> Sounds like you built something for yourself
Absolutely! That appears to be how all of my projects start. If I have a need for something, I'll go build it for myself.
That way I am ensuring I am using my own product, which I find vital.
> instead of building something that the market wants.
I don't quite have that information yet. So far, reactions seem positive, but the jury is out on whether it'll work. I'm only about a month in, but I felt it's worth giving it a shot and seeing if there are others who want the same features I've built.
I am not planning to even show up on Wordpress' or Squarespace's radar. Their user figures are in the millions. If I, by some stroke of luck and opportunity, ended up with a few hundred, maybe a thousand users, I'd consider this thing hugely successful.
> Every non technical person I've spoken with loves Wordpress and Squarespace for good reason.
This is super relevant, could you let me know how many people and what sort of level of technical knowledge?
You mention 'for good reason', which would also be most interesting to hear more about. What sort of reasons?
I have found Wordpress and Squarespace to be good products. Squarespace much more so, especially for less-technical people. I find that setting up a Wordpress instance, even in this day and age is an extremely varied experience (from 1-click providers all the way to installing your own SQL DB and whatnot). But I have also found that you run into certain limitations quite quickly. Themes can be oddly restrictive. Changing your mind about something substantial on your site can quickly become an issue. At the same time, my product has other limitations, so it's obviously about what you think you need as a user.
I'd wager that if you took someone properly non-technical and set them in front of our CMS vs. the Wordpress site builder (or even a site pre-built in either CMS), ours would be more intuitive to use. But I am still doing that research and while my sample size is growing, I wouldn't with confidence declare my product easier to use.
Edit: I feel documentation is another pretty big area where things quickly get confusing for users of the other providers' systems. I'm really trying to build a kind of documentation that encompasses the whole system and makes it very clear how to use every part of it.
With something as complex as Wordpress that's nearly impossible to do, as Wordpress can be as complex as you like it to be. That's obviously one of its strengths: Even a dev can use it and not feel hindered by it. My product, on the flipside, does not cater to devs whatsoever.