

Launchable.io - A quick and easy way to test ideas - mitchellbryson
http://launchable.io

======
kumarski
$100/month haha.

Here's a few useful landing pages tools. [http://populr.me](http://populr.me)
\- has free domain mapping etc... at first glance, it seems to do everything
this page site does.

[http://strikingly.com](http://strikingly.com) -pretty sweet.
[http://jetstrap.com](http://jetstrap.com)
[http://smore.com](http://smore.com)

Cool tool though.

~~~
mitchellbryson
Yeah I noticed there's a lot of free versions, I just don't like their
business model. Although trying to buck the trend when there's already free
versions out there might be impossible, we'll see.

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DanBlake
Isn't this just a launch rock clone that offers less and charges more?

~~~
mitchellbryson
It will offer more, maybe the page wasn't very clear. Primarily, the landing
pages will have that much content on, as oppose to the minimal launchrock
page. I don't think there's enough information on the launchrock version. I
was planning on helping with the content, as well as guiding them through it
with the UI.

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csmattryder
I can't help but feel that this is an idea, that while probably worthwhile, is
similarly built as a weekend project for a bored programmer.

If that's the case, I'd assume one of your biggest threats is an open source,
or free, version of the paid product.

So I ask, why the high price, especially for something that may only be
visible for ~1 month?

~~~
michaelbuckbee
I met the founder of a successful service that builds landing pages for people
and he said that startups aren't actually very good for them as they fairly
quickly either go under or get a real site.

Most of their business is for things like real estate, people running
seminars, more small scale types of business than the kinds of sites you
typically associated with landing pages.

------
bdunn
This could serve as a really nice method of securing consulting engagements
without the typical formalities of prospecting consulting engagements. I think
$99/mo and especially free fall way short of things like "copywriter help"
(there are many better ways of phrasing this), and you could essentially sell
a retainer-until-you-launch product where you do _nothing_ but help startups
launch and setup experiments to net more email opt-ins/presales (all the while
charging significantly more.)

~~~
mitchellbryson
Yes this is really what sparked the idea, I still get asked all the time to
help setup a little one-pager (launchrock just isn't enough information) but I
can't justify the time to do, hence a hosted option. Expanding that to just
helping them get off the ground is a nice idea. Thanks.

------
Raphael
> Hey, you're a little early. We haven't launched yet but if you leave your
> email address we'll let you know when we do.

So meta.

~~~
dolphenstein
Kind of like "Stanley, Start-up Founder".

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flipcoder
LOL. Okay I have to admit that was pretty damn funny. 10 sign-ups for free and
then $99/mo? LOL.

~~~
coherentpony
I'd down-vote this if I could.

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aroman
I don't want to be "that guy", but I was immediately turned off by the
grammatically incorrect comma in the call-to-action. There should be no comma
after "Say hello".

~~~
mitchellbryson
I over-use commas, all the bloody, time. Thanks!

------
alexgrande
Hilarious, I made a similar website in 2 hours yesterday -
[http://confirmidea.com](http://confirmidea.com). I'm experimenting with this
idea.. running a google experiment with two different screenshots. Why not? 2
hours for fun. If enough people said yes, create a basic service and charge $5
an A/B Test. Free for one page was my idea. $99 is ridiculous.

~~~
mitchellbryson
This took me maybe 4 hours, but over a weekend. Yes the price is pretty high,
did you A/B test yours?

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mitchellbryson
I have some excellent feedback on the site, thanks everyone who signed up and
left it.

One idea is to charge $99 for unlimited ideas/landing pages per month, which I
really like. Then maybe $15 for one page.

Also, thanks to
"ifthesourceofthispageisanexampleoftheshityouwillpush_nothanks@lame.com" who
simply says, "Lame". :)

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coherentpony
I don't understand. I spent over 5 minutes on that site. I read everything on
the page, and I still have no idea what it's supposed to do. It generates a
page for me? I have to put in my email address to do that? Why?

Oh well.

~~~
mitchellbryson
The page is the product, kind of. I think I have a lot more work to do on
making it clear. Thanks and sorry for the confusion!

------
bsirkia
What differentiates this service from either a) just throwing up a Wordpress
or SquareSpace site or b) using a service like Launch Rock? Having to pay
$99/month just to have your logo displayed seems pretty steep.

~~~
mitchellbryson
It's the same, but only takes 5 minutes to setup. It provides more space than
launchrock for content and explanations of your product/service. And it only
costs what most people charge per hour/2 hours. I figured they would only need
it for 1 month, hence the larger price - but I'm beginning to see that gets
people's backs up.

Based on your feedback I think I need to expand and include these differences
as part of the landing page. This would also be a useful exercise for people
using it - to compare themselves to the competition.

Thanks.

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bdclimber14
> We charge the equivalent of 2 hours from a professional developer.

I would say 1 hour, i.e. $99/hr, is a more accurate statement. This would also
help make the product appear more affordable, and as a better investment.

~~~
mitchellbryson
Really? okay, thanks. I figured 1 or 2 hours of time as a cost would be fair,
but it doesn't seem to go down well. I had also planned on them not using it
for more than 1 month. So I guess I'll half it until people stop considering
it a joke :)

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bapi
Way too expensive compared to laucnhrock and lauchnrock-likes. For 99$ per
month, I have a full featured BaaS... not a homepage only.

------
jdiez17
Haha, you're charging 99$ a month for a template. That was a good joke.

~~~
prezjordan
No need to criticize their price so harshly. If it's too high, they won't make
money, and they'll learn.

They obviously think it's worth $99 - your sarcasm doesn't help anybody.

~~~
jdiez17
I'm not only criticising their price. I'm writing off this whole thing as a
'joke', because honestly, that is what it looks like. Have you looked at the
source code? You should take a look at this[1]. If you say "well, that's not
so bad - they don't know how to make two classes with different background
colours, but who cares about that? Bootstrap is totally justified", you'll
love this little gem[2]. That's right, they're including 265 kilobytes of
javascript (and violating jQuery's MIT license in the process, but I'll let
that slide) for a form validator.

If you want my honest advice: do not go near this thing. It was built by
developers who are either playing a very dark joke on HN or do not have a clue
about web development.

The 99$/month price tag is what makes me think it is a joke. I have asked a
friend of mine who does freelance web development from time to time and "about
a hundred bucks" is what he'd charge for developing a single page built with
Bootstrap.

[1]
[http://launchable.io/assets/application-f12be0d179f7589b0d58...](http://launchable.io/assets/application-f12be0d179f7589b0d588fa0c333f15d.css)
[2]
[http://launchable.io/assets/application-99f549a279e10ccc7e06...](http://launchable.io/assets/application-99f549a279e10ccc7e069b5f497b07be.js)

~~~
lfuller
Really not sure what you're on about here.

First off, trying to use their inclusion of Bootstrap as a negative comes off
as elitist nonsense. Second, the file you are discussing is actually 131KB
uncompressed and 43KB when gzipped. No issues there.

This sounds to me like a serious case of "I hate this because someone else is
making money off of it instead of me".

~~~
jdiez17
That's strange - I took another look at the JavaScript and it is indeed 131KB
when uncompressed. I could have sworn it was 265KB last night.

Anyway, including Bootstrap to use two containers with different background
colours is a lack of professionalism. Why can't you make it yourself? I'd
argue that it would take an experienced web developer approximately the same
time to do it without Bootstrap.

I don't really hate it because he's making money off of it, it's just that it
feels like a ripoff to me. For $99/month [1] you can get a new website,
specifically designed for you by a web developer, every month.

[1] it looks like he has realised $99/month is a joke.

