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Relate 1.0 — Create the web together
Relate is the open platform to create together on the web.
Simple, intuitive, and visual environment for rapid web creation.
Speaks native web, HTML/CSS/JS.
Publish or export anywhere. Imports anything from anywhere. Complete openness—no vendor lock-in.
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Replies
Thanks @smalter for the critical question.
First, I love Webflow! It's their redefinition of "possible" that drove us to experiment with new solutions and take it further.
Wix and Webflow are too closed, vendor-locked, and non-collaborative. It claims to be web-based, but they enforce their paradigm, and the source is hyper opinionated. While you can export the code, it's not your code, and you cannot easily integrate it to something else or expand it with more code. It is built too vertically at the core and therefore slows online businesses from scaling.
Relate is more horizontal and works as the perfect "design-as-code" layer for any use case on the web. Really. From emails, to landing pages, sites, design systems for marketing sites or for web applications. It's a game-changer for web-based online businesses that need to scale quickly without trading-off simplicity/flexibility with anything of the holy triangle - content, design, and development.
It lets teams work together to create where the web itself happens. It speaks the native languages of the web, HTML/CSS/JS. It means you can import existing code to it or integrates existing libraries easily into your design. Multiplayer editing is on its way too, yet we believe it is the web foundation as a medium that needs to be genuinely accessible to anyone first. As it makes the collaboration even more empowering.
While I have to agree with you about the benefits of this certain framework, I do not believe it will last as the web itself, and you may be surprised how much you can enable humans by simply accessing native and stupid HTML/CSS. Speaking of the 90s, is it you @garyfung at the crowd there? 👉 youtube.com/watch?v=oeqPrUmVz-o 😀 ❤️
@ishkash_8 the Web's evolution has been with open source, open protocols, higher levels of abstraction. Your argument is like we should write in assembly because that's certainly powerful.
In commercial practice, I and teams do not write straight html and JS (jquery?) anymore. We can drop down to optimize/refine raw html and css of course, but large majority of time we don't. So outputting in straight html/css is about as useful as Figma hifi mockups. Which we definitely do use.
@garyfung I'm not sure how does the web evolution supports your claims? So we should forget about the lower level because there is a higher level? Maybe we should not care about physics because we got biology already?
I am not saying we should or should not use React. I am sure the community romanticizing these solutions too much, and for many use-cases (not yours) plain code is more than enough and more accessible than anything. You may not worry about accessibility as a technical person. I get that.
@ishkash_8 if your audience is non-technical people, then you are competing with nocode builders like Squarespace, Wix, etc.
Vendor lock-in? Not on the high priority list to non technical people who just want to get something accessible working.
My 2c anyway. Good luck
Congrats @ishkash_8!! It's been really fun seeing the product/vision come together. I'm going to +1 @smalter 's question...curious to hear how you'd break down the differences and how I should choose which tool to use.
@edavidpeterson Thanks David! I hope my answer to @smalter helps.
Jumping on the opportunity to expand on it:
"How I should choose which tool to use?"
If you're an ordinary person seeking to build an online business and need something live without fussing around much, take Wix and others. It simple and "chill."
But, if you hope to build a real scalable business online, this is where things get tricky.
Content-driven product? You're talking to a content writer who wants to use WordPress because it'll be easy to manage content, which they know and use since forever.
Custom-designed website? You go to a designer who may use Webflow and others because it'll be easy for them to set up any design and make changes to it later.
You're talking with a developer who wants none of the above and prefers coding everything from scratch, but ok if they have to go with WordPress or other non-vendor-locked solutions to integrate too safely.
Web application? It may turn out we got to code stuff from scratch anyway since you're demands are high. Maybe you're a tough maker who goes for challenging goals. Great.
You're a startup! There are designers, developers, and writers. You chose the most (of what you think the most) important things, traded off the others and their importance by excluding them entirely or significantly lowering their efficiency. You cannot get everything.
Wait. If our goal is to build successful online businesses - Are we using the right tools for the right job? Or are we simply making a broken process "work"?
Let's not compromise on content, design, or code. What if you could start by yourself and invite others? Writers to edit a web page as if they were editing a document. Designers to emphasize this content and create as if the browser was also a design tool. Developers to code and bind interactivity to it or to use its design somewhere else and build your online product together in different depths yet same space and time - The open web.
Hey @ishkash_8,
This looks amazing! I had a few questions:
1. Will code export be available for Free Plans? Right now, it doesn't seem to be. But one can copy the code from the left side panels.
2. On paid plans, would there be a 1-click solution to export/deploy to popular hosting services such as Netlify, etc.?
Hey @sushdagr8, thanks!
1. For now, we're keeping the package export under a paid plan. Copying from the code view is your way to overcome it 😉 I believe it can be just fine for the simplest use-cases that do not require too many manual changes in code.
2. The answer is YES. We started deploying an ability to deploy to other sources and still exploring parts of it. Can I privately send you a few specific questions regarding deployments? Thanks in advance.
Thanks for the hunt @benln
Hey PH! I'm Eden, CEO of Relate.
After months in a hyper-private alpha, we're excited to announce Relate 1.0!
Wait, what is Relate? Simply put, it's an open platform to create on the web.
Relate expands the medium's possibilities and redefines what is simple and flexible - ״Build a website״ with the confidence that it'll quickly answer the needs when a business grows. How?
Simple, intuitive environment to create for the web. Speaks only the language the browser understands and functions as a "design-as-code" layer on top of it.
There is no React, and it's not a Wix or Webflow site, not a Figma/Sketch file, just plain HTML, CSS, and JS, at W3C's standards. It's the WEB. And you can touch it as if you're editing a document.
Import anything from anywhere - Import design, code, copy an entire site or pieces of it, make more pages out of an existing site—whatever, from wherever.
Publish it anywhere, export it to code. It's YOUR code. No vendor lock-in. COMPLETE OPENNESS. Not walled gardens.
Why are we doing it? All of the platforms are too complex, too closed, or too detached from the actual medium.
There is a tension between simplicity & flexibility - They never exist together anywhere on the market. Therefore limits the possibilities of the web as a medium and hurts online businesses from scaling.
YES. It's another design tool, but it is built specifically for the web and produces the most beneficial HTML/CSS you'll get.
YES. It's another website builder, but you can also build complex design systems powered by plain CSS and have them continuously delivered to your dev team as the "one source of truth - Developers connect functional CSS the same way Tailwind/Bootstrap is being used.
Signup for the private beta here - https://relate.app
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"The first web browser was also an editor. The idea being that not only could everyone read content on the web, but they could also help create it. It was to be a collaborative space for everyone."Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web.
Hit me with questions.
@benln @ishkash_8 Great stuff! How easy would this be to connect to a headless CMS? I'm more on the design side and less technical, but would like that kind of flexibility
@charlotte_champion Relate is the ultimate "design-as-code" layer to connect to headless CMS or anything else. While it has now done with code, we're also working on a visual data binding solution 👌
Great concept. There is definitely room to solve all the pain points generated by using centralized web design tools. Good luck!
Looks great! Is it also easy to use for people without a strong coding background?
Thanks @dinataitelbaum . Of course, it's all about moving the power from the technicians' hands to the creator's hands. You will need to learn the web paradigm, though, before you run at full speed. https://playbook.relate.design
@slomchinskiy Hey Bogdan! We'll consider bringing it back. Is there a specific project you wanna export at the moment? Happy to help.
Hey @softsound, thanks for this important question. We're working on the feature set that is more suitable for teams and together with the team plan in which you'll be able to build and host/export/continuously-deliver more than one project.
Secret - For now, If you now build and host more than one site under the pro plan, we won't notice or limit you! 🤭😯😉
I loved how easy and intuitive it is to create a website with little knowledge.
Being able to edit and see the changes instantly is the best, I love that it shows you the html, js and css code.
Thanks @francarlos_jose_blanco_herrera ! Did you notice that the JS is editable? (we're working on enabling HTML/CSS editing too) Is it important for you? If yes/no - why? Thanks! (:
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