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Show HN: Sitebulb, a website crawler and auditor for SEOs

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Re: Show HN: Sitebulb, a website crawler and auditor for SEOs

#11

Post by throwaway2016a »

hathawayp wrote: post #4
stingraycharles wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting that it’s all a desktop app. What problem do you think this solves compared to something that runs in the cloud ? Apart from the cost structure, I can’t think of anything myself.

The other big thing, in comparison to cloud software, is convenience. You can setup a crawl and start it running -and see URLs being crawled - within a minute. On cloud software that's simply not possible, due to the way that everything is scheduled. There are a few other small things, such as being able to view Audits offline (what we call 'train mode'). The cost structure can be a big limiting factor though, especi…

> On cloud software that's simply not possible, due to the way that everything is scheduled.

As someone who works in cloud software this makes me cringe a little.

I have no doubt this is how existing cloud SEO crawlers work but with elastic scaling, web sockets, and serverless there is no reason why this has to be true.

It is not a limitation of cloud software. It is a sign of devs and/or product owners deciding making instant results is not a priority for the product.

Edit: I hear that a lot from industries that are not intimately familiar with web apps. "You can't do that on the cloud"... a typical web software engineer will not be able to do it but there are people out there who can. They are more expensive than your typical developer but if depending on your product they are worth it.

Re: Show HN: Sitebulb, a website crawler and auditor for SEOs

#12

Post by hathawayp »

rmccoy6435 wrote: post #7
stingraycharles wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting that it’s all a desktop app. What problem do you think this solves compared to something that runs in the cloud ? Apart from the cost structure, I can’t think of anything myself.

The one advantage that I can think of is this can run on websites that are in development and not accessible to something running in the cloud. A lot of enterprise websites have their dev/stage behind a VPN and being able to run this against those without having to find out how to jump through hoops would be really nice (which is looks like this is capable of doing since you just need to feed it a URL). On top of tha…

Yep exactly. All crawls are stored locally so there is no data issue to worry about.

Re: Show HN: Sitebulb, a website crawler and auditor for SEOs

#14

Post by hathawayp »

throwaway2016a wrote: post #9

This looks really good. My only comment I have is that if I am purchasing a piece of desktop software I expect there to be at least the option of an annual license. Monthly feels more like a service than a product and I think of desktop software as a product. But I realize Desktop software pricing is evolving so this may just be old school thinking on my part. Also, if I'm a Mac user (I am) I expect to be able to buy…

Interesting comment regarding the App Store. To be honest I'm really surprised no one has ever said this to us before. We have another product - (http://urlprofiler.com/) - for Windows and Mac that we've been selling for 3 years and no one has ever given us this feedback.

We're not wedded to a price structure, although we're rolling with monthly for now. I'm pretty sure through weight of demand that we'll need to add Yearly plans in the next few months.

There's nothing preventing a Linux version (it's built in Electron) other than demand really. We'll do it if enough people want it, but we have a bunch of other features on our roadmap that are currently a higher priority.

Re: Show HN: Sitebulb, a website crawler and auditor for SEOs

#15

Post by methyl »

hathawayp wrote: post #4
stingraycharles wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting that it’s all a desktop app. What problem do you think this solves compared to something that runs in the cloud ? Apart from the cost structure, I can’t think of anything myself.

The other big thing, in comparison to cloud software, is convenience. You can setup a crawl and start it running -and see URLs being crawled - within a minute. On cloud software that's simply not possible, due to the way that everything is scheduled. There are a few other small things, such as being able to view Audits offline (what we call 'train mode'). The cost structure can be a big limiting factor though, especi…

> The other big thing, in comparison to cloud software, is convenience. You can setup a crawl and start it running -and see URLs being crawled - within a minute.

This depends on implementation. If the architecture is modern and well thought, using dynamic scaling or even AWS Lambda, the result should be available much faster on the cloud software due to ability to parallelization. You can only have so much network bandwith / CPU power locally and if you need to crawl hundreds of pages to get your result, it matters a lot.

Disclaimer: I'm building a SaaS tool for SEO which also involves page crawling.

Re: Show HN: Sitebulb, a website crawler and auditor for SEOs

#16

Post by methyl »

rmccoy6435 wrote: post #7
stingraycharles wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting that it’s all a desktop app. What problem do you think this solves compared to something that runs in the cloud ? Apart from the cost structure, I can’t think of anything myself.

The one advantage that I can think of is this can run on websites that are in development and not accessible to something running in the cloud. A lot of enterprise websites have their dev/stage behind a VPN and being able to run this against those without having to find out how to jump through hoops would be really nice (which is looks like this is capable of doing since you just need to feed it a URL). On top of tha…

> On top of that you also don't have to worry about what they're doing with the data output by the program on their server.

Why would you care if the site is available in the Internet and you can't control who is browsing it?

This is a valid argument only for internal websites which are not a subject for SEO anyway.

Re: Show HN: Sitebulb, a website crawler and auditor for SEOs

#17

Post by btown »

throwaway2016a wrote: post #9

This looks really good. My only comment I have is that if I am purchasing a piece of desktop software I expect there to be at least the option of an annual license. Monthly feels more like a service than a product and I think of desktop software as a product. But I realize Desktop software pricing is evolving so this may just be old school thinking on my part. Also, if I'm a Mac user (I am) I expect to be able to buy…

Adobe Creative Cloud (as well as how streaming services have made people at all levels inured to low monthly subscriptions) has made this type of monthly pricing much more normalized - good for providers who can now point to recurring revenue, not so great for users who usually end up paying more.

Re: Show HN: Sitebulb, a website crawler and auditor for SEOs

#18

Post by hathawayp »

throwaway2016a wrote: post #11
hathawayp wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The other big thing, in comparison to cloud software, is convenience. You can setup a crawl and start it running -and see URLs being crawled - within a minute. On cloud software that's simply not possible, due to the way that everything is scheduled. There are a few other small things, such as being able to view Audits offline (what we call 'train mode'). The cost structure can be a big limiting factor though, especi…

> On cloud software that's simply not possible, due to the way that everything is scheduled. As someone who works in cloud software this makes me cringe a little. I have no doubt this is how existing cloud SEO crawlers work but with elastic scaling, web sockets, and serverless there is no reason why this has to be true. It is not a limitation of cloud software. It is a sign of devs and/or product owners deciding maki…

Sorry, maybe I misread, but I kind of read the comment as 'what separates this from other cloud products on the market?'

So I wasn't trying to argue what is and isn't possible with cloud architecture, simply what is and isn't possible with (our) cloud-based competitors.

The process is along the lines of: 'Click Start', get taken to a screen which says 'Initializing' or similar, then maybe 2-3 minutes later you'll see something start to happen. But there is little to no data on which URLs are actually being crawled.

Sitebulb, and desktop crawlers in general, has a much quicker feedback loop.

Re: Show HN: Sitebulb, a website crawler and auditor for SEOs

#19

Post by seibelj »

throwaway2016a wrote: post #9

This looks really good. My only comment I have is that if I am purchasing a piece of desktop software I expect there to be at least the option of an annual license. Monthly feels more like a service than a product and I think of desktop software as a product. But I realize Desktop software pricing is evolving so this may just be old school thinking on my part. Also, if I'm a Mac user (I am) I expect to be able to buy…

I am personally fine with a monthly fee for desktop software. If I'm paying for software, it's up to the person who sells the software to decide how I should pay, and for me to decide if it's worth it.

Re: Show HN: Sitebulb, a website crawler and auditor for SEOs

#20

Post by throwaway2016a »

hathawayp wrote: post #14
throwaway2016a wrote: post #9

This looks really good. My only comment I have is that if I am purchasing a piece of desktop software I expect there to be at least the option of an annual license. Monthly feels more like a service than a product and I think of desktop software as a product. But I realize Desktop software pricing is evolving so this may just be old school thinking on my part. Also, if I'm a Mac user (I am) I expect to be able to buy…

Interesting comment regarding the App Store. To be honest I'm really surprised no one has ever said this to us before. We have another product - ( http://urlprofiler.com/ ) - for Windows and Mac that we've been selling for 3 years and no one has ever given us this feedback. We're not wedded to a price structure, although we're rolling with monthly for now. I'm pretty sure through weight of demand that we'll need to a…

The app store has a few benefits. The biggest one, for paid software is that if I format my computer or move to a new computer my license come over with my Apple account. I don't need to worry about remembering an account and license keys for each each.

I can't count how many apps I've paid for but I don't have installed right now because I lost a hard drive and my license keys with it.

Though I'm guessing with monthly billing it is more a username / password thing for you vs a key. (I haven't tried it yet, sorry).

The second benefit is not having to give my billing info to yet another company.

I'm not unlikely to install an app not from the app store. But I'd say I'm... complete guess here... 30% more likely to install it if it is in the app store.

And I can also say that if I have the choice between the two (same software on the app store and off), I will always do the one in the app store because of the previously listed benefits.

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