Dev tools · alternatives · 2026
24 alternatives to I launched my first solo side project
Sysadmin is my bread and butter, but I taught myself PHP and have been coding on and off for the past 6 years. I've worked on numerous freelance gigs, but mainly internal apps that I use for my real job. I worked on this project (on and off) for the past year and I'm happy to finally release it to the public. Even if it doesn't succeed, I'm happy that I was able to "scratch an itch" I've had for the past couple of years. I wanted to make something and prove to myself that I can program. I'm not the greatest, but I'm proud of what I've achieved. http://www.ikeepm.com
iKeepm is a home inventory management tool that helps users track and analyze their household items as an alternative to spreadsheets. Built by a systems administrator who taught himself PHP over six years of side… Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes. Prices are shown for the 1 we have checked on their own sites. I launched my first solo side project launched in 2011; newer entries below may have overtaken it.
- 1
I quit my job and made an automatic time trackerfrom $39/mo▲136Hey Hacker News! This is my first post here. About 5 months ago, I left my job because I was completely burnt out. After taking some time off, I started freelancing. But I found tracking my time to be a real hassle as I kept forgetting to start or stop the timer and often had no idea what I’d worked on. So, I decided to build Taim as a side project, while also working now on some freelancing gigs. Taim is going to be automated time tracking tool for freelancers and teams. It’s designed to make tracking time effortless and accurate, so you can focus on your work and not worry about the clock.…
2024 · taimapp.io · its alternatives →
- 2MS
For years, I have struggled to understand my cash flow and save for the future. In addition to that, my wife has many credit cards and accounts that complicate matters. I am building a tool that connects all our accounts, helps us create a budget, and tracks and adjusts expenses on the fly. I am also sprinkling some AI magic on it for financial suggestions. I am looking for feedback on the implementation. More importantly, I am looking for more beta testers to improve the product.
2023 · financemadelovely.com · its alternatives →
- 3WT
Backstory: Few years back, I used a shared spreadsheet (GSheets) to organize my property hunt, and found it quite frustrating to keep on top of things just on the productivity side alone. Felt that there should be a better way to do this, and that's when I started creating a webapp, with features that can make this journey feel less stressful. This is a solo dev project. Have a look at the demo, and let me know your thoughts! Cheers
2025 · dash.collabnest.app · its alternatives →
- 4
Hi HN! Flocklist.app is a minimalist, private dependency tracker. I mostly just built this for myself, since I would sit down to work, look at my to-do list, and I couldn't do 2/3 of the tasks. None of the solutions to this really cut it, either because they are a little clunky or are enterprise scale (like Jira, Linear, you know the rest). I figure I can't be the only one with this problem, so I built this free app to fix it. (It also doesn’t store tasks in the cloud.) I would love to hear any feedback you have!
Apr 2026 · flocklist.app · its alternatives →
- 5IM
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 · its alternatives →
- 6
OpBoard▲7I’m a financial analyst, and for years I managed our family budget in a massive Excel sheet. I loved the control, but it eventually became an "unpaid second job" of fixing broken CSV formats and patching formulas. The real problem: The spreadsheet was a barrier, not a bridge. It didn’t help me have better money conversations at home. Telling my wife “Dining is high” wasn't helpful; we needed to see where we were overspending (e.g., that one specific cafe vs. grocery runs) without me having to act as a "human pivot table" every Sunday night. I didn't want an app that required our bank…
Feb 2026 · opboard.io · its alternatives →
- 7HM
Hi, I'm Marcus. I've spent the last 15 months or so home-coding on a document database, after work, on weekends (every waking hour). My plans for this particular weekend was to implement log-structured writing. It went faster than I thought and the results were faster querying times and fast, append-only writes. I've been working on this for almost a decade and being this close to the finish line feels surreal. This is my seventh iteration I believe. Everytime I realized I had an architecture built on a bad model I walked away, often in fury, depressed over my weak coding abilities but…
2017 · its alternatives →
- 8YP
Care to share a screenshot and the 'killer feature' of any of your personal, self-built productivity tools? eg. I made my own calendar and money-tracker last year - there are no other users, it makes no money, I have no plans to make it public, but it holds my life together :) http://i.imgur.com/h2keJDg.png GREAT BECAUSE... it tells me how much I'm going to get paid this month. Absolutely no ulterior motive here (ie. I'm not canvassing opinions for a productivity app startup or anything), just interested.
2013 · i.imgur.com · its alternatives →
- 9
Alrisha▲6Contractors: ditch the spreadsheet chaos
Dec 2025 · argonarsoftware.com · its alternatives →
- 10OI
While working as a Unix Systems Administrator (I still do, just with much more limited hours), I use a horrible piece of software called Netdoc (by Brady) for network documentation. It always confused me how something so expensive could be so horrible, so I set out to make something better. After a bit of development and research, I realized inventory software in generally was pretty horrible, so I changed tracks a bit so my software could be useful to everyone from IT professionals to those wanting to keep track of their personal book collections (And be at a price book collectors can…
2012 · flextory.com, · its alternatives →
- 11IP
Hey hackers, Like many of you, I'm always trying to optimize my productivity, and I have tried a lot of apps out there to do so. I didn't find the exact one that I could use, so I built one for myself. Check it out and let me know if you have any thoughts!
2024 · focusmax.io · its alternatives →
- 12IB
I was somewhat hesitant about sharing this personal projects, especially since I just saw that cool looking Werk[1] tool posted, but I figured that my ADHD-fueled creation might still have it's own place to be. I just finished rewriting the code for a personal tool I use to automate terminal tasks while minimizing the amount of Python/Bash code I have to write. As with all other tools I create for my own use, the guiding principle is simplicity and approachability, as if the tool creates more issues or friction than it solves, I'll get discouraged from using it again. [1]:…
Jun 2026 · 0xff.nu · its alternatives →
- 13MF
Here is the link: http://www.wikihowtodo.com I know a lot of geeks share the same dream -- build the next kick-ass todo-list/project management system. So do I. However, as I was quite positive that my web development skill is worse than 99% of developers' in this community, I decided to build something simple, useless but unique. So I built this. Basically it's a Wikihow scraper, nothing more. It gives you a place to store interesting Wikihow articles and yes, they are converted into todo lists. I know this site is not that good, but I still need your guys' feedback. For example, as I am a…
2010 · wikihowtodo.com · its alternatives →
- 14IM
I'm documenting everything about my process. From learning to code, to building the app, and all the way to my outreach efforts. I'm learning as I go and sharing it with everyone who's not a programer, and is daunted to build a software on their own. Trust me. If I can do it, anyone can! You can find my updates on: https://Claritask.com ...as well as video updates on https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdmqmifW4kIcPclXigay1dQ Would love to hear your feedback on my progress and if you have any suggestions on what I can do better. There's so many task managers out…
2017 · its alternatives →
- 15
Hello HN! I got pretty overwhelmed with Notion, Trello, etc. (Even though they are great tools!) as an indie dev, so I built an app that is simpler to use and perfectly suited for an indie like me :) You can basically divide your projects into multiple milestones (a milestone could be e.g. a new version), and the milestones can have multiple tasks that are either todo, in progress, or done. The progress for each milestone is calculated with those tasks, and you can also prioritize and categorize the tasks using tags (E.g. for me, #ph turns into "High Priority", and #pm into "Medium…
2024 · apps.apple.com · its alternatives →
- 16A2
Hey Hacker News, I have finished this after 2 months and made the entire thing free (up to 2 projects) for you all to try out, all you need is an account. Thansk and enjoy, Dan
2024 · flourishfreelance.com · its alternatives →
- 17
Just wanted to make my first post about something interesting I've been working on for some time. Any ideas/suggestions for new hardware or software I should try out are welcome, though I will only have time for a major overhaul in a month or two where I want to redo and document everything a bit better than how it is currently. Hope this can inspire someone to start their own homelab or give some ideas to already existing ones!
2024 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 18
I was debating when to post this, but I've been using it locally in a variety of situations for several months and I think it's pretty stable (and usable!). There are more features I'd like to add, but I wanted to see if there was much interest before spending much more time on it right now.
2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 19
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 · its alternatives →
- 20MF
Hi all :) Saturday, I launched my first side project. It's basically a job board for PHP devs. https://php-at.work In the moment, everyone can post a job listing for free. I review it and activate it manually. I would love to hear any kind of feedback :) I posted it already on saturday, but probably it should be better in Show HN section.
2018 · its alternatives →
- 211R
I wanted to find a product idea to build. "Build things people want," right? So I thought, why not literally find people saying what they want? I wrote a script to collect thousands of Reddit posts where people are looking for a solution or complaining about a problem. Then I used GPT to filter out the noise and score each one based on how viable the idea seemed. Threw together a simple search interface so anyone can explore them. I was planning to build a more advanced paid version of this, but figured I'd share the raw version first to see if it's actually useful to anyone.
Nov 2025 · search.reddit-business-ideas.workers.dev · its alternatives →
- 22WB
My other half runs a care home in the UK. She was frustrated with some of the remaining paper based processes, and the 'techy' alternatives were off-putting. So we built Care Home Domestic. The project is self funded and has been a fun and exciting journey! It is currently in use at a few homes and feedback so far is really good. There's loads of work still to do, but we've gone out early and aim to be reactive to the feedback of our users.
2022 · carehomedomestic.com · its alternatives →
- 23
I got the idea of [mindmap.so](http://mindmap.so/) out of my own frustration of managing my personal notes in Notion and Miro in parallel. I have built it 3 months back on top of excalidraw, posted it in Reddit a couple of times, and never looked back (was using it only for personal use). Little did I know that the small and nimble tool that I created has crossed 2000+ users (was so surprised when I saw the dashboard last week). It was all organic and word of mouth . Having 2000+ users trusting a product is no easy feat. That’s when I thought may be I should put some more…
2024 · mindmap.so · its alternatives →
- 24
Hi HN! I've just published my small home dashboard project on Github. Hope you like it too and perhaps find it useful as a reference for similar ideas. Overall I'm very happy with the LilyGo e-ink device and I'll probably add a bunch of other features in the future.
2023 · github.com · its alternatives →
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