Simpla is a modular frontend content framework built on Web Components. Create dynamic content with HTML, edit it inline, and manipulate it over a JSON API.
Hey everyone, and thanks for the hunt @chrismessina!
I'm Sean, one of the cofounders of Simpla along with @bedeoverend.
We built Simpla out of frustration with the CMS. It's a collection of new HTML elements that you use to create dynamic content directly in your code.
Simpla doesn't have admin areas or forms, you edit content inline (without the risk of breaking things). And it all runs of the frontend, so you can mix beautiful dynamic content into anything. The editing experience looks like this:
We've been thinking about this problem for a long time, and the maturity of the Web Components spec last year was the lightbulb moment for us. We think putting dynamic content into HTML itself is the way forward for the web.
Can't wait to hear your feedback! We'll be around to answer questions :-)
@seaneking@chrismessina@bedeoverend As someone that's been following Simpla along since the early days, it's super exciting to see you guys kicking goals!
Simpla makes the web fun. Looking forward to never having to use a CMS again! ;- )
@seaneking@chrismessina@bedeoverend
Nice work team. I've been impressed by how this team have built a useful product with their avid customers over the past six months.
@seaneking@chrismessina@bedeoverend Amazing concept guys! Solves a huge problem for web designers.
Every time I deliver a client's wordpress website I have to also send them tutorial videos and most of them don't have the time or the inclination to learn their way around a new software. So I end up updating their content every time there is a change. It's a total pain in the ass. I have some elderly clients and they sometimes email me because they want a change in their website tagline! It doesn't seem like a big deal but when you have to dig up the passwords for websites you delivered a year ago it becomes tedious.
That's why I loved Simpla and decided to give it a try right away. Here is some feedback -
1. I was a bit confused after signing up as to what I had to do to get started. I figured it out eventually and felt stupid because it was so simple. But a nice visual guide to help new users get started would help.
2. I'm planning to use Simpla primarily for my clients. And since I could create multiple projects with one account I thought 29 bucks a month was fair. But when I tried to edit my website I was asked for my login credentials so I guess I'll have to create one account for each client so that I wouldn't have to share my password with them if they want to edit their site themselves. In that case, $29/month becomes quite costly. Because they'll also need to purchase a hosting account and 29/month just to be able to edit their website inline wouldn't go down very well with any of my clients (or any web designer's clients actually). It would be great if you could provide one login for each project.
But overall its a cool product with great UI (UX has scope for improvement) that solves a real pain point.
Thanks for making Simpla!
@thepankazz Thanks so much for the awesome feedback! Glad you like the concept, to your points:
1. So sorry you felt that! We are painfully aware that onboarding needs work. It's our highest priority (along with multi-user, below). We're planning on implementing an optional step-by-step setup guide on the dashboard when you first sign up. Do you think that would have helped?
2. Mutli-user support is the most requested feature on our roadmap (http://simpla.link/public-roadmap), we're starting work on it ASAP. Though pricing would still be per-project. We'd want to keep the per-project option for flexibility (eg: devs who would want to pass on a project's cost to a client). We're always iterating on pricing though. The current price points are pegged to industry standards (Contentful, Firebase, etc). We'll keep testing though!
Thanks again for the feedback :-)
Nice tool! @seaneking how does it compare with tools like teletext.io (@centrical@marcelpanse) ?
The end results look similar, but from a tech perspective Simpla seems to require still quite some extra markup to have it up and running while teletext sounds more unobtrusive (especially for existing websites) - am I missing something?
We're looking for a multi-language (no-)cms solution for our platform, so I'm really interested on the topic. Thanks
@stefanocutello Teletext is very cool. Similar editing experience, but I think goals and implementation are quite different.
At a high level Teletext seems (@centrical@marcelpanse feel free to correct me) to be focussed on adding editing capabilities to existing content, like a more powerful and developer-friendly PageCloud. Simpla can do that, but we're more focussed on replacing the CMS in new projects, hence new HTML elements (more powerful) vs. data attributes (easier to retrofit).
Baking dynamic content into new HTML elements has lots of advantages:
- Editing is sandboxed inside Simpla elements, so it's seamless and can't interfere with your code.
- We can structure data on-the-fly (see simpla-block), which opens up awesome opportunities (eg: frontend blog in 10 lines of HTML + js)
- Individual elements vs. full WYSIWYG editors means more structured, semantic content
- Can easily create custom content types - lists, repeaters, datetime - every static HTML element could have a dynamic equivalent in Simpla, so you could build as you would with HTML, but have it all seamlessly dynamic.
We're working on the flexibility angle, for example we'll soon be making simpla-img extend a native img (ie: <`img is="simpla-img" /`>).
Hope that helps!
@stefanocutello@seaneking@centrical Simpla and Teletext.io are both trying to solve the same content editing problem. Our background is a bit different, we were building SPA's with ReactJs and in these component based languages you might not control the actual HTML output (like with ReactJs you might use bootstrap or react-mdl as a abstraction layer on the html), so you cannot implement something like simpla on it (unless you fork the component libraries). So we needed something that would work on any HTML output, as unobtrusive as possible. It is just a slightly different approach.
It seems Simpla is focussing more on new websites, since you need to implement the custom tags and we are focussing more on existing websites - to easily add content management to it.
Anyway, this is a huge market and it is good that multiple companies are working on the same thing, it just validates there is an actual problem and a need to solve it. There is plenty of room in this space for multiple competitors.
Kudos to the simpla team and keep up the good work -- so will we :-)
@stefanocutello@seaneking@marcelpanse I agree with both Sean and Marcel. When we heard about Simpla, we instantly liked it very much and reached out to Sean and his team to tell them so ;-)
The differences between Simpla and Teletext.io have to do with the use case. As Marcel pointed out, Teletext.io primarily aims at helping out developers who are part of an ongoing product development cycle. Sometimes, these products are already quite mature and have a lot of traffic. This is why we try to avoid requiring a lot of mark-up changes. For the same reasons, there are differences in feature set, the API structure and the architecture of the underlying system.
Anyway, we think Simpla does a great job - let's both conquer the world!
@centrical@seaneking@marcelpanse I strongly believe you guys are solving a very annoying problem that's there since a very long time. Content Management, without the System. Love it! Keep up the good work & thanks for sharing your thoughts!
Currently working on moving a project off WordPress and onto plain HTML/CSS. The head of marketing was initially scared she wouldn't be able to make any changes to the site, given she is not technical, but I showed her how I'd integrated Simpla, and she loved it.
This is how web development should be – no CMS bloat, and no 'visual composers' that easily break things. I write the code, someone else comes up with the content 😉
Well done team!
The ability to quickly create custom keyboard shortcuts for any task is a game changer, and I appreciate how it integrates with other tools like Alfred and BetterTouchTool. The ability to create custom touchbar buttons is a nice touch too.
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