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Comment by mion | Hacker News Reader

I'm one of the founders of Abstra, a hackable no-code tool focused on making MVPs quickly aimed at coders (not necessarily developers).

Could you please share some feedback? Anything is extremely valuable, thanks!

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Hello, nice looking product and great copy. 2 points:

1. Make your screenshots english too, keeping the code structure and copy consistent. Unless you want to highlight i18n. But seeing Portuguese and English mixed sticks out to someone like me with a mildly severe case of OCD.

2. Can you mention the language I can use to hack or export the source code in? I assume it’s javascript but spelling it out at least once on the frontpage seems appropriate.

Good luck with it!

Thank you for the details! This is excellent, going straight into our backlog. :)

Hi, this looks really cool - slick UI and clear value proposition. Great job!

Just a couple of questions:

1) why the emphasis on “for MVPs”? It seems like it can be used to build a proper product long term. Adding “for MVPs” make it seem like end users should expect to redo whatever they’ve done if they get any traction.

2)How does this compare to Retool (or how do you intend to differentiate it)?

Retool is a cool product but it’s for a different use case. Retool is for building internal applications, this is for building MVPs.

And I assume they are focused on MVPs because you aren’t going to run a $10m company on a no-code solution, you’re going to have your own devs. But using a tool like this can help you build your business while you get to that point.

1) It is in fact possible but as noted previously, most people still wouldn't feel comfortable running their core business long-term on this kind of tool. However, no one worries about running their business on AWS and in fact our infrastructure is on top of them (like Heroku). So we need to grow a bit more before people are OK with that :)

2) Retool is tailored at internal tools, so you can't quite customize the UX as you'd want for something that is touching end users. Besides, it's quite expensive for the MVP use case because they price per user (we don't, our pricing page is coming soon).

I would prefer to use this sort of things for longer term but non-core functions (e.g. back office).

I agree with OP that it's a weird use case, as a focus on short-term MVP may limit user retention if you actually succeed (or is the idea that people will accidentally start to use it long term?).

Hi,

the idea seems interesting, but my 2 cents feedback: Allow people to use the product _without_ requiring a login, especially using third-party authentication mechanisms like Google OAuth or FB one. I do respect my own privacy and data, how do you threat users like me?

Thank you so much for the detailed feedback, this was flying under our radar. We just went with Google for simplicity because it was easier to implement and didn't realize lots of users would dislike it.

We have now implemented email & password and should add anonymous login soon!

Would you please provide other means of joining abstra, other than just google?

We have implemented this today, you can now use email & password. Please give it another try!

Are the sites created responsive?

yes

Yes, they're fully responsive. We use Flexbox underneath and no absolute positioning (which is actually a limitation for now).

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