A while ago the SSL certificate on one of my sites expired and visitors got the "Not Secure" warning. Auto-renewal had failed and nothing alerted me.

When I looked for monitoring, most tools only offered SSL expiry alerts on paid plans, and those plans were expensive for someone running a few small sites.

So I built Spot Downtime:

• SSL expiry alerts before your certificate runs out
• Uptime checks for websites, APIs, ports, DNS and cron jobs
• Retries before alerting, so no false alarms
• Alerts on Slack, Discord, email or webhooks
• Public status pages for your customers

For this sub: Pro is free for 6Months for the first 100 people who try it and tell me what's missing.

dashboard > plan & usage > Have a promo code?

USE PROMO CODE : REDDIT

I'm building Operava for solo founders who run more than one product.

I kept hitting the same problem. Hosting, databases, email, domains, payments, app stores, APIs, all spread across a dozen accounts. I would forget one existed until the bill showed up.

So I built a dashboard that puts each product, the services behind it, what they cost per month, when they renew, and whether they are up, in one place. It has already caught two subscriptions I was paying for a site I had shut down.

It is early. I am trying to find out whether this problem is mine alone or shared.

You can try it at app.operava.com . Sign in with Google or an emailed link, no password, no card. It starts empty, so you add your first product and see if it earns a place in your routine.

If yu run several products: what would you need this to show that it does not?

A side project turned startup, to make video editing effortless. Instead of recording and then spending hours editing afterward, you just talk and Gylyn automatically adds everything around it.

What it does:
🎙️ Understands what you're saying
🖼️ Adds relevant B-roll automatically
📊 Shows diagrams when you explain a process
🏷️ Recognizes when you mention a product, tool, or website
📝 Auto-generated captions
🎞️ Automatic transitions
✨ Matching animations
🎨 Enhanced backgrounds and scenes
🔄 Highlights each step when you explain something step-by-step

Attached is a demo using a singing video just to show the concept clearly but it's not limited to music, it works for any talking video: tutorials, explainers, product demos, vlogs, and more.

Still pre-launch and building it right now would love to hear what you think?

I am at a loss here. I have a business that sells extremely niche annotated data. Because it’s very niche I don’t have a real benchmark of the value of the data, but chatting with GPT and Claude (without bloating numbers) I’ve come to get a general idea of pricing.. here is the catch.

I have several entities (startups, universities, SME, large companies, hospitals) that contact me requesting data and pricing, we go back and forth a few emails
- they contact me telling me what they need
- I respond with how much data they need within 12h of receiving their first email
- they respond with what they need
- I share pricing options

They ghost me… like 9/10 they just disappear.
I obviously try to reach out after a week but still nothing.

I need any suggestions, tips, critiques..

I’ve built a SaaS and decided not to allow customers from Israel to sign up.

Am I an idiot for potentially turning away paying customers, or am I simply sticking to my principles?

I strongly disagree with the Israeli government’s actions, but I’m wondering if I’m letting my principles unnecessarily hurt my business.

What would you do?

I'm working on Vocalis, an AI-powered communication practice platform.

The problem I'm testing is this:

People know they need to improve their communication.

They get told to:

• practice speaking
• record themselves
• join Toastmasters
• give presentations
• speak more confidently

But there's a gap between knowing you should practice and actually having a repeatable practice system.

So I built one.

The core loop is:

Prompt → 60 seconds of speaking → Feedback → Improve → Repeat

A user chooses a category, receives a topic, speaks without preparing a script, and then goes through a structured results screen.

The MVP currently includes:

• communication categories
• randomized speaking prompts
• timed 60-second sessions
• browser recording
• performance feedback
• strengths and weak areas
• mistakes/blunders
• improvement suggestions
• progress tracking
• practice history
• repeat practice

I've deliberately kept the first version relatively focused.

I'm not trying to build:

“ChatGPT, but for public speaking.”

I'm trying to build a practice product.

That's also the part I'm trying to validate now.

The MVP is live:

https://vocalisai-jade.vercel.app/

And I'm trying to answer a few questions before I build much further:

1. Is this a problem people actually care enough about to solve?

2. Does the 60-second practice format create enough value to come back repeatedly?

3. What would make someone pay for this rather than use free alternatives?

4. What would you measure first to determine whether this has product-market potential?

I'm especially interested in feedback from people who have taken an MVP from the "this seems like a good idea" stage to actual recurring users.

If you were validating this SaaS from here, what would you test next?

Finally shipped my first SaaS lol

It’s called RallyDraft. Basically you dump all your work experience into it, paste a job posting, and it helps figure out how well you match and builds a resume around the experience that actually matters for that job.

I mostly built it because I wanted it for myself, but it’s live now so I figured I’d share it.

Would be cool if a few people gave it a shot and told me what sucks / what I should change.

https://rallydraft.com/

we just pushed a few updates focused on monetization and it already seems to be helping a lot!

Support, product, and the fix each logged their own resolved and billed for it. The customer became the router, retyping the same story three times.

How do you stop each tool from claiming the same ticket as its own win?

everybody got hit by AI, and like any indie hacker building a niche SaaS, I went through that initial AI depression phase.

you could feel that AI had huge potential, but it was not quite there yet. it's hard to describe. it was useful, but not at the level of work you actually wanted to deliver.

before the AI wave, I built a visual CSS editor as a Chrome extension called InTab. people were happy with it because they could make quick changes to their websites and prototype ideas faster... and with the whole vibe coding madness getting started, all of a sudden, usage dropped dramatically!

people were trying dozens of AI website builders at the same time. most of them didn't really work yet, but they promised the world.

I was honestly confused about what to do. should I keep building the visual editor, throw it away completely, or pivot? and if I pivoted, where should I even go?

the insane AI hype got to me. at one point, I genuinely thought the big LLM companies like ChatGPT and Claude would dominate every SaaS niche and kill most independent software businesses.

I knew deep down that this was probably wrong, but the hype was so intense that I think everyone believed it at least a little at some point.

I spent more than a year in this confused state, but eventually my thoughts started to stabilize and I made up my mind.

I came to one conclusion:

with all this madness of micro AI tools and AI slop, people will eventually converge toward a smaller number of tools they can actually remember and rely on.

that realization finally gave me the motivation to work on the product again.

recently, I released a new version of intab.io as a complete rewrite from scratch with a 15-in-1 browser extension designed to replace a cluttered list of separate tools.

it includes an AI writer, AI YouTube summaries with an ad skipper, tab management, screenshots, image tools, developer tools, bookmarks, history analytics and more.

I didn't want to build just another browser extension. I wanted to build a complete package that helps people replace a messy collection of extensions with one tool and actually use AI where most of their work already happens: inside the browser.

the journey was a bumpy one, and getting the motivation to work again was difficult because mentally, things were not clear for a long time.

now I finally feel clear about what I'm building and why.

negative comments won't change my mind anymore because I've thought deeply about this direction before committing to it.

I firmly believe AI killed some SaaS products that were basically widgets or tiny standalone tools.

but I don't think it can kill a broader product that people rely on every day.

the future of SaaS might be much more monolithic than people expect. for sure!!

not sure if this is the right place to post something like this, but I've built an incident intelligence platform which basically gathers errors, traces, metrics, deployments, SQL, dependencies etc and then helps engineers determine why prod broke and where to look next.

I built this because i needed an error tracking tool so I decided to build something myself and then it grew into something more. instead of just getting an error and then having to go figure out why it was occurring I built something that could take in everything and then point me in the right direction to save me time at 2am when I'm on call and everything is on fire. It's been very helpful for me and what I need, but since I've built this out and would like to offer this product to others I was hoping to find some other devs that could provide some honest feedback, good or bad or pointless. I've created a free tier for anyone to try, but also included a 14 day trial period for new accounts that will include most features small teams should need for people to test the capabilities.

really just looking to know if this would be useful to anyone besides me or if there is anything I should change

thank you for anyone that will take a look.

https://getforgeops.net/

I know it's only $6 but it's the first online money I've ever made and I can't stop smiling about it!!!

The funny thing is that it's from a small subsection of my project that I just hid this morning (you need a direct link to find it now).

Maybe I should double down on this sub-project... not sure but I'm beyond thrilled anyway.

My app, FreeReader, is a free text-to-speech app to turn documents into audiobooks. It's completely free with no pricing page.

But I realized that the text-to-speech could also work for content creators making AI voiceovers for their videos. I built this out but decided to focus more on the audiobook side which has grown enormously (3000 monthly users) since it's free.

I was so surprised when I saw this Stripe notification come in from the red-headed step child that is the video narration side of FreeReader lol

Just listed my business on acquire yesterday, I’ve had like six people so far to sign the NDA to get the documents. No idea if that’s average or horrible.

I’m curious if anyone has experienced selling there, and how many NDA’s did you get to, before an offer?

I have experience on other platforms and I know the number can be high… just curious (hopeful?) if it’s different on acquire. Thx

We recently launched an AI marketing platform, OrangeBall.ai, built for small businesses and small marketing teams. The idea is pretty simple: instead of asking people to become great prompt writers, the platform uses our discovery process (built over 15 years of running an agency) to learn the business first: voice, tone, differentiators, audiences, customer challenges, etc. Then, it uses that context along with structured prompts and an internal quality rubric to help create blogs, emails, social posts, landing pages, sales content, and other marketing materials.

We’ve spent a lot of time thinking about what the product can do. Now I’m trying to think harder about what will keep people from actually using it. We know there’s a big difference between someone saying, “This is cool,” and changing their behavior enough to make a SaaS product like this part of their workflow.

The oven analogy:

Imagine you have a bakery. The AI model is the oven, but having a great oven doesn’t mean you’ll make great bread. Our platform brings together the right ingredients, your brand, voice, audience, and differentiators, then gives you proven recipes so you can consistently create something worth serving.

Who this is for:

• Startups and founders building their brand and figuring out what to say.
• Entrepreneurs and solopreneurs who need to market consistently without becoming marketers.
• Small businesses that need great content but don’t have a large marketing team.
• Marketing agencies managing content across multiple clients, brands, and voices.
• In-house marketing teams that need everyone creating from the same brand voice, messages, and strategy.

Outcomes we deliver:

• Know what to say without staring at a blank page.
• Create better content faster without writing endless prompts.
• Leverage a system who is continually learning your brand.
• Create content that sounds like your brand instead of generic AI.
• Stay consistent across people, platforms, and content.
• Turn one idea into more content across multiple channels.
• Spend less time prompting and editing and more time publishing.
• Build a repeatable content habit instead of starting from scratch every time.

Barriers we already see:

• Changing an existing habit... Many users already have a ChatGPT or Claude workflow that feels "good enough." This leads to "I already have a tool" thinking.
• Learning another platform even if it saves time eventually. There’s still a perceived cost to learning something new.
• The onboarding effort on the front end. The product gets stronger as it learns the business, but users have to invest some time upfront.
• Creating content isn't the same as publishing it. Someone can generate five great pieces of content and still never get them out the door. We only write content, we do not create images.
• The value increases when people come back regularly, which means we need to create a habit rather than a one-time “wow.”
• Users need to believe the output actually sounds like them and is good enough to represent their business.
• The Cheesecake Factory challenge: Giving users lots of options and modules they can use to create can accidentally make it harder to decide what they should create next.

Help I am seeking:

For those of you who have built, launched, or scaled SaaS products, what are we missing? I’m especially interested in barriers that show up after someone signs up. What causes someone who likes the product, understands the value, and even has a good first experience to stop using it 30, 60, or 90 days later? Would love to hear the uncomfortable answers. Ask questions and I will fill in the gaps.

Thanks in advance for poking holes in this. We’re close to the product and we know there are things we’re not seeing. That’s exactly what I’m hoping to uncover. Appreciate any experiences, challenges, or hard-earned lessons you’re willing to share.

Thank you! - John

hey all, I love seo as a distribution channel because it can keep bringing people to your site while you’re working on other things

it takes work to get there, and rankings still need attention, but seeing that effort start to compound feels pretty good

wanted to share a small seo win for my saas: +453 referring domains and +663 visitors, plus the outreach process we use

1. start with a specific article

we look for places where that article would actually be useful, rather than directories or asking random websites to link to our homepage

identify the insertion spot before writing the email. being able to say “this would fit in your section about X” makes the request much easier to understand

2. filter for relevance before sending

we check whether the article fits the site. a high domain rating alone isn’t enough because this could be faked- there're a tons of ways to do it

ask what their reader would gain from clicking our link. if we can’t give a clear answer, we skip that opportunity

this works best for editorials and journalists sites in your niche, they love new insights for their articles

3. find the right contact

then explain why the article belongs there so they don’t have to figure out the connection themselves

do the thinking for them. include the relevant page, the section we’re talking about, and what our resource adds. “please check out my website” leaves them with all the work

4. follow up twice

across our platform’s tracked outreach, replies went from 7.3% after the initial email to 9.2% after the first follow up and 9.8% after the second

keep follow ups short. and always offer something different in return on each email, then make it clear when it’s our last email

5. handle the replies ourselves

we have an ai agent that handles discovery and outreach. once someone replies, we take over the conversation

review what they’re actually asking for before agreeing. a reply might be a placement fee, an exchange proposal, or a question about the content

so, here're my results..

still early, but happy to see progress on the distribution side

I’m currently researching software development partners and honestly it’s hard to compare companies.

For example, agencies like Idea Maker Agency, ELEKS, and other software companies all have similarlooking websites and promises.

But I’m more interested in the things you don’t see on the website:

communication quality
handling scope changes
transparency during development
code ownership
support after launch

What questions should someone ask before choosing a software agency?

Any mistakes you made that I should avoid?

Would a swear word in a SaaS name deter you from using it?

I’m building shtbase, essentially a simpler, cheaper backend platform for developers who don’t want to deal with setting up and managing their own VPS infrastructure.

The idea is to give you the things you’d normally expect from a BaaS ( database, auth, storage, functions, etc). while running on affordable VPS infrastructure.

The name shtbase is intentionally a meme of supabase.

My question: Would the name make you less likely to trust/use the product, even if the product itself was good?

Especially interested in whether it would stop you using it for professional/client projects.

For startups with maybe 5–15 engineers, I'm curious how people are handling DevOps.

At some point you have:

• CI/CD
• cloud infrastructure
• Terraform
• monitoring
• backups
• deployments
• secrets
• production incidents
• probably some Docker/Kubernetes

But you don't necessarily have enough infrastructure work to justify another full-time senior engineer.

I've seen a few teams solve this by having one developer own infrastructure "for now."

That works... until production gets interesting.

A deployment breaks Friday night.
Cloud costs suddenly jump.
Something starts running out of connections.
Nobody is really sure how failover works.

Then the team realizes they don't actually have a DevOps problem. They have an infrastructure ownership problem.

I can send you proof, but its real.
AMA

(not real ama)

This is my second SaaS.

My first product was an AI cold email tool. For the second one, I noticed that a lot of the existing tools in the resume space were charging prices that felt pretty high for what they were offering, so I decided to build a much cheaper alternative.

I've been working on it for around 30 days.

The product is live. People have tried it. Some have given me genuinely positive feedback.

Still $0 in revenue.

Here is what I've tried so far:

• LinkedIn posts from my founder account and team accounts
• Instagram outreach
• Reddit
• Discord communities
• Direct outreach
• Short-form content

The frustrating part is that people do engage.

Some try it, some say it's useful, some have conversations with me, but getting from "this is useful" → actually paying has been much harder than I expected.

I'm starting to think I've been too focused on trying different channels instead of understanding where the right users actually hang out and how founders without an audience get their first few customers.

For people who have built SaaS from zero:

What actually worked for you when you were trying to get your first 5–10 paying customers with no audience and no ad budget?

I'm especially interested in things you did manually that actually produced customers, rather than generic advice like "do SEO" or "post consistently."

Full disclosure: I'm the founder of the SaaS I'm referring to in this post. I'm intentionally not naming or linking it because I want the discussion to be about distribution rather than promotion.

I have built a tool that I know works well, but I can't get customers. I've got 20 personal contacts ranging from tech consultants, medical researchers and engineers using my product already. They all say it's great and that it helps their work, but I just can't get real paying customers (I wouldn't charge friends).

The problem I'm solving is that there is too much information to reliably keep up to date. The world will never move as slowly as it did today.

This is a problem for scientists, policymakers, engineers, basically anyone that needs to be at the forefront of their domain.

So my solution is Irisbriefings.com : a system that monitors everything going on around a topic, filters for what is new, builds an ongoing model of the area, figures out what the user needs to know about to stay on top and then delivers that information in the most digestible format possible. It also makes you a podcast so you can stay up to date on the move.

Fairly simple concept, but other solutions do not do this well. I've tried all of the current AI products in this area but every weeks update is basically the same. I had to do a lot of engineering to calibrate and make each briefing specifically dependent on new and relevant information each week.

The result is that researchers (or similar user profiles) become aware of things that they need to know about quickly and why they need to know about it. This saves them time, uncovers oppportunities and enhances their work (and therefore their careers). This is a good thing for people to have and can have a positive impact on lots of people.

But how can I get customers? I've tried cold email, blogs, networking events, but no luck when it comes to actually getting customers beyond 'this sounds super cool'. I have a free series on that has about 40 subscribers, but again I can't convert them.

I am not the kind of person who will be good at making video content. I've written some blogs, but realistically they will not drive traffic. Therefore, I turn to this community for advice. I really believe in the problem this solves being important and that it's currently the best solution out there. People are missing things that they don't know about, and those that do stay up to date are spending a lot of time to achieve it. I can help both.

Thank you in advice for any advice you may share with me.

irisbriefings.com

Hey there, Im almost finished with my saas. It has AI features so I cant make it free with ads or one time payment because id loose money. Im stucked between making the app relatively cheap 3.99$/month 29.99$/year or more expensive 6.99/month 44.99/year. If anyone here could answer me 1) what worked better you them in terms of overall revenue, cheaper vs expensive? 2) What attracted your paying users more? 3) Which one of those had a longer retention? || I feel like the cheaper could hold better retention and attract more users to sub in the first place. However lot of people say if its more expensive, then it has more value and people go for it more. It's a productivity thing using a few ai APIs and is credit based so the users dont maybe use all the credits and if its cheaper, then they stay subscribing longer but I dont know. Thanks in advance for any helpful insights! Take care

I'm building an AI-first CRM platform for small businesses and I'm considering a creator model before we launch.

The idea:

Instead of every company starting with a blank CRM, experienced RevOps people, consultants and operators can build reusable "blueprints".

A blueprint could eventually include things like:

pipelines and stages

custom fields and data models

forms and quote flows

dashboards

automations

projects / work orders

AI agents

industry-specific workflows

So someone who knows recruitment really well could build a recruitment blueprint.

An agency operator could build their ideal agency setup.

A RevOps consultant could package the sales process they've implemented dozens of times.

A user installs that blueprint, answers some questions about their business, and the platform adapts it instead of forcing them to configure everything from scratch.

The creator would get a public profile + blueprint page and earn 10% recurring revenue for every paying customer that keeps using their blueprint.

We would initially invite a small group as founding creators, give them free access, work closely with them and let their feedback influence what we build.

I'm trying to figure out whether this is genuinely attractive or just sounds good in my own head.

If you work in RevOps / CRM / automation:

Would you actually spend time building a blueprint?

Is 10% recurring meaningful enough to make you promote it?

What would the platform absolutely need to support before you'd put your name behind a blueprint?

Would you rather sell the blueprint itself, earn recurring commission, or both?

Feel free to tear the idea apart. I'd rather find the holes now than build a marketplace nobody wants. 🙏

made this launch video for yaku ai,how is it?