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AlpacApp: An Extendable and Highly Customizable Website Builder

Posted by ybouane —

Alpac.App is a website builder with some very unique features:

  1. With a single click, you can export your project as a Zip file and host it yourself if you wish.
  2. You have full control over the design of the website. Click on any element and start customizing the styling properties.
  3. You can create your own blocks to extend the functionality of AlpacApp. You can even, download, share and upload blocks.
  4. It features a built-in Notion integration to embed your notion pages directly in your website. Write in Notion and Design in AlpacApp.

I do struggle with marketing though. It's not easy to convince people to use a website builder that they haven't heard of which is why I implemented the Export feature. It's a worry free solution to allow the customer to take their project and host it on their own if they ever want to.

Survey Results

How do you rate the branding and look of Alpac.App?

star star star star star 3.9

A website builder should have eCommerce features (cart, products, checkout...)

Strongly disagreeDisagreeNeither agree nor disagreeAgreeStrongly agree

What is the deciding factor for you when choosing a website builder?

Price 0% Ease of use 38% Plenty of features 13% How fast I can build a website with it 50%

How should I spend $1000 to attract the most users?

8 answers addReview this post

Reviews (8)

keyboard_arrow_up 1 keyboard_arrow_down

How do you rate the branding and look of Alpac.App?

star star star star star 5.0

A website builder should have eCommerce features (cart, products, checkout...)

Agree

What is the deciding factor for you when choosing a website builder?

How fast I can build a website with it

How should I spend $1000 to attract the most users?

Find social media influencers in the "Notion" niche and pay them to promote your tool and its Notion integration.

I really liked the branding.
You should put more templates and show people what they can build with your tool.

For eCommerce, I think it would be a great add-on, but at least I see that you have an Embed block which can be used to embed thirdparty widgets like a booking block.

For marketing, I don't think it will be easy to compete with all the alternatives like SquareSpace, Wix, Shopify... You can try reducing your pricing but I wouldn't recommend that. If your price is too low, people won't trust your service as it will be seen as cheap and unreliable.
You probably don't have the marketing budget of these companies either, so your best bet is to focus on what makes you different. I think the Notion integration you mentioned might be it.

Review by mark — Your feedback is very helpful. You convinced me that focusing on what makes me different from SquareSpace and the others is the only way to attract users.  — ybouane keyboard_arrow_up 2 keyboard_arrow_down

How do you rate the branding and look of Alpac.App?

star star star star star 3.0

A website builder should have eCommerce features (cart, products, checkout...)

Agree

What is the deciding factor for you when choosing a website builder?

Ease of use

How should I spend $1000 to attract the most users?

Particularly marketing, you should identify what existing solutions like Wix etc. lack in and how you can provide better services.

A big problem is how will you actually make it build a good website? There's problems like responsiveness, styling, transitions, etc. will it just be a static website? Will it export in React? If you export it in React.JS, I think it would be great if you could make it so that you can make components similar to that.

Review by cyclip — It exports to HTML/CSS. I like your marketing suggestion, but would target people that use tools like Webflow instead of platforms like Wix. I feel like AlpacApp would have greater success in the web dev community rather than regular users (regular users don't want to take risks with new platforms).  — ybouane keyboard_arrow_up 1 keyboard_arrow_down

How do you rate the branding and look of Alpac.App?

star star star star star 5.0

A website builder should have eCommerce features (cart, products, checkout...)

Neither agree nor disagree

What is the deciding factor for you when choosing a website builder?

How fast I can build a website with it

How should I spend $1000 to attract the most users?

God, I have no idea. I am no marketing expert. I would keep the 1000 dollar and start calling/emailing local business without a website or with a ugly/poor website. Help them set it up for them and try to somehow drive traffic to these sites.

There are so many website builders, what is your insight?

Review by kingkhalid — Do you think I should reach out to web agencies or the local shops directly? What makes AlpacApp unique is really that it's super easy to use and you can extend the functionality. You can build your own blocks if you want to build really unique experiences.  — ybouane keyboard_arrow_up 2 keyboard_arrow_down

How do you rate the branding and look of Alpac.App?

star star star star star 3.0

A website builder should have eCommerce features (cart, products, checkout...)

Neither agree nor disagree

What is the deciding factor for you when choosing a website builder?

Ease of use

How should I spend $1000 to attract the most users?

Get influencers to promote your product to reach niche audiences

Differentiation is the key in such a crowded market. In order to figure out differentiation, you need to pick a niche audience - ask yourself whom are you building for? What do these people struggle with, and how can you make their lives easier with Alpacapp? Is it mom-n-pop stores without websites? Is it developers looking to get a landing page out in the shortest amount of time? Is it stay-at-home moms looking to post their recipes on their own website? etc.
Once you figure that out, double down on going deep into the nuances of their specific needs - is it hosting that they struggle with? is it maintaining/updating their website that they struggle with?

Once you've done this, try to figure out influencers that are popular amongst the niche audience that you've chosen and start by testing with $100-250 to see if influencers promoting your product is giving you any meaningful traction.

Review by avip — What a great review, if I could upvote twice I would! I'll try to really focus on web developers/agencies since I think they're the ones the most likely to be early adopters to a platform like mine. For influencer marketing, I have no experience so far, so I need to read more about how to approach influencers.  — ybouane keyboard_arrow_up 1 keyboard_arrow_down

How do you rate the branding and look of Alpac.App?

star star star star star 4.0

A website builder should have eCommerce features (cart, products, checkout...)

Neither agree nor disagree

What is the deciding factor for you when choosing a website builder?

Ease of use

How should I spend $1000 to attract the most users?

Notion is the big play here – Find Notion influencers and partner with them.

Overall, neat concept and I like the ease of using Notion as a CMS.

Review by rentables — The only issue I’ve had with influencer marketing is that they all ghost me, they don’t answer. Maybe I should try harder..  — ybouane keyboard_arrow_up 1 keyboard_arrow_down

How do you rate the branding and look of Alpac.App?

star star star star star 2.0

A website builder should have eCommerce features (cart, products, checkout...)

Agree

What is the deciding factor for you when choosing a website builder?

How fast I can build a website with it

How should I spend $1000 to attract the most users?

on ads

Create website with more in terms of attractive with animation like FIGMA or webflow/framer

Review by htmlmonk — Thanks for the feedback, that's definitely the focus for me now. Create some nice blocks (with animations and so on) that people can use to build websites/landing pages.  — ybouane keyboard_arrow_up 0 keyboard_arrow_down

How do you rate the branding and look of Alpac.App?

star star star star star 5.0

A website builder should have eCommerce features (cart, products, checkout...)

Agree

What is the deciding factor for you when choosing a website builder?

How fast I can build a website with it

How should I spend $1000 to attract the most users?

Explain how it is better than GitHub Pages because it has more features out of the box.

The website is javascript heavy, that doesn't matter however, because one can design websites that are fast using aAlpacApp.

Review by igobysoandso — keyboard_arrow_up 0 keyboard_arrow_down

How do you rate the branding and look of Alpac.App?

star star star star star 4.0

A website builder should have eCommerce features (cart, products, checkout...)

Strongly agree

What is the deciding factor for you when choosing a website builder?

Plenty of features

How should I spend $1000 to attract the most users?

ease of launch

good idea

Review by hasbehas —