I'm about to reduce my cost for launching products
Hey, IndieHackers community!
I have worked on numerous products over the past 10 years. One challenge I consistently faced was deciding between paying for a subscription-based landing page builder or building the site from scratch with HTML/JS/CSS (and frameworks like React, Tailwind, ...) and using free hosting options like GitHub Pages. While services like Carrd and Unicorn Platform are great, the subscription fees didn't make sense for early-stage products that weren't generating any revenue. Additionally, they lacked a few key features that I really wanted to have for my landing pages.
That's why I decided to take matters into my own hands and build my own website builder — Lemon Builder.
Lemon Builder is inspired by Carrd and Unicorn Platform, but generates pure HTML websites that can be easily published and served through free GitHub Pages hosting. This eliminates the need for subscriptions and works particularly well for keeping costs low when creating landing pages to promote products.
It's a tool I developed with my own needs in mind, focusing on essential elements required for my current product websites. While it may lack the flashy features of other website builders, it does the job efficiently and effectively.
So far, I've migrated two of my landing pages to GitHub Pages using Lemon Builder, and I even built the Lemon Builder website itself with the tool. It supports analytics (I use Beam Analytics, but it's adaptable to other services), Gumroad payments, a dark/light toggle for switching between different appearances (which I needed for one of my desktop apps), and variables to customize button behavior based on dropdown selections.
I plan to continue improving Lemon Builder and exploring its potential to replace paid subscriptions for my portfolio sites as well.
If you're curious to see what Lemon Builder can create at this early stage, you can visit lemonbuilder.sarensx.com. Please note that Lemon Builder is not available for download at the moment. However, the page serves as an example of the websites you can produce with the tool.
Let's see where this journey takes me!
Cheers,
Stephan
Hello!
Be careful, because GitHub Pages isn't made for commercial use. Please read Prohibited uses on GitHub docs. It is for small projects, so for example people don't have to pay for every small web documentation. I think you might have to reconsider your GitHub Pages free hosting as a base of your service.
As I understand the text, even landing pages (related do a service or product) aren't allowed.
Thanks a lot for the hint! Good that I just do this for my sites only right now. I think from GitHub point of view this makes sense.
I should probably think about going to another hosting service then. Like Firebase or so. I think hosting itself is also Free there, but with limitations on Storage and daily bandwidth. But this should be enough for simple landing pages.
Use Netlify. As I know it supports commercial use on free tier.
Just checked this out. This seems to be a very good fit actually. They advertise that they keep track of everything, except pushing the content via git to their platform. And this is exactly how I want my workload to be.
While services like Carrd and Unicorn Platform offer some great features, the subscription fees may not make sense for early-stage products that aren't generating revenue yet. Additionally, these services may not have all of the features that you're looking for in a landing page builder.
That's a great idea. Thank you for sharing !
I love having complete control over my website, which is why I have never used any subscription-based website builders. I prefer to come up with ideas and implement new features on my own.
I know what you say. I like that as well. What I don't like is placing the elements (basically pure html/css part) to build the site. Drag & drop like in Carrd.co for example is easier. But there, I can't add my logic. I'm building LB in a way that it creates html/css code that I can change later. (not there yet, though)
That's a really good pain point to solve, I'd use something like that.
My very honest opinion is that execution is not there yet, styling on mobile doesn't look great.
But that's easier to fix. Good luck!
Hi Itay, you are right. Just starting out and checking if I can fix a problem for myself. Execution is on the way :D. You are also right about mobile. To be fixed.
Awesome work! I like the minimal but sleek look. It's hard to nail styling that isn't barren but at the same time isn't bloated with a lot of wild animations or things. I think you've hit the nail on the head here with the design at least!
Thank you! I have to admit though that this was heavily inspired by a design I found online. So the credits go to some really great UI designer and not me. Still, good to here we have the same idea about minimalism 💪
Wow this looks cool, I will definitely check it out!
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