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29 Comments

I just built a web app for creating sites using Airtable

Hey IH,

https://pory.io is a web app for creating sites using Airtable as a database. Our initial launch include templates to popular websites like:

  1. Product Hunt for creating discovery sites.
  2. Indeed for creating job boards.
  3. Fiverr for offering services.
  4. Instagram for sharing images.
  5. Meetup for sharing events.
  6. LinkedIn for networking.

I'm really new to marketing and guilty of not validating ideas before building... so this is really the aftermath of jumping into solution mode and blindly hacking away... Is this something you'd use? if not then why? :)

  1. 3

    Looks cool! I’d consider raising the price for the paid version. It’s definitely worth more than $9

  2. 2

    Congrats! I love Airtable so it would be great extension for my projects in the future :)

    1. 1

      Hi Wit, what kind of projects are you working on? :)

      1. 1

        Current I just soft launched Twitter Profile Review service. Even formatted them in Airtable but don't really need a site for this one.

        I meant future projects for sites in my previous comment.

  3. 2

    Good stuff, I've barely used airtable before and the user experience for making a new site was seamless. What are you planning to do next? Add more features and then big launch?

    Edit: Just realized you launched on PH today haha, gave some support there.

    1. 1

      Thanks @dkb868 for all the support! I'm super happy that you found it easy and seamless! 🎉

  4. 2

    I just got to know about your website, I guess on Twitter. Looks like something I would like to try.

    How long did it took you to create this?

    1. 2

      looking at my first commit which was 22 Apr, 35 days in as of today. I'm currently working part-time so that has provided me with a lot more time to work on it.

      1. 1

        About a month! That's great.

  5. 2

    Wow this is exactly what I’m looking for, kind of similar to Liist, which I’m looking into right now. Can I use my own custom domain? Besides Airtable as a DB do you plan on adding other integrations?

    1. 1

      totally, I'm using Liist now but this looks really nice. I'm just not a big airtable user:/

    2. 1

      This is amazing to hear! I'm working on custom domains right now which should be ready sometime this week and if not then the next :)

  6. 2

    This looks great @shooting_unicorns. Congrats on the launch!

  7. 2

    Wow that’s pretty creative. Don’t have a use for this yet, but might give it a go at some point.

  8. 2

    So your tool is to turn a DB table into a site with a template? Does it do more than this?

    1. 2

      Not at the moment haha... next step would be to allow people to add pages using building blocks and integrations with other apps like analytics, collecting emails, payments etc.

  9. 1

    Congrats on the recent launch Sam!

  10. 1

    Love Airtable based websites! Using one myself now. Going to sign up for yours too

  11. 1

    Looks really great. I saw you on PH as well and voted for you there as well.
    All the best.

  12. 1

    Very cool but I'm getting an "unexpected error" when trying it out!

    1. 1

      Sorry to hear that. It's most likely because you didn't link Airtable to the site properly. I'm working on improving the UX right now, so hopefully it'll be easier the next time you try again 🙏

    1. 1

      What are your thoughts on AirTable eating this product? They do have views already such as the Gallery view. Presumably they will add more...

      1. 1

        yeah I guess it's a matter of time. Hopefully I'll find another gap waiting to be filled when that time comes haha...

  13. 1

    I want to try this, sounds great :-)

  14. 1

    This is awesome! I just published a site and it was pretty smooth. I really like the editor that pops up when viewing the site and the way it immediately shows me the changes.

    Just a few questions/pieces of feedback:

    • Hopping back and forth between AirTable and entering details in each step may lose a lot of people. Is there a way to reduce friction?
    • Will images be served from a CDN or Airtable directly using the paid plan?
    • Can you add custom scripts like newsletter forms, Product Hunt buttons, Buy Me A Coffee buttons, etc?
    • While logged in, any link that takes me to your homepage immediately redirects me to /sites
    • Are there any plans to add a caching layer so I don't hit the 5 API requests per second limit on the Airtable API when my site gets popular or traffic spikes?
    1. 1

      Thanks for the feedback!

      Yes I'm noticing a lot of people getting lost between Airtable and as a result getting errors.. 😔.

      Our focus is on integrations first, so performance enhancements such as serving images from a CDN won't happen just yet. So yep, custom scripts will definitely be coming soon!

      Regarding the redirection to /sites, I did that thinking people won't want to see the landing page once they're logged in. It now looks like people actually want to see the demos for inspiration haha.. so i'll be removing that soon.

      Lastly, adding a caching layer is on our roadmap. That's the next piece to tackle, I'm thinking about using Redis. Do you have any recommendations?

      Great feedback, you're asking all the real questions. 😄

      1. 1

        Thanks for getting back to me. I'm building a similar tool on top of Google Sheets so these are some of the things I've either had to deal with or are on my list. As someone in the same space, I would love to hear how things are going so far.

        I'm about to jump into the new AirTable Custom Blocks Beta (https://airtable.com/developers/blocks). Not sure if anything there could reduce friction but I'll let you know once I've messed around with it.

        There are only two hard things in Computer Science: cache invalidation and naming things.

        Redis is a good DB for caching but the whole solution will probably be a bit more involved than just that. When I'm not hacking away at my side-SaaS I'm an API developer. If you ever wanted a sounding board for some of your ideas, let me know.

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