Why we built Brandolog (and why the blocks are free)

This is more of a note than a guide. But we get asked often enough that it's worth writing down.

The problem we kept watching

People who want a website rarely fail technically. They fail from exhaustion.

Open a standard website tool and within ten minutes you must decide: one column or two, how many pixels of spacing, which typeface, which size, which shade of grey, where the button goes, how big it should be. Each decision is small. Together they're thirty decisions before you've written a single sentence about your business.

You know how it ends: a tab left open for three weeks and eventually closed.

Hence the blocks

The core decision in Brandolog is that you choose what, not how.

Every block — hero, products, reviews, form — arrives already styled and already fitting its neighbours. You can't place it crooked. You can't break the mobile version. You can't pick two incompatible things.

That sounds like a limitation, and it is exactly that. The limitation is the feature. The freedom to get it wrong in 40 places is why most websites stay unfinished.

Tetris is a good metaphor not because it's a game, but because the pieces always fit — all the skill is in the arrangement.

Why Logi is a television

Our helper is an old CRT monitor with a face. There's a reason.

Help that talks like documentation repels precisely the people who need it most. Someone building their first website doesn't want to read "configure a DNS A record pointing at origin". They want someone to tell them which button to press.

Logi answers phonetic misspellings, understands "I can't see my site" and doesn't get offended by repeated questions. That's not decoration — it's part of the product.

Why the basics are free

The simplest reason: a website that never launches helps nobody. If payment stands before publishing, most people never reach their first order.

So the blocks, the editor, publishing and the cash-on-delivery shop are free. You pay when you actually need more — your own domain, more projects, specific plugins from the Bazar.

This isn't charity. We'd simply rather have a thousand working shops, some of which grow, than a hundred paid sites that were never launched.

Why we build things like NAPpy

One observation from talking to users: the technical part doesn't frighten people. The administrative part does.

Someone who makes candles isn't worried they won't understand the editor. They're worried they'll miss something with the tax office and pay a fine because nobody told them a certain file existed.

So we build those things too: NAPpy for the audit file, a shield against fake orders, a legal documents plugin. None of it is flashy. It just removes specific fears — and fears are what stop people.

What we won't do

• We won't add 400 settings. If the decisions pile up again, we've defeated our own premise.
• We won't sell your data. Not yours, not your customers'.
• We won't lock your site in. Your content is yours, your domain is yours.
• We won't make "AI builds the site for you" the main path. A site its owner doesn't understand is a site nobody maintains.

What comes next

The blog you're reading follows the same logic. The help center explains how to work with Brandolog. The blog explains how to work with a business — which is the harder half.

If you have a question that ought to be an article here, write to us. Half of what we publish comes from questions in the help center.

---

That's it. If that sounds reasonable — go build something. If it doesn't, tell us why. Both are useful.