
Show HN: Milkshake – Make Websites from a Phone - collistaeed
https://milkshake.app
======
ronilan
This is high quality product that produces high quality media and, most
importantly, it is a breeze to use (proof:
[https://msha.ke/ronilan/](https://msha.ke/ronilan/))

However, “Make Websites from a Phone” is an illusive target. I’ve had a
startup circa 2013 with a somewhat similar focus. It got to a working MVP
(sort of) and VC term-sheet before it imploded. All that’s left is this video
([https://vimeo.com/68029789](https://vimeo.com/68029789)). There have been
multiple other teams/products trying to crack the same nut, generally without
success, or with success that is significantly smaller than what the desktop
platforms (wix, strikingly etc.) have had in same time period.

The “You Only Link Once” and Instagram focus are a smart angle. Hope this one
flys.

~~~
Nullabillity
Have you tried opening the page from a desktop browser? It's just stuck in a
tiny phone-sized box..

~~~
collistaeed
:-) Yes that's intentional, we've started life completely focused on mobile
and Instagram (which is broadly only used on mobile).

It means that we get to try to focus on making one experience strong. That
said, ultimately the user is providing data which is independent of the look,
so evolving a desktop variant is totally doable.

We're (currently) keen to not necessarily run towards traditional responsive
design. The reason being that you have a lot of design consequences /
unintentional visual limitations - it's one of the reasons a lot of websites
kind of look the same, especially from website builders and tools (they go
heavy on block layouts to make it easy to deal with responsive).

All that said, it's iteration 1, and our launch is really a 'beta' launch more
than anything.

~~~
kevingrahl
> you have a lot of design consequences / unintentional visual limitations

Would you mind elaborating on what you think those limitations are?

I feel like it’s easy to say ‘nah we don’t do responsive’ instead of figuring
out a way do just do it. I can’t come up with a single example that I couldn’t
translate from mobile to desktop in some way.

~~~
collistaeed
Sorry, I didn't write that very well. I think the consequences are pragmatic
ones. In order to achieve more complicated visual designs you have to do a lot
more work to make them considerate of all the different situations they might
appear in. So pragmatically you either make less designs, or you limit the
designs to simpler to scale paradigms (like block layouts) which require less
pre-consideration.

As the foundation of this app is the idea that a user can just switch
layout/visuals, it needs a lot of visual looks to switch between. Doing a lot
of those, and having the responsiveness, and then iterating on app/data model
features (which need updates to those designs) is quite a drain on speed.

All that said, since you asked for a single _actual_ example, I have one which
I think is quite problematic (though could be addressed in _some_ way, just
not easily). We've kicked around the idea of letting users place stickers over
the top of their design in order to customise them (a little like Instagram
Stories), it's not obvious how to migrate a user input visual through a
responsive set of designs without a lot of trouble (the most obvious solution
being to guess and then let the user tweak at different responsive breaks).

Hopefully that convinces you that it wasn't _just_ a throwaway 'nah we don't
do responsive' :) I'm sure we could do better than where we currently are, and
it is an iteration one release!

~~~
atupis
How about if you flip phone vertically app user can see what tablets and
computers see.

------
chdaniel
Wish you nothing but the best. Made an aggregator website in literally 10
clicks as I was on the toilet. Will share it on my story

Just my $0.02 — $9/mo and it's a done deal... Later.com offers that linkin.bio
which starts from their $19.90/mo plan (I use Buffer though for my agency's
marketing contracts)

This one's super lightweight, can probably be optimised (if it isn't already)
to be even more lightweight. Fantastic. Join us at Reddit.com/r/saas (I'm a
moderator there) and tell us the story — anything u need, let me know

~~~
airstrike
Assuming the target segment for this product really is "Instagram users who
want a link in their bio" per someone else's comment in this thread, I'd price
it

$1.99/mo for limited concurrent users / bandwidth $9.99/mo for premium with
"""unlimited""" users / bandwidth

------
rubicon33
Honestly surprised there's a "need" for this. This is the kind of thing I
would shoot down as a business idea, simply from the standpoint of - nobody
needs that.

I'm obviously wrong as there are successful examples like universe out there.
But boy does it show me that I'm often completely detached from the consumer
in these instances.

~~~
collistaeed
Fwiw I can remember a time when I was like "Why on earth would anyone want
Squarespace when they can _host_ their own site!?"

These days I try to assume I probably don't understand! For the start of this
product, we had a Design Sprint where we came up with the idea, and then
brought in real Instagram users to test the idea on (with very lowfi
prototypes) befor actually building!

~~~
dvtrn
_These days I try to assume I probably don 't understand!_

We could learn so much more in life and have such better interactions if this
were the default condition going into the unknown.

“Maybe there’s something here to be learned”

------
emdowling
You need to get this on Android. For the majority of iOS users, they have
access to a larger screen so will prefer creating on that. The problem this
solves is less pronounced. But for emerging markets, their Android phone is
the first and only access to the internet. Designing a website on a phone
isn’t a novelty, it’s the only way they’ll ever move beyond social media
profiles to establish an online presence.

~~~
collistaeed
Agree completely! We have a spike this week to look at the work to roll out an
Android version. That said, we also need to weigh up the roadmap overall and
tradeoffs of what the iOS app users need out of the gates

~~~
emdowling
I would almost be tempted to drop iOS. The holy grail for a product is to find
the problem you can provide a 10x better solution to. I wonder if you’ll ever
be able to be 10x better for creating a website for the vast majority of iOS
users. But I would bet a lot of money that you can be 10x better for a
majority of Android users. Earning revenue from that market is harder, but
it’s not an insurmountable challenge.

Anyway, you know what’s best for your product. Great work on what you’ve done
so far.

------
kabacha
This is a such a weird niche. Personally I love "business card" websites but I
feel that this is not a correct way to approach this.

Why stick with this weird format instead of some responsive grid/flex design?
Why only limit to two slide pages? It seems like you guys reinventing wheel
here and burdening yourself with unecessary restrictions.

I swear the first person to adapt hugo/lektor/pelican for casual mobile
markets will strike gold. It's a static website that you can charge like
2$/month and still have a 90% profit margin.

Sorry if I come out negative but Milkshake looks a bit of a wasted opportunity
here.

~~~
rchaud
Because almost nobody browses Instagram from a desktop website. IG themselves
discourage it by providing a gimped experience on web. So there is a 90%+
chance that anybody clicking on the link in the IG bio is already on a mobile
device.

------
gameguy43
Messaging feedback: try leading with the imagery in your video (i didn't play
the video until reading the whole page and still not understanding what the
product was):

\- shot of instagram profile page, with highlighted link to website \- shot of
what that website looks like

"oh, that's what this is for." and maybe even more specifically: why do you
need one of these? so you can sell shit.

In hindsight, I see how "Insta website" was trying to convey this, but it
wasn't clear to me that "Insta" was referring specifically to Instagram
/directly/\--I thought it was just millenial-hip short of "instant."

And "turn your link in bio into" I at first parsed as "turn your linkedin bio
into." Then I was like "oh I guess that's not a typo" but I still wasn't sure
which bio it was referring to and it seemed like odd phrasing.

Then I hit "Pick a card. Cards are..." and was like "ugh, yep, this is very
much a hip app thing i'm not going to understand." instead of leading with a
vocab word and then defining it, just skip the vocab word and use its
definition. "Pick a page template. Visitors can swipe between your pages just
like an instagram story."

(obviously, i'm an old soul and don't really understand instagram. maybe
"card" is already more familiar than "page" for instagram folks?)

good luck.

------
ignoramous
Congrats. This looks great. I had wished for something similar not a long
while ago [0], and I'm really looking forward to using it. In Asia esp,
commerce over IM apps is huge.

So, the only suggestion I'd like to give (without having used it) is that is
it possible to make it so simple that folks could create websites from
messaging apps like WhatsApp?

[0]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19772719](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19772719)

PS With Firefox+uMatrix I'm unable to view the video on your landing page.
Just thought you should know if you choose to fix it.

~~~
collistaeed
That's a cool idea! I will give that some mulling with the team!

(And thanks for the bug report, will get it sorted)

------
teamski
Milkshake as a product and company looks well executed.

However, I wonder if these website builders are a fallacy. If you make money
with your business get a team building your custom site, if not just put your
opening times right on Google Business without having a website. A half-baken
website also done with a builder is still work and if nobody drives by, why
the hassle?

And most builders I know still have subpar mobile responsiveness. How is
Milkshake in this regard? Are there any examples?

~~~
cube00
Having a site on a domain you own is critical as an anchor, if you only list
on third party sites and for whatever reason they take your listing down your
business evaporates overnight.

------
greatNespresso
Had a similar idea, but did not think of leveraging Insta for this, really
smart ! What about the pricing for this ?

~~~
collistaeed
Thank you!!

Pricing wise, we've been thinking to delay until we see traction. The cost of
hosting the sites is fairly trivial because they are static output, which
means we can let it grow for a while before introducing some kind of paid
_something_ (extra cards, or extra looks, or domains).

~~~
PNWChris
@paid extras: analytics! People love their likes and views, at a modest price
it would be an easy sell.

PS: Super cool app and execution

~~~
collistaeed
Yes! And I think there's some interesting experimentation to be done between
'integrate Google Analytics' versus, make a really dead simple analytics /
stats tool. I'm used to GA so assume people understand it, but it's actually
quite a confusing thing if you step back and assume you know nothing about how
the internet plumbing works :)

~~~
steeveblack
I would pay to have "made with - milkshake" removed. Maybe $5 maximum but,
yep.

------
baby_wipe
There's a YC company who seemed to create something similar.

[https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/universe-website-
builder/id1...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/universe-website-
builder/id1211437633?mt=8)

~~~
collistaeed
Yes! universe are trailblazers! They’ve taken a different paradigm approach,
but a pretty neat one :)

------
malinens
This is how I started programming.

There were many mobile site builders in WAP era.

I did not have my own PC and it was easiest way to build something as
alternative would be to go to library.

Good times. It's nice this stuff is re-born.

This can be starting point for Young folks in programming!

------
pembrook
Couldn’t help but laugh reading some of the comments here saying they “don’t
get it” or “why doesn’t it have X feature only a developer or small business
would care about?”

Every wannabe influencer on instagram (literally millions of people globally)
is going to want one of these—-especially given the design aesthetic that hits
the target market right between the eyes. We’re talking about 17 yr old kids
here, not enterprise customers. The lower the friction and the more simple it
is, the better.

This is going to take off like crazy and I’m both jealous I didn’t make it
first and also sad that I’m not an investor.

~~~
Moru
I'm just afraid Instagram will find a way to block it if it eats into their
profits. Most companies don't like when you try to get around their money
maker.

And yes, I also thought you meant instantaneous homepage creation :)

------
saagarjha
I don’t have much to say about the your project itself, but I thought I’d let
you know that Milkshake profiles don’t scroll right in mobile Safari–you can’t
tap on the top of the screen to get the page to scroll.

------
Liquidor
From the Terms: "You must be 13 years or over to create a Milkshake account.
If you are under 18 years of age, you will need the permission of a parent or
legal guardian (who is at least 18 years of age) to create a Milkshake
account."

Seeing that Instagram only requires the age of 13, I wonder if teens will
actually bother with permission from their parents/guardians to use Milkshake.
Or is this something that will only be enforced after being revealed as under
18? And why 18?

~~~
HNLurker2
>Seeing that Instagram only requires the age of 13,

That sounds wrong though

~~~
zrobotics
It isn't though. For children under 13, COPPA [0] imposes additional
requirements,so most sites have similar terms in their policies. From
Instagram's terms of use [1], "You must be at least 13 years old".

[0] [https://www.socalinternetlawyer.com/legal-requirements-
socia...](https://www.socalinternetlawyer.com/legal-requirements-social-media-
websites/)

[1][https://help.instagram.com/478745558852511/](https://help.instagram.com/478745558852511/)

------
davidu
Another approach to this (doing quite well):
[https://onuniverse.com/](https://onuniverse.com/)

------
meerita
Sorry, but where is the value on this project? Only 2 screens, one that has
your profile photo and some description with a style on it and another screen
with the same link to go back to Instagram. I find this surprisingly useless
but I wish you luck on your project, i hope to be wrong.

------
V-2
The very first thing I got to see on the website: the "Watch this" link
obscured by the down arrow, and thus unclickable on my 1920x1080 laptop
screen. This is not the first impression you want to give, especially when the
product itself is about design, of all things.

------
hyperpallium
\tangent Can you serve a website from your phone?

My mobile data provider seems to block incoming packets... (but I can receive
if initiated from my phone (as in ftp), so maybe it's just that my IP address
isn't known?) I couldn't work it out.

~~~
rohan1024
Yes you can. You might be behind NAT what this means is your public IP address
is being shared with 100s of other users so for the outside world there's no
way to reach you.

If you are on IPV6 you most probably will have public unique IP and should be
able to access a website hosted on phone without any issue. ISP might not be
explicitly blocking incoming packets. NAT was a necessary evil that we needed
when we had limited address space. We should move to Ipv6 as early as possible
and kill NAT. I think that will open up tonne of opportunities.

------
bennythomson
The homepage is gorgeous! I certainly trust it to make a good website. Good
luck!

------
matt2000
Great idea! Very smart to focus it on building profile pages for Instagram
users, then it's a focused use case rather than the general "make a website."

One suggestion: I found the whole term "Insta website" to be more confusing
than helpful. I think of Insta as short for Instagram so it confused me to
keep seeing it in another context. Honestly, I don't think you even need to
define that term. Just focus on the benefits and why the user, as an Instagram
user, should want a great page linked on their profile. "Get a profile page
like all the top influencers...", "Grow your other social profiles...", etc.

Just a suggestion, hope the idea works out!

------
wolco
Was hoping for a codeeditor with sftp but neat project for the masses.

~~~
rchaud
The target audience for this are likely to use off-the-shelf solutions as much
as possible. Apps like Adobe Spark make that clear; while Illustrator and
InDesign are superior choices for the professional, IG is all about speed and
frequency of posting.

So Adobe Spark lets you grab pre-made, somewhat professional looking templates
abd make basic edits to colors and typography. It's a much faster and less
rigorous workflow than what a designer would go through to create pro content
for IG/Twitter.

------
BtM909
You've had a good opportunity with your short URI. Now it doesn't "pronounce"
as Milkshake. If this makes sense, grab the domain, otherwise let me know

~~~
uxcolumbo
what do you mean?

msha.ke is shorter than milksha.ke

Or were you thinking of another domain?

------
ricardobeat
No example sites to browse on mobile, other than a video (?)

------
desireco42
You might be interested to check:

[https://carrd.co/](https://carrd.co/)

Been here forever, fantastic to use with or without phone :).

------
exolymph
Cool idea! You should do some influencer marketing :)

~~~
collistaeed
Thanks exolymph - that's our plan!! :)

------
bvrlt
It's free. What's the business model?

~~~
tantalor
Probably the same as instagram itself: incessant, vapid marketing to teenagers

------
artpop
I saw a talk of yours on side projects. It was pretty inspiring. Did you build
this with those same principals?

~~~
fatfox
Can you share the link? :)

~~~
collistaeed
Sure thing! It's at:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwWEc4PhmJI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwWEc4PhmJI)

(14 views ... was a popular talk :-D

~~~
fatfox
thx!

------
IloveHN84
What about an Android version?

------
Y_Y
Posts saying "wow, coolest ever, bye" are about as constructive as posts
saying "boo, shit".

For what it's worth I think it's long overdue that there was a good way to
produce actual websites for those who only have/use phones. As far as I can
tell though, this is much more limited in scope.

~~~
collistaeed
Thanks Y_Y it is definitely quite limited at the moment, and intentionally so.
We wanted to scope down to something we could pull together and launch as a
team who'd never made an iOS app before and wanted to get out to market to
validate before getting too excited about patting ourselves on the back.

Hopefully from here we can iterate to a bigger scope (without overblowing it
:-)

------
nercht12
The site doesn't load well for me. Too much JS maybe?

------
dhogan
This looks really solid. I can see it getting big. Good luck!

------
person_of_color
This is prime for Zucquisition. Congrats.

------
villgax
Need to create Android apps too on the go!

------
tomerbd
Where do you host the generated web site?

------
matthewhartmans
This looks awesome!! Well done!!

~~~
collistaeed
Thanks Matt!

(very pumped that it's on HN's homepage :-)

------
mherrmann
Does your milkshake bring all the boys to the yard?

