Updating Crowdhoster: building accessible, open-source crowdfunding
A few months ago, we launchedCrowdhosterto empower everyone to launch their own free custom crowdfunding page and start collecting funds from the world, without needing to write any code at all. We want inspired creators to be able to raise money for their inventions from passionate fans (and future fans) for any kind of project, cause, or collective objective — as easy as posting the first GIF on your Spice Girls-themed Tumblr blog.
Thanks to the hard work of the crazy-talentedLockitronteam, we’ve been able to combine their open-sourcedSelfstarterwith ourCrowdtilt APIto make Crowdhoster into what we think isthe most open and accessible crowdfunding platform around.
But what about features — surely the big guys are better, right? Well, even with our tiny, pretty-much-just-one-dude Crowdhoster team, we’ve been able to make some solid updates that we’ve been pushing out to our lovely beta users:
Reward your contributors
Creators can now set custom reward levels, and your backers can change their contribution amount depending on what they’d like to receive:
Dress up your page
Crowdhoster is now completely theme-able :). You can design your own custom theme or choose from a growing list of themes provided. Big shout-out to Matt Mullenweg for his guidance on this.
Hatch several eggs at once
You can now have as many campaigns going on as you want, all for free. Each campaign gets its own dedicated page, and all active campaigns are displayed beautifully on the homepage:
Set different types of goals
You can now base your campaign’s goal on different units: a specific dollar amount (great for traditional crowdfunding campaigns), or total number of orders (great for pre-order campaigns).
Now what?
The feedback and reception from our wonderful alpha and beta testers so far has been incredible — and it’s even more exciting to imagine whatyoucan do with Crowdhoster with these new features: try crowdfunding the CSS-only Nintendo emulator you’ve always wanted to build, the Diet Coke replacement that uses edamame instead of artificial sweeteners, and/or both at the same time…
If you’re stoked about this, put your name down for a Crowdhoster invite. If you’ve already been stoked enough to sign up, thank you so much for holding tight. We’ve been onboarding more beta users in recent weeks, but there are still hundreds more waiting — we’re working hard to get you set up as fast as we can!
Please email us about your campaign idea (especially if it’s urgent that we get you up-and-running quickly), or if you have any questions. We’re working to make your imagination the only limit.
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