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How I built a proof of concept and marketing site in ~3 hours

From the scratching-my-own-itch department, I built a proof of concept, marketing site, and managed to launch it in ~3 hours total. Here's the story of how I am trying to validate Mailway.

While rebuilding my personal site, I wanted to add an email form. Previously, I was using Ghost and they took care of this for me. For my new site, I decided to use Email Octopus. Email Octopus, like most email providers, has forms, but it is difficult to drop in a form and have it match the style of your site. To make matters worse, you can't just build your own form and post to their API because of CORs.

I realized I had previously run into this same problem so many times before. I figured I could build a quick solution for myself and then see if others wanted it. Here were my requirements for the solution:

  • People can drop in an HTML form without writing any custom JS.
  • People can make direct posts to the API from the browser to post email addresses.
  • The service would only collect emails (maybe names), nothing more (niche down).
  • It would need to integrate with other email marketing services.

To validate the idea, I knew I'd need a marketing site and a proof of concept. Let's talk about how I quickly built the marketing site.

I recently paid for Tailwind UI and leveraged the available marketing site components to build a quick, beautiful site. This literally sped up my development time by 10-20X.

But I also needed to build a proof of concept to collect emails on this marketing site using the same concepts I planned to build. I knew I wanted to go serverless and keep the database simple for this concept. I tried to use
Netlify Functions, but I found them limiting in that the function URL would always have ".netlify" in it. Maybe I was just missing something, but since these URLs would be publicly facing, I didn't want "netlify" in them.

I decided to go with Vercel since the eventual app to support this product would need to easily communicate with the backend. There is no app yet, but I was able to make use of Vercel's serverless functions.

For the proof of concept database, I used Airtable. Can't get much more simple than that.

I put it all together, tested it, and launched. And now, the Mailway site is live and I can start the real research. Even if this product isn't validated, I will likely use it for all my future email collection needs. So it's a win/win regardless. But I do still hope you'll check it out and show me if you're interested by getting on the list.

  1. 7

    How do you plan on competing with the 100+ form providers?

    The market is validated. The only issue is getting traffic.

    1. 1

      I honestly can’t find any white label, client side only form providers that don’t require you adhere to their aesthetic besides formspree and formkeep. Would love to check them out though. As I said, I built this for my own needs, which weren’t being met. But that could easily mean I just wasn’t aware of those alternatives. Do you have some examples?

      1. 3

        https://web3forms.com/ is one.

        I have seen so many on IHs. It is super simple to get started.

        I even have one built into https://versoly.com/ and use it for our web app.

        1. 1

          Thanks so much! This is helpful. Also, love your site!

  2. 2

    I'm also in love with Tailwind UI, it saves so much time !

    Same as you, I use Netlify a lot for static pages and have Netlify function that send leads to Mailchimp directly.
    However once I continue building products I generally switch the backend to AWS. I recently started using Digital Ocean for my latest project, because their new Apps are
    similar to Netlify/Vercel for deployment, but you can have a "real" backend with it.

    1. 1

      I’ve been seriously considering DO apps. I love DO I own stock in them so I should probably use them haha.

  3. 2

    Awesome! Looks pretty clean.

    1. 1

      Thanks so much for the kind words!

  4. 1

    Site looks good, but clicked straight on it and had no idea what it did. Thought initially was something to do with collecting lists of users email addresses for marketing purposes (eek), rather than a simple form that users enter their contact details in. Keep up the good work !

    1. 1

      This was my wife’s biggest concern. Still trying to refine the quick problem solution headlines. Thanks for pointing that out!

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