[HN Gopher] Plasmic.app: Visual editing and content platform for...
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Plasmic.app: Visual editing and content platform for building
       websites and apps
        
       Author : octopoc
       Score  : 144 points
       Date   : 2023-12-19 16:27 UTC (6 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.plasmic.app)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.plasmic.app)
        
       | solardev wrote:
       | I don't really get what this does. The front page feels like a
       | lot of empty marketing, but I still don't understand how it
       | works...?
        
         | theogravity wrote:
         | Same. Reading the page all the way down makes it look like a
         | ReTool competitor?
        
         | nkozyra wrote:
         | Definitely a textbook example of too much splash.
         | 
         | If you pull all the marketing taglines together, it's a no/low-
         | code app builder. We have those, what makes this different?
         | That's the front page sell.
        
         | chaos_emergent wrote:
         | Seems like it's Framer-meets-Retool.
         | 
         | Framer has a great UI builder, but doesn't connect to backends
         | very well. They have their own CMS but the net result is that
         | you typically use it for marketing sites but not business app
         | interfaces.
         | 
         | Retool can connect to a lot of different data sources but is
         | ugly and wouldn't help build a customer-facing app that I would
         | feel proud of. They give you easy to use UI primitives to get
         | you up and running fast.
         | 
         | This seems like a UI builder that can hook into backend
         | systems.
        
           | chungwu wrote:
           | Yes, in a way! Plasmic is a general visual React app builder
           | that can be embedded into your existing React app or be
           | deployed standalone. As such, we place a heavy emphasis on
           | _design_, so you can build exactly the thing that you want,
           | and on _integration_, so you're never limited by what Plasmic
           | can do out of the box. A big part of this is being able to
           | use your own React components in your Plasmic designs, which
           | is a major escape hatch that lets you include any amount of
           | data fetching or business logic that can be consumed by your
           | Plasmic designs.
        
         | octopoc wrote:
         | I think they're trying to invent a new market where none exists
         | yet, and when you do that you HAVE to communicate very clearly.
         | Basically I think they're a WYSIWYG editor for a React SPA. For
         | me, this section helped:
         | 
         | https://github.com/plasmicapp/plasmic?tab=readme-ov-file#how...
        
           | solardev wrote:
           | Thanks! That's a lot more helpful. I understand the gist of
           | its value offering now.
           | 
           | Still have questions about how component composition and
           | layout work, but at least the readme is clearer about what
           | the product IS.
        
             | jason_plasmic wrote:
             | For component composition and layout, Plasmic makes it easy
             | to build responsive pages. Our primitives like stacks are
             | all based on flexbox, though you can use absolute
             | positioning if needed.
             | 
             | For some more detailed docs, check out
             | https://docs.plasmic.app/learn/styling-and-layout/
        
         | xyzzyrz wrote:
         | Thanks for the feedback, we're still iterating on the homepage
         | and didn't expect to get posted here yet!
         | 
         | Our repo https://github.com/plasmicapp/plasmic might be a bit
         | more concrete.
         | 
         | It's a visual page builder that integrates with React
         | codebases. Content management is our biggest use case - i.e.,
         | dev team integrates with Plasmic, and then
         | marketing/content/design teams can create landing pages on the
         | marketing site.
         | 
         | (A newer use case is building applications as well, hence some
         | of the comparisons with Retool etc. There's actually quite a
         | bit of overlap between these use cases, esp. when considering
         | external-facing "customer portal"-style applications.)
        
         | chungwu wrote:
         | Plasmic at its core is a general React app builder. You can
         | create components, add interactivity, and connect to other data
         | sources. You can also bring in your own React components, so
         | there's endless possibilities in extending the tool for your
         | needs.
         | 
         | Our users have used Plasmic to build all sorts of things, from
         | websites and e-commerce storefronts, to Retool-like internal
         | tools, to full web apps (major parts of the Plasmic visual
         | editor itself is built with Plasmic!). The most popular use
         | case we have is as a CMS -- once developers set up Plasmic, the
         | marketers are able to design and publish sections of the
         | website without developer involvement. One remarkable thing is
         | that the dynamically-fetched Plasmic-generated design is part
         | of the same React tree as the rest of your React app, so it is
         | able to read from your React contexts, etc., making it possible
         | to have rather deep and interesting integrations into your
         | site.
         | 
         | Ultimately, Plasmic generates React code from your designs.
         | This code can either live in your code base alongside the rest
         | of your code, or be dynamically fetched (like in the CMS use
         | case).
        
           | bossyTeacher wrote:
           | > You can also bring in your own React components
           | 
           | What does that mean? Does it mean that you can import your
           | own components like using a standard import statement?
        
             | chungwu wrote:
             | Basically, you set up a "custom app host" -- stand up your
             | server (which has your code components), and you add a
             | route (say `https://yoursite.com/plasmic-host`) that
             | renders a special `<PlasmicCanvasHost/>` component. When
             | you open a Plasmic project that uses your custom app host,
             | it loads your `/plasmic-host`, and the
             | `<PlasmicCanvasHost/>` component bootstraps the Plasmic
             | visual editor into the page. So now Plasmic studio is
             | actually running on your page, and it can access your code
             | components that you have registered to be used with
             | Plasmic. We never see your code; it's a run-time
             | integration.
        
             | georg-malahov wrote:
             | No, if you use codegen, you should register your component
             | by providing additional necessary metadata, like
             | importPath, importName and others. Then you can use you
             | component in the Studio same way like other builtin
             | components. Check https://docs.plasmic.app/learn/code-
             | components-ref/ for more details.
        
       | ffitch wrote:
       | An ability to connect a custom UI to managed data source
       | connectors seems interesting. Probably just me, but I find most
       | of the point-and-click intranet builders a bit cumbersome and
       | restrictive.
        
       | octopoc wrote:
       | Eventually someone is going to build a good enough visual app
       | builder with AI assistant, and nobody will ever know except that
       | a mysterious startup with seemingly unlimited resources and
       | agility is taking over every SaaS market.
        
         | zubairq wrote:
         | Interesting comment. I would like to know a bit more about the
         | thinking behind this comment
        
         | ukFxqnLa2sBSBf6 wrote:
         | I don't think the barrier to entry for SaaS products is "how
         | quickly can I create a shoddy front-end."
        
       | superfrank wrote:
       | My question with these WYSIWYG editors is always how maintainable
       | is the code they output?
       | 
       | I have no problem using these on smaller projects that are fairly
       | static, but on more complex things it has always felt to me like
       | the time you save by using a tool like this, you end up losing
       | when you want to do something not supported by the tool and you
       | have to hack through the spaghetti code it outputs.
       | 
       | Can anyone speak to the quality of the code that Plasmic puts
       | out?
        
         | chungwu wrote:
         | Plasmic isn't a one-time codegen tool, where you generate some
         | code and then modify it to suit your needs. Instead, we've
         | designed Plasmic code generation so that you can generate code,
         | add some business logic, iterate on design, generate code
         | again, without blowing anything away. You're never directly
         | editing the code generated by Plasmic.
         | 
         | You can check out how it works
         | (https://docs.plasmic.app/learn/codegen-guide/), but also happy
         | to answer questions here!
        
           | nkozyra wrote:
           | > Instead, we've designed Plasmic code generation so that you
           | can generate code, add some business logic, iterate on
           | design, generate code again, without blowing anything away.
           | You're never directly editing the code generated by Plasmic.
           | 
           | I think that actually amplifies the concern. Basically it's
           | "don't touch the output," but what if we want/need to?
        
             | chungwu wrote:
             | We wanted Plasmic to be the source of truth for certain
             | things (the css, the composition, etc), so that it is
             | possible to re-generate code from Plasmic and continue
             | iterating on your designs (design-to-code is never a one-
             | time thing!). We've designed the generated code to be very
             | instrumentable; you can pass in prop overrides for any part
             | of the component, swap out parts of the component with
             | other content, etc., so you can get the component to do
             | what you need, without having to edit the component code
             | itself.
        
           | jason_plasmic wrote:
           | +1 to Chung's reply. There's also a loader API where you'll
           | generally never need to see the code that is output. Check
           | out the differences between loader API and codegen here:
           | https://docs.plasmic.app/learn/loader-vs-codegen/
           | 
           | In case you still want to see the code from codegen, here's
           | an example. We generate 3 files per page/component:
           | 
           | 1. JS/TS: https://github.com/plasmicapp/plasmic/blob/master/p
           | latform/w...
           | 
           | 2. CSS: https://github.com/plasmicapp/plasmic/blob/master/pla
           | tform/w...
           | 
           | 3. An entry point wrapper JS/TS file: https://github.com/plas
           | micapp/plasmic/blob/master/platform/w...
           | 
           | While 1 and 2 will be overwritten as you update your project
           | in Plasmic (and therefore you should never modify it), the
           | wrapper (3) is yours to customize as needed, like setting
           | props or binding event handlers. In the above example, we
           | computed how much free trial time a customer has. You can
           | read more about the generated code here:
           | https://docs.plasmic.app/learn/codegen-components/
        
           | superfrank wrote:
           | That's not really the question I was asking. Most WYSIWYG's
           | that I've used in the past are built around the idea that you
           | can use them over and over. I'm thinking of things like Wix
           | and Squarespace or even all the way back to Microsoft
           | Frontpage.
           | 
           | My question is more focused on the idea that at some point
           | there will be something that I need to do that can't be done
           | through the WYSIWYG editor. I'm wondering what happens in
           | that use case. Can I open up VS code and start changing the
           | underlying code myself? If so how does the tool maintain
           | those changes through iterations and how maintainable is the
           | code that Plasmic generates?
           | 
           | My concern comes from the fact that I've used some of these
           | tools in the past and the code they spit out will have things
           | like 8 levels of nested divs for no reason, empty tags, and
           | inlined and !important styles all over the place. I'm not
           | saying Plasmic will do that, but I'm wondering if anyone who
           | has used this can say how good or bad the generated code
           | actually is.
        
             | chungwu wrote:
             | The main way to extend Plasmic is to use your own React
             | code components. So if there's something you can't achieve
             | with our editor, you can make a component that does it, and
             | use it in the design. An alternative way is to use the
             | Plasmic components that we generate, which expose a lot of
             | hooks that lets you instrument the props and rendered
             | content within the component, without having to edit the
             | generated component code itself. It is our explicit goal
             | that you never need to edit the Plasmic-generated code in
             | order to extend it to do what you want.
             | 
             | As for the actually generated code, it basically maps to
             | what you've created yourself in the studio. Plasmic does
             | have a styling / element abstraction, but it's fairly low-
             | level, and everything is pretty close to how you'd write a
             | React component yourself. If you're not creating empty divs
             | in the editor, you shouldn't see empty divs in the
             | generated code :-)
        
             | chungwu wrote:
             | You can also take a look here! https://github.com/plasmicap
             | p/plasmic/tree/master/platform/w...
             | 
             | This is Plasmic-generated code that we ourselves use to
             | build our visual editor.
        
       | momojo wrote:
       | What makes this different from other low-code/no-code editors out
       | there? Retool, Appian, Kuika, etc.
        
         | chungwu wrote:
         | It can deeply integrate into your existing app (reuse your
         | React components, and form the same React tree as your React
         | app and read from the same React contexts, etc), and it can be
         | hosted from anywhere. It also places a lot more emphasis on
         | design and customizability.
        
         | wg0 wrote:
         | How many are there actually? Sorry I'm new to this particular
         | space.
        
       | xyzzyrz wrote:
       | Excited to see this posted here! I think probably because we
       | announced it going open source today.
       | 
       | I think the GitHub page is probably a bit clearer than our
       | website right now:
       | 
       | https://github.com/plasmicapp/plasmic
       | 
       | Basically, it's a visual page builder that plugs into your own
       | Next.js/Remix/React/etc. codebase. Your marketing/content/design
       | team can then build and publish pages without filing tickets on
       | eng. This (content management) is the main use case.
       | 
       | The most interesting aspect is that editors can drag and drop
       | React components from your own codebase as building blocks. This
       | is very powerful, esp. with e.g. data fetching React components.
       | 
       | Why open source? Because we love the tool. Plasmic has been in
       | production deployment at companies big and small. But we think it
       | can grow far beyond ourselves as an open source project. We'd
       | love to see a broader community take it in unexplored directions.
       | Community users have even started using it to build emails with
       | React.Email and mobile screens in React Native.
       | 
       | Would love to hear folks' questions and feedback!
        
         | xyzzyrz wrote:
         | I think another thing interesting about Plasmic is that it is a
         | bit ambitious in trying to combine some seemingly disparate
         | genres:
         | 
         | - Webflow, Wordpress and other page builders
         | 
         | - Retool and other tool builders
         | 
         | - Glide and no-code app builders
         | 
         | - Contentful and other CMSes
         | 
         | Today these are different tools to specialize in, but the line
         | between, say, a website and an application is blurry (consider
         | an ecommerce storefront with user logins, or a customer
         | portal). With the right foundations, we think these can be
         | unified--Plasmic's UI can adapt to different levels of control
         | for different personas/tasks.
         | 
         | So a newer use case is that you can use it to build
         | applications as well as websites, for both developers and non-
         | developers. This is the more experimental side of the project,
         | beyond the content management use case.
        
         | bogwog wrote:
         | So it's like a more advanced alternative to something like
         | GrapesJS that also includes integration with some popular web
         | frameworks?
        
           | xyzzyrz wrote:
           | You can think of it like that - GrapesJS ultimately outputs
           | HTML that exists in its own universe, whereas Plasmic focuses
           | more on integrating with existing codebases, where you might
           | want to use your React components, render in your React
           | context, etc.
        
         | nilsbunger wrote:
         | Looks really cool and ambitious!
         | 
         | Curious why you guys decided to go open-source, and whether
         | that was always the plan.
        
           | xyzzyrz wrote:
           | I talk about the "why" a bit above, but we've talked about
           | how to open source it internally since almost its inception,
           | but there's work involved in open sourcing that we just had
           | to prioritize like any other work item, as well as concerns
           | around whether we were ready to support it (for instance, in
           | light of rapidly changing code and data).
        
         | santa_boy wrote:
         | This is awesome. Would love to learn more and build content at
         | n0c0de.com using this. Please kindly fix the slack link.
        
           | xyzzyrz wrote:
           | Fixed, thanks!
        
         | octopoc wrote:
         | Congrats on going open source! Which components are open
         | sourced specifically? Is there any chance it will be self-
         | hosteable? I don't want to host it myself any time soon but I
         | prefer giving my money to a company where that's an option.
        
           | xyzzyrz wrote:
           | We still have work to do to make self hosting (much) easier,
           | but yes, that's the plan!
        
             | octopoc wrote:
             | Awesome, that is great news!
        
         | promiseofbeans wrote:
         | How does it stack up against MUI's Toolpad?
         | (https://mui.com/toolpad/)
         | 
         | All things considered, they seem pretty similar - visual UI to
         | generate React code that works alongside existing codebase,
         | open-source & self-hostable, etc.
        
           | jason_plasmic wrote:
           | Replied to similar comment here:
           | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38701366
        
           | xyzzyrz wrote:
           | There's a vibrant industry of similar tools - but lots of
           | differences and room to innovate!
           | 
           | Just a few of the differences: Plasmic....
           | 
           | - Is not specific to MUI
           | 
           | - Supports actual design control (beyond theming)
           | 
           | - Supports defining reusable components in the editor, with
           | slots/props/variants
           | 
           | - Is suitable for websites and applications where page speed
           | matters (static/SSR pre-rendering and data fetching, image
           | optimization, etc.)
           | 
           | - Has a more structured layout system
           | 
           | - Is highly configurable UI for different personas - e.g.
           | non-developers on the team
           | 
           | - Has cross-project imports / reusable libraries
           | 
           | - Has Figma import
           | 
           | - More...
        
       | catapart wrote:
       | This doesn't quite hit the sweet spot for me, yet, but I really
       | wish something described the exact output of this app. Is it a
       | react app, always? Or can it be just a vanilla js-based web app?
       | Can it make svelte components?
       | 
       | Just a sample of the output would go a very long way in telling
       | me whether or not it can produce anything I can use.
        
         | chungwu wrote:
         | Right now Plasmic mainly target outputting React components.
         | The code it generates can either be consumed as files you check
         | into your codebase (see https://docs.plasmic.app/learn/codegen-
         | guide/) or as data you fetch dynamically across the wire to
         | render content without touching your codebase (the "CMS" use
         | case).
        
       | mholt wrote:
       | Chrome only :(
       | 
       | I guess Firefox 121 isn't modern enough...
        
         | bossyTeacher wrote:
         | Mozilla needs to step up its game or its browser is gonna
         | disappear :(
        
           | ireadmevs wrote:
           | Or maybe Chrome needs to stop implementing non standardized
           | APIs and becoming the new IE
        
       | addisonj wrote:
       | I have been using Plasmic for the last 3 months as part of a
       | contract app where the goal was to get the technical, but not
       | frontend experienced client able to do a lot of the design. I did
       | a lot of custom work on components (like integrating the Supabase
       | API and custom Auth for RLS support) as well as integrating some
       | other endpoints/libraries.
       | 
       | In short, I have gone pretty deep with it as a proper "app"
       | builder compared to maybe a more CMS/design use case. By far, for
       | front-end low code UI tools it is my favorite. However, it isn't
       | without the typical pains of that when the abstraction breaks it
       | can be quite a hassle and requires some real knowledge (or
       | support help) to figure things out. The real thing that keeps me
       | on it though is that it really can have hand written react and
       | Plasmic generated react live by side, which drastically lowers
       | the risk compared to a lot of other app builders.
       | 
       | I do genuinely think it can speed up development for certain
       | teams on app use cases, but I think the structure of those teams
       | is a bit particular, because you do need someone who really knows
       | react/next ecosystem to manage the underlying integration.
       | 
       | Thanks to the Plasmic team!
       | 
       | Happy to answer questions in thread
        
         | bossyTeacher wrote:
         | > you do need someone who really knows react/next ecosystem to
         | manage the underlying integration.
         | 
         | So this is react specific? It doesn't say so in the home page.
         | It vaguely hints at it with a "Bring your data sources, React
         | components, deployment environments, design system, and more.".
        
           | throwup238 wrote:
           | That omission jumped out at me too. I immediately googled
           | "django plasmic" and had to find out from the Github repo
           | title: "plasmicapp/plasmic: Visual builder for React. Build
           | apps, ..."
        
           | chungwu wrote:
           | It is possible to use Plasmic in other contexts, but to
           | really unlock the power of Plasmic, yes you need to be using
           | React.
        
           | ___victor wrote:
           | While Plasmic does offer the flexibility to export designs to
           | other frameworks like Angular, Vue or even plain HTML, it is
           | mainly targeting React. Some features, such as the ability to
           | register custom components from the user's codebase, are
           | React-specific.
        
             | octopoc wrote:
             | Is the project open to contributions for supporting other
             | frameworks? I'm interested in Blazor specifically, which is
             | based on HTML. Do you see this becoming a pan-framework
             | "design mode" tool? Do you think it's architected for that?
             | A related question is, is it easy to use it for client-
             | side-only stuff and leave the backend alone?
        
               | ___victor wrote:
               | > is it easy to use it for client-side-only stuff and
               | leave the backend alone?
               | 
               | Yes - using Plasmic to manage landing pages design and
               | content is our main use case!
               | 
               | We still need to improve the experience for open source
               | contributions, but we are open to that! That being said,
               | React is still our main priority at the moment.
               | 
               | I'm not familiar with Blazor, but you may also explore
               | our render API (https://docs.plasmic.app/learn/render-
               | api/). It allows fetching rendered HTML from Plasmic
               | servers, then you would just render it in the DOM.
        
           | claytongulick wrote:
           | This is my main concern too.
           | 
           | I don't understand why tools like this "pick a winner" with a
           | specific framework instead of rendering to Web Components
           | with a framework wrapper, or using something like Stencil[1]
           | that can render to any framework.
           | 
           | [1] https://stenciljs.com/
        
             | ___victor wrote:
             | It really depends on how well you want the design to
             | integrate with your codebase, which is where most of
             | Plasmic power lies on, such as: leveraging your existing
             | custom components as building blocks within the design
             | tool; or adding heavier instrumentation to props and
             | rendered contents on the code side.
             | 
             | It is possible to use Plasmic's render API
             | (https://docs.plasmic.app/learn/render-api/) to fetch the
             | rendered HTML and just render your designs using any
             | framework, but that means it's a more limited experience.
        
             | chungwu wrote:
             | We wanted to support tight integration with people's
             | existing codebase, so that it is easy to use your React
             | components directly in Plasmic, or to read data from your
             | React contexts provided from outside of Plasmic, or to have
             | your code components communicate with each other via React
             | contexts when they're used within Plasmic, etc. There's
             | power in being in "one React tree" with your existing app.
             | 
             | I imagine it's possible to achieve this with other
             | frameworks too, though the integrations would be deep and
             | bespoke for each framework. We've just decided to focus on
             | React first.
        
         | georg-malahov wrote:
         | I also started using Plasmic exactly 3 months ago and
         | accomplished now one client project with all the
         | backend/auth/frontend integrations entirely using plasmic. I
         | agree with you that this is a great tool, that is far beyond
         | other known builders and low-code solutions.
         | 
         | I'm curious about your approach to integrating APIs with
         | Plasmic. Did you utilize Plasmic's backend integrations, or did
         | you prefer a client-side fetcher?
         | 
         | In my case, I found that using backend integrations through
         | Plasmic's servers resulted in noticeable latency issues, with
         | response times varying between 1 to 3 seconds, which was quite
         | slower compared to direct API calls that took no more than
         | 200ms. Have you encountered similar challenges?
         | 
         | On another note, while the client-side Fetcher was a potential
         | alternative, it fell short in several areas for my needs.
         | Specifically, it lacked options for customizing SWR fetch
         | options, built-in mutation support, and accessible state
         | management. To address some of these issues, I've made a
         | contribution through a pull request:
         | https://github.com/plasmicapp/plasmic/pull/102. I thought it
         | might be of interest to you. I would love to hear your thoughts
         | on this and any insights you might have based on your
         | experience.
        
           | addisonj wrote:
           | I am using custom components for all data fetching which
           | primarily wraps the supabase JS sdk. I have some issues I
           | still need to make a bit more robust around caching and
           | invalidation, but the Supabase JS sdk does help some.
           | 
           | I do think that is another weakness right now is the built in
           | plugins aren't quite sophisticated for a lot of real use
           | cases
        
         | promiseofbeans wrote:
         | The generated react living alongside custom react sounds
         | similar to MUI's low-code drag-n-drop editor that they're
         | working on (https://mui.com/toolpad/).
         | 
         | Looking at the demo, does Plasmic have any killer features that
         | MUI's offering doesn't? At the moment, MUI's main limitation is
         | that it can't connect directly to a database: you have to go
         | through an API, or write an API route for each app that proxies
         | the SQL queries.
        
           | ___victor wrote:
           | Plasmic does have support to different data integrations,
           | including databases: https://www.plasmic.app/integrations
        
           | jason_plasmic wrote:
           | MUI's Toolpad looks pretty cool! I'm going to try it out
           | today.
           | 
           | One big difference is that Plasmic is a platform and can be
           | used by non-developers to make changes that go straight to
           | production. Think marketers, content managers, and other non-
           | devs that are on your team who want to ship new designs and
           | content without bugging the dev.
        
           | xyzzyrz wrote:
           | Just some of the differences:
           | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38701406
           | 
           | And yes you can connect directly a database - critically,
           | Plasmic lets you define backend operations that work with
           | auth: https://docs.plasmic.app/learn/integrations/#security
        
         | mattgreenrocks wrote:
         | It looks very nice for exploring the large design space of what
         | UI an app needs, and actually laying it out. I think in terms
         | of the backend, but the gap to visualize what the frontend
         | needs like can be large; the blank page stares back so much.
         | Hoping something like this can help.
        
         | senthuJ wrote:
         | Balanced viewpoint here. Good writeup. Got potential. In my
         | view looks solid in certain use cases e.g. websites, mobile
         | apps and for rapid prototyping. Step in the right direction
         | (open sourcing) for Plasmic i think.
        
       | jbverschoor wrote:
       | I don't understand what it does
        
       | armchairhacker wrote:
       | WYSIWYG web design has been tried since the internet has existed,
       | but people keep coming back to writing UI in code. How does this
       | compare to other tools? What is the best WYSIWYG tool today?
        
         | jason_plasmic wrote:
         | I think, with most WYSIWYG editors in the past, a developer
         | runs into some limitation, forcing them out of the system into
         | uncharted/hacky territory. But for Plasmic, developers are a
         | first-class citizen.
         | 
         | For example, one huge advantage with Plasmic is that Plasmic
         | components run within your React tree. This means you can
         | naturally embed Plasmic components in your React components,
         | and even the other way around!
        
       | Lincolnmitchell wrote:
       | I've been using Chakra UI components in Plasmic for around 1 year
       | after trying to do this in Framer and UXPin Merge. Plasmic is
       | what Framer was hyped to be but did not deliver, it's the best I
       | have found.
       | 
       | The downside to Plasmic has been the community size and therefore
       | lake of support so I hope Plasmic going open source will resolve
       | these issues.
       | 
       | These types of tools can be overlooked by traditional siloed
       | Design and Development, and is best suited to hybrid teams were
       | the power of designing with code components can be realised.
       | 
       | Plasmic was like discovering a Gem, a rough diamond that a hybrid
       | open source community get the chance to shape.
       | 
       | I highly recommend this product!
        
         | Lincolnmitchell wrote:
         | I'd add that our current workflow is to complete our webapp
         | designs using code components and deploy via Vercel as a
         | prototype. Later we aim to publish production directly from
         | Plasmic. These little steps are addressing cultural issues
         | mostly, a the idea of a design team publishing the FE touching
         | a lot of cultural issues and fears like reporting lines,
         | processes, job loss - change is scary.
        
           | ireadmevs wrote:
           | As a FE engineer, my preference is to work on the tool that
           | is used to create the websites rather than the website itself
        
       | wiltonn wrote:
       | Whats the difference between this and Builder.io? both no/low
       | code apps with a CMS as its base. Drag and drop for UI, auto-code
       | generation and plug into back end of choice.
        
         | chungwu wrote:
         | We have a lot of respect for the work Builder.io is doing! If
         | you're using Plasmic as a CMS, then there is a lot of overlap
         | there. But Plasmic is a general visual React app builder, and
         | as such, it comes with a lot of the abstractions and power you
         | need to build a full React app. For example, you can craft
         | reusable components in Plasmic that have different variants and
         | have stateful behavior, and you can make use of abstractions
         | like style tokens. Whereas Builder.io's UI is pretty focused on
         | building individual pages, Plasmic is more about building the
         | intermediate, reusable pieces of your app -- components,
         | tokens, etc -- that you can then compose into pages and
         | experiences. Using Plasmic will feel a little more like working
         | on a full React application... for better or worse
        
         | xyzzyrz wrote:
         | We also have this page that goes into some more detail:
         | https://www.plasmic.app/vs-builder-io
        
       | p2hari wrote:
       | I did not understand the pricing. Is it for the CMS then? Is it
       | possible to self host and connect other CMSes?
        
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