Automatio – Visual Automated Extraction Tool | Hacker News Reader

Automatio – Visual Automated Extraction Tool

automatio.co

115 pointsh1fra29 comments

Omg HN front page ^^. @h1fra thanks for sharing it bro!

I just sent a newsletter to all Automatio subscribers that our Early Adopter program is open and while I was watching analytics I saw traffic coming from HN. I was "oh sh*t". My plan was to submit Automatio on Show HN when we fully release it to the public. But what the heck, sometimes best things happens when it doesn't go with a plan.

Anyway, Automatio is project my team and I developing for last 4 years. It's totally bootstrapped, and it's hard but rewarding journey. Don't mind bad written copy on the website, a lot of stuff could be improved. But even we have ~5 developers, sometimes I feel like "one man army", doing various things from designing Automatio logic, features, testing, UI/UX, promotions/growth, talking with customers, accounting, legal, and everything which is necessary to move forward. Of course I have lot of technical support my Co-founder Taher and girlfriend Jelena.

I gonna quote myself and the text I written already on the EA page:

“Wish I had Automatio when I was starting my digital journey ~15 years ago. I was always in need for web automation. Another bot that will save me from boring, repetitive manual work. I started building Automatio to solve my problems, not to "validate" another startup idea. There is nothing to validate. Automatio is the future happening right now, and you should be part of it, because it will bring You tremendous benefits, in whatever field you are in this digital age”

My goal is to build most powerful no-code web automation (not just another web scraper) tool which will give ability to anyone to automate theoretically anything on the web, without writing single line of code.

Hope you share my vision as well.

Peace

Your signup page asks for a certain $$ commitment. Do we need to pay the yearly fee right away. I would prefer to try it first.

Since Automatio is bootstrapped project and in alpha phase, we are looking to work with customers who really find it useful and who can afford yearly package. It might be pricey for independent makers or small businesses, but in around ~2 months we will launch fully publicly so anyone can subscribe on monthly basis.

Could there be a (slightly more expensive) purely usage based pricing?

It would be amazing for little tinker projects to just pull some values from the web here and there.

Actually is based on the usage. And in next 2 months we gonna release normal monthly packages. Every user will get certain amount of credits which are reduced for each second Automatio run. It mean that Automatio is charging per second of what is used, but on monthly subscription basis.

So there is a minimum price? Or could i use and pay for a single credit a month if I want to get e.g. the monthly average temperature of my city.

Currently only yearly package for EA program. But soon we get out of it, will have flexible packages, something you described.

Been really impressed by the video, even though I did not tested it yet seems like a really good project. Congrats on shipping !

Thanks buddy, what you saw on video is something I recorded for one of my friend, showcasing Automatio. And then another friend suggested to put that on the homepage, because he said he could feel my energy, even its 35 min long video.

And yeah, that video 9 months old, and we did a lot of things on Automatio till then. It's much more powerful.

Tnx again for deciding to share the link, u made our day/night here!

Peace

Looks good. Would definatley suggest a few shorter videos to showcase the power of the tool (3 min each). Would start by showing the end result, then work backwards explaining how the tool made it happen. Good luck.

For sure! I just added that long video at the moment of creating new homepage, and my logic was it better to have something then nothing. The video is to long definitely, so once other priorities are sorted, gonna either create myself or invest into short explainer video.

Thanks for the feedback anyway!

I have a hard time reading this website with the amount of text fading and/or sliding in at all times as I scroll. I immediately closed it even though the product itself was interesting.

The <blink> tag was removed from HTML for a reason, but here we are in 2021 with websites that are effectively full of the modern version of it.

Sorry about it. Not sure about the <blink> tag. Automatio homepage was made in Webflow, with all of the animations.

But I understand your frustration, it's never good to overdo it with something.

The way the website loads (on firefox here) is very distracting, the animations slide ins add nothing for me, personally.

Sorry that you had bad UX there. I got reported by couple of people before that animations is bit overkill.

Thanks for the feedback, will definitely have in mind in next homepage update.

Looks amazing. How legal is using it?

Thanks. Actually it's much more then what is shown on the homepage, it's need some update.

Regarding legality, it's a tool which come with responsibility from the user itself. I often compare Automatio with a knife, where it can be used as a tool to help you do the things, or to make a damage.

I like the website and the prospect of the tool looks amasing. Really good work. What are your next plans?

Tnx man! Next plan is to collect dozen paying customers which will give us fuel to run for next few months without worrying about $$. Meanwhile, we gonna improve existing version of and build new features and tools that will make Automatio even more powerful.

Also more native integrations, with tools like Zapier, Integromat, etc is on the top of our roadmap.

First, amazing job and congratulations on launching.

I’ve founded a handful of startups myself (most failed) and was a little shocked and worried that y’all been at it for four years and now just “trying to collect a dozen customers.”

Four years in, with a product as well designed and engineered as this looks should have more customers and MRR/ARR. Have you just been heads down the last four years building and engineering? I can advise you from personal experience that’s a mistake.

Ramp up the sales and marketing dials, and make sure people really want and more importantly really will pay for what you are building.

Thanks a lot for the feedback!

“trying to collect a dozen customers.”

That was plan for next few days/weeks :D. I have great vision with Automatio, and its not money driven (that will come alongway).

Yeah, we are building it for last ~4 years, and I know what you are saying. We are to long into development, which is 100% true. But due life happening, and push you and drag you here and there, then hit you and punch, here we are. And I decided to go hardway, even we could get some $$ pumped in. But I believed that we can make it without sharing the equity or real goals of Automatio.

I am always looking such tools :) this looks great. But may I know is there any pricing plan?

Glad you think that, thank you!

The pricing plan is hidden behind few steps in the funnel process (sorry :D). Once you fill short form on homepage, you will get follow up email with another form which takes less then 3 minutes to fill. After that you will get confirmation with EA page with a pricing.

As I mentioned in other comment, it's because we are looking to work with fewer serious customers, who can afford our EA package.

There are two packages $1k (Pro) and $2k (Expert) for a year, where Expert package gives 50% LTD (life time discount).

Is there assistance if a customer is running into issues?

Yes, early adopters will be invited to private Slack channel and will have direct support of me and the team. I am there for chats and live calls, to help people with any issue they encounter.

Shut Up and Take My Money!!! Sleek, intuitive, valuable. Congrats @kinderjaje and team!

Haha, thanks man!

I think that the integration with the Airtable is gonna be great!

Yes, its coming in the near future! :D

Zapier first.

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