
Show HN: My new SaaS side-project, after years of open source - artf
Hi guys, I&#x27;ve created an open source web builder framework (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;grapesjs.com" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;grapesjs.com</a>) years ago, which I&#x27;m still maintaining, and now I&#x27;m excited to publish a side project based on it, Grapedrop (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;grapedrop.com" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;grapedrop.com</a>). It&#x27;s a simple web page builder which allows you to design and publish your web pages very quickly. The project is still in beta with a lot of stuff to improve but I&#x27;d really like to share it and hear what people think about it and maybe also get some constructive feedback.
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simplify
Since GrapesJS is already open source I would seriously consider pointing
users to that for the free plan instead of providing free hosting. Your
service provides hosting; free is a little too much as it costs you money for
likely little gain.

Alternatively you could put a time limit. "Free 30 day trial" or something.

~~~
matt_the_bass
I concur. Use the open source as “proof the product is solid”. It’s a badge of
honor and could allow enterprise customers to check off the “ensure we can
support it ourselves if needed box”. Likely they would never do that, but they
could from a risk management POV.

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schneidmaster
You should charge more :) Especially for your business plan -- any service
targeted at enterprises should get you bare-minimum three figures of revenue
per month, and you should look for a way to make it four or five, or have it
scale up for large enterprises.

There are a few reasons for this:

1) The difference between $35 a month and $250 a month is a rounding error to
most enterprises -- but for you, aggregated across all your business
customers, it will make it much, much easier to grow and achieve
profitability.

2) It's easy to lower your prices if you receive consistent feedback that
people really want your product but think it's 30% too expensive or whatever.
It's very difficult to raise your prices once people are locked in at a lower
monthly rate (especially if the rate is an order of magnitude lower than what
you end up really needing to charge).

3) Businesses are used to paying a lot of money for software (sometimes up to
seven or eight figures annually). For large enterprises, there is a
counterintuitive psychological factor: they don't trust something that costs
$XX a month to reliably store their data and scale to their needs, and you'll
actually close more customers at $XXX or $XXXX a month.

4) Selling to enterprises is very costly -- they will (try to) run you through
procurement, legal reviews, security reviews, terms of service negotiations,
and a litany of other things. Your price point needs to take that cost into
account -- you simply can't make a profit from large enterprises if you have
to spend a few thousand dollars of time/resources getting them closed, and
then you have to make it up $35 at a time.

Also, I agree with the other comment saying you shouldn't offer a free plan,
especially since your product is open source and they could self-host if they
really wanted it. There's an inversion of value -- free users still expect you
to support them, and users in free/cheap plans are often actually the noisiest
for whatever reason. If I were you, I'd charge about $25/mo for the basic
feature set (maybe without the branding and with more than 50 form
submissions); $99/mo for the "premium" feature set; and "call me" for
enterprises (hundreds to thousands a month depending on scale and commitment).

~~~
jv22222
I agree with everything you say BUT when first starting out I see no harm in
starting with lower prices. You need to build up confidence in yourself and
your product at the very beginning.

Then, after you're all tested and things are working well, then raise prices
(maybe after 2-4 weeks in).

Does it really matter about having high prices for those first few customers?
No, they get a reward for taking a risk on you!

I know because I did exactly what you said, and I can tell you your point #2
"It's easy to lower prices" is not quite right.

It really sucks to lower prices. Here's what that looks like:

[https://s3.amazonaws.com/nugget.one/academy/nugget-
down.png](https://s3.amazonaws.com/nugget.one/academy/nugget-down.png)

Conversely, it's easy to raise prices and grandfather the first few customers
that took a risk on you.

~~~
schneidmaster
I agree and disagree. I agree that there's not necessarily a harm to having
"beta pricing" or waiting to work out your price structure until you've found
some product/market fit. But I was largely responding to the "Coming soon --
business $34.90/mo" plan -- I think by the time they're ready for a business
plan, they're ready to start charging "real" prices. I also think you have to
be cautious with "beta pricing" because it can distort your view of the market
-- the cohort who will pay $10/mo is usually drastically different than the
cohort who will pay $100/mo, and it's easy to mistake the former for an
indication that you've got a market fit, when you might find that the market
is much different when you're charging what you actually need to grow and turn
a profit.

~~~
jv22222
I agree! How about this:

Start with a price that is the lowest price in the cohort/market band that you
are interested in and then work your way to the top as you get settled in.

I'm a big fan of the inner game, IMHO folks should operate where they feel
comfortable so they can rid themselves of impostor syndrome and get more
confident over time.

But yeah, do like compete.com did move from a $49 price point over time all
the way up to $1,000+! That's fine by me ;)

~~~
schneidmaster
Yeah, I agree that is a reasonable approach, particularly since it tends to
align well with product development (as you add more advanced features, you
can easily justify segmenting them into a new premium plan). Though I'm a
proponent of having enterprise pricing (or at least "call me" pricing) at any
stage -- if a large enterprise comes knocking, you need to make sure you can
get enough value for you to support their scale and procurement processes.

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bjohnso5
Your subheading text "Build and publish instantly your projects online" reads
a little strangely to me. I'd recommend re-wording that to "Build and
instantly publish your projects online".

Looks neat, though!

~~~
ummonk
Or better yet, "Build your projects and instantly publish them online", for
ease of parsing.

~~~
benatkin
How about "Build your projects online and publish them instantly"?

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encoderer
1\. Your homepage should give me a better sales pitch about what I can do with
your product and why I need it, not just how I do it. Explain your value.

2\. All content is focused at English audience except the pricing details. Use
a dot decimal sign $12.34 not $12,34

3\. I would make the connection to your open source project explicit. It’s an
asset. Sentry.io does this well

Congrats on shipping!

~~~
artf
Thanks for such a good feedback. Honestly, I'm a still bit confused how
exactly to proceed with the point 1 but I'll try to figure that out. Thanks

~~~
ainiriand
If you want I can forward you the contact of a person that does exactly what
you need. Just throw me an email and I'll set you up.

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hardwaresofton
Grapesjs is awesome software thanks for making it! I've been looking for a
chance to use grapesjs in some projects but haven't had the chance to yet but
it looks fantastic -- it's been bookmarked for a long time :).

I think it might be a good idea to further limit your free tier to a time
trial (a week?) maybe rather than # of projects, and _maybe_ adding a cheaper
tier -- the ability to make a website with only drag and drop.

Some that you might consider competitors:

\- [https://www.launchaco.com/](https://www.launchaco.com/)

\- [http://macaw.co/](http://macaw.co/) (not really)

\- [https://landingi.com/pricing](https://landingi.com/pricing)

Also, I'm not sure who your main audience is, but using ',' for a decimal
point is not commonplace in the USA. I doubt any worthwhile customer would
think it was $1,490 a month, but just saying.

~~~
artf
Thank you very much, really appreciate your kind words. BTW I'd rather prefer
to keep the "forever free" tier, there you have to use the subdomain and there
also "Made with Grapedrop" label, so more people will use the free tier more
visibility I gain, at least this is what I think.

ps. the price format should be solved :)

~~~
blihp
Forever is a very long time. You should really consider changing that from
'free forever' to just 'free'. It's great that your plan is for it to be free
forever, but as the saying goes life is what happens while you're busy making
plans. (i.e. things could change and you don't want the backlash of having
burned the 'forever' part in people's minds) Under promise, over deliver.

~~~
artf
Yeah I think I got the point, it sounds good but it's pointless

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artworx
FYI I got a "Suspicious link" popup from google when I clicked verify my email
address.

"Malicious emails often link to this site. Are you sure you want to proceed to
go.sparkpostmail1.com?"

~~~
artf
I use Sparkpost to send emails, seems just like their links got a bad
reputation, so in this case, it's just a false positive. I submitted a ticket

~~~
timdavila
I use them as well. You can avoid this issue entirely by creating a "click"
domain. All you have to do is set a CNAME and then your links go to your own
domain instead of go.sparkpostmail1.com

~~~
artf
Yeah thanks, this is exactly what I've done :)

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epaga
Yay for upfront pricing!!! Reminds me of how much I HATE it when I arrive at a
site only for them to be super coy about their pricing model. You did it the
way I wish everyone did.

~~~
artf
Thank you, now I know what I should not change :)

~~~
fabricexpert
Unfortunately, you might end up changing that if it increases your
conversions...

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gboone
Regarding the "number 1" value proposition, and given your audience is the
small-business type, creating the "why" from the "what" is normally a small
step.

For example, the "what" is "free forever", so the "why" is "save money and not
increase monthly software subscription fees, keep my budget in line with the
size of my business, grow with you, etc." Just change the point of view, and
you'll get your why.

The "what": super cool features that provide enough flexibility for the
credit, but simple interface. The "why": because small business is about
_ideas_ , and ideas need a _voice_ and a _face_. And sometimes the idea is a
quick one and I only have a few hours this weekend and the site needs to be
done ASAP. Hope this helps you get the wheels turning.

My other feedback is styling: make the text not be aligned or sized so one
word is left hanging below a full line. Check different phone screen layouts
maybe? Just bugs me to look at. But I do like the overall color a lot. Nice!

~~~
artf
Thanks for your feedback, especially for the what/why approach, it's somehow
natural to think about it but showing it more explicitly might be a great
point for the potential customer

------
martinpinto
This looks amazing! This is how a side-project should look like!

~~~
artf
Thank you :)

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dhumph
One quick bit of feedback - i'm not as likely to try it out if i have to
register first. Create a demo area where i can play, but not save and use that
as bait for registration.

~~~
ehnto
I was always pretty proud of my now defunct side project's flow. You could
build the whole page right from the homepage, but to save it you had to
register (otherwise who would the page belong to). It had a really great
conversion rate from click to account, but a poor rate from account to paid
customer hence why it didn't work out.

~~~
artf
Thanks for sharing, did you figure out the reasons for such a poor rate?

~~~
ehnto
My paid feature tiers really targeted commercial and heavy traffic users and I
simply never had any of them sign up because the actual platform functionality
targeted individual free users.

There are some hard to answer questions around the type of users that need
dynamic pagebuilders, and you need your paid tier to target the specific pain
points of people who would pay, not just arbitrary limits on free feature
usage. I built the platform for free users so that's all I ever attracted.

If I did it again, I would focus on things businesses need like product
widgets, contact forms, store maps, opening hours, social integration and so
on.

------
philprx
I've used it to build a very small landing page for a project, and here is the
gist:

1\. Very nice, fluid, rich way to edit.

2\. When using Command + <\- (back arrow) on mac, equivalent to Alt Back
Arrow, you should ask if you want to leave project, regardless if it was
saved. First time users wont understand at first that you need to click many
times in a text box to select THEN edit it, therefore they will not go to top
of word/sentence but instead they will leave the current project and go back
to project creation or dashboardm, therefore creating frustation.

3\. I had a very bad UX case: I went back to dashboard, and came back to
upload logo, just to find that my text had been erased and replaced by the
original LOREM IPSUM text (effectively, I LOST my write-up work). I believe
this is a history navigation issue, but the result is that I lost my page. I
could get around this and correct the damage because I had published the
evolved version earlier and did not refresh my published page, but you need to
check this as this is a deal-breaker when you're authoring.

This is a great tool and if you keep the excellent look and feel, reliability
both in UX and hosting if you get it is going to be the make or break part of
the equation.

Good luck, and count me in if you need debug and assistance.

~~~
artf
Thanks for the great feedback, I'll try to fix issues you mentioned and make
it more reliable

------
goddamnsteve
This is beautiful, and love the concept. Of course, the sales pitch and the
product design could be improved.

Might want to add them here: [https://hellonext.co](https://hellonext.co)

------
factsaresacred
Nice work. But the font on Chrome is painful to read. Font-weight 500 instead
of 200 and 16.5px font-size (for example) would be an improvement.

Also a example page showing the awesome stuff people can build would be nice.

------
burnt1ce
Great product. I love the fact it's free and open source. Thank you!

~~~
burnt1ce
*I love the fact you're offering GrapeJS as a free and open source project

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milanmot
I really like the website and the concept. All the best for it.

Just one feedback. The font on the pricing section is too blurred and not
readable.

~~~
artf
Thank you very much. About the font, can you share what browser/device/OS do
you use?

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Aeolun
I think it might be a good idea to increase your business/enterprise pricing.
As it is, it feels to cheap (e.g. too close to the first paid plan) to be any
good.

Besides, business users going for the business instead of premium plan are
going to be mostly price insensitive anyway (who needs more than 50
websites?!)

------
stanislavb
Good job and good luck, mate! I've submitted it to SaaSHub. Who would you name
as your top competitors?

~~~
nwsm
There are tons of quick site makers.

Wix, Wordpress, Mendix, Microsoft Dynamics, etc

~~~
marc_io
Also Webflow, Duda, Mozello.

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realty_geek
Awesome, congratulations. Really like what you've done with grapesjs - thanks
for all the hard work!!!

~~~
artf
Thank you very much, glad to hear that :)

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matt_the_bass
Following up on the comments of many people about not offering a free tier,
would it be possible to make your system easy to clone on github AND run from
a GitHub hosted site? If so, this could solve the question of you paying to
host free accounts.

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fabricexpert
This looks awesome, I actually used grapesjs in a project earlier this year
and it was really cool.

However I don't understand what this is? What's the output? A hosted website
or some html? What would I use this for?

~~~
hguhghuff
I dread releasing my next project and having these questions asked.

It should be simple but it’s so hard for the developer to see they have not
explained the basics.

And if your project don’t explain the basics fast, people leave in seconds.

~~~
keithnz
pretty cool though, within a few hours he's got a ton of advice and has some
reasonably big plot holes in his messaging highlighted.

~~~
artf
A good reason to start share your stuff as soon as possible :)

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HyprMusic
Looks great, I love the demo of using it for building email newsletters.
Perhaps that could be a nice use to target in your marketing, maybe even
integrate with some other email tools (i.e. Litmus).

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minhaj3
I remember when I was learning web development and bootstrap particularly, I
always used to dream about building something like this.

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catskul2
IMO the font choices on the sites include some that are _way_ too
narrow/faint. Hard to read on both Chrome and Firefox.

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slow_donkey
Looks really cool. Will have to check out when I'm not on mobile but at first
glance seems like a great prototyping too as well

~~~
artf
Thank you, let me know then

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userSumo
hi, i would just want to ask a few questions if that's ok.

i see you use ck editor, how was integrating it with page builder? because i
was making something similar some time ago and it was a pain to find a
solution for inline editor. and how do you host users projects ? i mean is it
all in one one virtual machine or something?

~~~
artf
> i see you use ck editor, how was integrating it with page builder?

I made a plugin for the editor and is open source
[https://github.com/artf/grapesjs-plugin-
ckeditor](https://github.com/artf/grapesjs-plugin-ckeditor) so try to check it
out

> how do you host users projects ? i mean is it all in one one virtual machine
> or something?

Yeah, kind of

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willwinger
I have used GrapeJs, it is a very well architected tool. Your new project will
sure be more successful!

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dawie
Our corporate firewall blocks your url as "porn"

The fact that your ssl cert is not working is also a concern

~~~
jasonwen
Probably your firewall regexes “rape”

~~~
breakingcups
Ah, the old Scunthorpe problem.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scunthorpe_problem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scunthorpe_problem)

~~~
ltc5505
That was an amazing read.

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killa_kyle
I really like grapesjs, using it as a newsletter builder. Good luck on
grapedrop.

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teknopurge
looks great - keep up the solid work.

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sigi45
Nice! But why is free without tls? :|

~~~
artf
With the free account, you can choose any subdomain and you have automatically
the HTTPS enabled

