
Show HN: Pyxxi – static website builder with client-side search - pyxxi
http://www.pyxxi.com
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pyxxi
I built this for a travel company I'm involved with, which needed simple
client-side trip filtering and search. I've tried to improve it since then,
but it's still a work in progress and only works on Firefox and Chrome. It
also needs more templates. I would love some feedback.

Caroline

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stephenr
I'm a fan of alternative pricing models (as opposed to saas) but this one
seems odd.

A selling point of "avoid lock-in" doesn't play well against a hosted service
that the customer has to pay you to download from.

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pyxxi
Thanks for your feedback.

I see what you mean, but I suppose I meant not "locked in" as in not locked in
to a subscription or a hosting fee, but a pay-as-you-go-model instead,
especially as the website created would be portable, so it could be be hosted
on Amazon or similar.

In theory, someone could use Pyxxi to design, build, and export to html an
entire responsive website for only a $1.

Actually, I don't really know much about pricing models. Can I ask if you know
of any other models that would be more appropriate?

Caroline

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stephenr
Well it depends how much control you have. Personally, I think something like
this could work quite well as a "open source, $$ to use our hosted version".

In that model, you'd open-source the tool itself (which means there can never
be any lock-in concerns) and charge organisations/people who want to use the
hosted version.

This also means you could get buy-in from e.g. freelance developers. They'd be
able to run the tool in private to build a client site, and then say "hey if
you want to keep editing this site, upload this <specially-formatted-
export>.zip to Pyxxi.com and you can keep editing it.

The selling point for the hosted version might then be 'extras', such as the
ability to push the generated content to an sftp server, or s3 bucket the user
specifies.

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pyxxi
Thanks, that's interesting 'cos I have been thinking of adding import/export
to GitHub via Markdown, so that website content isn't locked into Pyxxi.

I'm not sure how much of the tool itself I could open source (I've never done
that) but I could at least make the client-side search and lists open source,
I think, so that web developers could generate their clients' sites without
using Pyxxi at all if they needed to.

Perhaps they would then only need to use it if they wanted to redesign a site
or generate new style sheets. Plus, as you say, their clients could use Pyxxi
to edit their site. Especially, as they might not want to do that in Markdown.

Do you think that's feasible or would it be better to open source the entire
tool?

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stephenr
I can't speak for everyone obviously, and the pure-SaaS model is definitely
popular at the moment, so I'd imagine there is still a market without open
sourcing the whole thing.

Having said that, I still think open sourcing it will be a net positive for
you. Regardless of whatever unique client-side logic your product handles,
there are numerous other static-site generators available, that _are_ open
source (heck, I'm writing one myself). In this scenario, I believe that being
closed, _and_ a service (as opposed to say a closed source, but self-hosted
tool) can lose you some potential customers. I don't think being open (and
thus self-hostable) will lose you any actual paying customers - those who are
able and willing to self-host it are probably unlikely to have paid for a
closed service in such an active (in terms of competing products/projects)
niche.

> I'm not sure how much of the tool itself I could open source (I've never
> done that)

Regarding this specifically, the key thing here is going to be what (if any)
libraries/frameworks you're using. Assuming you're not using any commercial
libraries, it's probably mostly about making sure the various licences of the
libraries are compatible with whatever license you choose to use.

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pyxxi
Thanks. That's really helpful, and interesting what you're saying about self-
hosting customers not being willing to pay anyway. I hadn't really thought
about it like that.

Caroline

