Monday 18 September 2023

Typedream review

Gone are the days when you only had the choice of using a designer-developer team or a website builder like Wix or WordPress. In any case, even if you go with something like Wix, chances are, you still need to hire a pro to build your website or make changes to the template so that it fits your brand and design.

Typedream makes creating websites literally as easy as typing. It has a familiar text-editing interface, especially if you use apps such as Coda or Notion. Of course, it also comes with a gallery of templates to make the building process fast and painless.

Launched in 2021 by five friends, Kevin Nicholas Chandra, Michelle Marcelline, Albert Putra Purnama, Anthony Harris Christian, and Putri Karunia want to help all those who can’t or don’t have the time to code but want to create digital products. This means it’s not only for non-coder and marketers but also for anyone who wants to shorten the time until they can launch a digital product or service. Typedream is a startup funded by Y Combinator.

Pros and cons of Typedream

Typedream is an online service with a familiar text-editing interface that makes building website a very fast and easy process. It’s a subscription-based and hosted tool so that you don’t need to care about maintenance or security.

Pros

  • Easy as typing
  • Fair pricing
  • Forever free plan

Cons

  • Little to no leeway to design complex websites and low degree of customisability. Given that this tool is for people who don’t want to or can’t code, the target audience may not even consider it a drawback.

Who is Typedream for?

At the time of writing, Typedream doesn’t target a specific niche or industry. Rather, its simplicity makes it appealing for anyone who

  • Doesn’t know to code or have designer skills
  • Doesn’t want to code
  • Needs to launch a digital product quickly and want to save time
  • You don’t want to or have the time to learn all websites builder like Squarespace or Wix

If you see yourself nodding to one of this points, then Typedream is for you. In other words, you can be a startup, a small business owner, an influencer, a school, or just about anyone who wants to create and launch digital products.

How easy is Typedream to use?

It’s commendable that you can sign up without having your credit card at hand. As with many other website builders, you start by picking your template, and if you select a shop also your storefront.

Start with selecting your template

If you’ve skipped the onboarding, you should still feel familiar with Typedream since it behaves similar to Notion. But instead of adding stuff like a todo list or a database table, you get all components you may want to build a fully functional website.

See available components by typing ‘/’

You can really see and feel how much thought went into designing a simple, uncluttered, and fast tool that doesn’t make the user jump through hoops. It makes the process of designing and launching a website not only nice and easy but also super fast.

Since Typedream is meant to be simple and fast, you can’t expect the capabilities that Quarkly or Webflow offer. First of all, Typedream wasn’t built with professional coders or designers in mind who need a high degree of flexibility and customisability. Further, since Typedream was only recently launched, maybe someday it will since it’s regularly adding new features and capabilities.

Typedream templates

The templates can be grouped into

  • CMS
  • Web3
  • SaaS (Software as a Service)
  • Portfolio
  • Shop
Typedream templates gallery

CMS is a special category because it has collection views and item pages set up so that it can present data from a database. At the time of writing the supported database is Notion. Typedream is working on its own database and a new integration with Airtable.

How easy is managing your ecommerce store with Typedream?

You can design a storefront with Typedream but for checkout, you need to add a Stripe payment link or Paypal buy button. Managing a store needs a backend and that’s out of scope.

What marketing tools does Typedream provide?

Even though Typedream can be described more as a static website generator it comes with some dynamic content capabilities if you subscribe to a paid account. Then you can use its collection (CMS) feature and for now, use Notion to write blog content.

You can add a meta title and define a custom URL for each page. For more advanced SEO options, you need to subscribe to a paid account.

Payment options

As you can only design storefronts, you need a Paypal buy button or Stripe payment link to accept payments.

Security

All websites created with and hosted on Typedream are encrypted with an SSL certificate. You can protect certain pages so that only people with a password or token can view them.

Customer support

Regardless of if you’re logged in or not, you’ll find the chat button in the lower right hand corner on every page of Typedream’s website. The team usually answers within a few hours. There’s also a basic documentation that guides you through the 4 steps of designing and publishing your site.

Pricing

Typedream has comparable plans to Super, the official website builder of Notion.

If you need dynamic content or a custom domain go with a paid plan

Is Typedream the right solution for you?

If you’re looking for an easy and fast tool to launch a modern website, then look no further, especially if you don’t need all the bells and whistles.

If you’re starting or selling only a handfull of digital products and can live with something like a Strike payment link, Typedream is a dream in how easy it is to set up a website with a storefront.

That being said, Typedream isn’t meant for big, complex websites or online stores. You also won’t get features to manage a store. If you need them, you’d be happier with Strikingly or Shopify.



Original post here: Typedream review

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