Re: the features that you mentioned - these are definitely on my list. I thought that getting the product out there sooner was preferable to waiting longer at this stage. But I fully resonate with you, and I’m working on releasing them shortly.
Re: pricing, this is something I gave a lot of thought to, and I came to the conclusion that instead of participating in a race to the bottom, I prefer that the paying customers really see value in my product. I would like to offer a more generous free plan and find the right niche in the design field for those paying customers.
With this in mind, here’s a 50% discount code for any plan, for this community and anyone who would like to support this project: HN50
Re: the mailing list, it’s a great idea. I’ll implement a subscription list soon for the people who are interested. In the meantime, you can send me an email at contact@vecti.com with your email, and you will be the first person to get notified of the product progress.
They won’t see value unless they try. And by lowering price (maybe for a year or two?) you will compete strongly with figma and other design tools. Then you can increase price and see who sees value and who doesn’t.
When I started the project I was having a hard time finding a good domain name for the project. Some time later, I came up with this name, and found it for sale on some website for ~800€. I figured it was something I could do, but fortunately I ended up on dynadot's website where it was for sale for a fraction of the price.
I think I got lucky while doing all the work :)
Thanks for your input. I'm happy that Figma works for you, and I'm not trying to put Figma out of business :)
I’m sincerely humbled to be compared to such an iconic product as Figma.
I started this project as a personal endeavour to scratch my own itch during the pandemic, out of a personal desire to contribute to the field of UX design that I’ve always been passionate about, but at the same time I don’t intend on working as a solo developer for much longer.
Some of the features you’ve listed, are currently being worked on, which are going to be launched very soon.
I applaud your effort, and I love to see others practice the love of building. Though my original comment didn't suggest this, I would love to see your project succeed and gather a user base. Competition is always good, and this is a very solid start for a project.
> endeavour to scratch my own itch during the pandemic
Was this an "itch to build something", or an itch as in an annoyance you had with an existing tool? I'm skeptic of whether bloated UI is an itch many users have with figma or similar, which is why I'm critical of presenting this as the selling point for Vecti. If you manage to find an itch many people do have, and you provide the salve, you'll attract paying users.
Thanks for this question. I'm humbled by the comparison. I have been following penpot for a while and I appreciate the work they've been doing.
The main difference lies in the rendering engine. Penpot relies on an SVG engine, which limits performance as project complexity grows.
Vecti is built on canvas and WebAssembly (the same architecture used by Figma). This gives us raw performance advantages, allowing you to handle complex, heavy design systems without the lag you might experience in SVG-based tools.
An MCP server is definitely on my radar. I've seen some really cool workflows coming out of Figma too. Being a one-man show though, prioritizing what to build next is always the tough part. But it's on the list, appreciate your suggestion!
Thank you, and I know exactly what you mean. I myself have rewritten the entire engine ar least three times until I was happy with the performance and the overall outcome. It’s been a long learning experience. As a developer at heart, this project scratched every itch I had from a software engineering perspective :)
Yes. This. I read a post-mortem about developing v2 of an app last month because getting insight into the thought process of the builder is super interesting (to me). It's probably not for most people, but it definitely has an audience.
Thanks for your honest and thoughtful feedback.
Re: the features that you mentioned - these are definitely on my list. I thought that getting the product out there sooner was preferable to waiting longer at this stage. But I fully resonate with you, and I’m working on releasing them shortly.
Re: pricing, this is something I gave a lot of thought to, and I came to the conclusion that instead of participating in a race to the bottom, I prefer that the paying customers really see value in my product. I would like to offer a more generous free plan and find the right niche in the design field for those paying customers.
With this in mind, here’s a 50% discount code for any plan, for this community and anyone who would like to support this project: HN50
Re: the mailing list, it’s a great idea. I’ll implement a subscription list soon for the people who are interested. In the meantime, you can send me an email at contact@vecti.com with your email, and you will be the first person to get notified of the product progress.
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