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Comment by _fat_santa | Hacker News Reader

I think one challenge that you will face is that Webflow is a SaaS app while your app I have to host somewhere. If I'm a non-technical user then I have no idea how to host this thing myself and will just go to a competitor. On the other hand if I'm a developer then I have to weigh the time it would take to host and maintain the app versus just building a regular react app from scratch.

My suggestion is keep offering it as OSS, but offer a hosted version as well.

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> If I'm a non-technical user then I have no idea how to host this thing myself and will just go to a competitor.

This is a good suggestion.

My plan is: 1. We start with packaging the Electron app as a downloadable. You'll still have to run your localhost app with it.

2. Then we'll add some UI support for cloning and running your project directly from the app.

3. The last step is to provide hosting for your app but I don't think we have the resources to do that well at the moment.

What do you think about this plan?

Since you mentioned cloning, feel free to hack on this https://github.com/beenotung/web-clone

This looks nice.

Sorry for off-loading the research to you but how does it compare to SingleFile (Chrome extension based)? I can't tell what the output would be.

https://github.com/gildas-lormeau/SingleFile

"My suggestion is keep offering it as OSS, but offer a hosted version as well."

I would think, that is the obvious monetization plan?

Yes, that is the most obvious plan. I want to find a community-friendly way to do this.

I know Supabase has a similar and successful monetization plan but I know some take issue with the way they offer their hosting.

There is nothing to take issue, open source projects are allowed to monetize the same way as closed source projects. Your first thought needs to be how to create a sustainable project otherwise you won't have a community.

> Your first thought needs to be how to create a sustainable project otherwise you won't have a community.

I agree. Do you have any tips here besides being good with answering questions, documentation, and otherwise continuing to work on the project?

Honestly, marketing. Great open source projects die because the creator doesn't know or doesn't want to marketing. Your app looks great which is already way above average in open source so I'm hoping you can succeed in creating a sustainable business already it!

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