
Bootstrapped Wingify moves to a bigger office and hits 1600+ customers - paraschopra
http://visualwebsiteoptimizer.com/split-testing-blog/shiny-new-office/
======
jameszol
I am a raving fan of VisualWebsiteOptimizer.com (VWO) and highly recommend
using or trying their A/B product over any other. Paras truly cares about his
product, responds personally to inquiries although I am sure that as the
business grows he may not be able to do that as much. It was clear to me from
day 1 as an early customer (1st test deployed Sept 2010) that he truly cares
about his customer, listens to his customer, and works insanely hard for his
customer as does his entire team; and you can not put a price tag on that, in
my opinion.

Now go subscribe to VWO and take his team to 2000+ customers! It will be
beyond worthwhile for your website and business. It has been for mine.

Thank you for building a phenomenal product @paraschopra and team!

~~~
paraschopra
Thanks James! I remember you being one of the earliest customers of VWO. With
expanded team, we're baking lots and lots of interesting new features. But I
will make sure the customer experience remains #1 priority even as we grow :)

~~~
kalid
I'd like to chime in as well: VWO is awesome, and Paras' support rocks.

------
plinkplonk
Paras's (founder of Wingify) blog posts on

Sorry your cool web app is probably not going to make money

[http://paraschopra.com/blog/entrepreneurship/webapp-is-
not-g...](http://paraschopra.com/blog/entrepreneurship/webapp-is-not-going-to-
make-money.htm)

How to find startup ideas that make money

[http://paraschopra.com/blog/entrepreneurship/how-to-find-
sta...](http://paraschopra.com/blog/entrepreneurship/how-to-find-startup-
ideas-that-make-money.htm)

might be appropriate given his stunning success (congrats Paras)

The other great thing about Wingify is that they aimed from the beginning at a
global product vs a 'localized' knock off of an existing American product.

~~~
kroger
The link for "Sorry your cool web app is probably not going to make money" is:
[http://paraschopra.com/blog/entrepreneurship/webapp-is-
not-g...](http://paraschopra.com/blog/entrepreneurship/webapp-is-not-going-to-
make-money.htm)

~~~
plinkplonk
fixed. thanks. sorry about that. too much time without sleep.

------
bdunn
I've been using Optimizely, but after hearing from about VWO from COUNTLESS
people I think I'm going to make the switch.

Plus, bootstrappers should support other bootstrappers, eh?

~~~
petercooper
I'd be keen to hear the difference from someone who has used both in anger.
I'm with VWO (because it gets mentioned around here so much - so I went there
first) and it's awesome but it's always good to keep your options open.

~~~
dsiroker
Congrats, Paras!

As for a comparison, Optimizely uses Akamai which has 100,000 nodes in 75
countries. VWO uses Cloudfront and does two round-trips. Cloudfront has 32
points of presence in 12 countries.

Optimizely response time: Slowest: 289ms, Average: 65ms, Slowest: 19ms VWO
response time: Slowest 1983ms, Average: 276ms, 171ms

Source: [http://till.klampaeckel.de/blog/archives/100-Shopping-
for-a-...](http://till.klampaeckel.de/blog/archives/100-Shopping-for-a-
CDN.html)

Unique features to Optimizely that VWO does not have:

\- Mobile web support & editor

\- Dynamic text insertion

\- Staging server support

\- Human-readable results

\- Documented API

\- Advanced developer tools

\- Cross-browser testing for Chrome, Safari, Firefox, IE, iOS, and Android

\- One-click integrations with Google Analytics, Omniture SiteCatalyst,
KISSmetrics, MixPanel

\- Implementation is 1-line of code vs 21 lines of code

\- Pricing starts at $19/mon vs $49/mon

\- Optimizely comes with a 100% money back satisfaction guarantee with 99.999%
service level agreement

\- Optimizely support offers web, phone, email, and a dedicated account
manager, as well as the CEO's direct cell for Platinum customers

In terms of adoption by the top 10,000 websites on the internet Optimizely is
6x bigger than VWO.

Sources: <http://trends.builtwith.com/analytics/Optimizely>
[http://trends.builtwith.com/analytics/Visual-Website-
Optimiz...](http://trends.builtwith.com/analytics/Visual-Website-Optimizer)

Note: I co-founded Optimizely and used Google Website Optimizer, Omniture
Test&Target, and VWO but by no means an expert in their products.

~~~
paraschopra
Thanks Dan. Appreciate you pitching in. However, actually, you have old
statistics. We recently rolled out a dynamic, custom built CDN that sped up
our response times by 7x. Our average is now 45ms. We spent a lot of time
perfecting our system. See the details here:
[http://visualwebsiteoptimizer.com/split-testing-blog/geo-
dis...](http://visualwebsiteoptimizer.com/split-testing-blog/geo-distributed-
architecture/)

Plus, you are wrong about almost all of your points:

\- We do have a well documented API. Many customers use it on a daily basis to
integrate VWO into their systems. [http://visualwebsiteoptimizer.com/split-
testing-blog/announc...](http://visualwebsiteoptimizer.com/split-testing-
blog/announcing-visual-website-optimizer-api/)

\- Our 21 lines of code is unique as it provides an asynchronous fail safe
method. With 1-line of code, websites still have a theoretical single point a
failure where code is fetched from your servers/CDN. If your code isn't able
to get fetched for any reason, standard timeout of browser (30 seconds)
applies and since it is synchronous page load stalls. With our asynchronous
approach, we completely decouple the dependence (even if it doesn't look
elegant, it certainly is much preferable to our customers). Here are the
details: [http://visualwebsiteoptimizer.com/split-testing-
blog/asynchr...](http://visualwebsiteoptimizer.com/split-testing-
blog/asynchronous-code/)

\- I'm not sure what you mean by Human-readable results. Certainly we have
some great looking reports that our customers love. 50+ case studies on our
websites is a testimony to that <http://visualwebsiteoptimizer.com/case-
studies.php> In fact, one independent website that tracks UI from color
blindness perspective says we have one of the best charts out there
<http://wearecolorblind.com/example/visual-website-optimizer/>

\- We offer developer CSS/JavaScript API that allows complete modification of
a website without touching any backend code

\- Our tests run on mobiles as well, a lot of our enterprise customers
regularly test their mobile landing pages

\- We have one-click integration for Google Analytics, and have plugins for
KISSMetrics, SiteCatalyst, etc.

\- ALL employees of Wingify (including me the CEO and our CTO) do support for
all levels of customers (not just enterprise ones). In fact, support is bed
rock of our offering. My number is there on our about us page
<http://visualwebsiteoptimizer.com/about-us.php>

According to best of my knowledge, apart from cross-browser previews I do not
think there is any feature that VWO lacks. You may want to cross-check your
facts. Our backend delivery infrastructure prioritizes on speed and fall-back
rather than elegance of how the code _looks_.

However, you did not mention the features VWO has that Optimizely currently
lacks:

\- Usability testing. Our users can get quantitative feedback and improvement
ideas on what they should be A/B testing
[http://visualwebsiteoptimizer.com/split-testing-blog/geo-
beh...](http://visualwebsiteoptimizer.com/split-testing-blog/geo-behavioral-
targeting-usability-testing/)

\- Heatmaps and Clickmaps to show where people are clicking on their pages.
Our customers LOVE This feature and some solely use VWO for its heatmap
functionality [http://visualwebsiteoptimizer.com/split-testing-blog/ab-
test...](http://visualwebsiteoptimizer.com/split-testing-blog/ab-testing-
clickmaps-awesomeness/)

\- Enterprise security options such as whitelisting office IPs for login and
realtime activity notifications to administrator
[http://visualwebsiteoptimizer.com/split-testing-
blog/hallowe...](http://visualwebsiteoptimizer.com/split-testing-
blog/halloween-gifts-announcements/)

\- Free 30 day trial without requiring a credit card.

\- Numerous other small features that I won't go into (test labels, test
organization, frequently used goals, roles/permissions, account management,
reports exportable to CSV/PDF, etc.)

~~~
dsiroker
It's great to see multiple products in the market trying to solve this problem
and I admire your ability to do so without a large team or any funding. It's
unclear how the market will grow in the future but we're thrilled to see
Optimizely grow +397% amongst the top 10,000 websites in the last year to over
2,500 happy customers.

I'm glad to see you are focusing on improving your response time.
Unfortunately hitting live servers serving dynamic content in 5 locations is
never going to be able to beat 100,000 edge-cached nodes in 75 countries
serving static content when it comes to response time and reliability.

According to the link you provided it looks like Pingdom reports VWO response
times as:

VWO Slowest Average: 352ms

VWO Overall Average: 207ms

VWO Fastest Average: 45ms

According to Pingdom, Optimizely response times are:

Optimizely Slowest Average: 95ms

Optimizely Average: 65ms

Optimizely Fastest Average: 19ms

Here is a head-to-head comparison of Optimizely vs. VWO including response
time and feature differentiation: <http://i.imgur.com/BRTxC.png>

To clarify some of the points you might have misunderstood:

\- Here is a demo showing the Optimizely visual mobile editor:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HucXw_egPRs>

\- Documentation of Optimizely one-click integrations:
[http://support.optimizely.com/customer/portal/articles/58188...](http://support.optimizely.com/customer/portal/articles/581882-analytics-
integration)

\- The Optimizely API is publicly available at:
<https://www.optimizely.com/docs/api>

You are right we don't currently offer ancillary features like heatmaps and
usability testing. We've been focused on offering the best possible experience
for A/B and multivariate testing.

~~~
boundlessdreamz
Did Optimizely make that graphic? The support comparison is deceptive. You are
comparing the basic plan of VWO to the platinum plan of Optimizely. And
comparing lines of code is meaningless. In fact for the reasons outlined above
by paras, a 21 line implementation which does not block the site load is more
beneficial to most users.

@paras: Your response times do not look good. Why are you using a homegrown
pseudo CDN instead of a real one like akamai or limelight ? Also why not make
your API docs public ?

~~~
paraschopra
The reasons for having a homegrown CDN is mentioned in the article. The major
reason though is that our URL matching (determining whether to run a test or
not on a particular URL) is complex, and CDNs cannot handle that.

Reason API doc is not public is because API is on demand right now, but anyone
can use it. They just have to request for a key from us.

~~~
boundlessdreamz
I still don't get why the docs cannot be public. Stripe for example has public
API docs.

------
nreece
I've said it before and I'll say it again (because Paras and his team deserve
it): I tell people about VWO as the prime (and possibly, the only) example of
an Indian startup with a truly global product.

Edit: Sorry, forgot Zoho.

~~~
paraschopra
Kayako, FusionCharts, BrowserStack, FreshDesk are other great Indian software
companies that I admire. (The first 3 are bootstrapped too, as far as I know).

------
netcan
As a user, I pretty much have to chime in here & say this is well deserved
success.

It's a great product & pretty much the best customer support I've ever
encountered. Every time I've needed it, I was in contact (email & skype) with
Someone Who Knows and not afraid of treading into the gray area between your
problem & their problem.

------
Hovertruck
I like the VWO guys. I was kind of an ass and ranted about some issues in
their JS on twitter recently and they reached out to me and addressed the
issues I was encountering. Very responsive, look forward to seeing what they
can come up with.

------
ericclemmons
As a long time user of VWO, I'm very impressed and pleased with their success.

Early on, perhaps about 2 years ago, I reached out to Paras asking for an API
so our internal dashboard could show the status and performance of all running
tests.

Within a few days, there was a private (or non-published) API ready to go.
Since then, my business and I have been using it daily.

Disclaimer: I even supplied a testimonial for their homepage after frustrating
experiences with Google and Omniture. :)

------
brianbreslin
excellent. with 1600+ paying customers that means they are clearing over $1M
in revenue/year. ($49 being cheapest plan * 1600 = 80k/month)

~~~
paraschopra
Our enterprise customers pay thousands of dollars per month, so it is well
over $1M :)

~~~
dmix
Thats awesome. I remember when you launched on HN not long ago.
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=876141>

~~~
paraschopra
Yep, that was for the original prototype called Wingify (which I had to
completely discard. Horrible user experience). Based on feedback from initial
users of the prototype, then I had built Visual Website Optimizer and had
launched on HN <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=991252>

~~~
Juuumanji
congrats on the excellent progress!

------
famoreira
Congratulations @paraschopra. Really great to the success of your
company/products.

~~~
paraschopra
Thanks man. We're very excited about building a great software company and
staying bootstrapped as long as we can :)

------
santa_boy
Hey Paras, What was your methodology for customer development, customer
acquisition in the early days of your startup? Or, did you build for yourself?
What are the distribution channels you currently use?

~~~
paraschopra
Main methodology was guest blogging. I contributed exhaustive articles in
publications such as Smashing Magazine, CopyBlogger, etc. The articles were
purely educational in nature, taught people what A/B testing was and VWO was
introduced as one of the of the new tools to do A/B testing easily.

The second big focus was on passion for feedback from early customers and
incorporating that into the product. Really, our product is driven mostly by
customer feedback and that is why our customers love talking about it.

I plan to write comprehensively about it. But I do keep posting my experiences
on my blog <http://paraschopra.com/blog/>

------
Xcelerate
There's something about bootstrapped companies that I really like. I've always
thought if I began a start-up, it would be without any venture capital.

------
jeremyjh
It seems so many successful small internet businesses lately are attacking
meta-problems for the benefit of small internet businesses. Sort of like Levi
selling bluejeans to gold miners in California.

------
njx
congratulations Paras. Great bootstrapping!

~~~
paraschopra
Thanks :)

------
unlimit
Congrats, Some questions :-) Are you incorporated in US? If not what do you
use for payments?

~~~
paraschopra
Nope, we're an India based company. We use 2checkout for payments.

------
thlt
congrat Sparsh

\-- from Trung

~~~
sparshgupta
Thanks Trung, good to see you on HN :)

