrosenberg
I haven't played with Weebly, and I've spent a fair amount of time doing
custom development, but I have a store on Shopify. The pricing on the last two
tiers is very competitive. On the top non-enterprise tier, Shopify is about
$180 a month and the feature set seems pretty comparable. Shopify doesn't
provide a ton of tools to build your site unless you can do HTML/CSS, so I'd
imagine Weebly is stronger in that respect for non-technical users.

The email piece seems like an after-thought, once you get beyond a few hundred
customers, you will need a more serious solution for email marketing.

------
BadassFractal
How does this Weebly compare to squarespace, wix and webflow? What's the
differentiation?

~~~
brryant
Webflow CTO chiming in here - Weebly is definitely great for getting something
up and running. But if you have specific design needs, then Webflow may be a
better fit for you. We have powerful layout options like Flexbox:
[http://flexbox.webflow.com](http://flexbox.webflow.com), and a full
interactions & animations toolset:
[http://interactions.webflow.com](http://interactions.webflow.com). Our CMS
also gives you the ability to embed dynamic content into you page, so you can
power a lightweight ecommerce solution via Shopify or Foxycart. We also
support SSL, and a powerful hosting stack where you'll pages will load in less
than 30ms.

tl;dr: Webflow if you need powerful design controls without coding.

There's more info on our website, [https://webflow.com](https://webflow.com)
\- cheers!

------
donutdan4114
Do app integrations have a way of storing arbitrary data on resources, such as
products?

For example, Shopify has "metafields" which allow Apps to add strings of data
within a namespace/key, which can then be used in the liquid templating
engine.

~~~
fligtar
Justin from the Weebly Apps team here -- that's a great suggestion! We'd love
to add functionality to store custom data on products, pages, blog posts, etc.
and even allow apps to access other apps' data stored in that fashion. We
don't support this quite yet, but it's something we're thinking about. You can
find all of our documentation at
[http://dev.weebly.com](http://dev.weebly.com)

------
S4M
Is this Viaweb 20 years later?

------
harryf
iPhone 6 Plus in landscape ...
[http://i.imgur.com/ZKorFe9.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/ZKorFe9.jpg)

~~~
drusenko
we're working on it, thanks!

------
zazaalaza
Haha, you forgot to update this section of your site:
[https://education.weebly.com/](https://education.weebly.com/)

------
jondishotsky
Excellent team, beautiful product, bravo!

