#crowdhoster

Crowdtilt Launches Crowdhoster To Let Anyone Create, Customize And Host Their Own Crowdfunding Campaigns

Thanks to the JOBS Act and the rise of Kickstarter, Indiegogo and the parade of startups that have emerged in their wake, crowdfunding has gone mainstream. However, according to the minds behind Crowdtilt— the Y Combinator-incubated platform that caters to the many types of “team fundraising” that plummet outside the purview of Kickstarter — this is just Phase One. The Crowdfunding epoch is just…

A few weeks ago, we launched Crowdhoster to the world — a full-featured, open source crowdfunding solution. Building on the Selfstarter project by giving creators total control, but also providing key additions like full payment processing, administrative dashboards, and advanced tools so no development work is needed to launch, Crowdhoster struck a chord in the crowdfunding community. Since then, we've launched dozens of branded crowdfunding campaigns: check out Soylent, AdBlock, Vybe, and Summersalt Music Fest for some examples. And in the words of one of the Selfstarter creators, Crowdhoster "represents a maturation of the crowdfunding movement."

Today, we're excited to announce a big update to the Crowdhoster codebase: you can add recurring/subscription billing reward options to your crowdfunding campaigns. 

Now you can let your backers make a pledge not just for one payment, but for a commitment to automatically contribute on a recurring basis. Whether it's once a month, once a quarter, or once a year, now your crowdfunding backers can show their ongoing support for your initiative. 

Subscription crowdfunding, in the wild

We're launching this in conjunction with the (really awesome) San Francisco-based independent book publisher McSweeney's: they just launched a Crowdhoster-powered crowdfunding campaign to celebrate their 15th birthday. And because their bread and butter is subscriptions to their literary publications, they combined traditional crowdfunding rewards and ongoing subscriptions to launch some pretty special pre-order deals: 

Here's the opt-in that customers see upon purchasing:

And the payments dashboard on the backend — looks like their subscription package deals are proving to be pretty popular:

Where does this lead next?

So other than print publishers, what are some other applications for subscription-based crowdfunding? Here are some thoughts on how projects can combine one-off rewards and subscriptions:

Software subscription services: Even if you get a bunch of initial interest for your new subscription feature release, recurring revenue is most important to you. Let your backers opt into choosing to back you forever (maybe?), rather than just once. SaaS, welcome to crowdfunding.

Non-profit fundraising drives: Let your supporters back you with more than a one-time charitable donation, but a pledge to make a consistent donation on a regular basis. Recurring donations can build over time and connect you with the donor on a consistent basis.

Club memberships: Have an existing organization or launching a new one? Launching a crowdfunded fundraiser for memberships is now more effective, with the ability to collect dues or fees on a recurring basis to help cover the costs for the organization.

Content Creators: Want to create for an audience on an ongoing basis? Now you can harness the benefits of crowdfunding (build momentum, discover demand, build a community before launching), and not worry about sustainability.

It's such a new feature to the crowdfunding world, that we're not fully sure yet how project creators will use it — but we're excited by the wide world of possibilities.

Interested in launching a self-hosted crowdfunding campaign with some subscription-based rewards? Sign up for Crowdhoster now, and feel free to drop us a note.

A few months ago, we launched Crowdhoster to 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-talented Lockitron team, we’ve been able to combine their open-sourced Selfstarter with our Crowdtilt API to make Crowdhoster into what we think is the 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 what you can 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.