Show HN: Websites and Apps Built Without a Single Line of Code
builtwithoutcode.com
builtwithoutcode.com
Not saying this would happen with this company but if you don't own the code you are just (as another poster put it) renting your app. If the company you are renting from goes under or raises their prices you are out of luck and the cost of recovering might actually be higher than the cost of having just used a traditional platform in the first place.
Not saying I don't believe in those systems. I was one of the founding engineers at a company that did WYSIWYG website creation tools in the early 2000s (think Squarespace only not). I just think customers need to be aware of the concept of vendor lock in and data portability.
Edit: another important point is time to market. If your intent is to use an app like this to prove product market fit before going out and building something custom that might make a lot of sense depending on your use case.
Consider the trend we're seeing where a company is acquired and ultimately shut down. Those "promises" are (likely) no longer even the founders decision. What happens then?
Edit: it may also be a good idea to disclose that you're the founder/CEO of a Bubble partner.
That just means they'd need to charge more than their estimated customer lifetime value to make it worthwhile. If they thought a customer typically stays on the platform for 18 months then they could charge the equivalent of 19 months of fees to download the code in order to make more money than they would hosting the app themselves. If they factored in the cost saving from keeping the app running and supported they could charge much less and still make more money than they would hosting the app.
This is a really important point IMO, and a major problem with the business model of most "app builder" type platforms.
Owning the code matters even to non-developers. Anything beyond a static prototype can be expected to require custom programming at some point, but it's typically impossible if you are locked in as a "renter" on a closed WYSIWYG platform.
I've worked on a couple of projects that have tried to solve parts of this, most recently a product called React Studio. It just launched in version 1.0:
It's a visual front-end design tool that export high-quality React code and complete projects using Facebook's "create-react-app" toolchain (Node, Webpack, Babel).
The issue is the market is bimodal and there's not really any room for a middle ground. Developers prefer to have full control over their architecture and they have varied and evolving opinions. Non-technical folks tend to churn once they reach the "download your code" step.
Ultimately I think the best software will be created by the developers, who don't need a tool like this.
I suppose that's the motivation behind hackermake.com, somewhere that people could show their ideas and the end result would be available to everyone. But such things requires a vibrant community behind them and building/attracting such community is quite difficult.
Would be very interested in hearing your thought on such approaches.
I really want something like this but not quite this.
In my mind you have a visual builder like this that puts out maybe some bootstrap code. (Jetstrap or Bootply).
Then the back end is already hotwired up to something like Django/Rails with a database, hosted somewhere like DO, VULTR etc.
And you can move any of these pieces around, so you can move from DO to VULTR or move databases from Postgres to Mysql, by clicking a button.
You have access to all the code.
It works pretty much like bubble but out of open sources tools that are cobbled together and you have the access.
"Here is your site!"
"Great, let's add authentication."
"Cool, do you want to login with Google, Twitter or Facebook?"
"Github..."
"Ooh, add it to the list..."
And then you're waiting. This doesn't just happen once, it happens constantly on all kinds of things you need. This way you can go in and change it around.
You already have a nice CSS pattern, you just drop it in.
Yeah this is a big focal point for v1 - providing an avenue for developers to write in any features that aren't natively provided in the editor. I'm currently playing around with a "code view" that shows you the compiled, unminified version of whichever component you're working on and allows you to modify it directly. The plan is to save those modifications as a diff that can be re-integrated when the component is built. Obviously it's not quite as simple as that but my hope is that the editor will be able to gradually add new workflows for missing features but without constraining developers.
One thing everyone wants to avoid is lockin. I have the feeling now that if AWS raises prices, I can go to Azure. If Postgres adds some new RestFul feature, I can switch to it.
If I have to use your solution for the long term, and you are charging for it (which, of course, you should), I don't want to be bound to that solution forever. What if you sell the service and the buyer shuts it down?
You can't do everything well. If the main thing you do is an MVP producing service, that is great.
Add on to that. You might end up adding a whole different set of services such as paying for user feedback or user analysis or something else.
Edit: Just to be clear - I don't mean to advise you on what the service should or should not be. I just mean that it will evolve in ways you may not anticipate. The market will pick and choose what it wants. The things you initially think are small might turn out to be more profitable than the things you initially think are big.
I don't want to lock in users either though, so I'm aiming to find a good point where the product provides enough value that users would prefer to keep using it over exporting and coding.
If the complexity of the app is the same, won't it be just as involved to build with this alternative interface?
The Achilles' heel of these platforms tends to be the edges; when user needs a bit more than what it can provide out-of-the-box, can they extend it, and without creating a monster? I mean, we build custom business software based on a modular platform, and the story always goes like,
"We need a few POS terminals for a store." ... installs pre-built module ... "And an integrated ecommerce store." ... installs pre-built module ... "And the POS should integrate with an NFC reader to allow purchases with a shop card." ... and then we present a quote for the custom integration.
Each visual part of the site, in each page, has a component. That component may be just static text or image, or it can run code before rendering something.
That should be enough to start.
The code run in each component should be able to talk to a database (locally or over the wire), act on global page parameters or React to form submissions.
Since each component is independent, it should be clear to the user what he is trying to do in that component specifically. Since it is clear, the technical support could tackle that problem in no time.
I honestly do not see a big difference compared to other services which offer you pre-built blogs, websites etc.