Dorik: Build a website in 30 minutes

Mizanur Rahman has been building websites and website templates since 2012. He was an elite author at ThemeForest, a popular marketplace where you can buy and sell templates as well as themes for common content management system(CMS) software that can help you manage your website, such as WordPress, Joomla and Drupal.

Not long into his career, Mizan found out that customers wanted more customisation than what these platforms offered, and to make modifications to the templates themselves. 

So, he teamed up with Anwar Hossain, another website and website template maker, to help people make those customisations. To achieve that, they needed a builder - a piece of software that empowers users to develop a site without any knowledge of the code. 

In 2016 they made their first attempt to launch a builder. Unfortunately, it was not successful due to some technical limitations. So they took a hiatus and started working on other things. In late 2019, this project began gaining some momentum again.

By April 2020, Dorik's first landing page to find beta testers and early customers went live. They started getting requests for early access to their product, from the day they launched their landing page, and they soon granted access to their beta users. After putting the payment system in place, Dorik got its first customer on 4 July, 2020, even before its public launch.

Dorik is an all-in-one website-building platform. It lets anyone build dynamic websites like blogs, job boards, portfolios, directories, and more, without touching a line of code. It has built-in features like membership, team collaboration, and native SEO to build content-rich websites. It also provides AWS Hosting and Global CDN to serve the websites faster.

On 10 August 2020, Dorik officially launched on ProductHunt. On the day of their launch they finished as the #2 Product of the Day. By the end of the first week of being fully operational, they secured more than 250 paying customers and have not looked back since. 

Dorik has so far received funding from early-stage venture funds based out of San Francisco Long Journey Ventures and Airbnb employees turned investors Air Angels. They preferred not to disclose the amounts they received.

One of the most unique things about Dorik is the fact that it is a Sylhet-based startup. Out of the 43 employees they have, four are based in Dhaka and Chattogram, while the rest work at their HQ in Sylhet. But this unique location also posed some challenges for them. It was not only difficult to find skilled workers who were willing to come and work in Sylhet, things were further complicated by the global shortage of skilled developers.

"We have a complex product. So, we need designers and developers who can work at quite an advanced level. To solve our hiring issue, we brought in some people and trained them ourselves," said Nabil, Chief Operating Officer, Dorik.

Dorik has around 32,000 users at the moment, this includes 2,000 paying customers. It operates in a freemium model. 

"Users can access all of the features for free. They only have to pay when they use a custom domain. For example: If you use the domain Tbs.dorik.io you can use it for free; you only have to pay up if you want a custom domain like tbs.com," explained Nabil Choudhury. 

The name of the company, Dorik, is derived from architecture.

Dorik has 43 employees at present. Photo: Courtesy

'"We took the name from the word "Doric" which was one of the three orders of ancient Greek and later Roman architecture. We replaced the "C" with "K" for better pronunciation, and the Dorik domain was readily available as well," said Nabil.

"In architecture 'order' refers to a system of rules that structure the shape, structure, layout and proportions of a design. We are a website builder so in a sense we are architects as well, that is why we chose this name," he added.

Dorik's main mission is to build a website-building platform that is affordable for everyone around the world. It combines ease-of-use and flexibility to make it possible for anyone from any corner of the world to build a website. 

Dorik focuses on the expansion of No-Code. The last several years have seen a rise in the term "No-Code." It is on a mission to provide agencies and professionals with no-code solutions.

"Our goal is to make it easy for anyone to create a stunning website in minutes, without learning complex platforms. Combining flexibility, ease-of-use and affordability is our mission," said Mizanur Rahman, co-founder of Dorik."Since launching Dorik, we've seen it grow into one of the top website builders on the market." 

"It's been an amazing experience watching thousands of people use our platform to build beautiful websites," added Mizan.

Dorik is really popular among Bangladeshi freelancers who make websites for other people. "They usually use WordPress or have to code a website from the ground up. They have to pay different types of fees, like hosting fees, etc. This process is expensive and lengthy. On the other hand, Dorik lets you create a website in as little time as half an hour, using our drag and drop tools," explained Nabil.

Many of Dorik's customer base are businessmen. And when starting a business, you need your own website. 

"However, it may cost you up to a few lakh taka to launch one, not to mention developers require a certain amount of time to get the job done. On the other hand, anybody can build their own website using Dorik," said Nabil. "It takes just half an hour to get the hang of things." 

No-code technology in web development is fairly new. But there are other players in the market. So, what sets Dorik apart from the rest of the pack? 

"Firstly, our products cost less than our competitors; it's free if you don't want a custom domain. Secondly, other products have a steep learning curve, we don't. For example - Bubble is one of our competitors, but you need around six months to learn how to use Bubble. On the flipside, to understand how our product works, you need half an hour," said Nabil.

"Our UI and UX are also very modern and user-friendly," he added.

When asked where Dorik sees themselves in five years' time, Nabil replied promptly, "In five years, we would like to see at least 1% of all websites around the world being built using our product."

The user feedback so far has been overwhelmingly positive. "This tool is the best for web development, plain and simple, so much so that I have been moving my clients away from WordPress to Dorik," said Ethan O'Sullivan, Product Manager at US IT firm EPAM.

"I adore the look and feel of Dorik; you can essentially drag, drop, plug and play," said Milly Bannister, Director at ALLKND.