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37 Comments

I worked way too hard on this.

Howdy Happy Hackers,

I shipped my first SAAS product today! https://behold.so

I'd love to hear what you think. Is the value offered clear? How does the site feel to you? Am I making any bone-headed mistakes?

After failing to follow all the good advice out there about proving demand before investing serious effort, I've spent the last 6 months of nights and weekends building this bad boy purely based on the desire to scratch my own itch.

I've been using the product for months with my own clients - so hell, at least I know I have one customer.

Thanks for listening!

  1. 6

    Your landing page is incredibly slick and it's a lovely experience to try out the product, well done! For me the pricing page didn't work when i clicked on the home page, I had to refresh (or visit directly) for it to populate.

    1. 2

      Thanks for the kind words! And also for pointing out that bug - luckily it was a simple error and I just pushed a fix, I appreciate you saving me additional embarrassment!

    2. 1

      What kind of products are you imagining people make with this? It seems so useful but I'm not a big instagram user so can't see the bigger picture.

      1. 3

        I've been building marketing sites for various businesses for a long time (too long), and a large percentage of my clients want an Instagram feed on their homepage. Since Facebook deprecated the old Instagram API, doing that got a lot harder. There are some decent solutions already out there for specific platforms like WordPress or Shopify, but there really isn't a good option for people building static/JAMstack sites. Behold let's you integrate Instagram anywhere you want, and makes it super easy.

        TL;DR - This is aimed squarely at web developers, especially developers that like to build with JAMstack

        1. 2

          Oh nice I get it! Out of interest how does this work with static sites - do you rebuild the site every X minutes to update with the latest images?

          I'm building a static site builder and nobody has asked for instagram embeds yet but if it ever comes up I will be sure to integrate this!

          1. 1

            Everypage is really cool, by the way! Really interesting take on a page-builder. If I could offer some unsolicited feedback - I think you need to make the metadata more visually distinct from the rest of the page you're building. Right now it looks broken at first, until you read it and realize it's the metadata.

            1. 1

              Ah thanks very kind of you to check it out and give feedback. My eye for design is nowhere near as strong as yours, thanks for the tip 🙌

          2. 1

            I'd probably just fetch the posts at runtime with JS. A big part of what I'm offering is the ability to safely fetch Instagram posts with client-side code without exposing API keys.

            That being said, you could absolutely fetch the photos at build-time and integrate it that way. That would mean updating less often, but would let you do some interesting things like image processing/watermarks, etc.

            1. 2

              Makes total sense, excited for someone to ask for this now :)

  2. 2

    Great product!

    Value prop is incredibly clear & to the point. It took me about 3 sec to figure out what you do.
    I'm a dev who has tried to work with Fb's Instagram api and I can appreciate how hard this was to build.

    Also I liked the switch UX for monthly/annual pricing!

    1. 2

      Thank you so much!! It's hard because this is targeted so squarely at developers, and most of the feedback I've gotten is from other folks. I really appreciate you checking it out and the kind words! Helpful validation :)

    1. 1

      Awesome, clear feedback. Thank you so much! You've really given me some food for thought (and earned yourself a follow). Cheers.

  3. 2

    I actually love it. Your hard work shows and immediately would make me interested. A few thoughts:

    • "Fetch Instagram posts with your front or back-end code." This is a bit of an awkward sentence. I might say something more like "Fetch any instagram post with a simple SDK".
    • Are expiring tokens or app reviews a problem in other instagram feed APIs? I'm not in this world but those sound like odd problems. I think you might be referring to one competitor?
    • Having a "show more" for 3 additional features doesn't make sense to me. Scrolling is natural. I might make your features smaller if you're worried about them being too big.

    It looks like you're off to a great start. Good luck!

    1. 2

      Fastmap is pretty incredible looking, by the way. I haven't worked with Python much in years, but I can see how powerful the idea is. Saving developer time is always an in-demand service. Congrats on shipping an MVP and good luck with that first customer!

      1. 1

        I appreciate it! Thank you!

    2. 2

      Amazing feedback, thanks Scott!

      • "Expiring tokens and app reviews" is referring to the process of using the Instagram API directly. It's a total PITA, which was the inspiration for my product. I'm speaking directly to developers that have researched this, discovered how hard it is and are looking for easy solutions. That being said, you're making me realize that I might be targeting my language too narrowly. What if someone discovers my product before they've done a deep-dive into this challenge? I'll have to think this through.

      • Good point with the additional features. The second row felt like less important points, but then maybe I just don't need them! I should probably decide if they are necessary enough to show up-front or not and do away with the current silliness. Thanks for pointing that out :)

  4. 1

    This is actually an awesome landing page. Bookmarked for future inspiration.

    1. 1

      Thanks for the kind words! I'm pretty happy with it, but it's always hard to know with your own work.

  5. 1

    I’m on my tablet and only experienced a blank blue page with chat window.

    1. 1

      Okay - if you're on an iPad, I believe the issue was a missing polyfill. Should be working now! Thanks again for the bug report :)

    2. 1

      Oh no! Thanks for letting me know!

  6. 1

    Love the simplicity and focus of your landing page. Great work! Maybe some explanation of why I might need this (ie. deprecation of the IG API) would be useful? Though I suppose anyone visiting the page would already know what it's useful to them.

    1. 1

      Thanks for checking it out! I've definitely gone back and forth about that - my current thinking is that people will be looking for solutions like this once they do a bit of Googling and realize how hard it is to do this now. It might not hurt to add a little "why do I need this" section though. Or at least hint at the problem I'm solving. Good thought.

  7. 1

    Great looking site. Product message is very clear. Only thing to add is that I think there is no need to focus only on jamstacks... I think site-builders (e.g. weebly, wix, Squarespace, bubble, webflow) will be a much bigger market for you. Maybe Wordpress plugins. By the look of your FAQs, sounds like you may already be headed in that direction. Good luck!

    1. 1

      Appreciate it Steven! Really glad to hear that the message is coming through clearly. I've been making lots of adjustments based on feedback here. And you're absolutely right about my target markets. I'm focusing on developers initially, but as you saw my plan is to release an embeddable widget that can be dropped into any site, which will be built on top of the core API offering.

      The challenge then will be making it clear that you can call the API directly if you want, or just use the widget if you're not a coder. Always interesting targeting two very different types of customer. Cheers.

      1. 2

        I suspect that non-coders are more likely to be paying customers. Coders be like "API? I'll just build my own in a day." (Then 2 weeks later 😭). But I'm sure you'll figure out the right answer. Just keep your ears open and follow the path:
        🕺→💵💵💵💰

        Good luck!

  8. 1

    I don't know how hard it was to include instagram feeds before but your value proposition is very clear. One feedback is on the how it works section; normally step 2 would be below step 1 and you should not need to click an arrow to see step 2.

    1. 1

      Thanks for taking a look and the helpful feedback! You're not the first person to mention that. Planning on updating today.

  9. 1

    Hi Griffin,
    Love the passion!! - I can't seem see your longing page (Blank Green page only). I'm using Safari on a high end iMac. Maybe do some testing on that Browser.

    Chrome loads sweet, love the branding and the idea man. Congrats. I will give it a test.

    1. 1

      Thanks for checking it out! I've been actively pushing updates today so I wonder if you tried to load it on Safari mid-update or something weird like that?

      Is there any chance you could try it again? If not that's fine - you certainly don't have to do my QA for me, haha.

  10. 1

    Nice. Looks good on desktop and seems pretty clear to me (a developer) what the product is.

    The first step in "Step 1 / 2" actually seems to do a bunch more than just one thing, based on all that happens in the GIF, and I found it a little hard to follow. I don't feel the "share your unique auth URL" part is hugely relevant at this point — maybe just show a mouse clicking on the Instagram "Authorise" button? But once I skip to Step 2, it's cool that there's a URL to test :)

    Also, the "Let's go" button at the bottom of the page is a 404 (behold.so/register vs app.behold.so/register).

    1. 1

      I'm also really glad that the product was fairly clear to you — as far as I know, this is the only service like this targeted at devs. I think a lot of people are expecting yet another no-code widget. I'm going to add that functionality next, but I think access to posts as JSON is a slightly more special offering for the right customer.

    2. 1

      Awesome, thanks for the feedback (and the bug report!) — I think you're definitely right about the animated step 1. I'm trying to cram way too much into it, which is reducing clarity. Honestly I think I was just having fun making a little animated widget (that sequence is all done with css, html and svgs, in case you're curious)

      1. 2

        Very cool! I also enjoyed the slow-moving gradient backgrounds to the headings 👍

  11. 1

    Congrats on your launch. As many pointed out before, the page looks really solid and I love the design!

    The first CTA should definitely highlight that there is a free plan. "Get started for free", "Get started – it's free" or "Start for free" would be my choice. The section at the bottom of the page could be a little more engaging. Along the lines of "Start building for free" or "Start creating for free".

    Here is a little food for thought for the pricing table: Have you cosidered reversing the order of your tiers? There is quite some evidence that this works better due to the anchor bias. You can read up on a study here: https://cxl.com/research-study/pricing-plan-study-order/

    Additionally, I would highlight the discount that you get with the annual plan. And, as others pointed out before, highlight the most popular choice.

    I would also separate the pricing page from the FAQ page. This makes it a little clearer.

    Other than that you did a great job and I wish you all the best with your product!

    1. 1

      Thanks for checking it out! That's really helpful.

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