Crowdtilt co-founder here. Crowdhoster started right here on HN as an open source project, and this launch to the public is due to the feedback and support it's gotten all along the way from the HN community. Thank you for that! Happy to stick around and help answer any questions or hear further feedback!
Shawn, Beep CTO here. CrowdtiltOpen is currently hosting our e-commerce site. I can't say enough good things about you fine folks! The service rocks, the team is fantastic. And we get to keep all the incoming link juice (because it points to our domain), and get a fully customized site, that looks exactly how we want it to.
If you want complete control, while leaving the hosting up to a team that rocks and knows how to do it (they handled AdBlock's campaign for example, tons of traffic) CrowdtiltOpen is the way to go.
I'm not in the US, and got a little message saying "Join Our International Beta" but there's nothing in the FAQ to explain what it is, or why it appears I can't sign up. Can you explain for me?
Core contributor on CrowdtiltOpen here -- sorry for the lack of international info, we'll update the FAQs! Shoot me an email (lebel at crowdtilt dot com) and I'll happily get you set up with the international beta.
CrowdtiltOpen (formerly Crowdhoster) started out as a side project built on top of the Crowdtilt API.
We chose Ruby because we wanted the project to be as accessible as possible. There are low barriers to entry to customizing the app and it's allowed for some pretty awesome contributions from the open source community. https://github.com/Crowdtilt/CrowdtiltOpen
I don't understand why Kickstarter still has market dominance for crowdfunding even though they have higher fees, no API, and less flexibility for funds dispersal. Is it purely name recognition?
Kickstarter is a noun in public consciousness more-so than others. It's a branding advantage for those seeking to crowd fund. Say "crowd funding" even when using Kickstarter.
Curation. Art and design products meant that you could actually "shop" on the site (until risks forced them to require better disclosure), and interest in one type of project would lead to discovery of other similar projects. The homepage also allows for staff to pick projects that better represent the types of projects that might be successful. Indiegogo and Crowdtilt, among others, are more willing to accept anything.
Who has ever gotten that? Zach Braff and Veronica Mars brought their own audiences.. Similar stories for friends that have done KS. Something like Coin however was able to implement a pretty viral referral system that could get your card for free when you get others to buy by hosting it themselves and customizing that part of the flow. That's something I don't think you could do on KS and actually has a viral loop.
Got my invite from several months ago when it was Crowdhoster! Scant weeks away from using it! I was going to forward it to LPP, thinking they would (and didn't) never get to my email about their own crowd-funding effort, but in the intervening time, I've decided to do for them what they probably wouldn't have time or resources to even start pursuing. No details for now. It's a stealth crowd-funding campaign @_@. Go FOSS!
Readit News
If you want complete control, while leaving the hosting up to a team that rocks and knows how to do it (they handled AdBlock's campaign for example, tons of traffic) CrowdtiltOpen is the way to go.
I'm not in the US, and got a little message saying "Join Our International Beta" but there's nothing in the FAQ to explain what it is, or why it appears I can't sign up. Can you explain for me?
We chose Ruby because we wanted the project to be as accessible as possible. There are low barriers to entry to customizing the app and it's allowed for some pretty awesome contributions from the open source community. https://github.com/Crowdtilt/CrowdtiltOpen
https://www.kickstarter.com/blog/kickstarter-is-not-a-store