
Show HN: ReadMe.io – Beautiful Documentation Made Easy - gkoberger
http://readme.io/home
======
gkoberger
Hey all, founder here! I've worked at a bunch of startups, and inevitably we'd
have to make a dev.startup.com and I'd wonder why we were re-inventing the
wheel each time. Every startup needs this, they all have the same basic
features, yet every startup has to do it themselves.

Ergo, ReadMe! I wanted to do more than just documentation; it's a full
developer hub for your community. The goal is to make it so any startup can
have beautiful, interactive, collaborative, Stripe-quality docs without
wasting valuable time.

HN has been a huge help while building it – I even picked the name after
finding the domain for sale on HN :)

~~~
anonfunction
How many people do you have working on the product? It's beautiful and I love
how fast it's progressing.

~~~
gkoberger
I'm the developer/designer, and gdillon is doing everything non-technical!

------
karanbhangui
Love the attention to details, like the focus event on the password field:
[https://dash.readme.io/login](https://dash.readme.io/login)

~~~
afarrell
I know! This just makes me want to hug something!

------
codezero
Heap Analytics is in the process of moving over our documentation to ReadMe.io
and so far the process has been amazing.

The ReadMe team is really responsive and helpful, the documentation is
beautiful and the interface goes above and beyond.

Just to give you an idea of how polished the service is, if you select a
background color that contrasts poorly with the text, the interface will let
you know. It also automatically generates a "white" logo for darker pages.
This has almost nothing to do with writing documentation, but has a lot to do
with making documents readable for users, which is easy to overlook if you're
not a designer.

See our docs: [http://docs.heapanalytics.com/](http://docs.heapanalytics.com/)

Right now they are a transcription from
[http://heapanalytics.com/docs](http://heapanalytics.com/docs) but we're
planning more robust docs and ReadMe will make that process a lot smoother.

------
benbristow
"ReadMe has made our lives infinitely easier. We've had it on our todo list
for over a year, and a day after finding ReadMe we had our docs launched.
We're super impressed. You guys have built a fucking awesome tool."

I don't know, but having swearing on a professional website is probably not
the best way to go. Looks like a nice startup though.

~~~
curiously
to be fair the people who get appalled by reading the f-word are probably not
the target customer. who drops f-word all the time? programmers,
entrepreneurs, designers, developers, managers. certainly not established 100
year old corporation, but most certainly the hip, fast moving, horny, 20~30
something olds who eat and breathe technology.

~~~
dkural
More like insecure, inarticulate brogrammers who are getting burnt out
overworking but think it's cool. I don't find swearing to be a conducive way
of creating an inclusive, thoughtful work environment. I had enough of this
fucking bullshit in college. Time to grow the fuck up.

~~~
dkural
Now that I re-read my comment, what I actually meant to say is - I had enough
bravado swearing by young people in college, and it is time to grow up and act
professionally - but now I realize the comment can be read to mean that I had
enough of non-swearing PC behavior in college, and it's ok to swear as an
adult at work. Interestingly; I stay at an equilibrium of points after roughly
equal upvotes and downvotes. I wonder if it would've swung -- or ++ if the
meaning was universally conveyed correctly by me.

------
jonahx
This looks nice but $60/mo seems incredibly pricey when there are also nice,
and similar, open source solutions such as
[http://ricostacruz.com/flatdoc/](http://ricostacruz.com/flatdoc/)

What extra value am I paying for?

~~~
amanvir_sangha
It saves a lot of developer time, you would just have to write the docs in
markdown, not have to worry about the layout, hosting or building another app
just to manage your docs. IMO it provides a lot of value for money. You could
always just use the free plan and then upgrade later. With markdown files, you
wouldn't really get locked into the platform.

~~~
phaer
As far as I see, Readme.io has additional features but everything you've
listed is available for free on readthedocs.org, built on Sphinx which is free
software.

~~~
prottmann
Why should they not coexist? Some want it for free and some want to pay for
e.g. support or additional features.

Last time i watch at RTD it was a plain .md project import from e.g. GitHub
only to show a plain documentation.

In Readme.io you can edit/write your docs, have blog function and an
integrated discussion plattform (for support your users). If you not need this
features, you can use RTD or directly sphinx.

------
nodesocket
We just released our API on apiary
([http://docs.commando.apiary.io](http://docs.commando.apiary.io)), but after
finding ReadMe.io on ProductHunt, we signed up for a paid plan that very day,
and are in the process of migrating over.

Our focus for our API documentation is beautifully designed and easy to read.
All the extra features of Apiary and Mashup such as proxying, rate limiting,
billing, and mocking requests are not really a priority for us. ReadMe.io is a
perfect fit.

~~~
forsaken
What made you decide to get a paid plan instead of the free plan?

~~~
nodesocket
Mainly, we are a startup ourself, and we know how much blood sweat and tears
goes into it. ReadMe.io provides us a lot of value, and thus we want to pay to
make sure that value stays around. Also, using our own domain is nice. :-)

------
susi22
The most important feature for documentation is /a really good/ search. I
can't see anything about searching on the site? Can you clarify?

IMO everybody should use [https://readthedocs.org/](https://readthedocs.org/)
for documentation since all the docs will be put into elasticsearch (backed by
Rackspace FYI) and the results when searching are of really good quality.

~~~
gkoberger
Agreed! ReadMe does search, with the added benefit of also searching user
questions, blog posts and errors.

------
aw3c2
This seems highly dependent on Javascript for displaying its (actually static)
content. As someone who likes his notebook fan to stay calm and not have
websites shove obnoxious things into her face and thus browses with JS off by
default, please do not require Javascript to read your documentation. JS is
nice for animations or truly dynamic content, but why require it for static
things like this?

~~~
agilebyte
I am just guessing, but the site uses CodeMirror (JS) to do syntax
highlighting.

~~~
aw3c2
Check out the examples, they load content via JS.

~~~
agilebyte
Oh sorry, you meant why does it use JS to load content and not why it uses JS
at all.

------
eclipxe
Looks like Slate -
[https://github.com/tripit/slate](https://github.com/tripit/slate)

------
hughstephens
Love it and agree it's beautiful, but as a startup, I disagree with the "it's
just 1hr dev a month" in cost. Setting up something from GitHub onto Heroku or
similar costs me about 2 hours (if that), ever. And if it can be updated
without too much of a pain, it's hardly going to take >1hr of dev work to
maintain the _project_ (update the docs perhaps...but you'll need to take the
time to do that regardless).

I totally also agree with the sentiment that people don't pay what most SaaS
apps are worth. We save users 3-6 hours per month and charge $13 for the
privilege, but even then people frequently complain about pricing (can't
please everyone).

Just my 2c. Love the concept and could see myself using it, but the price
point is just too much beyond free, compared to DIYing....but I'm an open
source person, so that could just be internal biases.

------
dskaletsky
We've been using Readme.io for our documentation for a while now
([http://api.knowtify.io](http://api.knowtify.io)). Love the team, but mostly
I love that the non-technical folks (ie - me) can maintain/update our API docs
without engineering having to time on it. It's one of the last things
engineers want to spend time on (and one of the last things I'd want them to
spend time on)...

------
moondowner
Mozilla is also using ReadMe for Brick:
[http://brick.mozilla.io/](http://brick.mozilla.io/)

------
frankdenbow
Really well done product. Using it for my site now.

What are the future plans for making this into a developer hub?

~~~
gkoberger
Thanks Frank!

We've already built out a bunch of community features to make it more than
"just docs", but we have a lot of things we're really excited about.

We want to do things like have an "application dashboard" (where users can
manage API keys), some basic (optional!) API management, onboarding "wizard"
and more – the whole developer experience should be cohesive.

------
uncoder0
Will I be able to export my docs? I'm not really willing to put my docs on
readme.io without knowing I can export all my work if you all go under. I'm
currently an Apiary for Companies subscriber and value that feature but,
prefer your design.

~~~
gkoberger
Yup! There's an Export Docs button on the settings page.

------
dannyolinsky
We (StatusPage.io) are also in the process of getting our docs switched over.
Greg helped out with the initial migration which was awesome. Definitely
recommend other SaaS companies have a look.

------
ing33k
Looks awesome. I am currently using Swagger to document a REST API. can I
import from the popular Swagger format ( YML) to your platform ?

~~~
gkoberger
Swagger is on the short-term roadmap! In the slightly shorter future (AKA it's
working now, although we disabled it for new signups due to overload), we
support apidocjs.com

~~~
adamjcooper
This looks very nice.

Since you mentioned Swagger--We've started using API Blueprint for internal
API design and collaboration. Do you have any plans to support importing from
API Blueprint?

------
callmeed
I've seen a couple of these projects lately. They are really cool and I see
the need.

What seems to be missing (and is a no-brainer in my opinion) are auto-
generated client libraries. It seems like you could _easily_ create Ruby,
Python, and PHP libraries if you know their API endpoints, methods and
parameters. At the very least, you could create a starting point for them.

~~~
gkoberger
100% agreed. I wanted to get that feature done for the HN launch, but it
didn't make the cut.

We have a lot of APIs using us now, so we're going to revamp our API endpoint
builder with our new knowledge, and this will be a huge part of it. Check back
in about a week :)

------
arenaninja
The code blocks are really something else in terms of looks. Is that a custom
look, or is it some open source plugin?

~~~
Kiro
What's so special about it? Where can I see an example?

~~~
gkoberger
Here's a screenshot if you don't want to sign up (although signing up is
pretty painless and completely free :) )

[http://cl.ly/image/020W0r1x3J1n](http://cl.ly/image/020W0r1x3J1n)

------
emilsedgh
I suggest you guys to host documentations of some major free software
projects. It benefits both you and them. They get nice documentation, you guys
get some attention.

Edit: Feel free to contact me if you like the idea and would like to do it for
KDE project. I'm a minor contributor and I might be able to ease the process.

~~~
gdillon
Hey, I'm on the ReadMe team: We love open source. We've started working with a
few great projects already. Check out the Ghost.org documentation (and reach
out to their CTO, Hannah, she's great!) and the Brick by Mozilla docs are
linked elsewhere in this thread. There are a few more that have yet to launch.
Shoot support@readme.io a note if you'd like to get KDE started.

------
ccleve
How does this connect to an API? Does it read Swagger? Or is all the setup
(paths, parameters, etc) done manually?

~~~
gkoberger
Currently, you can do it manually or using
[http://apidocjs.com](http://apidocjs.com). (The latter is disabled for new
accounts due to heavy load; will be back this week.)

Swagger (and a few other even cooler options) are on their way!

~~~
prottmann
Creator of apiDoc here.... really nice that you use apiDoc :-)

I really like your nice and clean template.

A similar project was in my mind since i create apiDoc, but due the lack of
time i am happy now that you create such a project.

Will link to your site soon, so that apiDoc users can see your good
alternative for creating and hosting a documentation.

~~~
gkoberger
Awesome! I looked at a lot of "standards" (Blueprint, RAML, etc), and yours
was the first that felt right.

I'd love to talk more! My email is greg@readme.io. Awesome work on apiDoc;
it's been great.

------
reinier
Reminds me of Manula [http://www.manula.com/](http://www.manula.com/) which
makes something that looks like this. And has been around for 2 years (since
2012). There aren't many solutions that tackle this problem, so keep up the
great work!

------
twistedpair
Wow, wasn't expecting all the HN discount graphics on the site. I guess you
either (1) are really fast at updating your UI and pricing, or were (2) really
counting on this getting upvoted into the HN main page.

------
afarrell
I am currently working on improving the documentation for Conda, Bokeh, Numba,
and a bunch of other scipy-related tools. This looks pretty spiffy. How hard
is it to import existing documentation?

------
ccallebs
Your example page is kinda busted when scrolling horizontally. (on Chrome 37)

[http://imgur.com/HmzC1v0](http://imgur.com/HmzC1v0)

Looks good otherwise though.

------
samplusplus
This looks awesome. I can't wait to start using it!

------
innguest
This looks beautiful and I have been testing your product yesterday and today.
I have the following suggestions, which if implemented would convert the
company I work for to your product. :)

1\. Saving Basic Auth credentials so the user doesn't have to paste it in each
time they test an endpoint.

2\. A way to automatically populate the request form fields by clicking on an
example request.

Keep it up; all my colleagues think it's a beautiful and well done tool.

~~~
gkoberger
1\. Will be done ASAP! (the multiple alerts is a huge pain)

2\. Same

Shoot me an email (support@readme.io) and I'll keep you updated on the
progress of these two features. And in the meantime, I'd love to pick your
brain on your use-case.

