Dimi Baitanciuc experienced founder working in the internet industry since early 2000. Skilled in UI/UX Design, Leadership, and Project Management. Strong business development professional with a Bachelor’s degree in Computer and Information Sciences.

Co-founded Brizy in 2018, a visual WordPress page builder that lets anyone create websites without skill or effort and ThemeFuse in 2009, a premium WordPress theme shop focused on creative and stand out designs.

This weeks show is Sponsored By Kinsta Hosting

Jonathon: Welcome back folks to the WP Tonic Show. This is episode 422. We’ve got a great guest. We’ve got one of the co-founders of Brizy. Fantastic WordPress page building plugin and platform. Dimi you like to introduce yourself to the listeners and viewers?

Dimi: Yeah, sure. I’m Dimi Baitanciuc. Jonathan excuse that because it’s a very hard to pronounce. I am Dimi. I’m one of the cofounder of Brizy kind of actually, it’s the only platform that offers a WordPress plugin and has it`s pm WordPress component and also cloud platforms. Basically the builder is offered two separate ways for our clients. I’m one of the designers as well here. So a lot of the UI and UX you’ll see there. It’s partially my fault or my achievements. It depends on how you want to put it.

Jonathon: Thank you. And I’ve got my great cohost Adrian. Adrian would you like to introduce yourself to the listeners and viewers?

Adrian: Hi everyone, for those of you who do not know who I am, my name is Adrian. I am the CEO and founder of Groundhogg and our company produces sales and marketing automation tools for businesses that use WordPress. And if you want to know more about that, you can head on over to groundhogg.io with two G`s.

Jonathon: Thank you. And our listeners and viewers new ones, we have been increasing recently. So you probably have got a lot of new people Adrian that you’ve got to introduce yourself, which is very encouraging. Our figures have increased recently. And I appreciate your support listeners and viewers. Before we go into the main part of the interview, I want to mention one of my great sponsors and that is Kinsta hosting. Now if you’ve got a learning management system, a membership site or Woocommerce. They normally run on the kind of WordPress hosting is going to cause you a lot of frustration. You really need more powerful hosting. And this is where Kinsta comes in. They’ve built their platform on Google Cloud, which means you get some of the best technology in the world. They have built a fantastic UX interface upon that system.

And also you get all the bells and whistles when it comes to technology. And the reason why you should be interested in that is it will make your site safer, quicker, and easier to manage. So if that sounds interesting for you, if you are a developer, or if you’re a power user, I suggest that you go over to Kinsta. They are fantastic people to do business with. They are very responsive. You get fantastic technical support. Go over to Kinsta, have a look at their plans. I suggest that you should sign up with them and tell them that you heard about them from listening to this podcast. So we’re going to go into the interview now folks. So Dimi, why did you decide you and your partners to go into the really competitive world of WordPress page builders? Can you give us a bit of a background story of the company and you and your founder’s history and what led you to produce?

Dimi: Sure, sure. Actually it is because of a couple of reasons, but mainly we were in to put it nicely, we weren’t so keen on what was on the market at that point. We started two years ago. We’re always thought that there is no better way to do things rather than throwing hundreds of options in a sidebar somewhere and letting the user figure how to use them. And we thought that we need to build something that it’s more users friendly and a lower the entry level. So basically you actually don’t have to know anything about coding or design tool to use Brizy. Brizy is very, very easy to use. This is one of our objectives to make it super easy to use. Another reason is that I we thought we could do it a bit better.

We started to develop this project and work on it. It doesn’t make too much sense to do the same thing. If you start doing it, why do it the same? Why do it something that is already there. It is and maybe incrementally does it a bit better. And we throw on ourselves out there and we started to basically to question everything and to start from scratch and do something that we’re proud of. And the users will appreciate from the ease of use and the usability, the standpoint of you.

Jonathon: So just a quick for the fruit question. What were you and your friends was doing before you develop this?

Dimi: Right now we have another business called infuse. It was founded in 2009, the same guys founded it. It’s basically a premium themes shop; you can purchase premium themes there. We’ve also have another project, that framework for developing teams. Actually I think it’s right now as around 100,000 plus active installs. So there are themes build on it. And also sold them on the theme forest and mojo and marketplaces like that. And we had actually a builder there, but it was a, from the era of backend builders. I’m sure you guys are familiar with those and where you need to update every time and go out on the front end and see what you’ve done and things like that. Then the pieces are there in the backend. And it was actually time to move everything in the front. And then we had this this back project and solve inside the company called Brizy. And we’ve made some experiments and things like that. And then we’ve decided to focus basically on Brizy and developing for an investor.

Jonathon: Well, thank you, over to you, Adrian.

Adrian: So what would be I, I’ve only actually recently heard of your product. I travel in similar circles as some of your companies do. And primarily in WordPress as a service.

Dimi: I’m sure it’s because it’s our entire fault.

Adrian: So for example, the WordPress is a service community and a lot of them use your products because you offer white labeling and stuff. But so do some of the other page builders. So I’m wondering if someone’s listening to this and they’re saying, well, I first heard about Brizy for the first time. What are some of the competitive advantages that Brizy would offer as opposed to tools like Elementor or Beaver Builder? Elementor for example, just cross the 30 or the 3 million active installations on the WordPress repository as of this week. So where are we? So what are some of the competitive advantages that Brizy builder offers?

Dimi: Yeah. First of all, I would prefer going for a white label.

Adrian: I know that.

Dimi: This might be the first point. The second will be the ease of use. I think the ease of use and the user experience using it if you’re offering a tool like Brizy your clients, it’s basically 2.0. It’s something like we received the huge amount of feedback regarding the how easy Brizy is to use them to work with and learn. And the third point will be the design. We have a very solid design department here. Actually this is one of our edge advantages back to 2009 when we to started Brizy. We always try to make the designs. Not so painful ish. I think you understand what I’m saying. If you see all the cookie cutter templates out there. So we always try to put the creative spin along things. Plus there is this cloud thing as I mentioned at the beginning.

Adrian: So what does the cloud portion actually? So you mentioned that earlier. So you have the plugin, which is the page builder framework that people can install on their WordPress site. And then you have this cloud portion of the company. So what’s the difference in between those two? And how do people or what space would you need to be in, in order to qualify for actually using the cloud version of this tool?

Dimi: Basically it’s included. The cloud is included with the purchase of a Brizy license. So the cloud is basically a platform. The way Brizy is built as a technical part is built on react and react to react. So this has the possibility and the chance to basically take it from WordPress and put the stand alone as a builder’s standalone outside of WordPress. So basically what we’ve created, we’ve created a hosted platform. Think of it like Real Leads or Squarespace or Weebly or something like that. So it’s basically a hosted platform that is all by the Brizy builder is the same as Mueller.

Dimi: And if you purchase a reasonable license pro license, you get access to the WordPress plugin. And to the cloud, to the cloud version of you, what you do now for complex projects because we are, we got this question a lot in the past. What should I use if I should use WordPress or do we shoot you? Why you should and use cloud is basically if you are doing complex projects that require that a basis and shops and things like do you feel during and, and blogging and things like that where basically WordPress is a very powerful and, and bring some, some tools to the table that will help you a lot. You’ll go WordPress and if you want to build a presentation website to a multi-page website, basically business websites and landing pages for marketers and things like that. You go the cloud way. But more importantly in interesting part is that we’ll we’re working on this right now. We’ll merge the two, work of art and the called art in the sense that you will be able to sing blocks and the layoffs from WordPress into your cloud icon. And the take them there, modified them with the cloud builder, saved them and bring them back to whatever WordPress websites who are logging in.

Adrian: So the cloud builder is kind of like a lead pages or click funnels kind of. So it’s that hosted solution only better, obviously.

13:09: Yeah.

Adrian: And it’s kind of like the same concept. You can log in from anywhere and just go edit your site. It’s not WordPress, its cloud hosted. You do all the management to the server and stuff like that. Very, very cool. Jonathan.

Dimi: Everything is handled by us. If you don’t want the overhead basically of WordPress. And just to comment a bit on this. WordPress brings something to the table, a lot of power and is a great tool. We’ve made Brizy for WordPress but sometimes you take a bag of rocks with you with better databases. All these styles and all that. When you just need to build a fast landing page or maybe to productize something very fast for a client or maybe to create the three, four page, your business websites that doesn’t require that or basis doesn’t require gloss, doesn’t, you know?

Adrian: Makes total sense, Jonathan.

Jonathon: Yeah. I think we’re going to go for our break. When we come back, we’re going to be delving more in this fantastic project Brizy. We will be back in a few moments’ folks.

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Jonathon: We’re coming back. Dimi`s been handling this with flair. He’s very impressive. Might fall in language abilities I am not very impressive. So I’ll give him full marks. So Dimi similar to Adrian question in the first half of the show. We’ve got to discuss the hundred, the 800 pound gorilla in the room, and that’s Gutenberg. So how do you see not only your own products but the other page builders? How are they going to be able to compete or still exist in the world ever increasing complexity and power of Gutenberg?

Dimi: To be honest. Well, we’ll just have to live and see. It’s hard to me for me now too, to just what I can, well, how will you know? My take on it is that besides that there is room for everyone. Everybody, I’m sure it live it and the quality products and the products that do that are well bills and there are, have the client and the ease of use and usability and all, all that jazz around this and they will always have box then we’ll find a place.

Jonathon: Yeah, I’ll give you top marks for Brizy. I haven’t use their own, aren’t going to get a license and have a look at it because when it comes to actually the technology and some of the ideas that you’ve put in place, you and your team they’re all very impressive. What you’ve done with your platform. Over to you Adrian.

Dimi: One sec. I just want to want to finish the idea I had in mind. And there is another point with Gutenberg. I think that they do receive a lot of maybe a bit unfair pushback from the Cooke community because they, they mainly I think they, the community expected that something, where are you, they, they had comparison so they expected something maybe on par with the [inaudible] there are, or at least we’re at that point on the market, but I think that the professionals freelancers, developers and they, they will always go for the product that they’ll fulfill the, the whole, the whole thing. Right. If you, if you go Gutenberg, it’s okay.

It is perfect people most likely it will be your perfect for 90% of the, you know, you know the users, but the professionals and then the [inaudible 18:12] would want to build a website. I think they will always go for tools like Brizy and things like that. Because I’m not sure you want to depend on too much on a lot of blocks. I love plugins. Take these from there. Have a lot of developers, a lot of support from different places.

This is my take on it, so I’m not too afraid close. Wheeler, we have some plans with the Gutenberg compatibility. So

Jonathon: Yes, I can see that power BI and I think that that is exciting. Paul, I actually, before I put you over to [inaudible], I just wanted to say, like I said I think your product with [inaudible], you know, I think both you and your team, an agent and he’s team, you got two of the most interesting products in the world, WordPress spice at the present moment. I’m so occupied you and age and top marks with trying to do things in the original and trying to deal with difficult problems as enough prizes for you. IEG, your heads could explode. Actually an OCU agent.

Adrian: So I’m sure people are curious to know as I mentioned earlier Beaver builders in the six figures Elementor is now in the high is in the mid seven figures. Wow. What is your current user count? You know, how many people are currently using your product? Are they using it well? Are there any notable names that we should know about that are using your product to bridge? Just provide a little bit of credibility, a little bit social proof. What do you got for us?

Dimi: Yeah, sure. We have, I think we’re to 60, 50 plus thousands of active in styles. Yeah. Doesn’t sound too much, but it’s a lot. Then you’ll, you’ll actually have to build a plugin and startup for start to ranking cop the lactic and starts to see how hard it is to, Oh, trust me, I wish I was there. We had a huge amount of overt positive feedback. If anyone can do a Google search and see the reviews from Aiden, from WB, Pastor Donald, you to Sam little Aaron Wilson. We have a bunch of very positive and you know, passionate feedback from them and the users actually where we are now starting to, to gather some, we want to build a testimonial page and we, I love, I am a, you should see the views and that we are aware of basically all struck by, by how the feedback where we are receiving. I think and then when we have a lot of things still too to develop right. For, for Brizy where we are still young, we are, we’ve launched it last year and we have a bunch of, we’ve added a lot of things but we also need to add a bunch more and we still have some, some interesting idea made the Brizy weight, you know, some, some things that I bet we’ll willing pressed the community and the things done.

Adrian: So quick follow up question, I’m actually just looking at your WordPress repository listing here just to confirm it. It is forward slash Brizy. I’m looking at the right place. So there is a free version here. Now if someone wanted to go for example, test the, your, your free version that’s hosted on the repository and you mentioned a pro version several times, what are the differences they can expect? And you’ll only be able to get the full experience of, of what it’ll be like to work with Brizy given just the free add on that’s in the,

Dimi: Yeah, for sure. If you download the free version from WordPress, it probably started or you can actually go to your own [inaudible] search it right there in the planning section. You’ll get the full experience. The, the pro version basically adds some extended functionality like things like integrations for example, the contact form. The contact formula for example is in free. We’ve included in free as well. So basically we wanted to let you create a full website. So if you’ll install the free version, you’ll be able to, from start to finish. Of course we not all the bells and whistles, but you’ll be able to create the full website and experience Brizy fully. The pro is extended which static like the integrations, like the popup builder for example, like a block ambitions that we’re developing right now. Bringing designers, we are developing also a new block kids that will be parking people, parking pro. So yeah, basically it’s a, the usual, the usual, the usual deal with it.

Adrian: You can get pretty far, but if the bells and whistles you have to upgrade to pro now, is that premium and all inclusive price? So it’s just one price and you get all this stuff or is it like a premium service where you where you kind of pick and choose what you want?

Dimi: No, it’ basically you and you get, so you get all the proper functionality plus a job. Of course the access to, to the cloud, the counts are the same. If you have a reserve comp, you have a Brizy cloud account.

Jonathon: Now gentlemen. So you know, one of the unique things which we’ve touched on is the clouds, the platform, but kind of hello attempts to integrate icon of plugging with a sass element. Haven’t worked that well. It’s also fascinating area where I really see the future of WordPress really. Have you got any insight? What made you in your team? I had the cloud element. What was it part of the plan from day you one or was it feed by or can you give some insight? And did you have your concerns about going down, trying to build this high breads model?

Dimi: Yeah, sure. I can’t tell you how it will pan out. They don’t pan out grades. Where am I supposed to do it? Right. In WordPress. So I let, I let, I let you guys know on the same podcast, women how it will pan out, but we are very confident because this is a new and shiny thing, right? But the, the, the flexibility that this, we think that the flexibility that this product will give you, it will be you want to move fast, right? In this day and age, you, you, you have a new client. Maybe you want the prototype sign thing. You want to, you want to work something fast, you’ll go into your cloud account, you’ll do some things, and then switch to WordPress and we’ll switch back later on.

We wanted to, to merge this, this to two areas and of course there are the usual, the usual concerns. Or any company has done security, you need to take care of it, you need to, and you need to go to the best providers. We are using cameras on servers and their entire team. So there are that are concerned about that. If you plan accordingly and you, you, you pack a little more one by one. I think we have very competent people here financially. I’ve, we are the designers you Eucharist in Romania and the programming and the other artists are in Moldova. And we’ve beat the, I want to be proud hour. I want to be proud of this that we work with some of the best programmers in the country on react and on the server side.

So hopefully, and then I think we have everything covered for now. So your question we’ve blended from the start. It was not the feedback. It was not something regarding feedback. And, yeah, we’ve because you know why? Because the, the, the, the product is built on the, on this technology that is very powerful and very flexible reacts. So I always imagined that we use WordPress that’s as a shell, right too. We encapsulate the builder. But if you take, if you take the shell out, you can pick the builder and moving to SAS in the, in basic clouds too. I don’t know to show up if I’m just giving some example. It doesn’t have a line that tomorrow to be on Shopify on other platforms, but still it’s easier because of the flexibility of it.

Jonathon: There have been other attempts crowd favorite had their restaurant platform that was built on moat. You saw it, but that was a few years ago. Obviously with new technologies like react and the scout, Oh, you know, no [inaudible] kind of feeling biased. Actual application based titled solutions are more variable. I actually think, I mean it’s not only a technology problem, they may, I think it’s also, there’s also a marketing challenge of but I think, I mean your solutions in a white label so Allah users can work out the marketing challenges of finding niche sectors and just using your platform in the background is the right direction. And I’ll give you full Cree dos for doing that. I think if they told you are going to stay on for another 10 minutes and we do some bonus content.

Dimi: Yeah, yeah, sure, sure.

Jonathon: We are going to wrap up the podcast part of the show folks. Dimi, if people want to find more about Brizy and the company in general, where’s the best place for them to go?

Dimi: Yeah, the best place is on our websites. Or you can just search in Google, but yeah, just go to our website, brings it up. We also have one YouTube channel with a bunch of tutorials and walkthroughs and how can we use the builder different tools and things like that. We are there and we are on Facebook as well. We have a very vibrant and passionate community. I think of a couple of them are watching right now. I’ve put the link in our community. So yeah, and you can reach us. You can reach me personally at dimi@brizy.io and

Jonathon: And Dimi is saying we’re coined to offer the WP tonic viewer and watcher a 10% discount. We’ll have the full information for that the coupon code and the link to get that discount in the show note. That will work company at this great interview. I join. How can people find out more about you and your company as well?

Adrian: So if you’re looking to be able to communicate with your subscribers better, you want to build your list, you want to create some marketing automation and send out some automated emails, and then you probably want to check out Groundhogg with two G`s at the end. We all provide a full service marketing automation and sales tool free for WordPress. You can over to Groundhogg.io in order to learn more.

Jonathon: Adrian is offering a discount.

Adrian: This is my new perpetual discount that I’m just going to leave for anybody who’s watching in the top left hand corner.

Jonathon: So Adrian is offering the listeners and viewers a 25% discount if you use the coupon code WP hyphen tonic.

Adrian:: Yeah, that’s perpetual from now on. So as long as you keep me a cohost on the show, Jonathan.

Jonathon: I have being very happy with how things is going. Hopefully you are also happy. I think we’ve quickly developed a good partnership. I think the guest have been enjoying it as well. We’re gonna wrap up the show now folks. You will be able to watch some bonus content. You will be able to see that on the WP Tonic YouTube channel, which is growing rapidly. We are approaching 1500 subscribers. Keep subscribing to the channel. And like we publish the show and other content the earliest on the WP Tonic YouTube channel. We will be back next week with another fabulous guest like Dimi. And hopefully giving you insights on how to build an effective online course with a product like Brizy. I think in some ways it’s rejuvenated products like Brizy, have rejuvenated WordPress and made it a much more relevant tool in 2019. We will be back next week folks. Bye.

 

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