Alternatives
Products that do what Free Substack and Medium Writer Tool does
Initial quick launch! Run your account through this free analytical tool. Would appreciate feedback on features you would like to see.
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2013 · penflip.com
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- 4AU
I blew off a bunch of "serious" side work last month and built a tiny little embeddable editing tool that I've wanted to have for Ars Technica since, well, the beginning of internet time. It lets any random user make edit suggestions for writers/editors to consider and act on. I think it's pretty cool and it's gotten some good use over the last few weeks. Of note, it's uses a single-field signup form. Edit administration is currently email based, so all it needs is an email address to get people going. I'm sure I'm not the only person to ever do this, but I basically just turned it on one…
2011
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2011 · gun.io
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TLDR: I made a public only web analytics without signup. Stores views and visitors for 10 days before deleting data. Exactly 25 days ago today I posted here, proud of my new web analytics. The response was mixed and my post even got flagged (understandable). It was my first real launch and I actually made a sale just a day later of 49$(!). Back then my project was pay once, keep forever. Since then I have sadly went over to the dark side (subscription based). Anyways, I never went back to look at the post after the first two hours, turns out I got a lot of answers. Most answers was something…
2024 · indielytics.link
- 7RM
Hello HN! Being a software engineer and an SEO guy I wrote a heap of tools and scripts to make my life easier. Now I've decided to share some of them with the community, and made a small site where I will be publishing them. They are all completely free (yes, free forever) and you don't even need to sign up for the site. Just use the thing as you like, no limits. Currently you can access 4 instruments: - Backlink retriever - Thin/weak content analyzer - Traffic trend analysis - Visitor list retriever I am planning on releasing more free tools with time, and trying to stay original by…
2018
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- 9WW
Over three months ago, I posted my book on HN and got tremendous +ve reponse. I am happy to inform that I have published the book to leanpub as per the comments I got on HN itself! It is pay as you go model, and the minimum is $0 because I wanted to contribute back to the FOSS Community
2016
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This is a tool which lets you easily manage different versions of ideas, helpful for writing essays. I've found myself wanting this every single time I go through the drafting process when writing, and I've been frustrated every time I find myself accidentally working on an old draft just because there was a paragraph that I liked better. This solves it. I hope the community like this as much I enjoyed working on it! Note that it's currently a beta waitlist because there's some bugs with the undo/redo state management and so I want to dogfood it for a bit for reliability. It says April…
Mar 2026 · quillium.bryanhu.com
- 13OS
I got tired of collecting open source projects in my chrome bookmarks so I decided to compile a curated list of: - Recently active projects on GitHub - Mostly dev tools (but also productivity, analytics) - Projects which are "Alternative to X software" My bookmarks are finally empty:D If you have a great open source tool you use, I'd be glad to hear your suggestions. Also, any feedback is greatly appreciated.
2025 · alternativeoss.com
- 14IA
I was working on validating some of my own project ideas. While trying to find how to validate my idea, I realized the process itself could be turned into a tool. A few late nights later, I had something that takes any startup idea, fetches discussions, summarizes sentiment, and gives a quick “validation score.” It’s very rough, but it works, and it’s already making me rethink a few of my own ideas. It's still a work in progress. I don't actually know what I'm doing, but I know it's worth it. Honest feedback welcomed! Live demo here: https://validationly.com/
2025 · validationly.com
- 15IB
I’ve always found it funny how simple feedback widgets end up as $20–$30/month products. The tech is dead simple, infra is cheap, and most of us here could rebuild one in a weekend. So as a “principle experiment” I built my own today as a side project and priced it at 1 dollar. Just because if something is cheap to run and easy to replicate, it should be priced accordingly, and it’s also fun marketing. 1$ feedback tool. Shipped today, got the first users/moneys today, writing this post today. Side Sunday project, then back to the main product tomorrow.
Dec 2025 · onedollarfeedback.com
- 16IB
Hi HN! My name is Yossi, and I'm a solo indie maker. SEO tools are super pricey and free tools often fall short, leaving most users to costly subscription-based tools. So, I built SEO Stuff, a keyword tool that uses a credit-based system for builders like me who use SEO more sporadically. Have a great day!
2024 · seo-stuff.com
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I’m specifically looking for a tool a user shared on here that facilitated writing for content by scrolling up and disappearing text as new text was inputted. I believe it was a HTML/JSS only solution - a small personal project. I’ve done a lot of focused searches, but haven’t been able to find this comment. That said, I love these sorts of projects. I know they’re a self-indulgence and often a distraction. I’m celebrating that for a moment, personally. Please share your favorites writing tools, the smaller and more personal the better.
2021
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Hey hey! This is a tool I've worked on for a while, and it's reached the point I'm quite happy with the results! Comments and suggestions are appreciated :) Enjoy your day!
2023 · github.com
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I wanted to share something I've been working on recently: Statum, a handy web analytics tool. https://github.com/extractumio/statum The journey began when I found myself frequently needing simple web analytics for my projects. I tried Google Analytics, especially GA4, and realized it was quite complex and, at times, not very accurate, especially when I wanted to view stats for the current day or recent hours. Then I tested a few fancy startup solution but ended up with way too expensive plans the expect me to subscribe (I'm not that rich to pay $99/month for every…
2023 · github.com
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2017 · dontedit.now.sh
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Hello everyone. I'm a relatively new developer and I started my first project to go full production recently. It is a directory of payment processors and payment service providers. It's free to use and gives detailed info on their pricing, business model, supported business types, available countries, prohibited businesses and high risk business support. So far only 40 have been added with more to come. And I allow processors to contact me so that they're details can be added to the database. I'll eventually automate this and add verification the months to come. I hope you'll find it useful.…
2025 · sourcefees.com
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As a high school student, I love LLMs and the execution of Apple's Appel Intelligence Writing Tools, but was disappointed that nothing like that existed for Windows. So, I created Writing Tools, a better than Apple Intelligence open-source alternative that works system-wide on Windows! Key features: - Uses Google's Gemini 1.5 Flash model for superior AI-assisted writing (much better than the tiny 2B parameter Apple Intelligence model) - Works in any application with a customizable hotkey - Proofreads, rewrites, summarizes, and more - Free and privacy-focused (your API key stays local, no…
2024 · github.com
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Hey there, I'm a solo dev behind KewlTools. So I'm one of those people who like to build their own tools/utilities whenever they a) want to get something done, or b) want to learn something. c) don't want to spend ages finding a utilty and going through walls of ads. I gradually built 66 tools, all free, fast, ad-free, and zero login. I (and my family/friends) use these daily, so thought some of you will find it useful! Any suggestions, improving current tools or adding new ones, please let me know.
2025 · kewltools.com
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