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Life & fun · alternatives · 2026

IM

23 alternatives to I'm doing (software) engineering consulting for 5$

Hi, As part of dog fooding my own platform, Strmr.com - I decided to try to do remote online consulting for 5$ per session (mostly one hour slots). I'm hoping this can be an interesting experiment as I'm hoping to get a wider view of what kind of problems the industry is dealing with, as well as expand my network, possibly with like minded founders. Strmr.com is a platform for online professional services. It allows creating groups of providers to organize together. If you think this is of interest for you - please reach out through the contact form - I'm looking for more founders to join me…

Below are 23 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes. I'm doing (software) engineering consulting for 5$ launched in 2020; newer entries below may have overtaken it.

  1. 1IL

    Hey HN. This is a weekend project of mine. It's an idea I had after seeing so many comments here about the lack of available .com names for startups. As PG once said: "Take a luxury and make it into a commodity"[1]. So, I decided I'd try turning name consulting from something only large corporations could afford to something anyone could. I hope you'll take me up on it :) If you'd like to see a few examples of my work, just check out the links in the footer. Thanks for your attention. [1] http://www.paulgraham.com/ideas.html

    2011 · startupgods.com · its alternatives →

  2. 2IB

    Hey, just wanted to share with you guys and app that I built and deployed in a day with Lovable. So, as a founder I always wanted to have an advisor but my budget would always be less, then on the other hand hand I had Paul's essays on Startup Advice, which I never read because I was busy building stuff. Hence, I built this product which comes into a sweet spot of both at the same time being more reasonable and capable than the alternative. ps: it's running on a reasoning model and tbh I've been able to gather pretty good insights from it. Note to PG: If you're seeing this. I'm your big fan.…

    2025 · paulgraham.resurrect.space · its alternatives →

  3. 3IM

    Inspired by a good friend who did Unstick.me, as well as the recent MVP for 1k project, I've decided to give consulting a shot by offering my services as a developer and product guy to non-technical folks and early-stage web startups who are looking to brainstorm on both the technology and product side, and possibly looking to have an MVP built based on their idea. I started accepting requests the other day solely with a Wufoo form, and just launched a proper one-page site here: http://youshouldworkwith.me/ Curious to hear feedback on the offer and idea in general. It's the first time I've…

    2011 · youshouldworkwith.me · its alternatives →

  4. 4

    Hey HN, When I was learning to code I was always intrigued to see the guys on twitter making money with a SaaS. I always wondered how to make them and after a few months I developed my own. I wanted to share a Boilerplate for any new devs who are wondering how to start their own SaaS or wonder how things work. Boilerplate comes with Auth, Payments, UI and all the good stuff. Ali

    2024 · github.com · its alternatives →

  5. 5MS

    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 →

  6. 6CA

    Based on the multiple "Who's hiring remotely?" and similar posts on HN, I thought it might be useful to have a site that aggregates remote programming jobs. There is way too much spam out and an inconsistent way to say "work from home" so traditional searching doesn't work (or rather, takes a long time per person). I've worked in a few remote programming positions so I figured I might know of some companies or searching tricks to find them. Let me know if you'd find this type of thing useful. If we can get some traffic going, then maybe we can start attracting companies to actually list…

    2010 · workfromhomeprogrammingjobs.com · its alternatives →

  7. 7WW

    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 · its alternatives →

  8. 8IM

    I'm gauging interest for a service that would help connect devs/designers/copywriters with folks who have short term projects (a few days or weeks of work). The projects would range in value, but should ideally be at least a few $100. Through Forrst, there are already thousands of such people available to work, it's just a matter of if this is interesting to the other side. If it is, would you leave your info? Thanks a ton. Form: https://kylebragger.wufoo.com/forms/short-term-project-matchmaking/

    2011 · kylebragger.wufoo.com · its alternatives →

  9. 9IV

    Hey my name is Ivo and I'm a developer and a startup entusiast. My girlfriend was out of the coutry for the weekend and I decided to do something cool like building a startup. I've done a few startups over the years but that's the first I actually released, I would love to hear your feedback on it.

    2024 · craftlynow.com · its alternatives →

  10. 10

    Hey Hacker News, I'm the maker of Kopage, a free & self-hosted Website Builder. While working on new, cool features (AI, of course), it would be great to hear some HN feedback :) Thanks, Simon

    2024 · kopage.com · its alternatives →

  11. 11MF

    Promptly is my first SaaS Project. I built it because I wanted to refine my dev skills and also to have a central place to store my prompts for GPT, Midjourney, and other AI platform and systems. Would love some feedback on the website itself, as well as advice on how I should go about the marketing

    2023 · promptly.host · its alternatives →

  12. 12IM

    Imagine a reversed recruiting process where recruiters can pick a candidate like selecting a product from an e-shop!

    2024 · horeca-jobs.gr · its alternatives →

  13. 13

    Been building an x402 gate way for my local business site builder. I want to experiment with x402 more for deliverables outside of the "typical" things (e.g.: simple api calls etc.) as I believe the potential is actually a lot bigger than that. I think it can be used for "bigger" agentic deliverables, e.g.: with this you get a full pipeline (llm research, google places search, image analysis, brand guidemap etc. which than gets molded into a one pager). Changes the game from "cheap api calls" to bigger deliverables. Feel free to play around with it and let me know what you think!

    2025 · boosterpack.xyz · its alternatives →

  14. 14MP

    My first "real" web app! I appreciate any comments/suggestions.<p>Also I am available for hire. Contact me at www.sambolgert.com

    2012 · se.cret.ly · its alternatives →

  15. 15JL

    Hello everyone, I just launched my bootstrapped (no funding) online learning startup, after 3 years of solo development part-time (2 to 3 days a week) - https://onlinecoursehost.com I would love for you guys to go through the landing page and give me your feedback on the page itself, the idea, the pricing model, any feedback would be much appreciated. About the product, it's an online course hosting platform. Online instructors upload their video courses, integrate with Stripe, set a price, create a course landing page and website home page (there is a website builder component to…

    2021 · its alternatives →

  16. 16

    Hey HN! Quick TL; DR: I set up scrapers for the websites of ~20k tech companies, fed the results through GPT, spent some sleepless nights building a web app, and voilá. I started this after getting fed up with how slow LinkedIn felt. I finally got it working and easy to use, so I wanted to share it with you guys. The job list is free. But I’m currently paying a lot of money to OpenAI for all the data I’m passing through GPT, so I may end up eventually charging for some advanced features, or putting ads on it or something. Please let me know what you think! I’m actively developing this so I’m…

    2024 · techjobs.xyz · its alternatives →

  17. 17MA

    Hi there, So a buddy a couple of days ago came up with the idea for a new SaaS product regarding gpt and image generation. We did a quick MVP that barely works, it breaks almost 50% of the time but we still wanted to validate the idea before going all in. We have almost 1k followers on Twitter together. Did a quick post describing the idea with a stripe link in the comments with a 5$ value, no landing page, and no shipped product. In exchange, the buyers become beta users. Around 30 mins later we got our first sale next 30 mins another 5$ and so on. Do we consider the idea validated? The…

    2023 · its alternatives →

  18. 18IW

    I'm a ex Facebook & AOL designer. I recently quit my job to start a design studio of my own and I'm looking to build up my portfolio. I'm looking to work with amazing entrepreneurs to help them design even more amazing products. -FAQs: -What does $1k includes? Everything we can design in 1 week. I'm experienced enough to design a whole app in a week or so. -Do you take equity? No. -Do you also design web apps? Sure. I'm open for all platforms: Web, android, iOS, etc. except VR/3D. -How does it work? I will be booking on first-come, first-served basis. Contact is in my profile. Initial…

    2016 · its alternatives →

  19. 19WB

    Hey HN: Kaveh here, founder of https://www.usage.ai/ We help companies drive down AWS, GCP, and Azure spend. Why? Because the way it's done now is a pain. DevOps and Software Engineers end up spending time managing costs rather than focusing on business problems. I have been building Usage AI for almost 4 years now (4 year anniversary in 1 month from now!) with an incredible group of founding people. We started as a product just to help lower AWS EC2 costs, and now we do all major AWS services (such as RDS, OpenSearch, ElastiCache, and Redshift with more on the way) and other…

    2024 · its alternatives →

  20. 20PB

    I am a software engineer working alone on a passion project, a website that helps you stay organized easily and efficiently. Headspace.io is a webmail, notepad, task list and calendar, all rolled into on. The basic premise is that any data in Headspace can be "tagged" and then all relevant information for a particular tag can be displayed in one screen. This is a pre-beta build and I'm hoping to get some early feedback from the wise and generous HN folks. Would you pay a small monthly fee ($5 maybe) for a service like this? http://app.headspace.io/ (This is pre-production so…

    2013 · its alternatives →

  21. 21IC

    Stack: WASM + Rust + Macroquad I saw that a company had posted a cool job ad where you had to apply directly via a REST API. That gave me the idea to gamify my resume as well. Since I was bored, I vibe coded a bit and voilà, the result was ready. I think it's something new and fun that might put a smile on people's faces. (Please don't spam my email address, but feel free to send me an email with your high score if you want!)

    Feb 2026 · breezko.dev · its alternatives →

  22. 22IB

    Hello all, I built about 2 years ago a coding website for kids, teens and adults: https://codeguppy.com Despite my efforts to promote the website it is still not well know. I post almost daily about it on Twitter at https://twitter.com/codeguppy ... but even there I don't have views. The website is fun... although I still have a ton of things to add. I appreciate if you take a look and suggest improvements and most importantly help me with spreading the news about this website. I really need a boost! Thanks all!

    2021 · its alternatives →

  23. 23

    (Spoiler: $3,600+ pure profit in 1 month)

    2018 · timkock.de · its alternatives →

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