A One-Person Notion-to-Website Builder Scales to 4,000 Domains

Potion.so, a service that turns Notion pages into websites, is built on Next.js and Vercel. The entire operation is run by founder Noah Bragg as its sole employee. Using Vercel's Platforms Starter Kit and Edge Network, Potion now serves over 100,000 pageviews per month across 4,000 custom domains. In June 2023, the company was acquired for $300,000.

The core of Potion's technical strategy is the Platforms Starter Kit, a Next.js template designed for multi-tenant applications. Bragg credits it as a starting point that saved him from manual infrastructure work. "Being able to quickly scaffold this using the Platforms Starter Kit as a starting point was immensely helpful, and it allowed me to focus on building features that deliver value to my customers instead of configuring NGINX proxies," he says.

"With Vercel, I was able to quickly set up wildcard subdomains for my users and upsell them with custom domains."

Domain Management as a Growth Lever

For a website builder, supporting custom domains is a key selling point. Vercel's domain management tools let Bragg offer this without significant overhead. He set up wildcard subdomains for all users and then provided custom domains as a premium upsell. The Domains API, part of the Platforms Starter Kit, handles the complexity of connecting and managing those domains at scale.

Performance and SEO via Rendering Strategies

Site speed directly impacts SEO rankings, which is critical for Potion's customers. Potion uses Server-Side Rendering (SSR) to ensure content is delivered efficiently and is fully indexable by search engines. To keep performance high as the number of managed sites grows, Vercel applies Incremental Static Regeneration (ISR). By caching rendered pages, Potion minimizes database calls and avoids overload, even while adding new sites continually.

Growth Milestones Since Launch

Within two years of launching, Potion hit several notable numbers:

  • $6,300 monthly recurring revenue (MRR)
  • 6% month-over-month revenue growth
  • 4,000 custom domains
  • 100,000 pageviews per month
  • Product Hunt Product of the Week
  • Product Hunt Maker Grant recipient
  • A $300,000 acquisition