Intro to Remake, Part 2: What You Can and Can't Build
Why use Remake?
Web applications are notoriously complex to build.
What if they weren't? What if web apps were so simple and easy to build, you wouldn't feel guilty about creating one from scratch and then throwing it away the next day?
Remake's power comes from letting you build just these kinds of web apps. We call them disposable web apps.
Disposable web apps are the opposite of everything wrong with web development today. They don't require a huge investment in development, so you don't need to plan ahead so much by spending time designing, prototyping, and researching.
- You design as little as possible.
- You prototype by building a full product (quickly).
- You research by launching.
- You improve by getting real feedback on a real product.
Disposable web apps don't come with the normal headache associated with starting a big project — you can always just boot up a new web app in a few hours.
They give you the freedom to spend more time experimenting, playing, and talking with real users — and that's the real recipe for building something people want.
Remake's Capabilities
Remake lets you build web page builders.
Web page builders are websites that your visitors can modify. They can add items, remove items, upload photos, etc. And each user gets their own copy of the website that they can edit on their own.
Remake's ideal use case isn't making just one website for one client. Tools like Wordpress and Webflow can help you with that. Remake's power comes from using a single website template as the basis for a multi-user application, where each user can modify their own copy of the website and their copy is theirs alone.
Remake is a great fit for any website:
- Where 90% of the value of your website comes from the visual representation of its data and letting users directly edit that data
- If you want to build a website just once, but have each of your users get a unique copy of it that they can edit
Remake lets you have:
- Complete control over the design of your pages 🌈
- As many pages (and nested pages) as you want 📚
- As much data as you want on a single page 📊
- As many people as you want to sign up and edit your app 👨👩👧👦
You can build a web app with file uploading, custom style controls, and blog post editing all on the same page if you want — or put each control on a nested page. It's totally up to you!
Projects you can build with Remake
Remake is really powerful and fast to build with, but it can't build every type of application. In the following lists, you'll fine the types of applications Remake was designed to help you build.
Standard web page builders:
- Resume/CV builder
- Portfolio builder
- Business website builder
- Directory builder
- Changelog builder
- Product roadmap builder
- Multi-step form builder
- Project proposal builder
Single-player games and personal productivity tools:
- Kanban board
- Habit tracker
- Personal CRM
- Personal journal
- Personal task manager
- Garden planner
- Choose-your-own-ending game
- Multi-step quiz
The first production web app built with Remake was RequestCreative. It's an easy-to-setup storefront for freelance creators. You can see some of the advanced features that Remake supports by visiting this website.
→ Full list of Remake app ideas (and the apps you shouldn't use Remake for)
Remake's Limitations
Remake doesn't do so well with:
- Processing lots of data on the backend (calculations, data transformations)
- Data shared across users
- Social features (liking, commenting, following)
- Displaying real-time data
So, Remake is not a good fit for your web app if:
- A large part of its value comes from how it processes or transforms data
- You need to let multiple users edit the same data
- You need to display data from multiple users on the same page
This means you shouldn't use Remake to build the next big social network, chatbot, analytics platform, multiplayer game, or collaborative document editor.
If these limitations are okay with you, then Remake can turn HTML into one of the most powerful languages for building web apps that you've ever seen.
If these limitations aren't okay with you, sign up for our newsletter. Some of them might change soon. You can also let us know which features we should build next on our public roadmap.
→ Full list of Remake app ideas (and the apps you shouldn't use Remake for)
Should you use Remake?
You should use Remake if your customers want to build websites — and you want to launch really fast.
- If you run an agency that makes websites for dentists and you want to transform your dentist website template into a web app product that each of them can use, you should use Remake.
- If you want to build a dashboard to store and organize your thoughts and you think other people will benefit from having a similar personal dashboard, you should use Remake.
- If you want to build and launch a web app every few weeks, there's no better low code framework for doing so than Remake.
Use Remake if you know HTML & CSS really well — and you don't want to deal with setting up a backend.
What will you make today? ✨🧙♂️
"Intro to Remake, Part 3" is coming soon. Sign up to hear about it!