nowfound

Commerce · alternatives · 2026

SS

24 alternatives to Social Shopping

Hey there HNers, First of all, apologies for the shameless "self-promotion" - just felt like sharing :-) I've just launched a very simple project on the e-commerce front and although I'm currently involved in a few "bigger and bolder" projects, decided to give this a go. It's a DIY e-commerce tool that allows people to setup stores on Facebook, for free. We started this project as a weekend hackathon to help a friend bring her products online and decided to turn it into a product, so there's still definitely a lot to be done. Apart from showing off, this thread is here to start a discussion…

Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes. Social Shopping launched in 2011; newer entries below may have overtaken it.

  1. 1IM

    I had this idea rolling around in my head for the last couple of years, and I finally decided to build the damned thing just to get idea relief. The backend is a typical LAMP stack with the Symfony2 framework backing the P. Varnish sits in front of all the Chef managed Linode boxes. The site will work without Javascript (up until the checkout), and the style degrades really nicely depending on your viewport (try it out by resizing your browser). I'm open to all comments and critiques, so let me hear them. And if you are into graphic t-shirts, here is a code for a Hacker News 20% discount:…

    2012 · getnifty.com · its alternatives →

  2. 2

    Helping small businesses sell online

    2020 · about.fb.com · its alternatives →

  3. 3
    Overlead▲146

    Here's the problem: I launched two products. I wrote blog posts. I posted on X, built in public. I tried running ads. And you know what actually got me customers? Replying to someone on Reddit who asked, "What's the best tool for this?" One reply. Three signups. I felt like an idiot for not doing it sooner. But here's the issue: I don't have time to refresh Reddit all day looking for these posts. I have products to build. Bugs to fix. Emails to answer. Life to live. So I built Overlead to do the searching for me. Overlead scans Reddit, Quora, and Hacker News (and many more to come) for…

    Feb 2026 · overlead.co · its alternatives →

  4. 4

    Create and share stores to earn money online

    2016 · its alternatives →

  5. 5

    Hi HN! I’m working on Agora, an AI search engine for e-commerce products. Excited to launch the Agora API that helps other developers embed shopping experiences into their app. We provide endpoints to search, purchase, and track products sold on 25,000 different Shopify and WooCommerce stores. Early customers are building social shopping apps, marketplaces, and AI shopping assistants. I’d love your feedback!

    2025 · developer.searchagora.com · its alternatives →

  6. 6IM

    smrt.shopping - a smart shopping list that automatically categorizes things you add by the area they'll be in the store. It saves all data in localstorage. No signup needed. Nothing to install. Just go to the URL and use it. I decided at the start of the year I was going to build one barebones MVP per month, then move on to the next thing. I built this in January (over a few evenings) and then iterated a little during February, in between working on the second MVP. I have a bunch of ideas about improvements to make, but I'm trying to limit myself to the brief - simplest MVP, push it out…

    2025 · smrt.shopping · its alternatives →

  7. 7

    Selling on social media made quick, easy and insightful

    2014 · its alternatives →

  8. 8TF

    We just released www.hallways.me Hallways (Marketplace) wants to do for shops what Tumblr did for blogs - make it (kickass) easy to open up a shop and start selling on a social marketplace. We're slowly getting the shops onboard but we want to know where and how we can improve! Please send feedback! Thanks you guys rock

    2011 · its alternatives →

  9. 9IM

    Hey everyone! I wanted to share a tool I built to help you quickly find potential customers across social media for your product. It's a really simple concept: you simply paste in your landing page URL, and it shows you highly relevant posts across Reddit (Working to integrate few more) from people who likely need your product or service. For example, if you have a minimal to-do list app, it will show you posts like "Anyone know of a minimal to-do list app?" or "Really starting to dislike how complex Notion is." These posts are from the last 48 hours, updated in real-time, and uniquely…

    2024 · its alternatives →

  10. 10

    Excited to share something I've been building recently called CandySearch. I made it to solve a personal pain with a SaaS product I built, which was that we were always monitoring Reddit and Twitter to see if anyone had mentioned keywords indicating they were looking for us. Before, we had to go manually respond to posts, often missing good mention opportunities. Would love for HN folks to try it and let me know what you think!

    2025 · candysearch.vercel.app · its alternatives →

  11. 11MA

    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 →

  12. 12MW

    Hey all, just wanted to invite you to take a spin on this project I've been working on recently. To give you a bit of context, I'm a Pinterest/Tumblr/Svpply user but found that it's all still sub-optimal. The experience of these, I guess 'social' things, is still always about "me, me, me": Pin things I like, post items I like, I want this and that etc. My point is, in my experience, this got boring relatively quickly. Plus, when I log in to Pinterest for example, it's this wall of sound of relatively (albeit nice looking) yet random things. Anyways, a few weeks back, my roommate happened to…

    2012 · letsflair.com, · its alternatives →

  13. 13

    Shop Better, Together

    2015 · its alternatives →

  14. 14

    Finally, an alternative to Product Hunt :)

    2016 · its alternatives →

  15. 15

    Easy Links to Share, Promote, Sell, & Track.

    2018 · flyer.social · its alternatives →

  16. 16

    Hi HN, I’ve been building a small social network where the feed is always chronological — newest posts come first, always. It’s not 100% algorithm-free (there’s still basic filtering to avoid spam or abuse), but the core idea is that every user has a real chance to be seen, even with zero followers. It’s lightweight, works well on mobile, and supports both posts and comments. Most of the content is currently in Portuguese, since it started with a Brazilian audience, but the interface is mostly language-neutral. I’d love any feedback on the concept, UX, performance, or anything else. Thanks!

    2025 · qqpost.netlify.app · its alternatives →

  17. 17

    Free Helpful Resources for Ecommerce Owners.

    2023 · facebook.com · its alternatives →

  18. 18MS

    linkrdr (www.linkrdr.com), a personal link aggregator, was directly inspired by http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3555923 I read while browsing on HN. It's still a bit rough, but the concept is an interesting one and people have already shown interest. Let me know what you think. Also, if anyone knows a good UX designer, email me :)

    2012 · its alternatives →

  19. 19FC

    Hi Everyone, We've been working on a new way to stop "Zombie shopping" by building a social-commerce platform where anyone can create a personalized product via "Remixing" aka forking, copyrighted art & design. http://JuicyCanvas.com/Go I would love your thoughts. Thanks, Deb | co-founder

    2013 · its alternatives →

  20. 20MW

    this project started at a local hackathon and I spent another 4 or 5 weekends polishing it up. My girlfriend, who I brought along to the event, said she was getting 'tired of her friends asking her what she will be wearing tonight or the brand of the foundation she is using right now'. A digital wardrobe, for the lack of better words. It was a fun project and some of the early adopters are her friends. And since this site is more female oriented, here's my manly profile: http://re.mu/alvin I highly recommend bringing your significant other to a hack event.

    2012 · re.mu · its alternatives →

  21. 21IM

    orignally shared this on startup school... i thought id' share it here. i'm using a `nocode communication tool` (a web-based interface... a single browser tab!) for all of these things: 1. landing page — the landing page is the product and i wanted for folks to feel "transported" right into the app without having to walk through a shitty b2b marketing-style content. this is akin to my experience back in the `BBS` days of the mid-90's where you were immediately into the app, community, and tool. no terms of service, no privacy policy. just pure, immediate value. 2. building community — we…

    2021 · its alternatives →

  22. 22MP

    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 →

  23. 23AM

    TLDR: I built a "quick and dirty " private social network for my friends, posted on Reddit and HN, got some interest so now have built it properly along with my brother. site link: https://intimost.com/login/ demo creds: [email protected] Demo123! Full version: I needed a social network where I can just send updates and nothing else. So I built it, my friends liked and now I have built it "for the world". Everything is private by default. - Text-only updates - No likes. Only views to acknowledge a post - [in development] Comments are private between the poster and…

    Oct 2025 · its alternatives →

  24. 24

    Create your own marketplace for FREE!

    2016 · sellacious.com · 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 →