#2: Vzy
making it very easy for everyone to build their dreams online.
Still on the topic of no-code tools, another reason why Africans building no-code tools is important is pricing & billing. Pricing & billing has unintentionally become a barrier to entry for Africans hoping to learn and build with no-code tools.
The average price of the more popular no-code tool is 15 USD per month, which is 7,350 NGN [10,275 NGN in parallel markets]. That’s a lot of money for the average Nigerian to spend monthly on one tool. That is considering the fact that the minimum wage in Nigeria is 30,000 NGN per month, and the salary of “better” paying jobs is about 150,000 NGN a month.
And while most of these no-code tools run a freemium pricing model, the free plan is usually very limited. If you really want to learn the tool, you'll have to move to a paid account.
For people in Nigeria who can afford these tools, restrictions created by the Central Bank have made paying for the tool an arduous task. Nigerians cannot spend above $20 on their naira cards every month. Almost every day, in virtual communities I’m part of, someone is looking for a way to pay for one international tool.
The number of things working against Nigerians is truly amazing. I used Nigeria as an example because that’s the African country I know the most about. Still, I’m sure similar constraints apply to other African countries.
And I’m not knocking the companies behind popular no-code tools either; I get it, really. These tools are expensive to build and maintain, and the business needs money to survive and grow. But the truth remains that Africans face a lot of barriers to using these tools. This is why we need to build for ourselves.
By building no-code tools, African founders are making the web more accessible to people who may not have been able to access them because of pricing or billing issues. I think that’s a beautiful thing.
Anyway, enough with my rant. Without further ado, let’s learn more about our second product of the week.
Product Profile
Name: Vzy
Website: https://vzy.co/
Countries Served: Worldwide
Product Area: No-Code Tool
Pricing: Undisclosed [still private beta]
Founder: Evans Akanno
Funding Stage: Undisclosed
Year Founded: Undisclosed [Announcement made: June 2022, Expected Public Beta: October 2022]
Currently Hiring? No, but you can enquire at [hey@vzy.co]
In their own words:
A world where only 1% of people can code is missing 99% of its potential. Entrepreneurs still find it hard to grow their business online because most of the existing web tools are complex, require technical expertise, and are not optimized for creating on mobile devices.
Technology enables innovation and shouldn’t feel like a barrier. We believe in empowering everyone to create their dreams online, build fast and launch faster, even with minimal tech experience.
Vzy will help anyone:
create professional, beautiful easy-to-use websites
sell digital products
collect payments
manage customer contacts and
understand their business analytics all in one platform.
Wrapping it up:
While Vzy hasn’t isn’t public yet, they have a public demo editor. After playing with the demo editor for some minutes, the first thing I said to myself was “It’s giving Webflow, but completely stripped down.”
Am I biased? Maybe lol, but everything from the loading page was giving Webflow, but that’s beside the point.
I absolutely love the editor, and I’m saying this as someone who has used Webflow, Wix, Squarespace, Figma & Invision. It’s evident that one of the product’s top priorities is ease.
I’m excited to see what the public beta looks like and what direction they will take the product in the long run.
…
I have a lot of faith in this product for a lot of reasons. The simplicity being one but another is that Evans isn’t a first-time founder. He co-founded a popular no-code tool, Disha, which Flutterwave acquired in 2021.
I like what I’ve seen so far about Vzy, and I can’t wait to see where they go with it!
If you like what you’ve seen so far, you can sign up for Vzy updates and early access here.
I’d love to hear your thoughts about Vzy! You can drop your comments here or on Twitter. Don’t forget to tag us in your posts @vizibleafrica!
🎙Mic Drop:
That’s it for this issue! I hope you found it insightful. If you have feedback on how we can improve the newsletter, please send it to me here.
If you have any products you’ll like for us to feature, you can nominate them here.
If you have theme ideas, you can drop them in the comments, mention us on Twitter @vizibleafrica or drop them here.
See you in the next issue. What do you think the theme for next week will be? Tell us on Twitter, and be sure to tag us at @vizibleafrica.
Yours in Product Discovery,
Dumss