Chris Messina

Spirit — The animation tool for the web.

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Spirit Studio is an animation tool that helps designers and developers creating and managing their animations real time in the browser.

✔︎ Super easy to use

✔︎ Live edit animations directly on your web page

✔︎ Animate SVG/HTML

✔︎ Timeline editor

✔︎ Import/export JSON and play animations in production using the Web Player

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Gianmarco Simone
Disappointing that there's no way to try it before subscribing :(
Patrick Brouwer
@gsimone We're currently working on a trial version, will be available soon!
Diego G Marignac 🇦🇷
@gsimone @patrickbrouwer start collecting emails of interested people for that!
Abinash Mohanty
@gsimone give Keyshape a try and you won't regret. Best part is it's only around $30 and one time purchase https://www.keyshapeapp.com/
Bader Bouta

A great tool for animators, designers and creative developers out there.

I would quickly change the business model or pricing especially in your early stages if you want to avoid losing tons of potential customers, it's either that, or it's waiting for one of the big boys to completely rip off your concept and have it incorporated in their software suite... in fact, I think It's going to be a simple matter of time before that happens, so your competitive edge is probably going to your first mover advantage that you have now.

Not a lot of people are going to pay 180 dollars for a half feature that costs more than a TWO year subscription of SketchApp or even the Adobe Creative Suit.

Edit: Im almost a 100% sure Airbnb is going to add this feature to their already free 'Lottie' design tool... so it's indeed a matter of time. For anyone interested: https://airbnb.design/lottie/

Pros:

Great tool for creatives.

Cons:

Insane price and/or broken business model.

Rudolf Olah
it looks like the pricing is now $12/month or $144/year? That isn't much if this is a tool you're using everyday. Get the company to pay for it. edit: Also, if Airbnb is going to add that feature, they've already paid the price for the development for their "free" tool.
Bader Bouta
@rudolfolah 144 for annual subscription, 180 for a monthly one. I should add, Airbnb pretty much already has everything that this app does, but it's only baked in Adobe After Effects, which is arguably better than this.
Daniel Eitam
The product looks great! Although, its overpriced.
Patrick Brouwer
@dadatalks It's definitely worth it!
Rudolf Olah
@dadatalks @patrickbrouwer Don't listen to all of these naysayers; try out subscription-based pricing and you can always lower the price or add more value to make the price worthwhile. Most of these people complaining about price wouldn't *ever* pay for your product even if it was $0/month, they would try the trial and then move on to the next flavour of the month product on ProductHunt.
Patrick Brouwer
@dadatalks @rudolfolah Thank you for your kind words Rudolf. I truly believe in Spirit and think it's definitely worthwhile and absolutely not overpriced. However, it's true we lack on (video) tutorials, examples and more. Those are in development. Also the trial version is something we're working on and will be available soon. Thanks!
Dean Brady
@dadatalks @patrickbrouwer @rudolfolah That's a very narrow opinion. Price high now and lower later? And add features later? That's a path to no-users IMO. The tried and true method is give a good discount to those that jump on early. They will have to deal with some bumps, beta testing, and less features but they got the deal so they'll accept it. Charge the higher price later when you have all the kinks out and features that are worth it. I'm sure you put a ton of time/effort into the tool but that unfortunately doesn't translate into pricing. The market decides value. $99/Year for SketchApp, Tumult Hype Pro $99 (one time), and others are what you are being compared to and its a value proposition. Even if those tools aren't direct competitors, if I look at the value I get out of SketchApp for $99/yr vs $144/yr for SpiritApp, I can't justify it. I pay $60/month for Adobe CC and get EVERYTHING. Amazing value. IMO, you can't look at this type of tool from a "what I think its worth" perspective but need to look at the alternatives out there (direct and indirect competitors) and how you compare in value. A one-time free for $49 (maybe even $69-79) and I'm more interested. I think you also need to consider the use case. The number of people that would buy this and use it daily or multiple times a week is much smaller than the group that may use it once a month (or less). Is it better to get 10x (or more) the users, at a lower price where the value/cost is acceptable? Or charge the $144/yr and only attract those that will use it often enough to justify the price? Just some transparent and hopefully constructive feedback...
Seán Marsh ✌️
@dadatalks @patrickbrouwer I'd add to this that I'm generally time poor, so 7 day trails are nowhere near long enough... I generally look for limited free accounts that showed me what an app can do, which will then convince me to start paying for more features.
Sadok Cervantes R.
I've been waiting for this since 2016 when you announced it, a GSAP timeline editor is very much needed, but I am super disappointed that you chose a subscription-based model just for the sake of making more money. What happened to the one-time fee for a year worth of updates and free use? This really makes no sense to pay on a monthly basis since I'm not using your resources all the time, it's not like it's cloud based or anything. Very disappointed.
Sadok Cervantes R.
And the sad thing is I'm not the only one with these thoughts, and you are playing deaf with people that would be passionate users of this product.
Patrick Brouwer
@sadokx Sorry to hear you’re not happy with the pricing. I really think Spirit is definitely worth it, as it is a game changer in the field of web animation. Besides, with a subscription-based model you’ll enjoy all the new features once they come out. There are some pretty cool features on the roadmap that will be available soon!
G G
Too expensive, everyone has subscription greed. $12 a month. Get Tumult Hype for a one time fee, does the same and so much more.
Dan Dan
Feedback: This looks good, I can't confirm if it's good cause I haven't tried it. I have no desire to try it because of your home page. It doesn't backup it's claims with evidence (in this case a demo or more specific information). It says cute things like "Super Powers" and "Intuitive and Easy" but it doesn't do anything to show how intuitive and easy it is. It says it has a timeline editor. but no images of it. Wouldn't that be important? It seems like nowadays we want people to sign up first and delete later. It's frustrating to see an application landing page with so little details about how it works or what it does. Yes you could just download the application and try it... just to be greeted with a license purchase screen!
Patrick Brouwer
@tostartafire Hi Dan, while we're working on a trial, video tutorials and examples you can see what others create, like https://twitter.com/timokuilder/.... It's absolutely not our intention to lock anyone into the app. We're in the stage of an early launch and we'll add all the missing parts soon! Thanks
Dexter
a subscription model for a tool (especially at this price) that doesn't own an entire workflow (ui design / prototyping or production) seems insane.
Dean Brady

Want to love this but you need a trial version or at least a lot more demos videos. And as many have already called out, make the pricing affordable for what you are competing against.

Offer some intro price or free version with a watermark or something. Add some templates or something to get people started.

Hope you listen to the community feedback, there is an interest...

Pros:

Looks promising

Cons:

Too expensive, no trial, requires player

Alex White
Looks very cool, but I'm not about to pay a subscription fee for this (especially when it costs more per month than Setapp!)
Elijah Murray
Really wish I could watch a video tutorial to better understand the product, without having to read through the Getting Started materials.
Patrick Brouwer
@elijahmurray You're absolutely right, we're working on examples, tutorials and screencasts. Sign up for our newsletter and we'll notify you with new content, thanks!
Jovis Joseph Aloor
For such a product there must be tons of video content to back its claims. At least you should have a video showing all those cool features in action. Now i have to download the whole stuff to get to know what it is. But don't worry about me. i'll definitely give it a spin. I've already tried out HAIKU and it had all the bells and whistles but at the end of the day it felt very clunky and it was very difficult to create an animation in it. I hope this to be my goto tool for creating micro interactions
Jovis Joseph Aloor
WTH... you need to have a paid license to just try it out !!. I appreciate your confidence in your product. But lets just face the reality, today there are a ton of design tools releasing daily and on what basis should I spend that kind of money just based on your claims. You guys should've at least given a 15 day trial. As a SASS owner myself i can imagine why you guys took this route, but especially this market is really tough. You guys should rethink about your pricing. (btw I think the your annual pricing model is reasonable. But without a free trial period it doesn't makes sense)
Dean Brady
@jovisjoseph He'll reply that they have a trail in the works but seriously, if it wasn't ready, why launch? I paid for the year just to give it a try and already am asking for a refund. Too many options out there.
Jonathan Kelley

I would say they need to do a lot more tutorials or guides so beginners can get to grips with it easily.

Pros:

Smooooth as butter animations.

Cons:

Steep learning curve.

Jonno Riekwel
What a "dutch" pricing model haha. I usually like seeing the app before spending money on it. But I'm surprised that there's not even a screenshot of what the tool looks like and how it might work. Looking forward to giving it a try when there's a trial version.
Amrith
I remember seeing this few months ago when it was still a concept/private beta, can't wait to play with it now that it's finally out! What features do you plan on adding to this soon, @patrickbrouwer?
Patrick Brouwer
@amrith Some really nifty features are on the roadmap, to list a few: - Custom ease (draw your ease curve) - Group in groups, compose master timelines together - Bi-directional communication - Free transform tool on your web page - SVG path editing tool - Add Javascript objects to timeline (live edit for example a ThreeJS camera) - Design-tool integrations - Design-tool agnostic integration (drop a SVG on the app, changes are reflected on the web page instantly and can be animated without any effort). - A lot more! So excited!
d a n n y
"Price Elasticity of Demand"
Lee Qixian
How does this compare to animating in say Premiere Pro and then exporting and using Lottie to render it? From the looks of it this is much more lightweight and hence maybe easier to learn?
Lee Qixian
@bader_bouta I'm actually a Lottie user myself :) That's why I was wondering how would Spirit fit in. I did see the output and it is really decent as well, hence the comparison of the products.
Lorenzo Bruno
Nothing against Spirit in itself but to be honest I feel like this "web animations" thing is going out of control, just like we lost control of it with Flash. Plus, these days if you are designer you are expected to spend $50+ a month to design and prototype even the simplest app. At some point we'll realise we over engineered the process so much we'd be better off coding the thing rather than designing it using 3 or more different pieces of software.
Jason Sooter
No Trial is ridiculous! Available soon is not an acceptable response. Product Hunt is failing me lately
Aviran Revach
Wow 12$ billed Yearly (144$), 15$ quarterly (that's 180$ Yearly😱). Not even a month based price. that is really awful. Just out of curiosity, who are your audience ? It should have been Freelancers and small Agencies- they are the first who cares about these kind of animations, and this price really TOTALY missed that audience. Freelancers are not going to pay half of their "Sketch" price on an small early stage animation software, they really can't. these animation are cool but they are not worth as a whole webflow account, really. It should have been like this 1) Free for use, with downgraded exporting. maybe without, like webflow. 2) 8$ for a *monthly* account you guys. especially if these are the features available today. it is really not worth better than that (yet! this is very promising if we get additional value and need less software around it) 3) 5$ for a yearly. thats 60$. this is high but fair for TODAY. If adobe will update Animate for these features (and they should have, for a long time), or webflow, or even Studio for invision- that whole thing is compromised. that's why i'd grab those newbies today, and those freelancers. get them addicted and loyal while you can. And with these prices? this product is only for enterprises :/
Goretopus
Hi @patrickbrouwer , any plans for the windows version?
Patrick Brouwer
@gorelics Spirit Studio is currently available as a desktop app for Mac. We do not currently have a version for Windows or Linux, but you can sign up for our newsletter to be notified once we launch it.
Natwar Maheshwari
@gorelics @patrickbrouwer I also tried to look for this answer, newsletter link in docs is broken (FYI). Also, I don't think its expensive at all. Will wait for Windows version.
Patrick Brouwer
@gorelics @natwar86 thanks, will fix it.