The problem i have with The Grid is that it appears to only work/build a site (or choose a template :d) based on your image content (correct me if i'm wrong) what if your site does not have images but only text?

haha, looking at how much money they put into marketing where they just put some nice girls and then talk about an "intelligent AI"... well... 3 Wordpress templates that they chose randomly... Great that they don't even offer their service yet, I thought they already launched

the moment one of your early adopter, the ones who paid you with whole faith doubt your legitimacy, you have already failed miserably

96 $ * 54.000 = 5.184.000 $. And you're still hoping to get your hands on The Grid?

I wouldn't call it vapourware, because of the "countless" accounts we've seen all over social media and the blogs of how awesome and revolutionary it is. That said, I'm not a big fan of their approach. They over-promised and I seriously doubt that they can match my expectation now.

I've seen videos of the team and their intents, read blog posts and if i hadn't seen those from reliable sources, I would've doubted their claims. I personally didn't pay but I think they've had all the money and time they needed.

If the team can see this - Release the damn thing already!

Thank you for this post Johannes. I have been wondering about the very same thing. I am supposedly number 11,036 on their list and I also suspect that the $96 I invested are lost. I never thought they could deliver on their promise tbh, so I invested the money to satisfy my curiosity with a slight shimmer of hope that they would pull a magic rabbit out of their hat and give us an AI to design beautiful websites in minutes. Anyone here with a lower member number?

So you thought a nematode could build web sites?

Let me give you a little context here. This little fellow is Caenorhabditis elegans , a nematode worm that has 302 neurons. The absolute state of the art in simulating intelligence is this worm. We can simulate its brain on supercomputers and get it to wiggle and react, althogh not with full fidelity.

And here I'm talking just about our ability to simulate. We don't even know where to start when it comes to teaching this virtual c. elegans to bootstrap itself into being a smarter, better nematode worm.

– Web Design: The First 100 Years

Well Dann Petty is impressed.

https://twitter.com/DannPetty/status/608397199505031169

There's finally a solution for all the frustrated TheGrid founders: http://www.imcreator.com/offthegrid

I got a refund from The Grid. This is how: Like you, I paid my $96 a long time ago. Like you, I got frustrated with the wait and asked for a refund. Like you, I got turned down. But I recently got even more frustrated, especially as I see their blanket marketing which, to my mind, is mis-leading. And I keep getting their update emails as they try to keep the unrest down. So I replied to their update email but this time said, "You know, I'd just like my money back. I think you're bordering on thieving cheats." Lo and behold: they just processed my refund. Somebody must have threatened a lawsuit... :-) Be careful out there! Alex

5 million dollars later and still no product. Well vaporware is a light term, scheme would be more exact.

damn. they are marketing geniuses. almost joined just because it says "8$/mo for life if you buy now, otherwise 25$/mo". And I rarely need to build these kind of websites.

Their website at thegrid.io is riddled with misaligned text, orphaned words in paragraphs, pixelated images, improperly overlapping divs, weird whitespace, etc. Go there now on an iPhone 6 and look at the "request access" button.

Why would you trust a company's web design platform when their homepage is riddled with web design problems?

I was able to test the Beta and it was sooooo bad I wanted my money back...trouble is the demo on you tube had functionalities/features not existing on mine and requested my account to have the same features....they reponded that theyre still in beta (a year ago).... 'have not heard from them since

If you're interested in joining several fellow disappointed founding members in a class action lawsuit please check this out:

http://goo.gl/forms/eBCXVArzx5

Whelp I don't know if it is vaporware or not but I want my money back for breach of contract. I tried to hang. They were about a year late with the product and when I did get the product it was nothing in the least bit usable. There was virtually no customer service. I don't know how many times I've contacted them in the past year but I know how many times they've responded, zero. Their March 3rd update "Beta is in full swing now, and we've learned so much from all of you sharing your experiences with us. Your insight has been invaluable, we’re really encouraged by the passion and enthusiasm you show for The Grid. We love the sites you are building and we're making changes and improvements every day as a direct result of your feedback and sharing." I think I will see if I can pull together a class action suit. My site is not for sh*ts and giggles, I'm trying to make a living. I finally came to my senses and went with pagecloud, which has it's issues but at least I got the product and no "your insights have been invaluable," stuff. I didn't sign on to be a partner in building their business while mine languished.

A follow up piece about thegrid on the next web: http://thenextweb.com/dd/2015/07/31/this-is-what-the-grids-ai-website-builder-looks-like/ it mentions our post too at DN!

Too early to call it vaporware, but I am skeptical it'll deliver in the ways they want it to or that it'll find a market.

But also I want them to succeed! Partly because I think constraint-based layout is the FUTURE.

I purchased expecting a product, once I realized it was not even built - I promptly asked and received a refund.

In terms of extendible design The Grid has a few concepts right - in that templates are not the right way. Spaces with interesting concepts are Siteleaf.com which have posts & pages format for everything but almost requires users to write code.

The next thing that has my attention is semplicelabs.com. Although they are on wordpress their layout concepts are very interesting. Start blank and choose your blocks - Nav - Index - Text - etc. per page.

The positive thing is that wordpress is basically a synthesizer and you can patch / plug and play anything.. but not everything makes good music.

The open source project TheGrid works on is quite complex -> https://github.com/gss/engine

And as an anecdote, I've spoken to one of the developers there and consider him quite above average when it comes to software engineering.

Look forward to seeing the product!

Edit: [commented on wrong post :P]

What really concerns me is the code this thing kicks out. I remember seeing not to long ago that their website uses "grid". The source code is not a thing of beauty; The home page HTML is 4200 lines long with some crazy things going on in there...