Get Started with Replit
Tags: webdev, javascript, programming, beginners
Published: 2023-04-04 15:11:41



# Introduction to Replit

Replit is an online, collaborative, and user-friendly IDE platform that contains everything we need as a developer from the online supportive compiler, technical news, and developers community. Replit was officially launched in 2016 by Amjad Masad & Faris Masad. n

The idea behind launching replit is to provide a fully browser-based collaborative environment with the full power of IDE. Replit based on the top three fundamentals 

- **Collaborative**
    
    Replit provides a collaborative space where authorize users can join the workspace with a single link. It's simplifying the idea of a version control system where developers can collaborate and work together with amazing features like code highlighting. 
    
- **Online**
    
    You can access the replit workspace from anywhere on any device also you can code on mobile devices as well. Replit is a similar concept to google workspace(docs) where you can share your work and collaborate with others.
    
- **IDE**
    
    Installing and setting up a new development environment is not easy on your local machine but replit solves this problem with the help of the [global package manager](https://blog.replit.com/upm). You can simply code and build applications without worrying about development environments. 
    

These are three strong fundamentals that replit based on.

# Product Features

1. **Free** **Hosting in 5** **Sec -** 
    
    After building the final product the next step is hosting and it's one more step to deploy your application to production but replit hosts your application in less than seconds with [username.replit.co](http://username.replit.co) domain.   
    
2. **Simple UI Design -**
    
    A completely new beginner can code on replit due to the simple UI design structure of the platform. The complete replit platform is simple to understand anyone can start building & learning code with replit.   
    
3. **Real-Time Collaboration** 
    
    On replit, you can share, connect and collaborate with other developers with the amazing feature available on replit also you can communicate with the replit chat feature. Replit provides real-time collaboration for users. 
    

# Replit Marketing Strategy

Replit collaborated with the top online educational brands for marketing and brand awareness. Replit focuses on developers-based communities for collaboration because it's easy to promote products to the target audience.   

1. **Content Marketing**  
    
    Replit blog provides trending news and valuable resource for developers and the article, and blog posts written by experienced developers help beginners to get actual insights into the industry and trending technical news.   
    
2. **Community Support**
    
    Replit collaborated with education brands, institutes, and coding boot camps to offer their product and that helps to increase brand awareness as well as to get new users on the platform. 
    
3. **Social Media content** 
    
    Replit has an amazing support audience on its social media channels, especially on **Twitter** & **Reddit** where most active developers’ communities are available. It automatically helps to get the attention of the developers and promote a product. 
    
4. **Referral Marketing** 
    
    Replit has a referral marketing program to get a hacker plan for free and it works win-win for both users loyal user promote platform and new user get benefits of the platform and its automatically increases the users count on replit. 
    

Overall, Replit marketing strategy focuses on building a community for developers and providing valuable resources through content that helps replit build strong brand value among developers. Right now replit has **20M+** developers on their platform.   

# Replit Business Model

Replit has two different plans for users free and paid but the revenue of the replit business model comes from paid partnerships and offers paid solutions for small enterprises. All possible revenue streams of the replit business are listed below 

1. **Freemium -**   
    
    Replit provides limited free features to the users and then users have to pay for the additional features such as extra storage space, fast execution speed, and team collaboration. The replit **hacker** plan charges the user 7$ per month and the pro plan 20$ with additional features like ghostwriter(AI Tool). 
    
2. **Partnerships**  
    
    Replit partners with educational institutes and companies to provide required solutions to them and to target a specific audience that helps replit generate more revenue.
    
3. **Enterprise Solutions**
    
    Replit also provides solutions to enterprises based on their requirements with additional security features and team collaboration. It includes a single sign-on feature and a dedicated support team.
    
4. **Marketplace** 
    
    On replit, developers can build and share their creations on the platform and replit take a commission from each sale. This helps the platform to build another revenue stream.
    

# Product Market Size

The specific market size of IDE is $3 billion in 2018 to $23+ billion by 2029 but replit is not only IDE that's one part of the replit platform. Replit earning money through a subscription model. In 2022 replit earns most of its revenue from individual users that purchase the hacker plan. 

The other code editors and online IDE platforms are indirect competitors to the replit but it already captured a large space of the market and replit wouldn't consider them as a replacement for a traditional IDE.

# Codedamn vs Replit

Overall, Replit is an online IDE that helps users to code without worrying about development environments with the freemium business model but codedamn is a providing a complete solution to learning “how to code” with structured roadmaps.

Codedamn playground is a major component of the platform but codedamn is focusing more on complete development by providing courses, resources, playgrounds, and community support whereas replit is focusing more on providing an online development environment to the user. The target audience is the same for both communities.          

### Where to Improve

There is space where we can improve at codedamn. 

1. **Chat Feature** 
    
    Replit has a chat feature on replit to communicate with others and that's amazing for developers to get actual feedback on the product.  
    
2. **UI Can Be Better**
    
    Replit UI is simple and beginners can easily start with replit and similar for the codedamn but we can improve the UI of the codedamn user dashboard. 
    
3. **Social War**
Replit marketing strategy focuses on the active developer's platforms such as Twitter & Reddit. 
    
    
    | Platforms | Codedamn | Replit |
    | --- | --- | --- |
    | Twitter | 16k  | 85k |
    | Youtube  | 354K | 14.9K |
    | Instagram | 21.7K | 3K |

# Conclusion

The overall conclusion from this case study is Replit is focusing on building a developer’s community through content, marketing, and partnership and that helps to scale their platform with a number of active users. **Twitter** is developer oriented platform and replit has a strong presence on Twitter that help replit to get real-time feedback from the target audience for platform improvements as well it helps to platform growth.

**Codedamn** is a space where people can learn code, collaborate with others, and get opportunities through the platform, It's not only limited to the playgrounds where codedamn stands out as compared to replit.