Show HN: I built a website builder on top of Notion

Thanks for the question. Two main things currently. When you update your Notion page or styles it updates your site immediately so it makes for a nice editing experience where you can see what your site would look like easily. Others don't do this as quickly. Could take a minute or two to see updates. Second Potion has a pricing model that is more friendly towards having multiple sites.

Re: Show HN: I built a website builder on top of Notion

#7

Post by damechen » Thu, Oct 21, 2021, 5:35 PM UTC

Love it! I have multiple sites hosted by Potion. This is just one of them: https://support.testimonial.to

Re: Show HN: I built a website builder on top of Notion

#8

Post by tshaddox » Thu, Oct 21, 2021, 5:36 PM UTC

itake wrote: post #2

notion websites are so slow. Google's page speed for your home page has a score of 42. Why does it say "fast page speed" and "great seo"? This [1] demo scores 81 and this[2] has a 68. [0] - https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/?url=... [1] - https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/?url=... [2] - https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/?url=...

To be honest, 42 isn't actually that bad. PageSpeed Insights scores are incredibly strict (that's a good thing) and not at all linear with visitor perception of loading speed.

news.ycombinator.com has a 100 score, but if you compare the actual "Lab Data" it's not a massive difference.

First Contentful Paint: news.ycombinator.com: 1.3s, potion.so: 2.7s

The biggest difference is Time to Interactive: news.ycombinator.com: 1.4s, potion.so: 11.2s

That 11.2s is pretty bad, but PageSpeed Insights doesn't take into consideration which interactions work before all the JavaScript has loaded. In the case of potion.so, the HTML is rendered on the server (or perhaps statically generated), and the vast majority of important interactions on the homepage are simple HTML links that work even with JavaScript disabled. The 2 big exceptions (and probably the biggest contributors to that terrible Time to Interactive metric) are the third-party embedded video and chat widget.

Re: Show HN: I built a website builder on top of Notion

#9

Post by andygcook » Thu, Oct 21, 2021, 5:36 PM UTC

Noah's a fun person to follow for those of you who are interested in indie businesses and are on Twitter[0] He's been sharing his MRR growth and learnings while building Potion for awhile now.

@noahbragg - Given that you're built 100% on top of Notion (or at least I think you are), how are you thinking about platform risk long term? They could cut you off their APIs, end life for some undocumented API you rely on, or just build your features into their own product at any point.

[0]- https://twitter.com/noahwbragg

Re: Show HN: I built a website builder on top of Notion

#10

Post by noahbragg » Thu, Oct 21, 2021, 5:40 PM UTC

andygcook wrote: post #9

Noah's a fun person to follow for those of you who are interested in indie businesses and are on Twitter[0] He's been sharing his MRR growth and learnings while building Potion for awhile now. @noahbragg - Given that you're built 100% on top of Notion (or at least I think you are), how are you thinking about platform risk long term? They could cut you off their APIs, end life for some undocumented API you rely on, or…

Thanks Andy! Yeah there is definitely some platform risk. I'm trying to build a close relationship with Notion which can help a bit. But at the end of the day there is still risk building on a platform. As soon as I can I'll try to be using the official api which will take away some risk. But it's not quite ready yet.