
Show HN: Drag and drop page building for any site - steve8708
https://builder.io
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steve8708
Hey all, I made this myself and am looking for feedback from anyone with time
to spare some Thanks in advance!

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gitgud
As in a single person made this? Even for a team of 10 that is simply amazing:

\- Attractive and professional landing page

\- Fully featured demo site, free to try

\- [1] Over 10 SDK's built for all popular platforms (react, vue, angular...
etc)?!!

I would be happy to have implemented just a fraction of what you've done...
Like a sibling comment said; _you should be very proud of yourself_

Get ready to scale :)

[1]
[https://github.com/BuilderIO/builder/tree/master/packages](https://github.com/BuilderIO/builder/tree/master/packages)

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steve8708
Thank you so much for the encouragement, it really does mean a lot

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codesternews
May I ask how much time it took you to build it.

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steve8708
Absolutely - it's been about a year and a half of work so far

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jmswalter
Good stuff and congrats! How long did it take you to build this and how did
you find your first customer?

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steve8708
Thanks!

I've been working on this for about a year and a half now, though I was able
to get my first customer just a few months in.

The first place I went to was ShopStyle, since I had worked there previously
and had experienced the problem that Builder aims to solve first hand (non-dev
teams needing to build new pages all the time, and devs without time to
constantly code up all this new content).

So since I had a good rapport with them and this was a pretty "hair on fire"
problem with them, they were willing to be my first customer. I also charged
them very little - at first at least ;)

Then I got new customers from word of mouth and from being able to demonstrate
what ShopStyle had done (the pages their non-devs were making and how it was
helping their business). When people liked the product they were happy to
refer me to others who could use it. This was slow but it eventually got me a
handful more initial customers, some I knew personally and some I didn't.

Anyway, happy to answer more about the process if you have other Qs or
interested in more detail!

Edit: Typo

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johnday
What a fascinating tool. Thank you for sharing it.

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pySilver
Looks really promising! That would be great to have licensing where one can
pay a fee (subscription) without having API vendor lock (so it can be
integrated into internal software)

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steve8708
Thanks!

And what you ask for is actually possible in two ways -

One is to use webhooks to side load the data. Aka when people publish content
in Builder, it will trigger a webhook sending the data to an API of yours to
store and then serve how you like. You can see some docs on that here
[https://builder.io/c/docs/webhooks](https://builder.io/c/docs/webhooks) (and
feel free to reach out for further explanation - I'll create a detailed guide
on this at some point)

The second way, which is not available yet but will be soon, is an embedded
Builder editor you can work into your internal software. This is not publicly
available yet but is used by one customer and will be available more broadly
soon. If you're interested in trying that when available shoot me an email at
steve@builder.io

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ablekh
Great job! Congratulations and best wishes.

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ashishw
Great tool - super useful.

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ckpm
what is different from site builders like wix, weebly etc.?

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steve8708
Thanks for the question! The big difference is that Builder works like a
_headless_ CMS - so you can easily hook it up to existing sites with an API.

This is most useful for existing sites or apps that have a lot of custom coded
content, but you want non-devs to be able to make and manage landing pages and
other content without relying on developers at all

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rytill
If I start messing with a page in Builder, does that make it difficult to go
back and start coding like normal again on it?

For instance, if I want to do the page layout first in Builder, then jump in
and make one of the components into a messenger with sockets in the code, then
tweak a component’s position and add a few more, then jump back into the code
- is that a possible workflow?

Ideally I would want to use Typescript and React.

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steve8708
Not at all - you can easily balance your usage of Builder and your own code as
much as you like. You can put Builder content within your code components, and
you can easily use your code components within the Builder content.

Take a look at this for a real example you can play with on how you can have
some pages powered by Builder and some fully in your react/typescript code
[https://codesandbox.io/s/github/BuilderIO/builder/tree/maste...](https://codesandbox.io/s/github/BuilderIO/builder/tree/master/examples/react)

And then see this guide for how to use your own react/typescript components in
the builder content [https://builder.io/c/docs/custom-react-
components](https://builder.io/c/docs/custom-react-components)

And don't hesitate to reach out if you have any more detailed questions about
this - steve@builder.io

