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Comment by sccxy | Hacker News Reader

That must be worst website ever made.

Zero information available on mobile.

I thought it is some kind of portfolio site that does not work on mobile.

Not a mobile issue. I am on desktop and had no idea what this service was because nothing on the initial UI explained what we were looking at. I went and double-checked when people here were talking about pricing and VMs. From the home page, I figured it was some text-based game or experiment and closed the page.

It looks like some people who work there are watching this thread, so to them I say: You have got to explain what this is, not just say "the disk persists..." and expect people to dig deeper. Most aren't that curious.

It's odd to see how people are not accustomed to plain websites anymore. You click the 'About' link in the footer, and get a direct explanation of what it is, pricing and the entire documentation.

why do we need to click anything? Why wouldn't the relevant information be there in the initial view?

Gatekeeping mechanism. This effectively filters useless traffic and trash contacts.

You’re right that it probably filtered out a lot of traffic. Traffic that may have converted to users if they didn’t meet such a useless landing page

You truly, honestly believe that to be the real problem? Come on. You don't need to do whatever this is.

Even the 'About' page doesn't have much information either though

All the About page contains is:

> exe.dev is a subscription service that gives you virtual machines, with persistent disks, quickly and without fuss. These machines are immediately accessible over HTTPS, with sensible and secure defaults. You can share your web server as easily as you can share a Google Doc. With built-in optional authentication, so you can focus on your thing.

> Your VMs share CPU/RAM. Create as many VMs as you like with the resources you have.

As (probably?) their target audience, this is very clear to me. It’s a service to create persistent VMs and ssh into them. What’s missing?

Granted, navigation on mobile could be better – the “All docs” breadcrumb is the only way to find the pricing and rest of the docs. On desktop it is clearer.

What is the purpose of the landing page of this site, if it conveys nothing? Sure, 'about' explains what it is, but then from there I need to go back to a page that's called 'all docs' to see the link to pricing.

Don't defend this. It's not plain. It's obtuse.

A properly designed plain site will have the following text front and centre on it's hero:

"virtual machines in the cloud with persistent disks and sudo, starting from $20/month."

Given that this is an AD for the ten millionth VPS service, it should be upfront about the value proposition. Most people think its a game or something interesting and when they find out what it is they're disappointed. You dont want people associating that with your brand.

>From the home page, I figured it was some text-based game or experiment and closed the page.

Same, my first thought was that it's some pentesting game where you're given a VM and your task is to somehow break it. The line "the disk persists. you have sudo" sounds like game rules.

I thought it was one of those game sites where you had to "hack" it every step of the way to advance the next level.

The website has a huge `ssh exe.dev`, so I'd expect that running that works, but:

    SSH keys are required to access exe.dev.

Why put an SSH command in a huge banner if I have to go around and register before I can use it anyway?

you don't need to register the key. just have some sort of key.

It's kind of funny our experiences are so diffent. I almost immediately surmised it's some sort of on the fly generated vm you can access via a ssh jumpserver. Which it is! It's actually really neat. It's quite obvious that the authors want us to just ssh into it and try it out first.

> I almost immediately surmised it's some sort of on the fly generated vm you can access via a ssh jumpserver

How? It just says `ssh exe.dev`. Unless you are clairvoyant.

"ssh exe.dev" is exactly the Linux command you would use to connect there via ssh. And it's stylized like command prompt.

Except it doesn't trigger the keyboard on my phone and I can't interact with it.

It's not interactive. It's just an extremely brief brochure for the actual service, which is available via SSH. All the useful copy is under the About link at the bottom, which is so light as to fail WCAG contrast standards.

Ah, that makes sense, thank you!

The question wasn't "how to ssh into a server", it was "how did you figure out what it it from looking at the website"

"exe.dev is a subscription service that gives you virtual machines, with persistent disks, quickly and without fuss."

scroll down and hit the "about" link. I do agree though the landing page could be more resourceful.

I'm not going to SSH to a random server.

That's my point, the home/landing page tells you nothing other than "try to ssh into this van"

All a malicious website has to do to be convincing is to have a more conventional landing page then?

The disk and sudo mentioned are good enough clues, then you have the about.

Where did I say that, that wasn't a topic I just commented on the *entirety* of the content on the landing page.

> The disk and sudo mentioned are good enough clues

I mean, you do you and let's agree to disagree about a good landing page UX.

tbh maybe this service doesn't want you as a customer if you can't figure this out. it seems like you'd be an above-average support burden

You made me lol

Are you honestly suggesting that startups should be picky about taking on customers?

That’s probably the oddest thing to read on a tech VC forum.

The lading page was garbage. It’s forgivable because designing goods landing pages is hard. But inventing wacky ideas about why a bad landing page might have some hidden genius, isnt constructive feedback

Why are you giving in to such a troll/AI/low effort comment. If the page was some genius implication and I were too stupid to get it then his comment had a good point. The page has a random ssh command and this dude thinks it's genius.

> I'm not going to SSH to a random server.

Opening a random website likely exposes you to more risk.

Likely? Definitely.

Because it literally tells you what to do

How to ssh into a server isn’t a question, it’s a command.

Being pedantic, I meant statement not command.

You are not the target audience if "how" was not apparent to you

I became target audience after I had a cup of coffee...

I am the target audience and I still had no idea what the site was promoting from just the landing page.

Someone else said it's not actually interactive. So which is it?

I mean, I've done engineering work for the last 15 years on most layers of the stack. Seeing an ssh command into a fancy url does not tell me anything about what that is going to accomplish. But yeah, you must be right.

The "how" is very obvious, but not the "why". I'd assume this much would be very apparent from the OPs complaint, but apparently not I guess...

Yep, with no privacy policy published.

Exactly.

Agree, I finally found information via

Homepage -> blog -> docs -> "all docs" button:

https://exe.dev/docs/list

Which has an about and pricing etc.

That is very counterintuitive to just find out what this is.

I wouldn’t go that far but some link to pricing and documentation would be useful. I have absolutely no idea what the offering is here without those pieces of info.

Yeah. I managed to backtrack my way to the pricing through the about page.

It's really annoying when you're interested in a product but can't find a price.

Their pricing page says that it's currently a free trial.

https://exe.dev/docs/pricing

That link isn’t really easy to find from the home page is a large part of the gripe here. You have to click About in the footer, remain curious enough to click All Docs on that page (which Pricing isn’t usually a part of “docs”), then all you get is a Pricing paragraph that says “Plan options for individuals, teams, and enterprises.” Not very helpful until you realize the heading text “Pricing” is a plain colored link to this pricing page with more info. The whole UX of this site is garbage and what has fostered so many gripes here.

I was confused too. I first thought I should open up my terminal and just enter `ssh dev.exe` and this would be some kind of ssh-based interface? Honestly my first thought is that it would be one of those cool dev hack / art projects like the old starwars traceroute to 216.81.59.173

It didn't read as a company with products at all to me from the front page. Just a cryptic " The disk persists. You have sudo." with links to "Login" and "About * Blog * Discord" --- no pricing link, which made me think it was a weird hobby / art.

ssh exe.dev works

The exact text on mobile is

> ssh exe.dev

> The disk persists. You have sudo.

I've seen enough of these kinds of services in my lifetime that I also immediately knew what it was, for example sdf.org, which is one of the OG services, and various "tilde" services like tilde.town.

I thought the same, but it’s not quite like either of those things. It has their same benefits but way more flexibility with its VM model. It offers auth, and will forward most ports for developer access.

All this was totally lost on me from looking at the website. “I already have tilde and sdf, I don’t need this.”

If I hadn’t looked into the comments I would still think that.

I can see

> ssh exe.dev

> The disk persists. You have sudo.

on mobile

It is showing non-stop loading blink but nothing happens.

And cannot open keyboard if that is needed. It is like big CTA but does not do anything.

Very strange landing page for maybe cool product.

It’s not a loading blink, it’s just some text telling you what the service is

it's a cursor ready blink

I think knowing what the ssh command does is a pretty low bar for this platform

That as my first thought too. Landing page may as well be an empty page

Hyperbole much? I'm on mobile and think it's great. I wish more websites were like this. Just straight to the point instead of all the regular marketing fluff you need to decipher.

pricing information and what it does/how it works is not marketing fluff

I thought it was a web game.

It is not ”to the point”.

Agreed. Target audience will understand instantly

This thread seems to reflect how the HN audience has shifted — less commenters know what `ssh example.com` does and more commenters concerned about privacy policy.

i'm not sure what you mean; the demo runs with the ssh command in the centre, there's an 'about' link at the bottom, and that links to a docs index

it's fiine i think

Come on guys, it literally says 'ssh exe.dev'

Yeah, and it really is not I would want to do, just like diving into unknown water that sparkles weird.. It's an instinct, can get past it but to get more info about the service... nah.

That's okay, you're not in the target audience is all.

If their target audience is someone who remotes into a random machine because a opaque landing page them to, it's probably not gonna work very well. Those people are too busy sniffing glue.

It would be funny if it was literally the best website I've seen in like a year...

... which it is.

Did you try clicking one link into "about" and reading one paragraph of text?

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