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Overall Score: 5 / 10

Jellyfish is a professional Nostr relay provider that offers a subscription model in exchange for Sats. In the Nostr ecosystem, there are many relays, most of them free. So, the question arises with such offers: why should I pay for this? This is exactly the answer Jellyfish owes if they want to attract new customers. Everything should focus on that question. And then the second question: how much does it cost?

Jellyfish actually does a relatively good job at this. As a Nostr user, I’m tempted to give them a try. They explain the benefits after you click on the call-to-action button. It would be better to present the features on the homepage, because—who knows—some people might not even click that far.

The features are good. Longevity of your own data while still allowing for deletion—even vanishes (NIP-62). A nice combo. Apparently, many other NIPs are supported as well; a link or dropdown to a page where these are at least listed wouldn’t be a bad idea at this point.

A NIP-05 service that is supposedly coming soon doesn’t seem that attractive to me. It’s pretty irrelevant in the Nostr scene—easy to set up yourself, and these days you can get it almost anywhere without effort. What I’d much rather see is an inbox relay, like the one Azzamo offers.

The prices are attractive. But they should also be listed as their own menu item at the top in the main menu—or at least on the homepage. That’s what people are used to. As I said, there’s some potential being lost when features and pricing are only revealed after clicking the CTA button, so to speak, at the last moment.

They even link to terms and conditions, which is not something to take for granted in an environment full of anonymous “ninjas” who think they’re cool for disregarding every law and every trust-building measure. But more on that later in the ethical analysis.

Score: 8/10

PageSpeed Insights doesn’t give the best scores, but that likely won’t hurt sales.

I haven’t looked closely yet to see if it’s a server issue that’s blocking the first rendering, but it’s definitely worth digging into. It seems there’s especially one SVG element that takes a total of 6 seconds to load—which shouldn’t be the case. If it can’t be fixed, then this element is actually dispensable. In any case, with a file size of 64 kB, it shouldn’t be delaying load times by 6 seconds.

Score: 7/10

I definitely think the animated logo is cool, and I like the font and colors too. But something’s off with the spacing and white space. At times, it feels like there’s too much of it, and it lacks consistency or a clear system.

Score: 8/10

Why do I have to enter my npub again when making a purchase? Especially if I’m already logged in with the browser extension? In that case, you already have my npub, and I should only need to select a plan when topping up.

So I copy my npub to enter it there, select my plan, and after payment I get a success message. Okay—what then? What then? What’s the relay I’m now allowed to use?

Okay, I go “Back to home” hoping to find the relay address there. Still nothing. Now I’m starting to search a bit frantically across all the pages where it might be. It’s not in my dashboard either. Is the relay address even mentioned anywhere on the website?

Back on Nostr, I notice a DM. They sent me the relay address there. Just imagine if, for some reason, that DM hadn’t arrived.

No, that’s not okay. This needs to be made more transparent at every step of the purchase process.

One more thing I’m curious about: I signed up because of the promises. Because NIP-9 and NIP-62 are supported. But how do I actually do that? How do I delete my notes from the relay? How do I vanish? No UI for that? The answer is probably that it depends on the Nostr client. But which Nostr client supports that and how? No information on how to do it?

I know others aren’t doing it any better—but this needs to be there too. What you promise to the average user, you need to actually deliver.

Score: 2/10

There are landmarks, contrasts should be sufficient, and there are headings on both sides. On the homepage, there are two H1 headings, which should be an easy fix.

But the navigation markup is completely off. There is a nav element, but it actually encompasses the entire header, including the logo and the dashboard button. It should therefore be a <header>. The three main menu items aren’t marked as nav, but instead as some semantically meaningless div. No lists are used either. The form labels exclude blind users; for them, the offer is not perceivable. And there are also invalid elements.

Score: 2/10

The features are communicated well, but—as mentioned before—it’s left unclear how to benefit from some of the features. And the most important information, the relay address, is also not communicated.

Score: 4/10

Fortunately, the website doesn’t include many external resources. And the few it does include could easily be replaced with local storage, achieving the ideal state.

Let’s talk about “trust-building measures.” There is a TOS, linked at the last minute, where it’s needed—during the purchase. I’m not a lawyer, but I know that with a TOS, you should at least know with whom you’re entering into it. “Jellyfish.” Is that a company name? What legal structure do they have? Who represents them? I’d suggest giving the TOS a bit of a legal polish with a lawyer. Also, a link to the TOS usually belongs in the website footer.

The presentation of team members is on the homepage, but who is the person responsible? Who is the boss? First names may seem cool and casual in a startup way, but in the end, people want to know who they’re doing business with.

Oh, and like with almost all non-EU test candidates before: If you want to sell to EU citizens, you also need to comply with European GDPR and data protection laws. I didn’t make the laws, but that’s the requirement. Otherwise, your business is easily attackable.

Score: 4/10

Overall Score: 5 / 10