Ryan Merket

Appsites - Create a beautiful website for your mobile app in minutes

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Greg Moore
seems like it's down...
Ryan Merket
@gergmuure Homepage of hackernews took us down. Try again now.
Joe Anderson
Was just talking to @joe_blau about this idea, nice to see it made! The pricing seems ok but I can see how it can add up quickly with the more apps you have. After thinking about the model I think 1x fee could work better, with monthlies for using add-ons like twilio (text me a link if im browsing via desktop, appstore if im browsing on mobile). I think this because most people make 1 off apps and don't bother maintaining so they just want to get something out there. You are more likely to recoup costs upfront vs long run. There are a lot of things you can do with analytics, custom domains, and auto a/b testing templates? Lastly, there are some cool things you can do with cookies/storing numbers, understanding users interests across apps, since you essentially become a network different apps are using (this would be neatly packaged as an analytics thing for them, data for you). I tried it out but the images turned out really low res, how are you going about this? You should be able to download the image via scrape
Ryan Merket
@Anderson760 Joe. Awesome feedback! We recently updated our pricing to $3/mo for one site or $19/mo for unlimited number of sites. Love the data play. You're definitely right. We're going to concentrate on building an awesome website builder for app developers first, and then the data/analytics plays is definitely not off the table. Thanks again!
Ross Rojek
@merket nice to see you being responsive on that issue. Will be visiting it again for our own use.
Joe Blau
@Anderson760 it's great to see this idea become a reality. In terms of pricing, I think the $10/mo for a site is pretty high especially for such a basic app landing page. My current setup has me hosting my app landing pages on GitHub for free. I look forward to seeing more templates and maybe different types of templates for things like games, utilities, etc. Overall it looks like a great start.
Ryan Merket
@joe_blau Hey Joe. We just updated our pricing to $3/mo for one site or $19/mo for unlimited sites. We're also about to release a bunch of new themes, so be on the lookout for that! Thanks for the feedback, it feels good to know you care. :)
Mack Flavelle
I know some really great developers with pretty successful apps who still have TERRIBLE websites. Seems like lots of people could use this- assuming the results are nice and shiny.
Ryan Merket
@MackFlavelle Same here. We'll be adding a ton more themes in the future. Be on the look out :)
Ryan Merket
@rrhoover can you change "Crate" to "Create" in the tagline? Thanks!
Ryan Hoover
@merket done! I'll send you the bill later. :)
Ryan Merket
Nice -- we made it on Product Hunt! :) This is a side project @erikuix, @seamoss and I have been working on. We noticed that websites were mostly after thoughts for many app developers, and set out to make 1) beautiful and 2) easy to make a website for your apps. To create a site, all you need to do is paste in your iTunes and Google Play URL. We fetch your app's assets, apply some magic, ad your website is ready to go in minutes. We'd love your feedback on the concept, UX, pricing, and anything else that comes to mind. Thanks again! Shameless plug: If you want to help us design some sick themes, we would love to pay you. :) Hit me up ryan@appsites.com. Ryan
Kevin Steigerwald
@merket One bit of feedback: It would be awesome if there were some examples up so I knew what I was getting before pasting in my link. I think it's awesome that it's easy enough to paste in the link and you run the magic and spit something out. But there is still a sense of uncertainty that prevented me from doing it right away.
Ryan Merket
@sproutworx Absolutely. That's been a common bit of feedback. We'll add some examples ASAP. Thanks for trying it!
Bram Kanstein (@bramk)
this is awesome, like @MackFlavelle said: there are a lot of skilled app developers with poor websites and this seems like an easy way to create a lander. @merket any info on the pricing? I assume it's pay per site you publish? Think bundles (pay 4 get 5 or something) would be nice for serial app launchers :)
Ryan Merket
@bramk Hey Bram! Thanks! Pricing is currently free if you don't mind having your website on the appsites.com domain (eg: cname.appsites.com). and then $9/mo/app. $39/mo for 5 apps. We can also customize a plan uniquely for large developers. We also plan to offer app suite themes as well -- we ill be announcing something soon around this.
Ryan Hoover
Love the idea, @merket, but when I gave it a test run by entering the Instagram itunes link, it didn't pull in any photos, description, etc. I'm sure you're thinking about this but it would be nice to include a text me a download link, option (via Twilio perhaps).
Ryan Merket
@rrhoover very interesting. We were having some load issues this AM. When did you try to give it a spin?
Ryan Hoover
@merket it was right before I made the comment.
Ross Rojek
$9 a month is pricey if you have a lot of apps and can kick out html sites in an hour or two. (Granted lots of developers are pretty lazy, but it isn't that hard if you have a template down.) As a suggestion I'd also offer a program for larger developers with a appname.developername.com format. We consider which of our apps deserve their own url, so sticking the others under the main url might be a good value too. (Couldn't tell from the main screen if you offered that too). As our example, we have more than 60 apps and about 5 of them have dedicated websites. but many of the others aren't worth spending much on even a subdomain as far as our time goes. But throwing in a app store url and getting a website in a couple of seconds is worth something, but probably not $100 a year. Doing a sliding scale for larger app developers might be a good idea (self serving I know, but just looking from what might make me use a service like yours). Great idea however.
Some Guy
Just what I was looking for. It will be important to either have an abundance of themes, or allow some custom HTML/CSS, to prevent all your mobile sites looking the same, which tends to decrease conversion rates.
TrooMobile
@merket hey ryan... sent you an email... can you take a look? I signed up for premium :)