IndieMade is a company that provides creatives of all types of well-designed, customizable websites which can include image galleries, a blog, a shopping cart, and much more. Please check the interview with Michael Herlihy from IndieMade.
Please describe the story behind the company: What sparked the idea, and how has it evolved so far?
IndieMade was created in 2009 to give artists and makers the ability to sell their products and services online. The idea was sparked because at the time it was incredibly difficult and expensive to set up your own website.
It has evolved now into a mature product that has grown and developed based on the features needed by our customers.
What services do you offer?
IndieMade is a website-building platform that specializes in eCommerce, especially for handmade items.
Who are your typical customers, and what do you think is the main challenge that your product solves for them?
Our typical customers are small independent artists, craftspeople, and makers looking to sell or market their products and services. Many of our customers are already Etsy sellers that are looking for their own website. To either sell their products or services. They use their chosen payment provider like PayPal, Stripe, or Square. IndieMade product structure is designed to easily integrate with Etsy’s product listings.
IndieMade only charges a small hosting fee and does not charge transaction fees or any other hidden fees.
All of our features and integrations are available on all plans and we only limit the number of products or pages we are also very gracious in those regards.
Many of our competitors will continually add upgrades and charge for third-party plugins (like Etsy integrations).
What is the mission of Indiemade?
Our mission is similar to how the company started.
To give small independent businesses the ability to easily create a website with the tools to sell their products online.
We try to keep the functionality simple and not overwhelm our customers. Pick a theme, add some pages or products and a few other settings and you have a website ready to go.
What separates you from other similar websites/companies?
That’s easy. Our level and quality of personalized support. If you happen to need support you will get to know us by name. We officially have a very good response email support system but are always happy to take a phone call. We might not have all of the bells and whistles of Shopify, Squarespace, and other large eCommerce website builders but I believe we beat them on support.
We are also very agile when it comes to software development. If a customer asks for a feature and we feel it will benefit all our customers. We are quick to agree and we are quick to implement that feature.
That was the main goal for our new platform. The ability to quickly roll out features.
What are the plans for the company for the near future?
For the last few years, we have been focused on our new version that was recently released with modern beautiful themes and several feature upgrades. If you read about IndieMade in reviews, one of the cons was the lack of modern or customizable themes.
We don’t have a giant list of themes but what we have are configurable and design elements can easily interchange.
We are also very willing to help you customize and tweak your site. You will not get that level of service from our competitors.
We would also like to expand our market from not just artists but any small company or business that needs a website. I think we are a good fit and an affordable replacement for a traditional website company.
So, in short, our plans for the future are to continue to improve the new version and make sure it is simple enough to build a site but at the same time have the important features our customers as a whole need.
