I opened the site and poked around quickly. I thought "Hm... simple. Kinda interesting. I wonder if hackernews comments will evaluate the utility of it."

It was not until your comment that I realized it's a paid product. I never would have imagined that.

On the checkout page, there is an $80/year option. I just didn't want to complicate the marketing page, but it seems like I should add the optional yearly pricing there.

$8 a month is ridiculously overpriced.

nothing is overpriced if someone is willing to pay

I second this but at the same time the founder has a point. Since the average user can't create a blog with GH Pages or whatever else for free, he'll be willing to pay $8 for this product. The average customer won't be from the tech space and $8 would seem like "oh just $8 and I can have a personal website? easy!" so I'd say keep the price as is.

They're competing with WordPress which is much cheaper and more fully featured

For $2 a month i would've signed up, $8 is too much for what is offered, and just not in my budget for something like this.