The problem with website builders is that they do not suit anyone, except maybe when you need quick, "good enough", perhaps one-off web site.
* Professional developers don't want to spend their days on a online GUI like this as opposed to the comfort of a repository and trusty code editor and tools.
* End users, even with a great WYSIWYG UI, may still not be able to make knowledgeable design decisions. Also, even with the best WYSIWYG GUI, sometimes you just need to tweak the source.
We should be building better structured content management systems as opposed to better Dreamweaver-like tools. Structured content also enables other cool things like single-source, multiple-output publishing.
There are a lot of these "headless CMS"s nowadays but I still haven't found one that I really like, I think there's room for improvement.
You hit the nail on the head when it comes to page builders. As far as I can tell, most of then try tackling the problem of expensive development by enabling nontechnical users to build sites in one of two ways: customize with a GUI (which is either comically limited or harder-than-code complex) or choose from an endless list of pre-built components/templates (which just turns one development hour into three research hours).
primo enables end users by enabling developers by offering immediate access to those same productive tools and making the code as accessible as possible.
As to your comment on single-source-multi-output, primo will be able to expose all the content on your site at an endpoint soon, stay tuned.
We've used Contentful extensively basically since it's inception, and have toyed around with Dato enough to know what the offering is. We have our own list of missing pieces for both but am always curious about other's experiences.
* Professional developers don't want to spend their days on a online GUI like this as opposed to the comfort of a repository and trusty code editor and tools.
* End users, even with a great WYSIWYG UI, may still not be able to make knowledgeable design decisions. Also, even with the best WYSIWYG GUI, sometimes you just need to tweak the source.
We should be building better structured content management systems as opposed to better Dreamweaver-like tools. Structured content also enables other cool things like single-source, multiple-output publishing.
There are a lot of these "headless CMS"s nowadays but I still haven't found one that I really like, I think there's room for improvement.