Hey there,
We sent out an email earlier today about our new website builder and got an overwhelming response. A lot of you tried it, a lot of you had questions, and some of you ran into issues. I want to address all of that here.
First — thank you. The volume of interest caught us off guard in the best way. We're working through everything and I want to make sure nobody's left hanging.
Q: How does the website builder actually work?
There are two paths depending on your situation.
If you're starting fresh — you fill out a short form (takes about five minutes) telling us who you are, what you do, what makes you different, and your preferences on colors and style. The system then generates a full draft website using that information. It builds you a logo, generates imagery, writes all the copy, and creates a home page, about page, contact page, and three sample products or tours or rentals — whatever's relevant to your business. The whole thing takes under five minutes. You get a real, working draft that you can start editing immediately.
We built it this way because staring at a blank page is brutal. It's much easier to start from something that already exists and edit it than to build from nothing.
If you're migrating an existing website — we scrape your entire current site. Every page, every image, all your copy. We index everything and store it. Then we use that content to generate a new draft on the Gondola platform. Your existing images get enhanced — but they stay yours. If you have a specific boat, a specific bus, photos of your team, those are preserved. We're not replacing your stuff with stock photos. We're making what you already have look better and more cohesive.
For both paths, the draft includes up to three products and up to three blog posts. The rest of your content (all your other products, blog posts, categories) is stored in the system — we just don't generate the entire site upfront because each build costs us $3–5 in compute. Once you're inside the editor, there are options to pull in the rest of your content and keep building.
The draft is not final. It's a preview of what your site could look like on Gondola. Once you're in the editor, you can move sections around, change your colors, change your fonts, swap out copy — all of that is straightforward. The point of the draft is to give you something real to react to, not a finished product.
Q: Does the 50% off deal apply to existing customers?
No. The 2026SEASON code is for new customers only. If you're already a Gondola customer, your pricing doesn't change. What we do have for you is the ability to migrate your current site to the new platform — more on that below.
Q: I tried the builder and it failed. What happened?
We got hit with way more volume than expected and our automated process got overloaded. Some builds failed. I'm sorry about that.
You're welcome to try again — it should be working now. If you'd rather not retry, that's fine too. My engineering and product team is going through every failure, re-running them manually, and we'll email you directly when your site is ready for you to look at.
Q: I tried to build a site and the result wasn't great. Why?
The builder is designed specifically for tour, activity, and rental operators. If you're trying to build a site for a business outside of that space, or your existing site is very thin on content or irrelevant, the draft isn't going to be great. The system needs real tour and activity content to work with. The more detail you give it — or the more content your existing site has — the better the result. If you have a website, but it's not already filled with tours/activities, you'd be better off building a brand new concept from scratch.
Q: I'm an existing customer. What's different about the new platform?
Three things that matter most:
The new editor is fully self-service. You log in, open your site, and make changes without waiting on us. No more submitting requests and waiting for our team.
The new sites are significantly faster. Better load times, which directly affects your conversions and your SEO.
All new features going forward will only be built on the new platform.
We plan to eventually migrate everyone over. But if you're heading into your busy season, do not make changes right now. Wait until your season winds down, then migrate. There is no rush.
Q: How do I get my existing site moved to the new platform?
Two options.
Option 1 — Do it yourself. Your products, blog posts, and categories dynamically populate in the new editor, so you don't need to recreate those. What you'd recreate are your core pages: home, about, contact, category pages, privacy policy, terms and conditions. It's mostly copy and paste from your old site into the new editor. More straightforward than it sounds.
Option 2 — We do it for you. Our implementation team handles the full migration. Current wait time is 2–5+ weeks because we've gotten a lot of requests and we're doing each one carefully. We'd rather take our time and get it right.
If you want us to handle it, submit a migration request here:
https://form.asana.com/?k=rPzQTAcdxj9RlGlMNBpNxQ&d=1202377881612236
Q: How do I access the new editor?
If you see an editor button inside your Gondola dashboard, it's already enabled. If you don't see it, reply to this email and we'll turn it on for you.
If I missed your question, just reply and I'll get back to you.
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