There's something I genuinely don't understand in discussions of price, which is that folks seem to want to ignore basic economics.
Something is either worth it to you or it's not. If it is worth it, and you want it, you may buy it. If it's not, then you don't buy it. The world keeps spinning.
The Tailwind folks seem to think this may be worth $150 to some people. Those people might buy it. If you think it's not worth that, it doesn't mean that those people are wrong, it means that you 1) don't understand the value or 2) the value just doesn't exist for you, and it's not for you.
Or maybe people do understand the economics of it, but there's something psychological that's more pressing: because one person doesn't find value, and sees another person that does find value, they must defend or justify their own value assessment and confront the opposition. I'm sure there's a name for this, but I don't know it off-hand.
Haven't checked out Catalyst but I have used TailwindUI. The components are really good but if you are not using a JS framework, it's a lot of work to integrate. The regular JS version of TailwindUI uses Alpine which doesn't have a CSP compatible version so you will have to write the Javascript from scratch.
Partially due to these and frustrated by lack of component libraries in Rails, I built and recently released a UI kit for Rails - https://zestui.com
Built with Phlex, styled with Tailwind with custom built Stimulus controllers.
It's got
- 25 themes
- Dark Mode
- Form Builder
- Icons
- Built in Flash Toast
- The components are responsive or have specific mobile views
- All the JS needed (Stimulus controllers) is wired up automatically
Phlex is a game changer. It is simple, powerful, intuitive and performant. I will never ever write a component as a partial/ViewComponent again.
A short video (50 seconds) showing it off: https://youtu.be/OQmDZddLtR8
This is an unbelievably unfinished UI library. Especially with a price tag. A limited set of components with very little attention to detail. For example, the buttons lack the active state completely. Why would I pay €250 for something I can find easily for free?
As an infrastructure engineer who spends all day in Go and Bash and AWS I gotta say I’m a huge fan of Tailwind. This looks worth buying too. People are blown away by my front end skills, baby I’m just letting Copilot and Tailwind whisper sweet anodyne nothings into my ear. Keep me as far away from design as you can; this helps!
I bought tailwind UI more than a year ago. The lifetime/unlimited product or whatever it was.
It’s generally fine but feels incomplete. Many of the components don’t have any alpine or JS code documented even though the team has clearly built those aspects when building the previews and demos.
I’m not sure what the rationale was there but I hope they’ve fixed it here.
I am so confused.
Tailwind UI is a set of prebuilt components for building applications. And catalyst is built from those but is also a "template" which is also an "application UI Kit" which is what I thought Tailwind UI was....
Oh man, if this is more or less tailwind ui but already turned into thoughtful react components, I’m all in. Tailwind ui has been useful as a reference of a non-trivial implementation of tailwind css that you buy, which is great. Try to drop the examples into a real application and you’ll have a bad time, it just feels like something should exist already… and here it is! Hopefully, anyway, will definitely try it out!
Why does Tailwind not build framework agnostic UI components?
The best thing about Tailwind is everyone can use it.
Wish we could go back to the days of building for the web and not building for React.
Unfortunately, I'm going to have to dunk on the irony of developing a CSS-first toolkit then only releasing headless React components. At least if you used Svelte or WebComponents directly you could compile them down to bind to other frameworks.
I'm not a React hater, but it's time for React-only support for UI toolkits to end. There are other compelling frameworks that are also worth using that are better choices in many cases.
Why would you ever pay for a UI kit on the web. I am not gonna name things, but you dont need to spend a dime on any framework. Most if not all popular ones are opensource. Use those ones. Makes your life much easier. Community arround them also a lot bigger.
Also look at Flowbite as an alternative tailwind component library
More competition in the UI components is good.
If you are new to the space, you may check Mantine components.
They are arguably better and more mature.
The reason Mantine is free is because the maintainer is not doing it for quick bucks.
In 'Live preview' I casually inspected the the first button, and it has 63 classes, wow
<button class="relative isolate inline-flex items-center justify-center gap-x-2 rounded-lg border text-base/6 font-semibold px-[calc(theme(spacing[3.5])-1px)] py-[calc(theme(spacing[2.5])-1px)] sm:px-[calc(theme(spacing.3)-1px)] sm:py-[calc(theme(spacing[1.5])-1px)] sm:text-sm/6 focus:outline-none data-[focus]:outline data-[focus]:outline-2 data-[focus]:outline-offset-2 data-[focus]:outline-blue-500 data-[disabled]:opacity-50 [&>[data-slot=icon]]:-mx-0.5 [&>[data-slot=icon]]:my-0.5 [&>[data-slot=icon]]:size-5 [&>[data-slot=icon]]:shrink-0 [&>[data-slot=icon]]:text-[--btn-icon] [&>[data-slot=icon]]:sm:my-1 [&>[data-slot=icon]]:sm:size-4 forced-colors:[--btn-icon:ButtonText] forced-colors:data-[hover]:[--btn-icon:ButtonText] border-transparent bg-[--btn-border] dark:bg-[--btn-bg] before:absolute before:inset-0 before:-z-10 before:rounded-[calc(theme(borderRadius.lg)-1px)] before:bg-[--btn-bg] before:shadow dark:before:hidden dark:border-white/5 after:absolute after:inset-0 after:-z-10 after:rounded-[calc(theme(borderRadius.lg)-1px)] after:shadow-[shadow:inset_0_1px_theme(colors.white/15%)] after:data-[active]:bg-[--btn-hover-overlay] after:data-[hover]:bg-[--btn-hover-overlay] dark:after:-inset-px dark:after:rounded-lg before:data-[disabled]:shadow-none after:data-[disabled]:shadow-none text-white [--btn-bg:theme(colors.zinc.900)] [--btn-border:theme(colors.zinc.950/90%)] [--btn-hover-overlay:theme(colors.white/10%)] dark:text-white dark:[--btn-bg:theme(colors.zinc.600)] dark:[--btn-hover-overlay:theme(colors.white/5%)] [--btn-icon:theme(colors.zinc.400)] data-[active]:[--btn-icon:theme(colors.zinc.300)] data-[hover]:[--btn-icon:theme(colors.zinc.300)] cursor-default" type="button" data-headlessui-state="">Button<span class="absolute left-1/2 top-1/2 size-[max(100%,2.75rem)] -translate-x-1/2 -translate-y-1/2 [@media(pointer:fine)]:hidden" aria-hidden="true"></span></button>https://flowbite.com/ is free and supports Vue too :)
Hate that everything needs React these days. I’ll stick to using Tabler and HTMX.
Paid TailwindUI user here.
I understand Tailwind's decision to choose a framework, but it is not good for us, and I suspect will not age well.
I have a non React site, and including React for a button makes no sense.
All the new stuff they are developing are not worth my even looking at.
I feel they built themselves up while doing everything in Vanilla, then for a period the sponsored and promoted Alpine as being their style, then in Headless moved to React + Vue, and now have abandoned that.
They've forgotten how much of the world wants to use Tailwind but won't use React.
Am I missing something? It looks like this is incredibly unfinished.
I've been a long time user of tailwind UI and bought the all in bundle two years ago. Especially with the education discount I was eligible back then (thank you to the creators for that!) the purchase was an absolute no-brainer for me.
However, with this specific template, I really don't get the economics. This appears to be the least finished template they have in their repository, yet it is the most expensive as a single purchase.
I would gladly pay this price as a monthly subscription, if only I could get a maintained CSS library that lets me build applications on a level similar to Semantic UI, with the ability to customize or theme components.
I don't want JavaScript, I don't want a "framework", I don't want an npm-installable-monster, I want something that produces CSS that I can use for business. Semantic UI was close, but it got abandoned, and the forks do not go in the right direction.
Also, I need information-dense design, not whitespace-dominated design. Some of us build complex apps that display a lot of information and need tightly packed UI.
This is not hypothetical: I really do need to replace Semantic UI with something that is maintained and will work better on mobile screens. At a quick glance, my code has several thousand places where Semantic UI tags are used. If somebody picked up Semantic UI, started maintaining it without turning it into a JavaScript framework, and offered a $249/month subscription, I'd pick it up.
Been using Shadcn this week, definitely like the component concept and this has arrived just in time.
I had to double take this, because I use a very different web framework also called Catalyst http://catalyst.perl.org/
Perl in all its glory and horror.
I wish it wasn't tied to React. I'm unsure if this can be used headless?
It's cool how it uses the same name as the technology used for porting UIKit applications to macOS, which I'm sure will make search engine usage very fun if it ever gains any traction.
I instantly purchased this. I really love Tailwind and the component/UI libraries they sell. I'm shocked that a CSS library/framework is so divisive. If you don't like it, don't use it!
I'm also surprised that someone ... selling something ... gets such negativity on Hacker News of all places. Again, if you don't like it or it doesn't have value to you, don't buy it!
Tailwind Templates are the new Wordpress themes.
I wish there was a "frameworkless" version. Just include the JS/CSS/Font(s) and paste the html and there you go.
The dark themed combo-boxes are broken in terms of the item visibility. Only the active/selected item is readable, the rest are using a font color matching the background of the item box.
The decision to cough up for the lifetime payment pays off again.
the probable success of Catalyst will prove once again that people believe that an expensive product is automatically better than free ones.
Can I use it with just plain HTML? I would love the marketing site to look just like the application if at all possible.
I learned so much from using tailwind ui. Could be more extensive but it’s easily paid for itself
The name is a bit confusing. I thought it was related to Apple's Catalyst and UIKit
Cannot be unseen: radio buttons are not symmetrical (chrome 120 on ubuntu)
Nice start, but Flowbite has all the blocks an states described.
I feel like this doesn't belong on the front page, not really trying to be negative here but it's a quite sloppy UI kit for something I don't like (Tailwind, after extensive research & some usage).
What free alternatives exist other than ShadCN?
I don’t see a dark mode/theme.
<3 tailwind
this is awesome btw :-)
Slightly off topic, but has anyone read the license[0]?
This point feels really odd to me:
> Creating an admin panel tool (like Laravel Nova or ActiveAdmin) that is made available either for sale or for free.
I mostly get the other restrictions. You can't buy the kit then repackage it and sell it. But why can't you make an admin panel?
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What's with all the negativity here on HN, especially about the pricing?
The Tailwind team created one of the most used CSS frameworks ever and charge nothing for it. The framework needs a revenue stream to enable continued investment. Rails has basecamp. Bootstrap had twitter. React has meta. Tailwind has Tailwind UI.
I find it great value. It's a one-off cost comparable to hiring a designer or front-end developer for a day, and you get a bunch of usable components + future upgrades.
Usually HN isn't as negative about revenue streams for open-source developers.