Alternatives
Products that do what My sideproject - The javascript is free, but the backend will cost you. does
Hi all, My side project, an online image watermarking app, is ready to start showing people, so I'd appreciate your feedback.<p>http://www.watermarquee.com<p>The free version is entirely client-side javascript. If there is a good response, I plan to develop the backend to support larger images and additional file types, as well as some other functionality. Since the free version is completely client-side, I can easily host if on Heroku's Varnish cache, which makes this an easy/cheap MVP to try out. Please let me know what you think.
- 1MA
hi all, I've always wanted to make my own game, but couldn't afford a thousand-dollar adobe (flash+photoshop) license. I'm not a talented programmer, have no degree in CS. But I understand some elements of design. So I got me a copy of ImpactJS, and after about 5 months of steep learning curve (at least for me), I managed to come up with a game. I also integrated it with a highscore and badge system, similar to what you get at Kongregate. You need to login with Google/OpenID to earn badges/scores. link is: http://www.hotbazooka.com/privatejoe hope to hear some feedback/questions from you guys!
2011 · hotbazooka.com
- 2
- 3KI
We are delighted to introduce new, fully-rewritten Kraken.io featuring: - Outstanding image optimization - Intuitive, easy-to-use API - Significantly improved lossy optimization techniques - Support for Google’s WebP compression algorithm - Support for SVG file optimization - Comprehensive paid plans for API usage designed to please everyone - Free, unlimited 7-day trial on all of our plans - The free Web Interface, featuring more beauty with Retina graphics - Rackspace Cloud Files and Amazon S3 integration - Integration libraries for PHP, Ruby and Node.js
2013 · kraken.io
- 4BC
Hi all, I'm currently validating an idea for a new BaaS solution which will allow you to build and host a web app backend without writing a single line of code. The app is called BackendLab and the landing page is here: https://www.backendlab.app/ The idea is that it allows you to define your database models by specifying what fields to include and BackendLab automatically creates a CRUD API which you can start using straight away. We've just launched the public beta and are looking for early adopters (free of charge, just looking for some feedback on the tool) Looking forward…
2018
- 5AC
Hello HN. This is a project me and some friends built at university in 2017. It was originally built in a rush, but we've added a few improvements over the years. It's a fun game to host at a demoparty and project on a big screen - We did that at Instanssi many times. The implementation is still rough, and suffers from the fast pace of the modern web - The frontend is likely very outdated, and the backend is built with Vapor 2 and Swift 3.1, both no longer supported. You can host this yourself, but it might be a bit of a pain to set up. The WebSocket protocol is fairly trivial to work out…
2022 · pixel.vkoskiv.com
- 6MJ
Hi HN, I built https://mergejpg.me – a client-side image merging tool that combines multiple JPG images directly in your browser without any server uploads. The Problem: Most image editing tools require uploading your photos to remote servers, which raises privacy concerns for sensitive documents, business presentations, or personal images. The Solution: Complete client-side processing using modern browser APIs. Your images never leave your device. Technical Details: - Built with Next.js 15 and TypeScript - Uses HTML5 Canvas API for image manipulation - Progressive loading for…
Sep 2025 · mergejpg.me
- 7DC
Hi, this is a project I've been working on for about 2 months. I am definitely not a designer, so I tried to keep the GUI to minimum and really make the presentation about photos and as fluid as possible. Any feedback welcome! :)
2012 · dofsome.com
- 8AS
Hi! I am sharing this because it may be useful to others. I created a simple Docker image that lets you easily expose a web app running locally on your dev machine to the Internet, via a proxy server. It is a self hosted alternative to something like Ngrok, which is a paid service if you use custom domains. A small server is cheaper than Ngrok (I use Hetzner Cloud and the cheapest server costs me 3€ per month). I use this method in particular to test HTTP verification with Let's Encrypt for a SaaS app running on my Mac. Hope this is useful :) Code:…
2019
- 9MS
Hello HN! I've been working on http://underthesite.com for the last month and now think it is ready for some full strength HN feedback. What do you guys think? It crawls up to 10 pages of a given site while you wait, looking for community-provided CSS / XPath selectors and regular expressions. Additionally, I'd like to appeal to you to submit matchers for technologies that you care about. Technologies are easy to add, so add your favorite jQuery plugins, analytics tools, client-side node.js wrappers, what have you. I'm going to be running a large crawl in the next few days and want to make…
2011
- 10SH
Hey all - we decided to build an open-source (https://www.github.com/swishjam/tagsafe) tool to self-host and version control all of your third party javascript on your website's frontend. What's the problem with third party javascript? Honestly, there's quite a few issues. Here are some of the most relevant ones: 1. You don't have control over what the 3P JS does on your site or when updates are made to it. With each 3P tag added to your site, you give the ability for someone else to push changes to your site without your knowledge or control. 2. There are lots of…
2023 · tagsafe.io
- 11TP
Hi HN, I’m Linn, the creator of ToolKuai (https://toolkuai.com). Like many of you, I’ve always been wary of "free" online file converters. Most of them are black boxes: you upload your private documents or images to a remote server, and you have no idea where that data ends up or how it’s being used to train models. I wanted to build a suite of tools (Video/Image compressor, OCR, AI Background Remover) that runs entirely in the browser. No files ever leave your machine. The Tech Stack To make this performant enough to rival server-side processing, I leaned heavily into modern…
Jan 2026 · toolkuai.com
- 12IW
The use case am considering is to do self testing on your site yourself, rather than depending on any third party, I plan to OpenSource it. I am storing the mouse movement coordinates of the user in a javascript array which I plan to send to server every few seconds and save into DB. Where I plan to aggregate the data and show final results. What do you think? http://websymphony.github.com/labs/trackerapp/ Currently tested on only Chrome.
2011
- 13IM
Hello! I just made my first web app with Sinatra. It is a REST API that helps people add two-step verification to their websites or apps. I am a complete noob in web development so please criticize me and let me know how shitty this whole thing is. :) http://two-step.herokuapp.com/
2014
- 14SD
Hey HN, I wanted to share with you what I've been working on for the past few months – the Splunk Developer Platform[1]. We released our Python SDK[2] back in August, but just last week we released our Java[3] and JavaScript[4] ones, and the JS SDK was the one I've been working on. It was a great learning experience for me – first real foray into JavaScript and Node (the SDK works in both the browser and Node), and was a lot of fun to try different things out releasing it. I ended up building on a couple of open source libraries (and contributing back). We are building out Splunk's developer…
2011
- 15IV
Hi HN,<p>In my spare time (evenings and weekends) I've built 3 products which have been relatively successful even with little advertising (only google ads budgeted at $30 per day). The latest one is WcfStorm.Rest; which is a REST service test client. I built it because I found that the current tools did not have the features I wanted such as, intellisense when working with HTTP headers, syntax highlighting for JSON messages, etc.<p>I'm continually trying to improve these products and would very much love get your feedback. Every suggestion is welcome!<p>(My apologies…
2012 · wcfstorm.com
- 16WO
I built it for myself because ngrok didn't let me add one more domain unless I paid $12 more. I probably should've looked for alternatives before building my own, but my grudge got in the way . Once I started, I wanted to make it better than the other options. Silly, I know. No one probably cares. I plan to open source it sometime next year because I’ve got other projects to finish first. It's free until I deplete my cloud credits, then it will switch to a tier-based model with a free option.
Oct 2025 · wsgrok.com
- 17IM
Hi HN! I've created [UFreeTools](https://www.ufreetools.com/), a collection of developer utilities (60+ tools and growing) that's completely free, ad-free, and runs entirely in the browser. No data leaves your device - everything is processed locally. ## Background As a developer, I found myself constantly searching for simple utilities like JSON formatters, UUID generators, and color pickers. Most existing options were cluttered with ads, required sign-ups, or sent data to servers. I wanted clean, fast tools that respected privacy. So I built UFreeTools as a modern SPA using…
2025 · ufreetools.com
- 18IM
I made a simple site that allows you to upload files. It requires no sign up and 100% free. The biggest advantage is that it returns you the direct URL to your file. So you can use it to store images for MD-based forum posts. Or put in your site's . I use the Cloudflare R2 storage which offers zero egress fees. So I pay $0 of transfer costs. I added a simple anti-nsfw files check and a simple anti-malware check. Please do not try to break it. Thanks! (>‿◠)
2024 · uploadfile.click
- 19LB
Howdy friends! Tell me if this is an atrociously terrible idea - I've been working on building a leetcode for clientside devs so we can practice React and Javascript interview questions in a more concise way, I call it clientside.dev I just finished a beta version of it yesterday and plan on releasing it with many more problems on Jan 1st but it's there if you wanna play with it open to any ideas / feedback however mean or nice it may be :)
2022 · vacation-call-335691.framer.app
- 20IM
Hey guys, I needed a way to convert Code, CSV, and Markdown snippets to shareable images so I built this over the weekend. It all runs locally in the browser using a few lines of jQuery. Nothing fancy. Sharing in case someone else might find it useful!
Mar 2026 · snip2img.com
- 21AP
Some folks at Tokyo just launched a Heroku alternative PaaS based on Docker containers called moCloud, what do you think? https://mocloud.io
2015
- 22MJ
Hey HN! We would love to hear your thoughts on our new client-side adaptation framework called Mobify.js. We've worked extremely hard on this product for a year and a half now, and we recently went open source with it. We use it internally to create mobile websites for our customers, and we would love for the rest of the world to use it too. Here is our first blog post on it: http://www.mobify.com/blog/introducing-mobify-js/. Once again, feedback would be awesome - go ahead and be brutally honest :)
2012
- 23BE
2018 · backendlab.app
- 24FS
Hey everyone! I wanted to show you the FSL licensed paywall tool I developed for for indie creators that can gate content from over 12 different platforms. I wanted to create something that didn't favor just Notion, Coda, or one specific tool and as far as I know this is the only option for paywalling platforms such as: - Figma - Clay Templates - Miro The way it works is using NextJS routing and Iframes, and I cam into this knowing there would be those who believe the old wives tales of IFrames being insecure, but you'll be happy to know Happybase doesn't allow users to inject any URL into…
2024 · app.happybase.co
Ranked by how close each launch is in meaning, then by votes. Refine with a description →