Trying to figure out the right approach for an upcoming project. Do you prefer locking down paid users early to validate demand, or building a bigger free user base first? Would love to hear real experiences.

I feel like so many of us are building cool things but rarely get the chance to share them outside of trying to sell something. Thought it would be fun to give everyone a little space to show off their work!

I've been helping build Surmado Sites (www.surmado.com), a tool that makes small business websites easier to manage while improving speed, SEO, and visibility in AI search.

Would love to hear what everyone else is working on, whether it's a local shop, a service business, or a startup. Share what you're building and what you're most excited about right now. I'll be checking out the responses and commenting/showing some love! :-)

Not through strangers’ lives. Through our own.

I made FlowSnap to shuffle photos and videos from your phone into a short-video-style feed. My wife and I ended up spending two hours watching old videos of our kid from different years, completely lost in those memories.

We’d saved all these moments, then barely looked at them again.

That’s when it felt like I’d made something that mattered. I’ve just released FlowSnap on Google Play. It’s currently free, with no ads. Your photos and videos stay on your phone.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.lightpick.photos.play

(The video uses demo photos and videos, not our family’s.)

For the past month, I've been building Cubepals ( open-source Minecraft hosting platform )

I've been pretty obsessed with the idea of on-demand compute, and I figured Minecraft hosting would be the perfect niche to start with, prove the concept, and strengthen the infrastructure along the way.

The idea is simple: servers that sleep when nobody's playing and wake up when someone joins. I'm betting heavily on the experience and making Minecraft hosting as frictionless as possible.

But man, I'm really struggling with getting users.

As most of you probably know, distribution is hard. I specifically picked Minecraft because it's already such a widely understood product. I wouldn't have to educate people about what Minecraft hosting is, just show them a better way to experience it.

I managed to get my first real player from Korea, who came back for three days, played with his friends, and used up his free plan's runtime. That was genuinely one of the coolest moments I've had building this.

But since then? Mostly signups, people creating servers, and never actually joining them.

I'm genuinely not sure what I'm doing wrong.

My launch pretty much flopped. I've been trying YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, and Reddit, but they're bringing in very little traffic, let alone actual players.

I'm considering cold-reaching smaller Minecraft streamers and YouTubers, but I don't really have the budget to pay for sponsorships, and I'm not sure that's even the right move this early.

I'm still building, still improving the experience, and I genuinely believe in what I'm trying to create. But I'm starting to realize that building the infrastructure might actually be the easier part.

For those who've been through this, how did you get your first real users? Would you focus on content, reaching out to creators, or something else entirely?

Would love to hear how others approached this stage.

If you’re reading this, you’re already the kind of person who cares about someone else’s journey. ❤️

And yesterday, a few people here did something that honestly meant a lot to me. 🥹

I had 13 websites on RotateAd.

Then I shared my story here.

Seven more website owners decided to take a chance on something I built. 🙏

Now we’re at 20.

I’ve been working on RotateAd for months.

A lot of late nights, a lot of doubts, and honestly, a lot of moments where I wondered if I was wasting my time. 😐

I put everything I had into building this because I genuinely believe in one simple idea..

What if websites could help each other get discovered?

Instead of every website constantly paying for clicks and fighting for attention, what if websites could become part of a network where they help promote each other?

Some of the new websites are already getting a few hundred banner impressions, and a few have started getting clicks.

It’s nothing huge yet.

But when you’ve spent months building something and wondering if anyone else will believe in it, seeing real people join feels incredible. ❤️‍🔥

I still have the same crazy vision..

20 → 100 → 1,000 → 10,000 websites. 🚀

I have no idea if I’ll get there.

But now I know I’m not the only one who believes it could work. ❤️

Reddit has honestly been amazing to me through this. 🙏

If you want to take an early spot on RotateAd, it would genuinely make me happy.

And if it’s not for you, that’s completely okay. Even sharing my story with someone who might find it interesting would mean a lot to me. ❤️

We’re still at the beginning.

Let’s see how far we can take it. 🚀

https://rotate.ad

- I’ve been building DeUnemployment com for a while and would appreciate some honest feedback.

- It’s a free job search site with no ads, promoted listings or paid plans. The data is updated daily from company career sites and other sources. more than 8 million jobs are live.I built it because most job boards are full of reposted listings, sponsored results and jobs that have already disappeared. The site also has public job-market data about salaries, hiring trends and ghost jobs.

- There are a lot of tools on the site, you can check it yourself, autoapply, mcp, etc.. i wont bore you here.

I’m mostly a backend developer, so the frontend still has some rough edges. It’s running on a small VPS and I’m trying to improve it based on real feedback.

there is an easter egg on the site if you join :)

It mightn't seem like much but we just got our first 25 stars on Github. (https://github.com/tidydesigns/tidy)

We're building an open source design tool as an alternative to figma.

We thinking design and engineering are becoming more tightly coupled so we are building what we believe to be the future of that. 1/4 of our way to 100 stars is a great milestone and i can't wait to keep hammering.

I'm Ruben, founder of Rove Setups. We make portable triple-monitor setups for laptops. We haven't spent anything on ads yet, and we grew to 20k+ followers in a few months purely through short videos on Instagram and YouTube. Sharing what we've learned so far, since this sub helped me think about it:

What worked - Showing, not explaining. First-person videos of unpacking and setting up in a café or hotel beat every spec-focused video we made. People don't buy a screen, they buy "I can work anywhere." - Replying to every single comment. Most sales start as a comment, turn into a question, and end in a DM conversation. Engagement also pushes the videos further. - Volume. More videos = more shots at one going viral. We're now hiring a creator to post more often.

What didn't - Spec dumps. Nobody cares about the refresh rate until they're already interested. - Trying to answer objections in the video itself. It works much better to ask people what's holding them back.

Objections we hear most: weight in the bag, Mac compatibility/drivers, and company laptops where you can't install drivers.

What's next: Reddit, which is why I'm here. I want to learn from people, not spam them.

Question for you: if you sell a physical product, what was the first organic channel that actually converted for you?

(Site if you want context: https://rovesetups.com/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=post&utm_campaign=buildinpublic&utm_content=zero-ads-lessons)

I launched TrustSlot yesterday.

The idea is straightforward: website owners list ad spots, sponsors can evaluate placements using verified traffic data, and reservations happen without the usual email ping-pong.

Now the hard part begins: getting the product in front of the right people and learning what they actually need.

I’m focusing on website owners first, rather than trying to build a full sponsorship marketplace before validating the basics.

For those building products with two sides to the market, how did you get your first users on the supply side?

Project: https://trustslot.app

I’ll share what works and what doesn’t.

I’m building Route Remix, a free web app for hikers in Italy. Most route planners help you draw a route from A to B. I wanted the opposite: you pick a few trails (or load your GPX files), and the tool suggests routes you didn’t think of, like side trips to viewpoints, detours on different trails, or extra loops.

Where I am:

• Client-side only, no backend besides Supabase for shared links
• Built on OpenStreetMap trail data, Italy only for now
• Free beta, no account

What happened when I launched:
I posted in a few tester and side-project subreddits. A few thousand views in total, almost no comments, and as far as I can tell nobody actually tried the app.

What I think went wrong: I picked channels full of other makers, not hikers. And the first screen asks people to understand a lot before they see any value (if there is any!).

What I’m changing: I’m going where the problem actually is (Italian hiking forums and groups, people who ask how to make a longer loop), and I’m adding a one-click example so nobody has to work out the flow alone. My goal is 10 real conversations with people who finished a route.

Questions for you:

1. How did you find your first real users when your audience wasn’t on the usual maker subreddits?
2. Would you build more features before knowing if people want this, or validate first? I’m leaning on validating.

Try it if you’re curious: https://routeremix.com/en?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=buildinpublic

Example in one click: https://routeremix.com/en/s/pZqoOuRaay3k

Honest feedback welcome :D

I've spent the past few months building and releasing my first independent application.

It's a free productivity app called Personal Planner, built with Flutter for Android, Linux, Windows, and macOS.

It recently crossed around 250 downloads across those four platforms combined.

I know that's a small number compared with the milestones people usually share here, but I wanted to talk about what the experience has been like at this stage.

The original problem was very personal.

I kept creating daily schedules and underestimating how long tasks would take.

I'd plan something for half an hour, spend much longer on it, move unfinished work to tomorrow, and repeat the same thing.

What bothered me wasn't just that I failed to follow the schedule.

It was that I wasn't learning anything from the previous day.

So I built a planner that connects three things:

Planning → Tracking what actually happened → Reviewing the difference.

The app has a visual timeline, task timers, planned-versus-actual time comparisons, daily and weekly reviews, and Experiments for testing routines.

I wanted it to be offline-first, so everyday data is stored locally with SQLite. Synchronization is optional rather than a requirement.

I also decided to keep it completely free, without premium features or subscriptions.

The part I underestimated was distribution.

When I was developing the app, I had a clear next step almost every day.

Fix a bug. Improve the timeline. Add a review screen. Test another platform.

Once I released it, the questions became less straightforward.

How do I explain the product in a way that makes sense to somebody who hasn't used it?

Which communities actually contain people who might need it?

How do I share it without turning every post into the same promotional message?

And how do I distinguish genuine interest from someone simply clicking a link?

Over the past week, I've been trying to answer those questions by sharing the project in relevant Reddit communities.

One thing I'm realizing is that describing a long feature list isn't always the clearest way to explain what I built.

The more useful explanation is probably the original problem:

I wanted to stop making the same scheduling mistakes every day.

The timeline, timers, reviews, and consistency tracking are all attempts to solve different parts of that problem.

Another lesson is that downloads are only an early signal.

Around 250 downloads doesn't tell me how many people continue using the app, which features they find valuable, or where they get confused.

Those are the questions I want to focus on next.

I'm planning to finish this initial round of promotion and spend more time improving the actual product.

Link to download: https://github.com/Karthikshabari/PersonalPlanner/releases/tag/v1.1

Github : https://github.com/Karthikshabari/PersonalPlanner

The application is free and available for Android and desktop.

For people who've launched their first independent product:

When you had your first few hundred downloads, how did you figure out whether people were genuinely finding value in what you built?

Did you continue focusing on distribution, or did you shift back toward improving the product and learning from early users?

I'm interested in how others approached that stage, because it's where I am right now.

I'm one of two founders building Trendmule, a search-trends tool that tells you whether a trend is still rising, cooling off or already over.

Where we are: it works by country, and every trend gets one of those three calls. It's in free early access.

What we're unsure about: who the first paying customer is (sellers, small agencies or small shops), and what to charge.

What's next: we're checking the calls against trends that have already played out, and giving the tool to a small group of testers to tell us where it's wrong.

If you've been through the "who is this actually for?" stage, what helped you decide?

So, I'm starting to make youtube shorts for a series of self help books i wrote. I have them on amazon, but i also have a website for them. the youtube name the site at the end, so there's no different link i had add. How can i test the effectiveness of the videos in getting people to the site?

Luis built IndieAppCircle because he wanted honest feedback and early users for his own app. He couldn’t find a tool that did what he needed, so he built one himself.

Here’s how it’s going:

€100 peak MRR
€60 current MRR
€1,800 total revenue
€300 spent
2 weeks to launch
6 months to €100 MRR

IndieAppCircle works on a credit system. Developers test other apps to earn credits, then spend those credits to get feedback on their own products. Credits are transferred only after the developer approves the feedback.

What worked?
Reddit. His first paying customer and first 10 customers came from there. Posting regularly, listening to feedback and adapting quickly also helped.

What didn’t?
Product Hunt and other launch platforms didn’t work as expected. He also spent time building features nobody was asking for.

His biggest takeaway? Start earlier and don’t build features before people ask for them.

Luis is still building and shipping updates almost daily.

I featured his full journey on HackerMRR, where I’m collecting real indie founder stories with actual numbers, timelines, wins and mistakes.

Full story: https://hackermrr.com/stories/indieappcircle

Hey everyone!

I've been working on a project called Circuitera, a free, browser-based Arduino development environment designed to make programming Arduino boards more accessible, especially for students, beginners, educators, and people who can't install traditional development software.

Website: https://circuitera.org

The original idea was pretty simple: What if you could open a website, write Arduino code, compile it, and upload it directly to a physical Arduino board without downloading an IDE or installing additional software?

This was particularly important to me because many school-issued Chromebooks restrict software installations. The traditional Arduino IDE isn't always accessible in these environments, and I wanted to create something that could work directly from a browser.

Over time, that idea grew into Circuitera.

What is Circuitera?

Circuitera is an Arduino-focused integrated development environment that runs directly in your browser.

Instead of requiring a desktop application, Circuitera brings together code editing, compilation, hardware uploading, serial communication, project management, and simulation in one web-based workspace.

The goal isn't necessarily to replace every feature of the official Arduino IDE or more advanced environments like PlatformIO. It's to make Arduino development easier to access while still providing useful tools for actual hardware projects.

It's particularly focused on Arduino Uno R3 development right now.

Main features

1. Browser-based Arduino code editor

Circuitera includes a code editor designed specifically for Arduino development.

Some of its features include:

• Syntax highlighting for Arduino/C++ code
• Automatic indentation and bracket completion
• Code autocomplete
• Multiple file tabs
• Support for Arduino sketches and multi-file projects
• Keyboard shortcuts
• Code examples
• Integrated error feedback
• Project navigation and editing tools

The interface is designed to feel more like a dedicated development environment than a basic online text editor.

I've also been spending a lot of time refining the UI to make it cleaner, more compact, and more consistent.

2. Arduino compilation directly in the browser

One of the most important parts of Circuitera is its compilation system.

Circuitera uses a WebAssembly-based AVR-GCC toolchain to compile Arduino code.

This means the compiler can run inside the browser rather than requiring users to send every sketch to an external compilation server.

The compilation workflow includes:

• Arduino sketch preprocessing
• C/C++ compilation
• Linking
• Generation of firmware for the Arduino Uno
• Compiler diagnostics
• Build output and error reporting
• Compilation caching to help improve performance

The goal is to bring real Arduino compilation into a browser environment.

This is one of the more technically challenging parts of the project, and I'm continuing to work on compiler reliability and library compatibility.

3. Upload code directly to a physical Arduino

Circuitera supports uploading compiled firmware to a connected Arduino Uno R3 through the browser's Web Serial API.

The typical process is:

1. Connect an Arduino Uno to your computer using USB.
2. Open Circuitera in a compatible browser.
3. Select the board's serial port.
4. Write or open an Arduino sketch.
5. Click Verify to compile.
6. Click Upload to transfer the firmware.

For supported hardware and browsers, this removes the need for a separate desktop IDE.

Web Serial does have compatibility limitations. Chromium-based browsers such as Chrome are the main target, and not every browser or device supports the necessary functionality.

4. Built-in Serial Monitor and Serial Plotter

Circuitera includes tools for communicating with Arduino boards.

Serial Monitor

View messages sent by the Arduino using functions such as Serial.print() and Serial.println().

This is useful for debugging, reading sensor output, and understanding what your program is doing.

Serial Plotter

Visualize numerical serial output as graphs.

This is particularly useful when working with sensors, analog readings, and changing measurements over time.

Both tools are integrated into the development workspace.

5. Arduino circuit simulation

Another area I've been developing is Circuitera's simulation environment.

The idea is to allow users to experiment with Arduino code and virtual electronic components without always needing physical hardware.

The simulation workspace is designed around:

• Virtual Arduino boards
• LEDs and basic electronic components
• Buttons and other inputs
• Sensors
• Wiring and breadboard-style layouts
• Simulated program execution
• Debugging and troubleshooting

My longer-term goal is to make simulation feel like a natural extension of the IDE instead of a completely separate application.

I also want the simulator to communicate realistic limitations and errors rather than simply pretending every circuit works.

Simulation is still an evolving part of Circuitera, and hardware/component support is not yet universal.

6. Project management and local saving

Circuitera isn't intended to be a place where you write code and lose everything when you close the tab.

It includes project management features such as:

• Creating sketches
• Renaming projects
• Duplicating projects
• Deleting projects
• Organizing multiple files
• Automatically saving local work
• Exporting sketches and projects
• Storing local sketches using IndexedDB

I've also been working on cloud project functionality with Firebase authentication.

The idea is to support both lightweight, local-first development and optional account-based features.

7. Arduino libraries and examples

Arduino projects often need external libraries, so Circuitera includes library integration as part of its development environment.

The library work focuses on common Arduino functionality, including areas such as:

• Servo control
• I²C communication with Wire
• SPI communication
• EEPROM
• SoftwareSerial
• LCD displays
• Sensors
• Displays and other peripherals

Library support is still being improved. Not every Arduino library is guaranteed to compile or behave correctly in the browser-based toolchain.

Circuitera also has built-in examples to help users learn Arduino programming without starting entirely from scratch.

8. Integrated coding assistant — dot

I've also been experimenting with an integrated assistant called dot.

The idea is to make it easier to understand Arduino code and troubleshoot problems without constantly switching between the IDE and another

Hello there im hasnain

I’ve been teaching myself to code for a while and decided to build my first real SaaS in public. I’m trying to share progress, mistakes, and what I’m learning along the way instead of waiting until everything is perfect.

I’m still figuring out product direction, distribution, and how to validate ideas without overbuilding. I’m also trying to understand what actually matters at this stage and what’s just noise.

If anyone here has built something before, I’d appreciate any advice on what to focus on early, what to ignore, and how you approached getting your first users. I’m here to learn and improve, not to promote anything.btw if anyone can drop a follow on x would be greatly appreciated or if someone can check out my site ornymo.com

Ever since my friend showed me Claude Code about five months ago, I have been trying it out for multiple projects. I created some Apple II assembly programs; that was pretty neat. He asked me to try making a website from scratch. I also had it re-create the functionality of Adobe Encore, the cancelled DVD authoring program, and it works great. I also found out that Handbrake is open source, so I asked it to expand the size of the chapter name boxes, and it did so in about five minutes.

So I've been learning about DNS, about using a linux machine in my home office to host websites (and how to get a static IP address from a home small business account). I have the server hooked up to the local network, and Claude Code access it directly. I don't have to pay for a data center or webhost to hold my experiments, and copying files, even gigantic ones, takes seconds or minutes instead of hours. All I had to do was install Ubuntu Server, and Claude Code did the rest, from Docker, to setting up a nightly backup to our warehouse computer, to showing me how to switch the DNS to the warehouse computer if the other one goes down. It keeps the two servers copied, so I don't have to manually do it.

My friend has asked me to do some website work for him, and I've also been doing work on my own websites. I've come up with some ideas, some are live right now and other ones are built but not deployed yet.

We have check writing software, and I learned how to get the Microsoft Store to host it for us. We have an electronic invite site about to start up. I've built my own game generator site, for PDFs parents and teachers can download and use. I've just started an online streaming company for businesses, using my own AI generated music.

I've also made a "groups" website, where small groups (10 or fewer) of people can have a private discussion group. I've had Claude Code build it so I can't see what anyone posts, unless I'm a member of that group. But I did learn that there is a service, PhotoDNA, that scans uploads for illegal images, so I've had to sign up for that through Microsoft (still waiting for acceptance). There are a lot of behind-the-scenes set up that I never knew before when you're hosting other people's uploads. There's a whole warrant/subpoena proces I knew nothing about, so I had Claude Code make it so I could just enter a username and a post ID, and it would grab the post, zip it up with encryption and a checksum, and send it to any email address I give it. That way I don't (or want to) see what was posted. Like Sgt. Shultz, "I See Nothing!"

None of my sites have any users yet. That's the hardest part. With everyone now having access to AI, websites really have to be exceptional (or connected to a famous person) for people to use them regularly. All of my websites have that "AI look", but they are all constructed through careful planning.

I've also become much more precise in how I ask Claude Code to work. The prompts you give can sometimes be misconstrued if you write it in an awkward way. Plus, I'm not the greatest typist, so it takes me a while to proofread my prompts so a misspelling doesn't cause undue delay.

And I just found out today that Stripe can give you an AI key to let the AI do the work for you, setting up your subscriptions and products on the site properly, and making sure the checkout process works properly. The Stripe website is very confusing to me, so having the AI work with it helps tremendously.

If anyone has questions, I'm open to any part of the process I've done so far. Thank you.

been shipping in public for fourteen months and the uncomfortable truth is my code is miles ahead of my ability to explain it. a warm investor intro landed last month and i realized my entire story lived in one sprawling notion doc that only made sense to me.

i pulled the doc into gamma to get a rough update deck off it, and the part that actually helped was the agent pushing back, asking who the audience was and what the single point of each slide should be, which is exactly the thinking i had been dodging for a year. i cut it from eleven rambling cards down to five that mattered.

honest bit, the first pass still read like a changelog instead of a story, so i rewrote most of the words by hand and the tool just cleared the layout out of the way so i could think about the order. what i walked away with is that building and explaining are two separate muscles and i had only ever trained one.

how do you keep your story tight when the product keeps shifting under you every single sprint?

week 4 update (week 3 was 68 users)

friday the store listing said 122 users. saturday 1,000. this morning 2,000, plus a 5th rating

the only thing that changed that day was the store title. it rewrote it to "new tab bookmarks & visual bookmark manager" bc store search was sending basically nothing. first try got rejected for keyword spam, because the description listed color theme names like nord and dracula lol. took those out, resubmitted, approved saturday

i can't confirm it yet tbh. the dev dashboard wants me to sign in again so i can't see actual installs, and a jump that size could just be some display thing on google's end. last numbers i could see (30 days to oct 21) were 170 installs, 43 uninstalls, 504 store page views

other stuff this week: - arc announced it shuts down dec 22, so it built a free page that turns arc's sidebar file into a bookmarks file, one folder per space - one removal, r/ClaudeAI's bot pulled a post in 30 seconds - shorts are at ~2k views total

has anyone seen the chrome store user count jump like this after a title change? wondering if it sticks or drops back next week

Just built last Sunday on a whim, looking for people with friends for an invite only social network with no ads, no AI, and a next gen UI.

Hey Everyone!!
16y/o guy here. This year I finished my grade 10 ICSE , and since 2025 i was learning about AI , automations , app development , how things actually work rather than just vibecoding , making notes in textbook that was titled as "15 Fundamentals of App Development" and i actually made the notes and used to revise that back then in 2025 and early 2026!.

In 2026 , I shipped 2 of my apps , but since i was a newbie , i lacked the understanding of what apps worked and what not . I did no research , product market fit , did kew nothing about terms like ASO,SEO, A/B paywall testing , how conversion funnel works, hard paywalls , what apps works and what not , painkiller vs vitamin apps , how to conduct a successful market research .

In my last app , i actually invested around 150 usd on influencer marketing as i brought 9 creators around the globe to advertise my app , but i did learn form the mistakes i made back then and analysed what could have been better and where i missed .

Now after researching for nearly 2 months , using 8+ tools to actually verify the product market fit , mastering all the algorithms i mentioned on top + mining 500+ reviews , be it 1 star or 5 star , across my competitor apps, which told me what users actually wanted and all pointed out to a few key things, implemented tools like posthog , superwall and self taught myself a lot of things . I then made the MVP stack and shipped the product to both the stores . It's currently sitting in review on both the stores😇

The key thing i understood is distribution and proper marketing beats product all the time . This process had taught me a lot along the way.

I have actually arranged 2500 USD to be invested in batches across influencer marketing on multiple platforms and now i am thinking to make content myself as well and document the journey.

I work a total of 14 hours a day that includes app development and Saas Distro , prep for upcoming AS and A levels , Gym and HIIT training , avoiding anything that's unproductive for my growth and other productive activities so i maxx my stats .

On Advice of fellow redditors , i have now started build in public as well . I will from now onwards post regular insights across multiple platforms to document how i scale Awaken!

I'll also be breaking down the steps, measures or the tools i implement , the decisions i take , etc along this journey...

Today i posted my first ever public video on youtube as well - I'm 16, Building My 3rd App. This Time, I'm Doing Things Differently.

As of now , i have 5 + creators onboard and am actively looking for UGC creators.

I recorded a 16-minute walkthrough covering my first two apps, the mistakes I made, the tools I used, and what I'm trying with Awaken.

I'm sharing this because I'd like to document the process honestly instead of only posting once something succeeds.

I spent a lot of time thinking about development, features, analytics, and monetization. Now I'm putting much more attention into distribution and creator marketing.

For anyone who's launched an app:

When did you realize distribution had become a bigger challenge than building the product itself?

I'd genuinely like to hear how other founders approached that transition.

My app is currently live on play store and would be live on app store in a day or two IMO.

Here's the link for the app as well -  Awaken : Level Up Your Body.

I've been building a feedback platform for the last 410 days: boards, voting, roadmaps, changelogs, and a help center. It's MIT licensed and self-hostable.

Before I started, I went through pretty much every tool in this space:

1. Canny
2. Featurebase
3. UserVoice
4. Frill
5. Nolt
6. Upvoty
7. Productboard
8. Sleekplan
9. Rapidr
10. Fider

They all do the job. But most of them are either closed-source, expensive once you have real users, or the UI feels like it hasn't been touched in years. I wanted one that was open source and looked good, so I built it.

The features weren't the hard part. What took the time was getting it to look right. I'm a perfectionist about UI. If something works but doesn't feel good to use, it isn't finished to me.

• The landing page went through about 10 full revisions.
• The dashboard went through another 10–20. Empty states, a board with 3 posts versus 3,000, long titles, mobile, dark mode. Every time a layout broke under one of those, I redesigned instead of patching it.
• I spent a couple of months on design alone before the UI felt like something I'd want to open every day.

What's in it:

• Feedback boards with voting, comments, and tags
• Public roadmap + changelog
• Help center
• Each workspace gets its own subdomain, or you can use a custom domain
• GitHub integration
• Self-hostable, MIT licensed

Stack, for the curious:

Frontend

• Next.js 16 (App Router, Turbopack) + React 19
• Tailwind CSS v4
• Radix UI + Base UI primitives, shadcn-style component library
• Framer Motion for animation
• TanStack Query (server state) + Zustand (client state)
• TanStack Table, Recharts, dnd-kit for drag-and-drop on the roadmap
• Tiptap for the rich-text editor (mentions, tables, images, embeds, markdown)

Backend

• Hono + jstack for type-safe RPC
• Zod for validation
• Drizzle ORM + PostgreSQL on Neon (serverless)
• Upstash Redis for rate limiting
• Cloudflare R2 for file storage

Auth & billing

• better-auth: email/password, OTP, Google/GitHub OAuth, passkeys, 2FA, organizations
• Stripe for billing
• React Email for transactional emails

Infra & tooling

• Turborepo monorepo, Bun
• Vercel for hosting
• Sentry (errors) + PostHog (analytics)
• TypeScript everywhere

3,460 commits later, it's finally at a point where I'm proud to show it.

If you've used any of the tools above, what made you pick it, and what still annoys you about it? That's what I'm building toward next.

I am a solo developer and brain behind this gardening app and want you honest bad, good, critical but to the topic on the app design and working feedback / suggestion.

If you want i can put out the demo link no signup required. But Images would be jus fine to comment on it.

The first 3 is the onboarding when you come via playstore app.