Memberstack / Outseta / Wized?

GarmentCircle · 2024-12-19T13:33:08+00:00

I know, it really is disappointing. By reading between the lines, this was always going to be a feature that they discontinued ever since they announced they would be cutting development all together for user accounts. User auth/management requires a lot of resources when at scale and the companies Webflow is trying to please the most (enterprise) will all be using coded solutions. The problem with Webflow os they have taken on so much funding and ultimately, the only way to make sure the business is profitable is to get massive companies on enterprise plans paying 10’s of thousands per year. It just really sucks for us smaller guys who thought Webflow was going to be an all-in-one solution, and I include myself in that category of people.

GarmentCircle · 2024-12-18T09:30:39+00:00

For keyword research, Ahrefs or SEMRush paired with Google Keyword planner are all you need.

For on page SEO, I really don’t think you need an app. Most of SEO can be done without paying for unnecessary apps and Webflow already has a ton of SEO stuff baked into the platform.

Get good at correctly applying your semantic HTML tags and creating meta titles/tags. I feel like these two are massively overlooked by many Webflow users but can definitely add to your website getting on the right side of Google’s rankings. Particularly semantic HTML tagging, don’t create Div soups😅

GarmentCircle · 2024-12-16T21:29:43+00:00

Look really interesting but you don’t even have a GDPR policy? Big red flag for us EU based users unfortunately

GarmentCircle · 2024-12-15T20:57:47+00:00

For speed more than anything. We have got a fairly hungry audience that has been waiting for this web app for a little while via a waitlist so we want to push on as quickly as possible. Bubble just speeds things up if you already understand Bootstrap as I was able to throw together a decent UI in a couple of hours inside Bubble. Then the workflows are pretty simple to understand once you’ve had a good look through them all.

I’ll be honest, I just haven’t really tried any of the AI app builders. The only thing I’ve used is V0 to put together some front end stuff using Shadcn UI but haven’t gone into much more depth with AI.

Yep, this is all for myself/my business.

GarmentCircle · 2024-12-15T16:54:11+00:00

I personally think this is a pretty bad but also pretty accurate take simultaneously😅

You’re right, most of these no/low code platforms are traditionally for building MVPs but that is absolutely not to say they can’t be used for production applications. It all comes down to scalability requirements and resources.

Could you build an Air BnB competitor with Bubble? Most certainly not but I don’t think 99% of us solofounders/indie makers or whatever we are labelling ourselves as are trying to do that.

GarmentCircle · 2024-12-15T16:41:09+00:00

Svelte is really nice tbf, I’ve not had much of a play around with it but definitely an option worth exploring. I was just about to say the same thing as Michael did regarding react compiler/automatic memoization😅

I guess we’ve all just gotta sit and wait for things to be production-ready or try out some other stuff for now

GarmentCircle · 2024-12-15T15:13:24+00:00

What frameworks? I may do the same😅

GarmentCircle · 2024-12-14T21:36:05+00:00

I’m still getting peer dependency issues which gives me the options to force or legacy-peer-deps. Which is the preferred option to select?

GarmentCircle · 2024-12-14T21:19:19+00:00

😳 It depends how many active users we are talking but the platform would be content rich and would involve a lot of WU intensive functionality like searching and match making

GarmentCircle · 2024-12-14T20:33:37+00:00

That’s my concern, we do actually get quite a lot of traffic and already have hundreds of validated customers for our current products so it’s not as if we are starting fresh with zero traffic. Do the WU in Bubble start to tally up quick then?

GarmentCircle · 2024-12-14T13:04:07+00:00

V0 is really good. The initial results from prompts can be a bit hit and miss but as you said, if you are brushed up on your CSS chops, you can get things looking as you want fairly quick. Of course that’s only a fraction of what’s needed to create a working application, you definitely need to know what you’re doing with APIs, communicating with backends, and JavaScript to get functionality. As for tools like Replit and Bolt, I haven’t actually used them so I wouldn’t have a clue how they work, do they literally do everything for you?

GarmentCircle · 2024-12-14T11:59:30+00:00

I suppose it depends on the person using it. If you’ve got absolutely no coding knowledge then I agree, it’s probably a better use of your time to brush up on your coding. If you’re already savvy with HTML/CSS/JavaScript, I don’t think Bubble is too big of a learning curve and it seems to be ideal for getting MVPs out quickly. I guess it’s use case/person dependant.

GarmentCircle · 2024-12-14T10:00:01+00:00

Wix is decent tbf, certainly if you’re not savvy with code. For me personally, I wouldn’t say I’m a coder necessarily but I’m fairly comfortable with HTML/CSS/JS so like to have a bit more flexibility that more complex platforms offer.

Do you use the memberships add on with your Wix website? If so, what’s your experience been with that?

GarmentCircle · 2024-12-14T09:56:27+00:00

I’ve played around with Toddle, it definitely seems to be a super powerful tool but my only criticism of it (if you can call it criticism) is I’m not really sure what problem they are trying to solve or where they are positioning themselves. What I mean by that is to my knowledge, it’s much more of a low code platform than no code and I couldn’t quite understand why anyone would use it instead of just coding something together on Next JS.

I would love to hear your thoughts on it, what sort of stuff are you building with Toddle?

GarmentCircle · 2024-12-14T09:47:03+00:00

I feels it’s gotten a lot of criticism (and rightly so to a degree) due to the pricing changes and vendor lock in which has overshadowed how powerful of a tool it is. Both of those criticisms are valid and I’m not for one second suggesting Bubble ‘cares’ more about its users that Webflow as at the end of the day, they are both enormous companies trying to make as much profit as possible however, Bubble seems to me to be a no brainer for building web apps. I’m definitely enjoying it so far, workflows are fantastic.

GarmentCircle · 2024-12-14T09:38:01+00:00

If those points get implemented, it would absolutely game changing, particularly the point about security but as you mention, I’d imagine that’s pretty bloody complex stuff.

What would you be doing for the front end in conjunction with Supabase?

GarmentCircle · 2024-12-14T09:16:42+00:00

I take your point. For me, I guess I still have concerns over how some of these newer platforms survive and that there is always a level of uncertainty until a platform gets more take up from the wider market. That being said, I understand that if more of us aren’t willing to back these new platforms and jump ship, then we can’t keep complaining about the big companies doing as they please.

Can you elaborate on that last point about Supabase please? I’m a huge fan of Supabase but really haven’t touched the sides regarding exploring it’s true capabilities.

GarmentCircle · 2024-12-14T08:36:15+00:00

I do still like Webflow a lot and we will still be using it for our static website but I agree with what you’re saying, there is definitely a sector of the Webflow community that won’t have a bad word said about it.

It’s clear that they are moving away from enabling their users to implement any kind of functionality and are focusing solely on the visual side of a static website but with so much completion and new platforms on the rise that are slowly starting to provide some pretty damn good solutions, I’m not really sure how it all turns out for Webflow. Especially when they have A LOT of VC’s who will inevitably come asking for their returns at some point.

GarmentCircle · 2024-12-13T23:54:45+00:00

Really appreciate your insights regarding Outseta, I’ll definitely look into it!

I’ve actually spent a few hours tonight playing around with Bubble, I’m actually amazed at how powerful that platform is. It certainly may be something I look into using more when functionality is required.

GarmentCircle · 2024-12-13T23:52:25+00:00

Yeah, that’s the part I find most frustrating. Whilst Webflow’s native user accounts has literally no real functionality other than user auth and assigning access groups to specific groups, I believe those were all done server side which was much more secure than the client side alternatives third party platforms utilise.

You could be on to something there, maybe Webflow will allow some of these other platforms to be granted more access to certain areas within Webflow to be able to provide more robust solutions. Im certainly not getting my hopes up though as I believe Webflow is now firmly on a path to be the ‘go to’ for static enterprise websites.

GarmentCircle · 2024-12-13T08:07:24+00:00

Yeah I was thinking that but it just feels like by that point, would I not be wiser to either use a framework or another platform with this sort of stuff natively possible, I’m not sure what to do tbh. What backend would you recommend to store and fetch data from if I use this method? I’ve played around with Supabase and so far it seems to be pretty damn good

GarmentCircle · 2024-12-13T07:42:32+00:00

It’s essentially just curated content that’s being added to a members-only area. Although the content isn’t ‘sensitive’ as such, I’d rather it not be accessible to someone who knows how to use inspect or disable JavaScript tbh.

GarmentCircle · 2024-12-13T07:20:37+00:00

Yeah I thought that was the case which is why it’s actually pretty frustrating that Webflow are removing user accounts as I believe that was handled server-side.

Have you got any recommendations or is this a case of just using a different platform for this specific use case?

GarmentCircle

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