Commerce · alternatives · 2026
24 alternatives to Kitify, my first Rails project. And some advice for non-tech founders
http://kitify.com I'd love to get HN's feedback on Kitify (http://kitify.com), a new service I built. Kitify makes it easy for DIY project writers to document, share and sell kits for their projects. I built Kitify because DIY is fun and a great way to learn, but actually getting the parts together for many projects is a pain; I want to solve that. This is my first Rails project. I knew how to write simple PHP scripts before this, but I had no exposure to Rails - or MVC or, actually, anything meaningfully involving objects. I had the idea for Kitify months ago, but wasn't able to move it…
Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes. Kitify, my first Rails project. And some advice for non-tech founders launched in 2012; newer entries below may have overtaken it.
- 1
A few days ago, I responded to a comment by bloggergirl offering to read anyone's web copy and help. I shot off an email hoping for a paragraph or two of feedback on my startup's copy. Instead I received a professional, detailed deck of tons of invaluable well thought out feedback. It must have taken her an entire afternoon. Here's a link to it: http://www.slideshare.net/shereefb/recommendations-for-bettermeans To top it off, this isn't someone with a lot of free time on her hands, she's only days away from launching her own startup (page99test) This community blows my mind!
2010 · slideshare.net · its alternatives →
- 2
I wrote this over the last couple of weeks using Rails 3, Twilio and a variety of Gems, putting in about 2 hours per day. I'd love any feedback from the HN community on any aspects of the site (design, API construction, documentation, marketing, pricing which is TBD). On a related note: I have to say that I'm really flying with Rails 3. Typically I roll with Django, but have been super impressed with the Rails 3. Feels really clean, and there are some Gems that make the more mundane parts of the webapp construction fun and agile: Haml/Sass, blueprint, Fancy-buttons, Devise. I'll probably…
2011 · phoneify.com · its alternatives →
- 3
Flows▲239If you’ve ever tried building onboarding or product adoption with Appcues, Chameleon, Userflow, WalkMe, or Usetiful, you’ve probably hit the same two problems: 1. Everything is rendered with JavaScript overlays 2. Customization is a nightmare A little backstory: When I was choosing an onboarding tool for my previous project, nothing matched what I needed. So I had to build my own. With help from IntroJS I built onboarding solution that I needed: Tooltips, Modals, custom CSS, waiting for interactions, and saving the state into the database. It worked… but it took way more time than it should…
2024 · flows.sh · its alternatives →
- 4
talking about a blog post complaining about Rails
2015 · developingstory.netlify.com · its alternatives →
- 5IL
What I built: Bonjournal, a travel journal app - iOS app (https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/bonjournal/id719266933) - web app (https://bonjourn.al) What and how I learned (in order of importance): * Ruby on Rails * - Michael Hartl's Ruby On Rails Tutorial - Railscast - Code School - Ruby Toolbox * Objective-C * - Nerd Ranch iOS Programming - NSScreencast - Code School - WWDC Videos (for performance improvements) - CocoaPods Rank (https://gist.github.com/luvtechno/8842522) And of course, a lot of Stack Overflow. I didn't think it would…
2014 · its alternatives →
- 6
Indie Kit▲58I wanted to build simple apps to launch over the weekend. I was so frustrated implementing billing, stripe, auth, quota management, etc. I just gave up. So I made Indie Kit Login users, process payments, send emails at lightspeed. Spend your time building your startup, not integrating APIs. Indie Kit provides you with the boilerplate code you need to launch, FASTER THAN EVER.
2025 · indiekit.pro · its alternatives →
- 7
I needed to get out of localhost:3000 land and ship a (somewhat functional) web app. Anyways, I built Current Ride as a place to put your bucket list items out in the open. The goal is really to inspire the community to do more things! Building the app helped me understand Rails a lot better and allowed me to hack-break-fix bugs/features more effectively :) Enjoy! http://www.currentride.com
2012 · currentride.com · its alternatives →
- 8AI
2012 · theindianlist.com · its alternatives →
- 9FP
A little background. For the last 1.5 years I lost what could be considered an embarrassing amount of money hiring other people to work on a project that I thought had potential, I got some important people involved, had some great coders, but couldn't launch. The failure was depressing, rejection by YC didn't help.. I had to take a job, I didn't enjoy and I had a girlfriend who stood by me despite going into debt. But bouncing back over the last 45 days I've taught myself Rails some Jquery, and Javascript and built this www.hangout.io. It's empowering to build something myself because I'm…
2011 · its alternatives →
- 10ND
Hi HN, I'm happy to finally ship my first development project: http://favsi.com. Favsi is a site to share lists of random stuff. Things you probably wouldn't post anywhere else. Like: • Favorite cheesy ninja movies • Favorite original NES games • Favorite songs to sing in the car There's been lots of list-type apps cropping up lately: Bagcheck, ListGeeks, Listry, and probably others. Mini-trend? Some Background: By trade, I've been mostly a business guy [shudders] at startups, but have been working to change that for awhile now. I started learning Ruby a few times last year but had trouble…
2011 · favsi.com. · its alternatives →
- 11
FoundersWall▲35I used to be just a blogger. Now I build internet products, still without code, using AI, design, and taste. I was building in public on X for last 2 months. And honestly, I got tired of how it became performative and started to feel fake. I shipped 2 products. Both failed to get any real traction. I kept sneaking into popular builders’ profiles, hoping to learn how they do it. One thing I kept seeing everywhere, product launch directories. I thought here is the scope. So I started building one. Same UI like the rest. Nothing special. Suddenly one day when it was half built, I realized…
2025 · founderswall.com · its alternatives →
- 12PV
Been going for about three years now on the side, learned to code in Rails from Michael Hartl's book, got help from friends and have been getting tons of feedback. I find using Uservoice's idea generation tool was the best along with emailing all customers a few days after they register to get feedback. I also found that a good amount of people will sign up and abandon the site quickly and I'm going to put in a JQ tour to help guide people around the app. Also been testing out Olark to gauge converting users. Anywho, I just launched the latest, responsive Printavo update with has a ton of…
2012 · its alternatives →
- 13MF
2012 · themescroller.com · its alternatives →
- 14MF
I quit my job a month ago and have been heads down working on my startup. It's my first time working with Ruby or web development at all. I launched on the 7th - http://www.onefatpig.com Now I'm done with the easy part (code) and working on the substantially harder part (getting users). Any advice?
2011 · onefatpig.com · its alternatives →
- 15MF
I'm getting my feet wet in programming again and wanted to learn Rails. So I followed railstutorial.org (you'll recognize the similarity if you've gone through it yourself) and changed a few fields around and created LinkRawr, a simple site to find and share links. It's here: http://linkrawr.heroku.com It works like Twitter, you follow others' links and people follow your links. You can follow me here: http://linkrawr.heroku.com/Justin I created this over the past couple of days and I'm a relative newbie when it comes to programming, so it's far from a polished project, but I thought I'd…
2011 · linkrawr.heroku.com · its alternatives →
- 16IW
Hi all! Joe Masilotti here. After 2+ years my book, "Hotwire Native for Rails Developers", is finally available for sale. It contains everything I know about building, shipping, and maintaining iOS and Android apps with Ruby on Rails and Hotwire Native. Always with one simple goal in mind: making it easier for Rails developers to build mobile apps. The book teaches you how to: - Build your first Hotwire Native apps on iOS & Android - Add navigation, modals, and native tab bars - Mix in native screens and components - Send and route push notifications - Ship to physical devices via TestFlight…
2025 · amazon.com · its alternatives →
- 17LJ
I've been working for about 8 months on http://www.Learneroo.com, a site to teach programming and more through challenges. I created the site and all the content on it, and I'm looking for some feedback. Thanks!
2013 · its alternatives →
- 18MF
Please have a look at www.socialeaks.com and tell me what you think. This is my first adventure in coding (my background is not CS). I started learning rails about a month ago via railstutorial.org. When I finished that, I felt the best way to continue learning would be to just build an app from scratch. I came up with this concept while observing how crazy the world had gone over WikiLeaks. I thought this was a funny idea. I also thought it would be fun to build! So, here I am. I built this in rails 3 and it is currently living on Heroku. It took me about two weeks to code, doing just about…
2011 · its alternatives →
- 19MN
Link: http://this.isby.us/ I've been working on this on and off for a few weeks as part of an apprenticeship program with a Rails shop. I was given the opportunity to create a 'toy' app to learn more about Rails development. The basic idea is this: If you know people you often share links with, you can create a 'bin' on the site, and share that bin with others. Then, you and your friends can all add and view links that you find interesting. My goal was to make this happen as simply as possible, so there are no user accounts, and there is a bookmarklet for adding links without having to go…
2011 · this.isby.us · its alternatives →
- 20
- 21IV
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 →
- 22HI
I’ll put the tl;dr up front: I built my first web app with HN’s news.arc: http://hubski.com The long version (I can be verbose): Recently, I was in a startup that sputtered out. It was my seed idea, but my contribution was on the design/UI end. We applied to YC fall 2010, and were rejected (rightfully so, in retrospect). My previous coding experience entails a bit of Fortran from undergrad research, and building a couple of simple websites (Frontpage even. o-O). Anyway, I had tons of energy for the project, but lamented not being able to contribute to coding, where it was badly needed. After…
2011 · hubski.com · its alternatives →
- 23FS
Hi HN, This is the first site I've built. I know it probably won't be interesting to most of you but I think it's pretty helpful to people interested in makeup: http://www.savvyist.com I hope to make it easier for anyone who wants to get started with makeup, as it can be a really useful tool, and I know firsthand how overwhelming it can be. I learned Ruby on Rails to create it using the amazing book/tutorial by Michael Hartl and some good codecademy courses. I was formerly a User Experience Designer at Nokia & didn't know how to code before then. If you want to know more about…
2015 · its alternatives →
- 24MF
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 →
Also compare
Ranked by how close each launch is in meaning, then by votes. Prices were read from each product’s own site when checked and can change. Refine with your own description →