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Products that do what I made a calculator builder to increase engagement and conversions does

Hi HN, I am a solopreneur in the evenings and a software engineer during the day. In the past, I have created lots of calculators for my web projects and freelancing friends. These were pretty basic, but users always welcomed them. I also used currently available builders, but the problem was that they were either slow, broke on mobile devices, had nonsense page view limits, or were expensive. Some even ticked all those boxes. So I have decided to create my own, with a simple interface, and called it Creative Widgets (if it ever takes off, I plan to add more exciting stuff like charts, etc,…

  1. 1

    Should you build an internal tool? Or just buy it?

    2015

  2. 2IQ

    Quick background: I used to code. Studied it in school, wrote some projects, but eventually convinced myself I wasn't cut out for it. Too slow, too many bugs, imposter syndrome — the usual story. So I pivoted, ended up as an investment associate at an early-stage angel fund, and haven't written real code in years. Fast forward to now. I'm a Buffett nerd — big believer in compound interest as a mental model for life. I run compound interest calculations constantly. Not because I need to, but because watching numbers grow over 30-40 years keeps me patient when markets get wild. It's basically…

    Jan 2026 · calquio.com

  3. 3WT

    I figured I needed to work on my coding skills before building the next groundbreaking AI app, so I started working on this free tool site. Its basically just an aggregation of various commonly used calculators and unit convertors. Link: https://www.calcverse.live Tech Stack: Next, React, Typescript, shadcn UI, Tailwind CSS Would greatly appreciate your feedback on the UI/UX and accessibilty. I struggled the most with navigation. I've added a search box, a sidebar, breadcrumbs and pages with grids of cards leading to the respective calculator or unit convertor, but not sure if…

    2025 · calcverse.live

  4. 4IG

    I’ve always found that online calculators tend to have bad UIs, especially on mobile. Most of the calculator websites I’ve come across use outdated and inconvenient ways of inputting data, or they format the results in confusing ways. I’ve noticed that fraction calculators (especially mixed fractions) are terrible to use, even on desktop. I haven’t built one of those yet, but it’s something I’m planning to tackle soon. This is a project I’ve always wanted to work on, but I’m relatively new to this space. So far, I’ve created a collection of simple calculators focused on math and finance. I’d…

    2025

  5. 5RI

    Hi HN! I'm a developer who noticed that I haven't done much experimentation lately. I decided I wanted to change that this year. This month I built a simple resume builder with the main goal of practicing front-end development, and to scratch an itch I had when updating my resume. :) After it was functional enough, I casually shared with some friends to express my enjoyment of crafting something just for the sake of having some fun. To my surprise they ended up asking how they could send to others. So I went one step further, due to my pure excitement, and hosted it on Netlify to make…

    2022 · resumecreator.io

  6. 6MP

    Hi I'm the developer of UX-App if you have any questions then fire away :) Just thought I'd give you all some background. I'm a high school teacher by day and developer by night. I was bitten by the start-up bug a few years ago and UX-App is my first product launch. In between a full time job and a 5 month old at home it has taken about 3.5 years to complete the project. I'd like to think its a unique product that holds its own against the existing competition and even has some features that no other tool has. My favorite aspect is the visual code builder which allows designers to easily…

    2015

  7. 7YP

    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

  8. 8IM

    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

  9. 9OS

    We did a "Show HN post" 6 months back of our startup and we're very excited to show everyone how far we've come as well as the lessons we've learnt so far! It's been a roller-coaster so far and we think there's lot more of the same to come! We did apply for Ycombinator funding but got turned down :( But may re-apply soon :) For those that don't know, our startup is called Scirra and we make Construct 2 which is an HTML5 game engine (http://www.scirra.com). Our engine allows anyone to make HTML5 games without knowing any programming. It's only me and my brother working on this and we're based…

    2012

  10. 10IM

    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

  11. 11IG

    I recently quit my job at a decent TTS company I was working for as a software developer advocate to pursue what I have always enjoyed doing, which is creating software that is helpful. Before and after quitting my job, I have always found it expensive and time-consuming to hire a designer that can come up with a decent logo for my software, and as a software engineer, I really enjoy coding, not designing. One day, I made a pretty bold move to design a logo, and it took me a whole day to come up with a logo that looks nice. This is the reason I built Owl AI, a logo generator that generates…

    2024 · app.owlai.art

  12. 12IB

    A few years ago, I started managing my finances using Google Sheets. It worked fine for a while, but then I hit some limitations. As my financial planning needs grew more complex, I found myself struggling with tracking assets and forecasting future financial scenarios. Thus, I started to work in my spare time on building FinancialAha: https://www.financialaha.com - a financial planning app designed to do everything my spreadsheets couldn’t. It is completely free and I intend to add some paid features later on as listed on the pricing page, but I want to keep it free for people…

    2024

  13. 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

  14. 14IB

    Hey HN, I've just begun my solopreneur journey. I've been a "serial starter" - often starting projects and never seeing them through, and I have finally finished my first project! Maybe this sentiment resonants with some of you, let me know in the comments below I built this tool as a simple no-risk method for turning more visitors into customers by A/B testing your sale promotions and automatically displaying the promotion with the highest conversion rate. Did you know that increasing your conversion rate by just half a percent can have a dramatic impact on your sales without needing…

    2024 · smartsalebanner.com

  15. 15

    I built a tool (https://1mil.app/hn) to help me test my intuition about various weird business ideas that were on my mind. Initially, I wanted to create a database with 1 million business ideas (hence the name - "1 million opportunities"). But turned out to be a dumb idea already. So instead I built this tool that returns only 10 ideas. It's all based on your input, market + your background. The first release scored on demand only and it gave false confidence. So I rebuilt the the scoring around "winnability": can a solo founder with a specific background "win" against what…

    7d ago · 1mil.app

  16. 16IM

    Hey everyone! I'm really excited to share a side project I've been pouring my heart into lately. As a developer with over five years of experience, I've taken on my fair share of freelance web development projects. In the beginning, I always coded everything from scratch, but as I juggled more projects simultaneously, I started using Webflow to save time. While Webflow was definitely a lifesaver, I couldn't help but wish for an even faster way to set up a website – something that would allow me to start with a template and then easily customize it to my heart's content. The problem with most…

    2024 · instawebai.com

  17. 17IP

    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

  18. 18IV

    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

  19. 19

    Make a free, no sign-up, editable calculator in seconds

    Jun 2026 · calculatequick.com

  20. 20SD

    Hey HN! I am a FE dev who is working at a software agency and im making 2-3 estimates per week. Creating estimates is painfull manual proccess, where you have to read a lot of .docx like RFP, SRS etc. This was really tiring for me Also in agency where im working we make estimates in google spreadsheets which is another pain, trying to drag something, copy, duplicate can really mess up the whole layout So i just wanted tool that can just automate this a bit. I just started researching and I couldnt find anything good enough for my usecase. So I made a tool for creating estimates with AI. I…

    2025 · devtimate.com

  21. 21IB

    Hey all, I'm a product designer and I built this cause' when I was designing liquidity pool and staking features for this DAO, I didn't know how the user flow worked and how the UI looked for similar pages, so I was constantly switching back and forth Balancer, Uniswap, and OlympusDAO as references. I thought that I might not be the only one with this problem, so I built this library of userflow screenshots, and annotated them, to share with the web3 community of builders, designers, and developers. Would love feedback if you're a builder in web3, let's connect too! (Also I'm aware that…

    2023 · w3design.io

  22. 22

    18 free finance calculators for small businesses

    Apr 2026 · finance-count.com

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