From 200+ Widgets to Infinite Customization: Our Journey to Embeddable

Hello Indie Hackers! 🙌

My name is Daniel, and I'm the founder of Embeddable. This week, my team and I are launching Embeddable, an AI-powered tool born from a decade-long journey of building website widgets.

I wanted to share the story behind Embeddable – how we went from creating over 200 pre-built widgets at Common Ninja to building a platform that can create any widget you need, on the fly.

How It All Started: The Frustration Behind the Idea

A few years ago, I found myself frustrated watching marketers struggle with simple website tasks. Imagine needing to add a contact form or a newsletter signup to your site – something that should take minutes.

But unless you were technical, it turned into a week-long ordeal of waiting for a developer or paying thousands to get a custom solution built. I saw this pain firsthand with marketing teams we worked with. They had creative ideas for engaging their audience, but implementing those ideas on their websites was always an uphill battle.

I knew there had to be a better way for marketers to create interactive elements without relying on constant developer help. That frustration and empathy for non-technical marketers lit the spark that led me down this path.

The Common Ninja Chapter: 200+ Widgets and 500k+ Users

To tackle this problem, I co-founded Common Ninja about a decade ago. What started as a weekend project in my apartment quickly grew into something much bigger than I ever anticipated. Over 10+ years, our small team built 200+ different website widgets – from contact forms and polls to booking systems and image galleries. We ended up helping over 500,000 businesses add these widgets to their websites.

Common Ninja’s premise was simple: give marketers and digital agencies a rich library of plug-and-play widgets so they wouldn't have to build things from scratch. And it worked – marketers loved having so many options in one platform. We learned a ton about what makes visitors engage and convert, and we poured those learnings into every new widget we created.

But as Common Ninja grew, so did the feature requests. No matter how many widgets we offered, customers kept asking for more customization:

• “Can you add just one more field to this form widget?”
• “Could we tweak this gallery to scroll a bit differently?”
• “Is there a way to integrate this poll with our custom CRM?”

We built a lot of features in response, but with each request it became clear: Even 200+ widgets weren’t enough. Every business has unique needs, and there were always edge cases our pre-built solutions didn’t cover.

The Limits of Pre-Built Solutions

Running a platform with hundreds of widgets taught us an important lesson: pre-built widgets will always have limits. We could build 1,000 widgets and someone would still come with a use-case we hadn't thought of. The reality was that no fixed library – no matter how large – could anticipate every need.
This was a tough realization.

Our widgets had helped half a million users, yet I still found myself telling people “Sorry, we can’t do that” for some custom request. As a maker, that feels bad. We wanted to empower marketers, but our model still left some of them stuck or compromising on what they really wanted.

Around this time, something interesting was happening in tech: AI was becoming more accessible and powerful for builders. Services like GPT were getting good at generating code and content from plain English. A lightbulb went off for us: What if we could leverage AI to build exactly what each marketer described, instantly? 🤖

Enter Embeddable: Custom Widgets at the Speed of AI

This idea got us very excited. Instead of forcing marketers to choose from a menu of 200+ options, what if they could simply describe the exact widget or feature they envisioned and have it built on the spot? That would mean infinite possibilities instead of a finite list.

Fast-forward to today, and that’s exactly what Embeddable does. With Embeddable, you don’t browse a catalog of widgets. You just tell us what you need in plain language:

• “I need a contact form with two email fields and a GDPR checkbox that syncs with Mailchimp, and uses our brand colors.”
• “Give me an interactive quiz widget to qualify leads, with 5 questions and a progress bar.”
• “Can I have a pop-up coupon offer that only shows to new visitors and integrates with Shopify?”

You get the idea. You describe it, and our AI builds it for you, instantly. No waiting weeks for a developer, no settling for a cookie-cutter template. Custom experiences tailored to your exact needs, created in minutes, not months.
And because it’s AI-driven, the possibilities are essentially limitless. One marketer might use Embeddable to whip up a unique survey for their campaign, while an agency could build a bespoke pricing calculator for a client – all without writing code.

It’s like having a super-talented developer on call 24/7, except it’s an AI that never sleeps and delivers in seconds.

Importantly, Embeddable works with your existing website or platform. This was a core goal for us. Unlike some AI tools that want you to rebuild your whole site on their platform, Embeddable plugs into what you already have. Whether your site is on Shopify, Wix, WordPress, or a custom HTML setup – you can drop in your Embeddable creation with a simple embed code. No need to start over or migrate anything. We’re not here to replace your website; we’re here to make your existing website work harder for you by easily adding the interactive components you’ve been dreaming of.

What We Believe (Our Core Principles)

After 10+ years of building marketing widgets and now developing Embeddable, our team has adopted a few core principles that guide everything we do:

• Marketers First: Great tools should empower marketers and non-developers. If you need to know how to code to use a tool, we feel it hasn’t done its job. We design everything so that a marketer can use it intuitively without technical help.

• Conversion Over Glamour: We prioritize results over flashiness. Every feature we add is backed by data from millions of widget interactions. We’ve learned that sometimes an “ugly” form that converts well beats a gorgeous form that users ignore. We optimize for conversion and function, not just looks.

• Platform Freedom: Your tools should work wherever you do. We’ve made our widgets (and now Embeddable creations) work on any website or platform – be it Shopify, WordPress, Wix, Webflow, or anything else. Vendor lock-in or platform silos are a big no-no for us.

• Customer Obsession: In the end, our success is measured by your success. If Embeddable isn’t helping marketers get better results or making their lives easier, then we’re not succeeding. We listen obsessively to user feedback and tailor our roadmap to solve real problems marketers face.

• Innovation that Matters: We don’t add features for the sake of having more features. Every new capability should solve a genuine pain point. This was true at Common Ninja and it’s true for Embeddable. We won’t chase trends unless they truly benefit our users.

These principles have been hard-earned through lots of trial and error. They remind us to stay focused on building things that genuinely help our users win. 🏆

Our Mission with Embeddable

In one sentence: We want to give every marketer (and agency) the power to build truly custom interactive tools for their website – without limits and without waiting.

Having built hundreds of widgets over the years, we certainly know what tends to convert visitors into customers. We’re baking all that know-how into Embeddable’s AI, so it not only builds what you ask for, but also suggests optimizations that make it effective. But we also know every business is unique. What works for one might not work for another – and that’s exactly why a one-size-fits-all widget can fall short.

With Embeddable, our mission is to combine our proven conversion expertise with the creative flexibility of AI, allowing you to create exactly what you envision for your site, tailored to your specific needs and audience. No generic templates, no waiting in the developer queue, no huge custom dev bills – just you and your ideas, brought to life instantly.

Ultimately, we’re aiming to level the playing field. A marketer at a two-person startup should have the same ability to create a brilliant interactive campaign as a marketer at a big tech company with a huge engineering team. We’re using AI to make that possible.

Launching This Week – Looking for Early Users 🚀

After months of building and beta testing, Embeddable is launching today on Product Hunt, and we’re both excited and nervous to get it into the world. As fellow indie hackers, you know how scary but thrilling it is to finally release your product!

At this stage, we’re especially looking for early users, marketers, and agencies to give Embeddable a try and help us shape its future. If you’ve ever struggled to get a custom form, widget, or interactive element onto a website, I genuinely think Embeddable can make your life easier. I’d love for you to try it out and let me know what you think.

Your feedback as early adopters is gold for us – it will help us iron out any kinks and decide what features to prioritize next. Plus, if you have a cool idea for a widget that you always wished existed, challenge us (and our AI) to build it for you! 😊

Feel free to ask me anything about our journey from Common Ninja to Embeddable, or how Embeddable works. I’m happy to share more details on the tech behind it, our lessons learned, or mistakes we made along the way. And if Embeddable sounds useful to you, I’d be thrilled to get you early access. Just drop a comment or DM, and I’ll send you the invite link.

Thanks for reading our story. Indie Hackers has been a source of inspiration for me throughout this journey, so I’m really excited (and a bit anxious) to finally share what we’ve been working on with all of you. 🙏

TL;DR: After 10+ years building 200+ web widgets at Common Ninja for 500k+ users, we realized pre-built widgets will never cover every marketer’s needs. So we built Embeddable, an AI tool that instantly creates exactly the widget or interactive tool you ask for, tailored to your site. We’re launching this week and would love any feedback or early users to kick the tires.

Thank you! 🎉