We ran a generous free plan for over a year. It helped us grow fast, hit vanity metrics, and make a lot of people happy.

But about 4 months ago, we shut it down completely. No more freemium. Just a 14-day free trial.

We were nervous — like, are-we-about-to-kill-growth nervous. But we did it anyway.

And here’s exactly what happened next: the good, the bad, and what we’d do differently.

Context

• B2B SaaS — workflow automation
• Our free plan = limited features, no team access, forever free
• Free users made up ~86% of total signups
• Monetization rate = a painful ~1.4%
• Support volume from free users = ~52% of total
• Monthly infra cost for free users: ~$900/month
• Main traffic sources: organic, content, light paid

Why We Pulled the Plug

1. Free users weren’t converting.
We had thousands of signups, but most never activated key features — or they used us casually and left.

2. They created support drag.
Our small support team was getting buried in “how do I…” emails from non-paying users.

3. We needed focus.
The free plan was bloating onboarding, complicating feature gating, and splitting our roadmap.

What Happened After We Killed It

1. Trial-to-paid conversion almost doubled

• Before (with free plan): ~4.8%
• After: ~9.1%

This surprised us — people who signed up after the change were more serious from day one.

They explored more, activated faster, and were more likely to pay at the end of trial.

2. Activation rate went up

• Before: ~29% of users reached activation milestone
• After: ~47%

When users know they’ve got 14 days, there’s urgency.
It changed the mindset from “I’ll poke around later” → “I need to see what this can do now.”

3. Support load dropped by 41%

Most free users didn’t bother reading docs — they just emailed us. Once we removed that segment, the noise fell drastically.

We’re now supporting fewer users, but they’re more engaged and more respectful of time.

4. Total signups dropped by ~60%

No surprise here. “Free forever” gets more clicks than “14-day trial.”
But it turns out... not all signups are created equal.

We replaced quantity with quality — and churn dropped too.

5. Some backlash

We got a few angry tweets, and a couple blog comments calling us “greedy” or “bait-and-switch.”

But interestingly, no actual customers complained. It was all free users who never converted.

Lesson: Don’t optimize for people who will never pay.

What We’d Do Differently

• We’d give a longer trial (maybe 21 days). Some teams needed more time to evaluate in a real workflow.
• We’d build a sandbox/demo mode. So evaluators could click around without needing real data.
• We’d communicate it more clearly. A few users were caught off guard by the change — totally our fault.

Final Thoughts

Killing our free plan was scary. It felt like we were cutting off a growth channel.

But what we actually did was filter for intent.
And that meant:

• Less noise
• More revenue
• Faster feedback loops
• A better product for paying users

Freemium can absolutely work. But if you’re early-stage, strapped for support bandwidth, or struggling to monetize — don’t be afraid to kill it.

You might be shocked how little you miss it.

Happy to share our before/after trial flows, pricing page tests, or activation metric definitions if helpful. Has anyone else killed freemium? Curious what happened for you.

Hey r/SaaS,

After building MVPs for countless clients, I've noticed one stupidly simple feature that consistently outperforms everything else in terms of winning and keeping customers: a personalized "Quick Win" flow right after signup.

I'm not talking about generic onboarding - I mean a deliberately designed path that gets users to an "oh shit, this is awesome" moment within 2 minutes of creating an account.

Here's what I've implemented that works:

For a client's email marketing tool, we added a "Create your first campaign in 60 seconds" path that used templates and AI to let users build something immediately. Activation rates jumped from 31% to 67%.

For a project management SaaS, we created a "Clone this sample project" button that pre-populated their workspace instead of showing them an empty dashboard. Engagement in the first week doubled.

For an analytics platform, we built a "Connect your first data source" wizard that got them looking at actual data (even if limited) in under 90 seconds. Trial conversions went up 43%.

The pattern is clear: Empty states kill SaaS products. Users who see a blank dashboard after signup rarely come back.

Implementation is dead simple:

1. Identify the core "aha moment" for your product
2. Design the absolute shortest path to experiencing it
3. Remove EVERY possible step between signup and that moment
4. Make it impossible to miss (like, full-screen it after signup)
5. Celebrate when they complete it

The technical implementation takes a day or two max. The ROI is insane.

Even more interesting: I've found this matters more than having tons of features. Users forgive missing functionality if they get immediate value.

This isn't rocket science, but I'm shocked how many SaaS products still drop new users into empty dashboards with a "watch this 10-minute tutorial" prompt.

Edit: Damn this post blew up! Since a lot of you guys are DMing me so, yes If you need an MVP built DM me.

What "quick win" could you build for your SaaS this week? Has anyone else seen similar results from focusing on that first-use experience?

Hey r/SaaS,

Just wanted to share a recent experience that perfectly captures the chaos of early-stage solo founding.

I built lambdagency.com, an automation tool that handles job applications on LinkedIn for developers. After months of development, I finally launched... and then my very first paying customer signed up. Great news, right?

Except they were a LinkedIn Premium user.

I hadn't built for that edge case. AT ALL.

My tool worked fine with regular LinkedIn accounts, but Premium shows completely different UI elements, form fields, and some application flows. And there I was, watching in real-time as my automation crashed spectacularly trying to navigate their account.

Cue me dropping EVERYTHING else to fix this. No marketing, no sales calls, no interface improvements, no sleep. Just 72 straight hours of frantic coding, testing, and tears as I rebuilt the core application logic.

The most frustrating part? I had a whole roadmap of features planned, but had to shelve it all because this one critical issue had to be fixed. Customer #1 was waiting and I refused to lose them.

The silver lining: The system is now much more robust and handles all LinkedIn account types. But man, the reality of being a solo founder hit hard - when something breaks, there's no "team" to assign it to. It's just you, caffeine, and determination.

Anyone else have similar "oh crap" moments with your first customers? How do you prioritize when everything feels like it's on fire?

I've been building MVPs for startups as a freelance dev for almost 5 years now. Worked with all kinds of founders, from first-timers with big dreams to serial entrepreneurs on their 4th venture. After seeing so many projects succeed or crash and burn, I noticed something strange - the ones who made it big were usually the ones who didn't follow the "startup playbook."

Everyone says you need to validate your idea with endless customer interviews, build an MVP that's barely functional, and follow lean methodology to the letter. But the most successful founders I worked with? They did almost the opposite.

One guy I worked with built a SaaS for a problem HE personally had, with zero market research. Everyone said the market was too small. He's doing $15M ARR now. Another founder insisted on perfect UX from day one despite me telling her we could cut corners to launch faster. Her users became evangelists because the product felt so polished compared to competitors.

And my favorite: a founder who refused to "move fast and break things." He insisted on rock-solid, tested code even for the initial version. Took 3 months longer to launch than planned, but they've had almost zero churn because their product never fails. Meanwhile, I've seen dozens of "proper" lean startups fail because they shipped buggy MVPs that users abandoned.

The pattern I've noticed is that successful founders have strong convictions about what's right for THEIR business. They listen to advice but aren't slaves to it. They understand that startup rules are just guidelines written by VCs and bloggers who aren't building YOUR specific product.

What "conventional wisdom" have you guys ignored that actually worked out well?

Edit: Damn this post blew up! Since I am getting a lot of DMs asking if I can help build their project, so Yes I can help build your project. Just message me with your requirements.

Hey, Guys

My name is Vlad, and this story is not about success — quite the opposite.
This is all about:

• NOT FAILING FAST
• NOT UNDERSTANDING HOW MARKETING AND SALES WORK
• NOT UNDERSTANDING THE TARGET AUDIENCE
• NOT HAVING A PLAN FOR DISTRIBUTION
• USING COMPLEX ARCHITECTURE IN THE EARLY STAGES JUST... TO HAVE IT
• BEING NAIVE AND THINKING THAT SYSTEMS BASED ON SCRAPING DATA FROM OTHER SOURCES ARE EASY TO SUPPORT, MAINTAIN, AND A GOOD IDEA TO START WITH
• SPENDING LITERALLY YEARS OF LIFE ON... WHAT? I CAN'T EVEN EXPLAIN IT RIGHT NOW
• HAVING A TEAM OF 4 MEMBERS:
  • 2 FRONTEND ENGINEERS
  • 1 BACKEND / DATA ENGINEER
  • 1 UI/UX ENGINEER
• AND ME — “LEAD/CTO/ENGINEER”, BUT NOT A MARKETER OR SALESPERSON

How did it all start?

Chapter 1: Intro

Back in 2019, I decided (solo at that point) to create a Telegram bot for users interested in subscribing to specific car offers — by make, model, year, engine, etc. The goal was to help them be among the first to see new listings and get a chance to buy a good deal early.

The main benefit for users at this stage (as I thought) was the following:

1. I was scraping data not just from a single source, but from multiple sources in parallel — so the result was aggregated and more comprehensive.
2. Users could simply get notifications on their phones, without needing to constantly monitor listings themselves.

Just to give you some technical context for this stage — and to show how deep I was going — I was already thinking about scalability challenges. I was considering the right indices needed to efficiently find all subscribers interested in specific offers. I was also evaluating the best type of database to use, so even at this early point, I chose MongoDB, ran benchmark tests, and applied the appropriate structure and indexes.

I isolated the scraping logic into Azure Functions to scale it independently from the main service that communicated with the Telegram client and decided which notifications to send and to whom.

The notification logic itself was also isolated into a separate Azure Function.

All communication between components was built using asynchronous messaging — Azure Service Bus.

Again, I have 0 users, 0 traffic, 0 understanding if this needed or not. (I will add all images to proof how a lot it was done)

Chapter 2: Hiring a Dev & Building a Mature Scraping System

Let’s get back to the main story. After I built the initial version, I decided it was a good time to find some help. So, I posted a description of the “position and what needed to be done” on LinkedIn — and thank God, I found a really responsible and smart engineer. Today, he’s a good friend of mine, and we’re still working closely together on other projects.

So, what was the next direction? And why did I need an engineer — for what reason or task?

I was scraping some really well-known and large automotive websites — the kind that definitely have dedicated security teams constantly monitoring traffic and implementing all sorts of anti-scraping technologies.

So, the next big challenge was figuring out how to hide the scraping traffic and blend it with real user traffic.

The new guy built a tool that split the day into intervals, each labeled as:

• No load
• Low load
• Medium load
• High load

So instead of scraping at constant intervals (e.g. every N minutes), we started scheduling scraping tasks based on these time slots and their corresponding allowed frequency. This helped us avoid predictable patterns in our scraping behavior.

After that, we decided to take it further and design a fallback logic and sequence to make the system more cost-efficient, elastic, and resilient to errors.

Every time we scraped a source, we used a 3-level fallback approach:

1. Try parsing without any proxies
2. If that fails, use datacenter proxies
3. If that also fails, switch to residential proxies

Small and IMPORTANT note here — throughout this journey of scraping various well-known websites, I was always able to discover internal APIs (yes, it takes time, a lot of time sometimes). That meant instead of parsing HTML, we could simply fetch structured JSON responses. This dramatically improved the reliability and maintainability of the system, since we were no longer affected by HTML layout changes.

On one of the sources, I even found GraphQL documentation and started using GraphQL directly — which was both really cool and kind of funny 😄

Chapter 3: Adding new sources for scraping, adding new features

Ok, let’s continue the journey.

At some point, my “smart” head (spoiler: not really 😅) came up with what I thought was a clever idea — what if we started scraping car listings from other countries? The idea was to cover new sources where cars could potentially be imported from. Due to currency fluctuations and regional price differences over time, taxes and import calculations, importing a car could actually be a good deal (and this is true and relevant for my region, a lot of companies that doing this).

With the increased volume of data, we realized we could now provide users with additional insights. For example, when sending a notification, we could highlight whether a particular car was a profitable deal — by comparing the average price in the user’s region to that in other regions.

So, we started expanding to new countries, building a data pipeline to analyze listings based on different groups — like make, model, generation, engine capacity, and engine type. This allowed us to include that analysis directly in the notifications.

Chapter 4: Building a website & Hiring more people

We realized that Telegram alone wasn’t enough to cover all our needs anymore. We wanted a proper website with full listings, filtering functionality, and individual car offer pages that included some analytics — to show whether a car was a good deal based on market data.

So, I found a UI/UX and frontend engineer, and they started working on it after I prepared the initial mockups.

In parallel, I found a random SEO specialist to handle the SEO preparation on her side. I knew nothing about SEO at that time, so I completely outsourced that part.

Chapter 5: Overcoming challenges with data scraping on volume (interesting tech part)

One day, I noticed that the data coming from one of the major car listing platforms — a really big one — didn’t fully match what was shown on their actual web pages. Specifically, some characteristics of the listings coming into the Telegram bot were off.

AND YOU KNOW WHAT? They weren’t just blocking access to the real data — they were actually feeding me fake, mocked, slightly altered data.

F*ck.

That’s when one of the biggest challenges of this project began…

I started digging deeper to understand what was going wrong:

1. I looked into user agents and all the request headers.
2. I tried tons of scraping API tools — Octoparse and just about every alternative out there.
3. I bought every kind of proxy imaginable: mobile, residential, from multiple providers.
4. I tested solutions in Python, C#, Go — you name it.

But nothing helped. After just a few consecutive requests, everything would fail again.

After a month of work — trying everything that was even remotely possible — I finally found the root of the problem and the right solution.

1. They were checking fingerprints at the TLS level, so I needed to correctly set the JA3 parameter during the handshake to mimic a real browser.
2. But that wasn’t all — they were also using fingerprinting in cookies. The tricky part was that these FT cookies couldn’t be fetched through standard HTTP requests; they were only generated when a real browser accessed the entry point of the site.

Here’s the critical part: Since I needed to make up to 700,000 calls per day, running real browsers for every request just wasn’t feasible — it would’ve been insanely expensive.
So, I came up with a workaround: I set up virtual machines that simply visited the homepage to generate fresh, valid cookies. The main scraping functions then reused these cookies across requests.

TO BE CONTINUE...

Guys, I know this turned into a huge article — not sure if any of this is interesting to you or not. But everything I shared above is real and honest.

If you liked this post, I’ll gladly share the rest of the story in a follow-up.

P.S. Here is architecture diagram of app

The formula is always the same: "I built this AI tool that helps you [insert mundane task no one struggles with]." Then they drop a link to some landing page with gradient backgrounds and stock photos of happy people using laptops.

What's even more annoying are the ones with the fake vulnerability stories. "I failed 7 times but persevered" only to link to another chatgpt wrapper that does exactly what 50 others already do.

Look, I'm all for people building and learning, but can we get some honest labeling here? Maybe a "Yet Another AI Tool" flair so those of us looking for original projects can filter this stuff out?

Most SaaS landing pages don’t fail because of bad design.
They fail because no one feels anything when they land there.

I know you will hate me for this but Let’s be real. Most of you are indie devs, and broke.

Even if you’ve got some a day job, you act broke.
You hold off on investing in things you know you need, not because they’re too expensive, but because deep down, you don’t trust your product.

And the truth is, it’s not even about the product.
It’s about you.
If you feel worthless, then yeah, everything you make feels worthless too. Right?

Meanwhile, people have made millions selling fart apps.
And here you are, sitting on something actually useful , but too wrapped up in self-doubt to sell it.
You’re not failing because your product sucks.
You’re failing because you don’t back yourself. You try a bit, and give up, jump on to the next thing, making 10 different SAAS in a year because you have been told by the boilerplate building gurus to "ship fast and fail fast", or other cute things like "build in public" Do you actually have an original piece of thought in that little brain of yours? All following the trend, hoping to get lucky, with no plan in place. Working 24x7 like a robot on 10 different products in a year.

But here’s the thing:
It’s fixable.
You don’t need a new product. You need to actually sell the one you’ve got.

You have to start investing in the right things if you want to see your product grow. That means spending a little extra on marketing, copywriting, design, UX, and onboarding, not just coding your next feature.

You’ve got a solid product, but if you don’t make it easy for people to understand it, then you’re just wasting your time. A great product needs a great presentation. It’s not just about the tech, it’s about making it easy for users to get the value instantly. A clean UI? Sure. You need to nudge users to take action with lifecycle emails. You need to guide them smoothly through each stage of their journey, helping them reach that "aha" moment quickly.

In the next post, I’ll tear into you even more on other points.
But for now, let’s focus on landing pages.

Here’s what I see every time with landing pages:

1. The hero image/text doesn’t say what you do.
“Powering scalable synergy through cloud-native solutions.”
That’s not a value prop, it’s a word salad.
Tell me what problem you solve. Who it’s for. What I get out of it.

2. It’s all features, no outcomes.
Your page reads like a changelog. “Real-time API integration. Multi-tenant architecture.”
Cool. But what does that do for me?
Save time? Make money? Get promoted? Say that.

3. It’s got zero vibe.
There’s no voice. No boldness. No humor. No edge.
Your product has personality — why doesn’t your copy?

4. No social proof.
No logos, no testimonials, no screenshots, no numbers.
If no one else is using it, why should I be the first?

5. CTAs that go nowhere.
“Start now” isn’t a CTA.
Start what? Why now? What’s the value?
Your CTA should be tied to a promise — not a process.

6. Way too much text.
If I have to scroll through five paragraphs to figure out what your tool does, I’m already gone.
Clarity converts. Rambling kills.

7. No urgency, no stakes.
Why should I care today? What happens if I don’t act?
Your landing page doesn’t give me a reason to move.

8. Designed by a dev, not a marketer.
Clean UI? Nice. But clean doesn’t sell.
You built the product. Respect. But now it needs a story , not just a spec sheet.

In the next post, I’ll tear into you even more on other points.
But for now, let’s focus on landing pages.

If you’re stuck, drop me your landing page. I’ll take a look and send back 2–3 tactical fixes. And if you want to get out of the broke mindset and take your SAAS to the next level, send me a message, I’ll reply when possible.

👉 Interested in a done-for-you service? Book a meeting from here

Example designs

www.emailwish.com

www.instacaptain.com

Full portfolio here

Ecomwedo | Dribbble

👉 https://tidycal.com/ankitsrivastava/ecom-we-do-consultation

I was working on a landing page for a fashion magazine with a tight budget. No photoshoots, no stock photos - they wanted something fresh. So, I turned to AI to see what I could come up with. Here’s what I did:

• Generated model images using just text prompts (AI casting call style)
• Styled them in real outfits from actual brands - high and low mix
• Upscaled the best ones and threw together a quick collage for the landing page

The team loved it. It was unique, stylish, and didn’t cost a ton.

I used AiMensa — 100+ AI tools to make it all happen. I mostly used their Stock photos AI, Prompt Generator, Virtual try on and Image enhancer

Can’t share the final link (NDA stuff), but I’ve got a couple of visuals that didn’t make the cut. If you’re curious, DM me.

I’m thinking about whether to build something like this just for fashion and media.

Would love to hear thoughts from anyone using AI in creative projects.

Education, work, interests, social links, whatever.

We make a complete profile for you from just their name!

How? OSINT and AI magic.

It can help you with prospecting, getting information so it makes your cold reachouts more personal, learn about people you come across at a networking event, etc.

Check it out at https://useodin.net

*This is Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) so it's strictly publicly available information.

First it was boilerplates, then directories, and now it’s tools to help you find leads on Reddit. Every few months, devs seem to swarm the same idea until it’s everywhere.

Is it just trend-chasing? Fear of missing out? Or are we all just too online, copying whatever we last saw trending on Product Hunt?

Not throwing shade. I’ve done it too. But I do wonder if this cycle burns people out before they ever find traction.

Why do we keep building the same things at the same time? What’s driving the herd?

When I was starting out, I always wanted to learn from people who had actually seen success, and I just wanted to hear how they had done it. Just getting that perspective used to help and motivate me.

I knew that if we succeeded, I wanted to help others who were in the same position as I was, by just giving that insight and sharing exactly what we did to get to where we are.

Now that we've hit some significant milestones with our SaaS, here's a breakdown of what actually worked.

Where we are now:

• 8,000 total users
• $5,800/month (proof since it’s Reddit)
• 7 months since launch (8 months since MVP launch)

The early days (0-100 users)

• Created survey to validate idea in subreddits where our potential users gathered
• Offered genuine value to survey participants to make responding worth their time (detailed project feedback)
• Shared MVP with survey participants when it was finished (our first users)
• Daily posts in Build in Public on X sharing our journey and trying to provide value
• Regular engagement in founder subreddits
• RESULT: Hit 100 users in two weeks

Breaking through (100-1,000)

• Put all our effort into product improvements based on those first 100 users
• Launched on Product Hunt and ranked #4 with 500+ upvotes
• Got 475 new sign-ups in the first 24 hours of PH launch
• Also got featured in Product Hunt’s newsletter which further boosted traffic
• RESULT: Crossed 1,000 users within a week post-launch

Scaling phase (1,000-8,000)

• Maintained community engagement (not just posting, but responding and helping)
• Word-of-mouth growth started to really kick in
• Focused 90% of our time and effort on product improvement vs. marketing
• Set up frameworks to capture and implement user feedback efficiently
• RESULT: Steady growth to 8,000 and beyond

What actually worked

• Product Hunt launch
• Idea validation before building (saved months of work)
• Being active and engaging in communities (founder communities on X + Reddit)
• Being open to feedback and using it to improve the product
• Dedicating most of our time to continuously finding new ways to make the product better

What’s next:

• Building our own affiliate system for sustainable growth
• Continue taking in feedback from users
• Continue improving the product so we can help more people
• Aiming for $10k MRR this year

I hope that getting some insight into how we did it can help you on your journey, even if it’s just with motivation.

Since launching on Product Hunt worked so well for us last time, we’re now doing it again. So, if you want to help two bootstrapped brothers beat all the VC-backed companies, your upvote would mean the world to us! Live right now: Launch link

I’ll continue sharing more on our journey to $10k MRR if you guys are interested.

🚀 ✅ just go to my shitty vibe coded AI app link (insert link here) and 💰 buy my shitty product.

✏️ here’s how I did it👁️: - Trust me bro 🙌

🖕fuck these advertisements 👍of these trash devs. 🤡

Share your SaaS and connect with one another. In a simple format

Format - "Link Name and 10 Words Description"

This is our

www.findyoursaas.com

Product Launch Platform to Grow Outreach and where you can get users 👈

i’ve been building for a while. i thought if i make something useful, people will find it. so i kept shipping. shipped 8+ products in the last 2 years.
every time i thought “this is the one”. but after launch? silence. few upvotes, few likes. traffic barely moved. i thought the product wasn’t good enough.

i was spending 95% of my time building, 5% on tweeting about it. meanwhile, people with simpler products were getting thousands of visitors.

so i stopped building. spent 3 weeks mapping out every place indie devs get traction. found 1000+ places. niche directories, subreddits, slack groups, hidden gem platforms. organized everything into a doc. started testing.

week 2, used the refined playbook. this time, things exploded.

posted in 30 places in week 1. traffic jumped. but conversions sucked. so i kept tweaking. started studying how others convert their traffic. tested reddit hooks, cold emails, twitter viral threads. figured out what made people click. picked the ones that actually

week 2 but this time with this playbook. things exploded. got 14K+ visits, 150+ paying customers in a week. $2K mrr in a month.

shared the doc with a few indie devs. same result. felt like i hacked the marketing algorithm for saas.

so i cleaned it up and made it available for everyone for fair price.

not a course. just a toolkit i wish i had earlier. hope it helps someone else avoid wasting 6 months like i did.

First Revenue proof: https://imgur.com/a/QXAHqgg
I'm working on this form builder (minform) for last 2 years and sometime feel like I'm going in the very wrong direction. Most of the sales that are done is via LTD purchase. I keep adding features as I get time and recently opened a discord channel for any help or bug fixes for that.
Currently living on my savings that I made via saas development from a single client. I'm very bad at marketing also. Don't know what to do ?
Should I start working on new saas app or go back to freelancing ? Getting client for saas development is also very hard.

Edit: I've recently launched hreflabs.com - mvp agency and looking for work.

Edit 2: After gathering feedback (some bad and some very good). I plan to focus more on these key areas. Currently I'm not presenting what my form builder does and even I would not call it just a form builder in the upcoming weeks. So I'll rebuild the landing page again to present proper use cases. But first I'll work on these areas soon.
- Embedded Calculators widgets (currently lacking some advanced layouts).
- Quiz forms with timer and advance analytics
- Survey forms (pretty common, but still)
- Mini AI tools (soon will work on this, pretty easy to go in this space now, since I've everything ready)
And since many people asking about the website in DM, here it is: minform.io

For your first 10,000 users, don’t waste cash on Google Ads. Early on, it’s a time sink: tons of setup, high costs, and zero ROI in weeks.

Under 10,000 users? Skip Reddit Ads, Meta Ads, or TikTok Ads. They’re too broad and pricey for startups.

Do this:

Reach your ideal customers fast. For a marketing SaaS, sponsor a blog with marketing tips ($10-$50/month for a clean banner), back a free tool by a micro-service creator, advertise in a niche newsletter your ICP reads, or get a shoutout from a small YouTuber.

That’s where your audience is. Target them directly. Stop wasting time on generic ads with few users (<10k-30k).

What’s worked for you to grow early? Share below!

In the past 48 hours:
- Crossed 100+ site visitors
- 20 waitlist signups
- 7 users shared a detailed feedback forms
- 3 DMs from people who’ve been waiting for a tool like this
- 1 DM flagged a bug — it's already fixed

Not viral. Not huge. But for the first time — it feels real. I'm building that people want.

If you're interested then checkout 👇

Its simple - Reddit is a great place to find leads. People are looking for solutions to there problems everyday. Drop your SaaS, what you are solving, and the target audience and ill reply with leads.

and if you want leads like this daily you can check out https://www.subredditsignals.com/

hi guys. i am a dev for 10 years. earlier this year one of my side projects started making $600/mo without any marketing or promotion, so i quit my job to go full-time solo maker. building indie products since then..

the biggest struggle wasn’t building products, it was always distribution. every time i launched something on product hunt, it got buried under big companies and tech influencers. saw the same thing happen to so many other solo makers. tried other indie-friendly platforms but none of them really worked either.

so i decided to build one.

i launched SoloPush on april 1st — a platform where only indie makers can showcase and launch their products. the goal is to give our products a chance to actually be seen and spread in the indie community.

in 19 days, SoloPush crossed 200+ products, 350+ indie makers and passed $2K MRR.

spent the last week listening to feedback, improving the UX, and doing a full rebranding. rebuilt the whole thing from the ground up to make it feel right for makers.

on SoloPush, your launch doesn’t die the next day like on other platforms. products keep showing up in their category. your ranking depends on the upvotes you get, and only the best stuff surfaces.

right now i’m also building out free tools for solo makers inside the platform.

if you want to check it out: SoloPush.com
if you share your thoughts, you’ll help make it better.

I’ve been running a software agency for 12 years — ~$25–30K/month recurring, plus $200–250K/year in extra projects.

A few years ago, I wanted more leverage and fewer support calls.
So I started building SaaS products.

Launched 5. All failed.
Why? I had zero marketing experience.

Client work is relationship-driven.
SaaS needs positioning, attention, and conversion — all online.

Eventually, I paused. Learned marketing.
Built two more products — now they’re slowly growing.

Lesson:
If you don’t know how you’ll get users, don’t build yet.
Marketing isn’t optional.

Hey Reddit! Freelance SaaS developer here. After building 30+ MVPs for startups over the past few years, I've noticed the same mistakes killing promising products before they even launch. Thought I'd share what I keep seeing from the trenches:

The "Kitchen Sink" Syndrome -

Almost every founder comes to me with a feature list longer than the Bible. Last month, a guy wanted "Amazon marketplace functionality plus social network features plus gamification" in his MVP. We eventually cut his feature list by 80% and focused on the core problem his product actually solved. Remember: 70% of MVP features are rarely or never used. Each unnecessary feature adds weeks to development time and thousands to your bill.

Targeting Your Buddies Instead of Real Customers -

Can't count how many times founders have told me "all my friends love it!" Yeah, because they're your friends. One client spent 6 months building based on feedback from his college roommates only to discover his target market (small business owners) needed something completely different. Your buddies aren't your ideal customers unless they're exactly your target market.

Tech Debt Russian Roulette -

Founders either want the cheapest no-code solution possible (which breaks at 1000 users) or a gold-plated infrastructure that takes 9 months to build. Both are equally deadly. I now work with a staged approach: - Validation: Quick no-code tools - Small user base: Light code (Next.JS + Supabase) - Ready to scale: Custom solutions with proper architecture

The "Build It and VC Money Will Come" Delusion -

Too many founders think: MVP → few users → automatic funding. Yet when I ask about their metrics plan, they look at me like I'm speaking Klingon. Investors want to see MoM growth, clear unit economics, and actual paying customers (not just signups).

Launch and Ghost -

Launching an MVP isn't crossing a finish line - it's firing a starting gun. Clients who plan for post-launch iteration crush it. Those who think they're "done" after launch fail spectacularly. Your real work begins after people start using your product.

The "I've Started Coding Already" Problem -

Some founders come to me with 3 months of code already written, no market validation, and wonder why they're burning cash with no traction. Start with problem validation before you write a single line of code. I had a founder who "just knew" his idea would work... until we ran some ads to a landing page and got zero interest.

What's been your experience with MVPs? Any lessons I missed?

My friend moved to Dallas from Buffalo. He works in the medical field, and hasn't started his new job yet, so I offered him a temporary role cold calling for us.

To be clear: He has never sold a thing in his life.

I spent 1 week giving him all the info and context necessary to talk to prospects. Then I gave him a list of numbers with Salesfinity.

He worked his way through the list and got better as time went on.

The final results from 4 days of calling:

• Hundreds of calls
• 7% connect rate
• 19 demos booked

I can't lie, this was gratifying to see.

If this person, with no sales experience, and who got introduced to our company less than 1 week ago, can book demos with cold calls, you can as well.

TLDR:

Cold calling works!

Most SaaS landing pages don’t suck because of design — they suck because they don’t convert.

Over the past months, I’ve rebuilt 12+ of them for early-stage founders who already had traffic... but couldn’t turn it into users.

Here’s the pattern I keep seeing, over and over.

The hero section reads like a pitch deck.
“A next-gen solution for dynamic team collaboration workflows" No one knows what the hell you do. You’ve got 5 seconds to show me the outcome — not your tech.

Zero proof.
No testimonials. No logos. No screenshots.
If I’m trusting your tool with my money, I need to see somebody else did too.

Weak CTA.
“Get started” / “Try now”
What am I starting? Why should I care? Where does that button take me?

Built by a dev, not a marketer.
I get it. You built the product. You spun up the site. It’s clean. But it doesn’t sell.
It’s optimized for shipping code — not converting strangers.

If your product’s great but your site isn’t selling it — you’ve got a packaging problem, not a product problem.

If you're stuck, I’ll happily roast your landing page and give you 2–3 actionable fixes (no catch).
Drop a link or DM — I’ll reply when I take a break from work.

I’m wondering what everyone is using. Some of the recommended sites I’ve seen are upwards of $20 per month which are not in the budget for this micro SaaS! What are you guys using to get this done? ✅