Building Website Builder: A Mobile Ops Client for Template-to-Deploy Sites

I shipped Website Builder (Mak Apps) — the Flutter client for Buildly, a mobile website builder. The UI follows the Figma designs from onboarding through site management and code editing.

If App Builder is “template → remote APK,” this is “template → site → deploy,” with the phone as the control surface.

Product surface

• Splash, onboarding, auth
• Home, My Sites, templates, customize, deploying
• Build with AI / generate-website flows gated by entitlements + ads/IAP packs (remote-config driven)
• Media library and uploads
• Site detail tools: share, export, domain, preview, SEO, history, code viewer, find & replace, rename
• Code editor with save and deploy dialogs
• Settings, paywall, language, delete account

Stack: Flutter, Riverpod + get_it, easy_localization, feature-first modules.

Why it’s not “just WebView editing”

A naive mobile builder dumps the whole HTML string into a text field and hopes. That breaks the moment you want structured CSS/JS editing.

HtmlParts treats the document as parts:

• extract inline <style> blocks and non-src <script> bodies
• merge edited CSS/JS back — replace first style/script, strip duplicates, or inject before </head> / </body> when missing

The code editor can reason about sections of a site without round-tripping a corrupted document. Deploy remains an explicit action, not a silent autosave to production.

Monetization as feature keys

Generate-website and related actions are first-class entitlements (FeatureKeys.generateWebsite, consumable in-app packs, interstitial slots). Remote Config tunes caps without a binary release — same pattern as other Mak Apps clients.

Pairing with App Builder

Together they tell a coherent story:

Neither pretends the phone compiles the world. Both optimize for shipping something real from a mobile session.

What I’d still harden

Keep API errors human (site tools already avoid dumping Dio internals). Production deploy needs clear preview-vs-live semantics and rollback/history UX. Own the AI generate backend the same way App Builder owns workers — keys and abuse off-device. Complete any remaining backend parity beyond the Figma-complete client.

Bet: mobile website builders win as ops consoles with surgical HTML tools — not as full desktop IDEs crammed onto a phone.