There was another one of these that made it to the top of Product Hunt the other day...I don't remember the name. They didn't disclose on their lander whether or not they handled domain based email though, so I would say this one is at least better described if not actually better.
I get the value proposition, but I wonder if the positive response to this concept on HN & PH is from actual potential customers, or is one of those things that sounds to a technical crowd like a good idea for our less technical friends. I guess I am curious how many people that would need a simple service like this are interested in owning their own domain.
I agree that most HN readers probably wouldn't use this service, but I will definitely point people to it.
I have set up dozens of sites for friends and relatives over the years. The only reason I'm still paying for shared hosting with WebFaction every month is because some of them are still running blogs / businesses off the crummy site I made for them years ago.
My default response when someone wanted a personal website used to be giving them a WordPress blog. But most people never actually wanted to write content for a blog - they just wanted a domain name and a custom email address, but got overwhelmed when shopping for a domain.
Sending people to a service like this is better for them and better for me.
Good point. I've created personal domain website announcements for each of my kids' births within hours of being born. I used a mix of services, such as Dropbox, IFTTT, and others, to make this possible. I've thought offering a dead-simple solution like this would be well received. But perhaps the interest already correlates with the knowledge to do it, thereby reducing the market for it.
Are you thinking of https://picnic.sh? Even simpler and cheaper, but need to write HTML and no templates.
I get the value proposition, but I wonder if the positive response to this concept on HN & PH is from actual potential customers, or is one of those things that sounds to a technical crowd like a good idea for our less technical friends. I guess I am curious how many people that would need a simple service like this are interested in owning their own domain.