Hey Matt, so great to talk to you again! You'll remember me from ProteusThemes, we did business together, you coding some of our WP themes to HTML and selling them on TF :)
This interview is gold! I've already copy/pasted (and attributed) your view on dealing with angry customers to our internal knowledge base on how our team communicates with the rest of the world.
Now the Gutenberg in WP is all the rage, I cannot resist - you're a true visionary, in Pagestead you were using the concept of "blocks" before they were the thing 😎
Wish you all the best with Pagestead! And expect my email soon :)
1
Hey Primoz,
How've you been man? Yep, I sure remember the good old days over at TF ;) I'll reply to your email soon!
4
Impressive the $30K in pre-orders, congrats!
3
Respect for sticking with the process as a "solopreneur"!
"(although popular media would have you believe that huge, overnight success is the norm and not the exception)"
Huge. That's why communities such as IH are so important in showing the full journey, instead of the tipping points.
How do you find agencies using your product? Do they build a client website using your solution and then host it and offer the client to be able to customise it by himself as a package?
Great read, thank you! 👍
2
We acquire leads through a combined effort of SEO/content marketing, referrals (from others products/projects we own) and through our existing network and email subscribers. Once we're getting closer to product/market fit, we'll start investing more in experimenting with additional marketing channels (like paid advertising, partnerships, engineering as marketing, etc).
The majority of our customers offer Pagestead (typically rebranded as their own product) as SaaS to their own customers. However, we also do see a number of customers who use the software to build websites for their customers and then give them access to manage and maintain the site themselves.
1
Really flexible value prop, gives you and your clients a lot of options. Great idea 👍
2
Great read!
I'm also a big fan of Startups For The Rest of Us. My company WP Buffs sells a productized service so it's not pure SaaS, listening in here has given me a ton of insight.
We also provide a white-label service and work with agencies and freelancers to support their clients. Great to see somebody else having success with that kind of business model.
And to see somebody launch a page builder in such a crowded marketplace and start to see some success is an important story to tell. With Beaver Builder, Elementor, Divi and a few other major players out there, I think it's important to show people how you can start by capturing the attention of a few people and grow from there.
What are the reasons your customers pick Pagestead over something like WordPress on a multisite that's also self-hosted? I assume it's the seamless experience vs. needing a bunch of plugins and managing it all, but is there anything else?
1
The seamless experience definitely plays a large role. More and more people are growing tired of dealing the bloated mess that Wordpress has become today. When it comes to building simple sites, say a 5-page brochure site, Wordpress is simply overkill.
That said, our page builder plays an important role as well. Allowing a visually appealing and easy way to create nice pages offers additional value, compared to the Wordpress short-code mess.
At the end of day, we believe both Pagestead and Wordpress both server their own purpose.
2
Great story and an awesome product. Have you considered a lower price (e.g. $20-$40) but on a monthly basis? Would love to use this to create some landing pages as and when I need them.
1
We have been thinking about subscriptions for the software itself. However with Pagestead being a self-hosted project, there's really no reason for customers to continue their monthly subscription once they get their hands on the source code. if we were to offer something like this, what would motivate you to continue your subscription? Thanks for your input!
1
Why not offer it as saas?
2
This is a question we get frequently. The answer is twofold: first, the fact that our software is self-hosted, white-label and open source is why most of our customers purchase a license. They're looking to modify, integrate or use it in some other way that a regular SaaS app won't allow. Second, we'd up against like likes of Wix, Weebly, Squarespace and numerous other large, well established companies with very deep pockets.
1
Aaron Swartz is in Open Source heaven looking down proudly on how you answered this question.
1
I have tried to test pagestead but it never sends out a link for a demo like it says it will
1
That's a bummer! Did you check your SPAM folder? It sometimes ends up there. If it's not there either, please let me know what your email address is and I'll send you the link manually.
1
I also had the same issue. Gmail treated it as spam. Issue is because your return and origin address on the message is info@example.com. If you correct that, it will go to Inboxes. Thanks for the interview. I am so inspired by you. Cheers
Hey Matt, so great to talk to you again! You'll remember me from ProteusThemes, we did business together, you coding some of our WP themes to HTML and selling them on TF :)
This interview is gold! I've already copy/pasted (and attributed) your view on dealing with angry customers to our internal knowledge base on how our team communicates with the rest of the world.
Now the Gutenberg in WP is all the rage, I cannot resist - you're a true visionary, in Pagestead you were using the concept of "blocks" before they were the thing 😎
Wish you all the best with Pagestead! And expect my email soon :)
Hey Primoz,
How've you been man? Yep, I sure remember the good old days over at TF ;) I'll reply to your email soon!
Impressive the $30K in pre-orders, congrats!
Respect for sticking with the process as a "solopreneur"!
Huge. That's why communities such as IH are so important in showing the full journey, instead of the tipping points.
How do you find agencies using your product? Do they build a client website using your solution and then host it and offer the client to be able to customise it by himself as a package?
Great read, thank you! 👍
We acquire leads through a combined effort of SEO/content marketing, referrals (from others products/projects we own) and through our existing network and email subscribers. Once we're getting closer to product/market fit, we'll start investing more in experimenting with additional marketing channels (like paid advertising, partnerships, engineering as marketing, etc).
The majority of our customers offer Pagestead (typically rebranded as their own product) as SaaS to their own customers. However, we also do see a number of customers who use the software to build websites for their customers and then give them access to manage and maintain the site themselves.
Really flexible value prop, gives you and your clients a lot of options. Great idea 👍
Great read!
I'm also a big fan of Startups For The Rest of Us. My company WP Buffs sells a productized service so it's not pure SaaS, listening in here has given me a ton of insight.
We also provide a white-label service and work with agencies and freelancers to support their clients. Great to see somebody else having success with that kind of business model.
And to see somebody launch a page builder in such a crowded marketplace and start to see some success is an important story to tell. With Beaver Builder, Elementor, Divi and a few other major players out there, I think it's important to show people how you can start by capturing the attention of a few people and grow from there.
Keep on rocking!
P.S. Hi, @primozcigler :)
Awesome work. A question:
What are the reasons your customers pick Pagestead over something like WordPress on a multisite that's also self-hosted? I assume it's the seamless experience vs. needing a bunch of plugins and managing it all, but is there anything else?
The seamless experience definitely plays a large role. More and more people are growing tired of dealing the bloated mess that Wordpress has become today. When it comes to building simple sites, say a 5-page brochure site, Wordpress is simply overkill.
That said, our page builder plays an important role as well. Allowing a visually appealing and easy way to create nice pages offers additional value, compared to the Wordpress short-code mess.
At the end of day, we believe both Pagestead and Wordpress both server their own purpose.
Great story and an awesome product. Have you considered a lower price (e.g. $20-$40) but on a monthly basis? Would love to use this to create some landing pages as and when I need them.
We have been thinking about subscriptions for the software itself. However with Pagestead being a self-hosted project, there's really no reason for customers to continue their monthly subscription once they get their hands on the source code. if we were to offer something like this, what would motivate you to continue your subscription? Thanks for your input!
Why not offer it as saas?
This is a question we get frequently. The answer is twofold: first, the fact that our software is self-hosted, white-label and open source is why most of our customers purchase a license. They're looking to modify, integrate or use it in some other way that a regular SaaS app won't allow. Second, we'd up against like likes of Wix, Weebly, Squarespace and numerous other large, well established companies with very deep pockets.
Aaron Swartz is in Open Source heaven looking down proudly on how you answered this question.
I have tried to test pagestead but it never sends out a link for a demo like it says it will
That's a bummer! Did you check your SPAM folder? It sometimes ends up there. If it's not there either, please let me know what your email address is and I'll send you the link manually.
I also had the same issue. Gmail treated it as spam. Issue is because your return and origin address on the message is info@example.com. If you correct that, it will go to Inboxes. Thanks for the interview. I am so inspired by you. Cheers