I killed it off right before launch actually. I got spooked by potential spam. I think you're right this is the move after I get through some launch stuff.
This is solid, I'll show my appreciation by giving constructive criticism. This is after giving it the "120 second glance" that I imagine is how most people scan projects quickly without a proper deep dive:
* First impression: this is a website builder that looks and feels like many other website builders, with some advantages like low onboarding friction, and AI integration. As a solo project reaching par is a triumph. But I think if you continue to diverge your marketing page from a default SaaS startup style you can separate yourself more from the pack AND build a reputation as a better design tool instead of another design tool. Of course the product is more important than the landing page, but perception is perception. You do for example show personality in some of the loading pages which I personally enjoy.
* I got about 4 hours of sleep last night. I was thrilled when I could click into your app and immediately play around without having to register or experience other forms of friction. But complex design interfaces are overwhelming to me. How do I learn your tool quickly? Why should I invest the time to learn your tool versus other great tools? These are questions I'm left with after a quick scan. There are a lot of developer tools vying for my time. And I imagine their all working on AI integrations if they don't have it already.
* As a SWE I don't like Tailwind. I don't like the syntax soup, I don't like having to memorize less conventional syntax because my brain already has enough trivia in it, and I prefer small indie projects that are maintained by extremely small teams with limited resources. As a result I do not reach for Tailwind (despite having paid the $300 or whatever for their membership!). What about developers who don't want to use Tailwind?
* As a potential business customer, can I depend on you? Where will this product be in multiple years? What's the process to transition from a competing tool? What's the process for transitioning to a different tool? Enterprise customers, where the real money is, care about consistency and managing liability sometimes (often?) more then the potential value of a new tool. Consider looking into various compliance licensing, industry audits, and enterprise features, that will be needed to attract investors who want returns based on enterprise sales, not consumer sales.
I wrote this up because I like your project and hope you succeed. Hopefully it helps!
Super true. I know... I bought this domain a long time ago for another project that never launched and swore to use it one day. It's a short .io that is easy to remember. I agree it does not match well
Thank you so much. Please just make a free site and add your email with notifications enabled or signup for the newsletter. I'll be posting some pretty detailed and mind-blowing updates soon
Front end devs are officially on notice at this point. If you're someone who makes their living doing little more than design -> code (and there are many of us still), it's time to upskill or be left in the dust. The days of writing markup/styles by hand are over.
looks pretty sick, if you don't mind me asking. How long did it take you to build this and how are you marketing this? how many paying customers do you have so far may I ask
Thanks! It's been a fun side hobby project for me. I typically crank out contract work day in and day out.
I got the proof of concept done in a month or so. It took a little longer since I wanted to build it on 100% Cloudflare Workers for ideally low cost, scale, and speed. Other low-pressure things I was trying too.
It has sat around for almost a 1/2 year now unlaunched where I have just added small features here and there.
Over the next few months, I plan to release a ridiculous amount of high quality Tailwind themes for people to start from amongst some other marketing efforts.
This looks sick! How easy is it to add custom stuff into the pages? Say I've got a really cool three.js project I want to showcase. Is there much work to add it in?
Congrats on launching! I love the design and the clever loading messages ("Harambe would love this"). Do you plan to support an export option if I want to self-host?
Really cool! Is it strictly a playground? Entering a subdomain at the start gives me the impression that I can use the result as an actual website, perhaps there's already a path for that but I wasn't sure.
Thanks Ryan. Great question. It's more of "build a full site via small Tailwind playgrounds". I chose that language to best describe quickly the idea. Hope that helps clarify
It looks like you’re using the same domain for the app and user generated content? You usually want to host the user sites on a separate domain because the whole domain can be penalized in search engines for the content users create.
I was thing this myself. Who is this for. I might recommend this for someone who needs to do a pop up concert / event venue site. Or a limited promotion for a niche presence. Any other use cases that people can think of?
No image uploads on the free plan is tough. Might drive more upgrades but makes using the free plan untenable for me
Might be smarter to limit to a few images because 0 will likely push a lot of people away
I killed it off right before launch actually. I got spooked by potential spam. I think you're right this is the move after I get through some launch stuff.
This is solid, I'll show my appreciation by giving constructive criticism. This is after giving it the "120 second glance" that I imagine is how most people scan projects quickly without a proper deep dive:
* First impression: this is a website builder that looks and feels like many other website builders, with some advantages like low onboarding friction, and AI integration. As a solo project reaching par is a triumph. But I think if you continue to diverge your marketing page from a default SaaS startup style you can separate yourself more from the pack AND build a reputation as a better design tool instead of another design tool. Of course the product is more important than the landing page, but perception is perception. You do for example show personality in some of the loading pages which I personally enjoy.
* I got about 4 hours of sleep last night. I was thrilled when I could click into your app and immediately play around without having to register or experience other forms of friction. But complex design interfaces are overwhelming to me. How do I learn your tool quickly? Why should I invest the time to learn your tool versus other great tools? These are questions I'm left with after a quick scan. There are a lot of developer tools vying for my time. And I imagine their all working on AI integrations if they don't have it already.
* As a SWE I don't like Tailwind. I don't like the syntax soup, I don't like having to memorize less conventional syntax because my brain already has enough trivia in it, and I prefer small indie projects that are maintained by extremely small teams with limited resources. As a result I do not reach for Tailwind (despite having paid the $300 or whatever for their membership!). What about developers who don't want to use Tailwind?
* As a potential business customer, can I depend on you? Where will this product be in multiple years? What's the process to transition from a competing tool? What's the process for transitioning to a different tool? Enterprise customers, where the real money is, care about consistency and managing liability sometimes (often?) more then the potential value of a new tool. Consider looking into various compliance licensing, industry audits, and enterprise features, that will be needed to attract investors who want returns based on enterprise sales, not consumer sales.
I wrote this up because I like your project and hope you succeed. Hopefully it helps!
Tailwind is amazing for LLMs. You can't beat it:
- concise
- inline with the rest of the code
I am willing to bet it's going to become a standard because of its existing popularity + the insane tailwinds that codegen give it.
Facts
This seems like a very capable and solidly built project. Well done!
That being said, I can't wrap my head around the naming. Why tips.io? What do tips mean in this context?
(PS: Excuse me if it's covered in the promo video, I'm currently in a zoom call and I can't put any audio through right now)
Super true. I know... I bought this domain a long time ago for another project that never launched and swore to use it one day. It's a short .io that is easy to remember. I agree it does not match well
Good lord, man, this is a _side_ project? Most impressive. Nothing much to add except to say I am most impressed.
Haha, thanks so much! It did get a bit feature rich and has sat around forever as it wasn't my main source/priority for income.
Wow, this is ridiculously polished for a one-man-show side project. Massive kudos.
Do you have a write-up somewhere of how you built this? I think there is a lot that I (and probably many here on HN) can learn from you.
Thank you so much. Please just make a free site and add your email with notifications enabled or signup for the newsletter. I'll be posting some pretty detailed and mind-blowing updates soon
Front end devs are officially on notice at this point. If you're someone who makes their living doing little more than design -> code (and there are many of us still), it's time to upskill or be left in the dust. The days of writing markup/styles by hand are over.
looks pretty sick, if you don't mind me asking. How long did it take you to build this and how are you marketing this? how many paying customers do you have so far may I ask
Thanks! It's been a fun side hobby project for me. I typically crank out contract work day in and day out.
I got the proof of concept done in a month or so. It took a little longer since I wanted to build it on 100% Cloudflare Workers for ideally low cost, scale, and speed. Other low-pressure things I was trying too.
It has sat around for almost a 1/2 year now unlaunched where I have just added small features here and there.
Over the next few months, I plan to release a ridiculous amount of high quality Tailwind themes for people to start from amongst some other marketing efforts.
This looks sick! How easy is it to add custom stuff into the pages? Say I've got a really cool three.js project I want to showcase. Is there much work to add it in?
Congrats on launching! I love the design and the clever loading messages ("Harambe would love this"). Do you plan to support an export option if I want to self-host?
You can already backup your site as either static files or the original "tipsio" files.
Very useful, I did not see this right away. Thanks!
Nick! Congrats on the launch. Super solid. I tried getting ado.tips.io but looks like domain needs to be at least 4 characters long :(
This is incredible work for one person. Keen to try it out but like the website might be getting hugged.
You seeing downtime errors? The platform is 100% serverless in Cloudflare Workers, so fortunately mostly hug proof
The content of the editor and the site preview were not loading previously. It seems to be resolved now.
I like how in the icon demo, it shows how you can replace X (formerly Twitter). Nice.
Looks really nice.
Some very minor feedback: the animations are a bit too busy for my tastes
Really cool! Is it strictly a playground? Entering a subdomain at the start gives me the impression that I can use the result as an actual website, perhaps there's already a path for that but I wasn't sure.
Thanks Ryan. Great question. It's more of "build a full site via small Tailwind playgrounds". I chose that language to best describe quickly the idea. Hope that helps clarify
It looks like you’re using the same domain for the app and user generated content? You usually want to host the user sites on a separate domain because the whole domain can be penalized in search engines for the content users create.
Yep. I also own tipsio.com but I figure for remembrance/launch reasons it's not super big deal right now. SEO play has not happened yet.
Who is it for?
I was thing this myself. Who is this for. I might recommend this for someone who needs to do a pop up concert / event venue site. Or a limited promotion for a niche presence. Any other use cases that people can think of?
Imagine coming back to the site and there being 30+ free themes for various websites and uses.
The people who benefit most would be:
- I can't dev websites => Go to Squarespace
- I dev tiny bit of websites/or smart enough to figure stuff out => Tips.io
- I am a dev => Go custom
Anyone who needs a site!
Big winners right now are developers or low-code (just HTML...) people who need:
- want to just pick a site, tweak, and go
- people who want an easy and free link tree or carrd.co style site without limitations
- splash pages, 1 pagers, microsites, coming soon pages, blogs/profile with full HTML, etc...
- people/orgs who need to do high volume sites