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by seibelj 2073 days ago
I consider Shopify a website builder, but I can't export my website to other hosting services.
4 comments

Also Wix, Squarespace, and Weebly.

I didn't realize that all these services are actually presentations and not websites. Whatever that means.

The value of a tool like this without the backend and infrastructure is minimal. If you need to setup your own host and generate new HTML/CSS every time you'd like to update the site, the market for this product drops close to zero.

You could use their APIs to pull your product catalog out, but IIRC their terms of service says that's not allowed if you're migrating to another system.

l.o.l.

Yeah, you can't do that right now. But we do have plans to support self-hosting. We believe it will be table stakes for various customers.

We're a small team of 5 right now, though, and decided to focus on the core experience right now.

Bit confused reading this, thread was talking about Shopify. (Other confused readers: parent's profile says they work at Makeswift, the site builder in OP.)
I mistakenly replied to the incorrect thread hah. Sorry for the confusion!
Good point, although Shopify does solve a very specific problem that's beyond the realm of basic front-end HTML sites.

Although Shopify does allow you to export your webite too - it just won't be able to do very much used elsewhere, without the Liquid-supporting back-end! :)

Shopify has a Shopify website builder.