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Users need website building solutions that reduce ongoing subscription costs, minimize the need for expensive design work, and allow for faster, easier, and more direct changes without vendor lock-in. The current model of continuous subscriptions and reliance on external designers for simple updates is a significant pain point.
I think website builder SaaS apps are in trouble. For the first time in 10 years, I built a website without Wix, Webflow, or Squarespace. I’ve used all of them across personal and professional projects. At my previous company, we followed what every YC company was doing at the time, which was Webflow. I hired a talented Webflow designer, website looked great. But it meant: ⤷ Paying $$$ for design work ⤷ Paying the Webflow subscription ad infinitum ⤷ Making changes never felt fast/easy For chatpal.chat, I considered Framer. New sleek kid on the block and a lot of beautiful VC-backed sites use it. But the tradeoffs were familiar: ⤷ Spend time learning it myself ⤷ Or hire someone again ⤷ And be locked into another subscription ad infinitum Given I'm bootstrapping ChatPal, I wanted to explore leaner options. So instead I tried vibe coding the site from scratch in Node.js. Immediately I was having more fun, felt like I had more creative flexibility, and felt like I could make changes faster then I've every felt using a website building SaaS. Now the site runs on Vercel and costs basically nothing. Just a tiny fraction of the $20/month plan I already pay for the ChatPal backend. Website I like, process I enjoyed, extremely agile to make changes, and no website building SaaS subscription. Hard to imagine going back. - - - Notes: - - Admittedly, chatpal.chat is integration light. The only CTA is a link to Apple App Store. I imagine there will always be a place for integration heavy requirements of B2B SaaS - - Maybe one day I'll be stuck with some huge Vercel bill because the website gets crazy amounts of traffic 🤷♂️. Right now, seems hard to imagine and there will be ways to resolve that. Actually with code I wrote much less vendor lock in than traditional website building tools - - Requires knowing how to setup DNS and hosting in Vercel but to be honest not incredibly complicated and I think already is possible, or easily achievable, for most marketing folks