Show HN: Brix for Bootstrap | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Brix for Bootstrap

brix.io

53 pointsko_hol53 comments

I have yet to see one of these Bootstrap-centric editors that is worth a monthly fee. Bootstrap is so well laid out and so well documented that I can't see many instances where this would that much of a time saver or worth the premium. Presumably a shop that is churning out basic site after basic site may benefit from the ease of use but I can't imagine that is a big market.

You should try http://pinegrow.com (I'm the author). It's a downloadable desktop app sold for $50 (no monthly fee).

It's the same for me. Bootstrap is so easy to build upon that it's much easier to just code it up than bang my head against another tool. I hardly need to write any CSS besides the minor customization of colors/fonts.

Maybe it's useful for people selling templates for a living, but they will most likely hit the limits of the tool pretty quickly (if they want to up their game).

I'm curious. What kind of users currently use this? Are they devs, marketing people or someone else?

You should probably have someone proofread the English on your site.

There's something really distinctive about the kind of English that Polish people (especially the ones confident in their language skills) use in writing, it's really easy to tell.

It's easy to spot a native "slavic" speaker. There is no concept of definite article, so they tend to skip it.

I was going to criticize you for being overly critical but then I looked through the English and this is a real problem. My advice would be to get the English proofread as some people may suspect the final product is associated with the English on the landing page (it doesn't look like it is, but it may give the wrong expression). Examples:

"we gain more" --> "we gained more"

"more than 15 years I design apps" --> "more than 15 years I have designed apps"

"more than less" --> "more or less"

"It's something worth to be proud of" --> "It's something to be proud of"

"more than 15 years I have designed apps" => I have designed apps for over 15 years. ;-)

I was going to say this. The bits I've read are understandable, they're just not 100% correct.

In the interests of giving back, and not being a coder, please find below my quick and dirty re-write of the CEO's intro. Note that this has not been copy-hacked or made more sales-y, I've just tried to fix the minor issues with the English. Hope it helps!

We’ve created brix.io because we want to share our success with you. Our success is your success. Join us.

How in less than a year we gained more than 12.000 customers from all over the world.

My name is Lukasz Holeczek and I am the CEO of BootstrapMaster.com & Brix.io. I love design, that’s why for more than 15 years I have designed apps, interfaces and web pages. But suddenly all this changed when I discovered the Bootstrap framework. Both interfaces and web sites became easier and more user friendly each time I start the design process. That was the origin of BootstrapMaster.com, our design studio, specialising in Bootstrap interfaces. Now we’re one of the market leaders, having more than 12,000 customers and almost 100k people who use our free templates. What does it mean? That more or less millions of people use our solutions every day. It’s something we're very proud of.

Among our customers you will find small companies and startups, as well as big guys from Silicon Valley and from the Fortune 500 list. To ensure the best service for them and efficient design for us, we need appropriate tools. That’s why we decided to create our own app, which could be used by our team on a day to day basis. And suddenly one of us asked, why not to share it with all of you? So here it is, a complete tool which implements our experience & know-how in the design of sexy interfaces and web pages.

Brix.io helps us and also helps you to create better projects, making them faster and easier than ever before. All the projects can be mastered by you and/or your team. The results of your work can be instantly presented to your customers. And at the same time, you’re just one step closer to creating the world’s sexiest projects.

Thanks you. IT helps us. We will replace this text on our website.

No worries - glad I could help. And your English certainly beats my Polish ;-)

"to creating world’s sexiest projects"

I knew I was setting myself up a hostage to fortune and as soon as I did it someone would spot new typos :-) Thanks, fixed.

I just started the free trial and it seems to be a very promising implementation - certainly not trivial to get something usable like this. My problem is the pricing model. The only option is $29 per month for unlimited users, etc. That's too much for someone like me who just "dabbles" in Bootstrap websites (non commercial). I would happily a smaller single user free, but could not justify that much for something I would use on an ad hoc basis.

Read the fine print. ;)

Highlight the pricing page to see more hidden pricing.

I guess they at one time wanted 29/month for 1 user...

What price you recommend for one user?

Hahaha, I love this image: http://brix.io/welcome/assets/img/lh.png

It's the most hipster thing I've ever seen. Was that intentional?

No it's my normal look :)

I thought this was related to Mozilla's Brick[0] and got more excited than I should have.

Still, looks nice though!

[0] - http://mozilla.github.io/brick/

Not really quite sure how this: https://www.dropbox.com/s/c9ksnlob416zloe/Screenshot%202014-...

translates to this: https://www.dropbox.com/s/s48mpnee9imy5qv/Screenshot%202014-...

Weird, we will check this.

Some constructive criticism, is very unintuitive, there are no explanation steps or visual tutorial, also the starting template is too simple just a hello text a more advanced starting template would give more info on how it works, I tried dragging some elements but I got lost and I ended up with http://imgur.com/haRtVXS

Thanks for yor feedback, we will add templates to brix

GitHub owned https://www.easel.io/ is the best alternative for me now. Your service looks promising, but has strange pricing policy. Do you plan limited free plan?

I think that Limited free plan is good idea. I need to talk about this with my co-founders.

This is an incredible amount of work, I know Bootstrap well enough (plus I use a 24 col grid with 16px margins for everything) that it wouldn't be much use to me.

Incredibly well executed though :).

Can't you modify the number of grid columns in Bootstrap? I use Foundation 5, and there is an option within settings.scss which allows you to change the default 12 column grid, eg:

  $total-columns: 24;

We will add support to Foundation 5 ASAP

I think (maybe) you misunderstood, I do use Bootstrap with a 24 column grid as I compile it myself with less (I also change a bunch of other stuff to improve table appearance etc).

I can't login with my credentials after confirming my email (confirmation hash: 160caba46334a76427bbfc0d127542f8), so that's kind of a show stopper.

Please send me message with your brix.io login. Our mail support@brix.io, we will check what's wrong.

Looks nice! I'm one of the creators of Jetstrap, and this is definitely really cool. Best of luck, it's an interesting market.

Jetstrap is awesome tool, maybe we can talk more about this market?

Sure, feel free to email me whenever. Email is in my profile!

label your pricing plans based on customer segments. example: Solo | Dev Shop | Enterprise

(can't think of a better label instead of "Enterprise")

It's good idea, thanks.

Perhaps not as nice, but there's also Bootply[0]

[0] http://www.bootply.com/

Yes we know bootply it's great.

It bothers me when I see statements like '10x faster' ...10x faster than what? Hand coding? Using some other library?

Hand coding.

Then IMO, it should say that on your site :) and some reasonable explanation on how you landed on that number.

$29/mo is simply outrageous!

This is very cool. It's nice to have a tool palette for the set of controls ready to be placed on the page.

Congrat on the great work.

Poles...poles everywhere =p

What ever happened to software that didn't cost me a monthly fee?

I thought web apps were cheaper to build and easier to maintain, but the savings don't seem to be passed onto the consumer.

But why charge $59 one-off when they can charge $29/month ($348/year)!?!?!

I hate it too. Especially for relatively simple utility apps like this that don't really provide a lot of ongoing service apart from hosting the app.

as an 'early access' price, is this considered a discounted rate with plans to increase later?

A few questions. Did they do any cost/value testing with potential customers? Who is it for? customers who do this every week or every 5-6 months. The price suggest the first.

But web apps also enabled subscription/SaaS models. Before you used to have to pay for upgrades. Which was/is ok, but web apps are always the current version and most up to date. So they are maintaining and extending it at all times.

SaaS model often doesn't make sense for users. Why do you need software in the cloud when working with local files directly would be much better?

That's why we sell Pinegrow Web Designer (http://pinegrow.com - I'm the author) as a normal desktop app. It has full support for Bootstrap, Foundation and plain HTML.

Wow, this is awesome. Exactly what I was looking for.

This does actually look pretty cool, and I too am a fan of local app+1 time payment.

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