[dgam]

I announced Blot on Hacker News almost 10 years ago. Thank you all for helping to get it started. It was a nice surprise to see it posted again here today.

The goal of Blot is to bring the benefits of the static site generator to people who haven't heard of static site generators

[Sephr]

Please increase your pricing transparency. I could not easily figure out the price of your hosted service without having to use a search engine.

Blot[1] (open source software) turns a folder into a website, and blot.im offers a hosted Blot service for $5/mo.

1. https://github.com/davidmerfield/blot

[dgam]

Fair point – I have just added:

https://blot.im/pricing

[devjab]

Some people are pointing out that they found it easy to read your pricing before you added this site. I’d like to offer a different perspective. So many tech products and startups lack this sort of easy to find clarity.

Many times in my professional life we’ve dismissed products we might have bought if they had a pricing page as clear as yours. Not so much because they necessarily did anything wrong, but because we rarely have the time to “research” tech products that are “nice” but not “necessary”. So where some companies might have sold us an eternal product license for $5 a month, they didn’t because they didn’t have this sort of pricing page, where they very clearly explain the exact price of their product in as few words as possible. Some may find that ridiculous, but I’m fairly certain that if we do this, then others does as well as we’re very rarely unique.

One of the consequences of having done this professionally at many organisations for two decades is that I also do it as a private person. Maybe that’s even more lazy, but it is what it is.

So I think you did well to add this!

[EarthAmbassador]

I want to second this view--simple transparency and being upfront about pricing sets the tone for an entire ongoing relationship, and is even critical to beginning one. I have a 99 percent rejection rate of every website that doesn't put pricing up front, along with a customer service phone number. If I have to click more than once for pricing, and if that phone isn't on the landing page, the entire product goes straight into the ether. Ignoring these basics is a fundamental lack of respect for my time and attention as a customer, and I won't have it. I know this view is pervasive, yet dark patterns persist.

[lolinder]

To be fair, it's very clearly fronted on the Sign Up form, which has a prominent button in the top right corner. A dedicated Pricing page/section would be nice simply because people often look for it, but it's not like they're trying to be sneaky or use dark patterns.

[Sephr]

Yeah, this is just a usability issue for sure. Unfortunately for me, I didn't want to click "sign up" until after I could locate the pricing, leading me into a catch-22 situation.

[pmontra]

I second this. Why would I want to click a sign up link without knowing the price in advance? No price no sale. Every service has a pricing page.

Anyway, it seems that they fixed it because there is a Pricing link in the menu now. Well done.

[rightbyte]

Ye "sign up" implies that you have accepted the pricing.

A common dark pattern is that you need to enter PI to get to the pricing so that they can call spam you forever. (I am not accusing the linked site of doing it, I haven't checked.)

[cortesoft]

Did you think it would sign you up without confirmation or something? It seems strange to me to not want to hit sign up to see how much it would cost.

[badsectoracula]

Personally it never even occurred to me that the "sign up" button would show pricing - in fact it wasn't even apparent that this was a paid product. Usually services have a separate "pricing" link somewhere at the top that explain things.

I pretty much never click on "sign up" buttons unless i have already been convinced the service is something i want to sign up for.

[swells34]

I think of a "sign up" button as something I click after I've chosen to use that product. The button click signals my intent to do so. Having to click it to see pricing is something that would just not happen for me, because I'd never intend to sign up without seeing pricing.

[voidfunc]

I agree sign-up is not how I would look for pricing. Sign-up is something I click when I'm ready to commit to using but until then I'm looking for information and I expect something like a Pricing page.

If I can't find the pricing I'm never going to click "sign up"

[EarthAmbassador]

Indeed. In fact, I will refuse to sign up out of spite.

[hiddencost]

HubSpot popularized collecting emails before providing pricing. A lesson from corporate sales in other industries. (Urgh)

[rchaud]

But at least they'd offer something, even if it was just tepid whitepaper about CRMs or email marketing.

[heliodor]

The interesting question is how did you arrive at this site layout where the pricing is hidden in the sign up page when every single SaaS site on the internet has a pricing link in the header and in the footer. Genuinely curious.

[badsectoracula]

I second this, in fact from the site i didn't even knew this was something you'd pay for or that it was open source.

[slashink]

Been a happy customer since 2018! Thank you so much for making it.

[wodenokoto]

As a HN reader it was a little hard to figure out if this was a static site generator or a dynamic script like those old school php files that turned a folder of images into a image gallery website.

But for your target audience, it might be confusing to compare your service to those.

[seventhtiger]

This seems like a very nice product.

I wanted to look into the developer guide to customizing a template. It's to add RTL support for Arabic content.

This give me error tho https://blot.im/developers

[fnord77]

Are table of contents on posts possible?

[anigbrowl]

Just what I needed!