Alternatives
Products that do what Toybox – A Laravel TALL starter kit for solopreneurs does
Hey peeps! Here's a project I've been working on for the last two months. It initially started as trying to be a simplified boilerplate for Laravel, but I think it's gone a bit beyond that. With recent tooling releases in the Laravel ecosystem, there's a ton of exciting tools to work with, but it's either annoying to set it all up every time, or it's difficult to try and gather it all up for every piece you'll need for your SaaS. To that end, Toybox attempts to collate what is in my opinion the best of modern Laravel, and while being simple to start, run and launch with. This is how I also…
- 1MN
Hi guys, I've created an open source web builder framework (https://grapesjs.com) years ago, which I'm still maintaining, and now I'm excited to publish a side project based on it, Grapedrop (https://grapedrop.com). It's a simple web page builder which allows you to design and publish your web pages very quickly. The project is still in beta with a lot of stuff to improve but I'd really like to share it and hear what people think about it and maybe also get some constructive feedback.
2018
- 2SC
Have been working on this for months, hope you guys will like it. Feel free to share your own side project in the comments.
2012 · sideprojects.com
- 3
- 4IB
Last week my 9 year old son walked up to me and asked "Would your rather shit your pants in public or drink spoiled milk?", and I was intrigued. Turns out he did not make this up himself, but got the dilemma from a card game. A couple of nights ago I decided to digitize some of these cards and create a simple open source app for it. Just a little fun project; no monetization or bigger goal, really. Link: https://dilemma.wtf Tech stack: - Back-end: Laravel - Front-end: Plain HTML and Tailwind with a sprinkle of Alpine.js - Deployment: Laravel Forge, linked to a Hetzner VPS.…
2024 · dilemma.wtf
- 5RA
I wanted to have a framework that would let me build web apps faster than ever before. I didn’t care if it was a little hacky or didn’t use best practices — I wanted to be able to get a multi-user application out the door in hours instead of months. I researched the CMS space for months before deciding to build something from scratch. My goal was to be 90% done building a web app once I had the static HTML and CSS finished. I’m not a big fan of building out API endpoints over and over again for every new app, fiddling with a database, or doing lots of config. What I ended up with was a…
2020
- 6IB
Hi HN, After watching a lot of Show HN's here, it's finally my turn to show something. This is the first real project I have shipped, so it is extra special to me. For those who will inevitably ask why I made yet another mockup editor I covered it on our blog (http://blog.mocktailsapp.in/why-build-yet-another-mockup-editor-tm). Not all the features mentioned in that post have been implemented yet. As such Mocktails is pre-beta software and very minimal. It does not even have user accounts or any actual server side component at all for that matter (yet)! Our intention is to build Mocktails…
2012
- 7SL
So a while ago I was thinking it would be neat to build a site that had the most absolute utility. The idea I came up with was a site to store those little protips that are super useful, if you know them ahead of time. I hired a guy to work on it with me, and ClueDB was born: http://cluedb.com/ Please give it a whirl (it uses Twitter auth as login but doesn't tweet anything) and tell me what you think! (Various trivia: My first try at a project coded by someone else and "product managed" by me. Runs on Flask + MongoDB. Also, this is totally unrelated to my startup.)
2011
- 8SH
website: dashboard.io I've been thinking about this idea for a while now and finally got around to building the prototype this weekend. The idea is that you'd drop my JS snippet on your site and I'd start building the "AARRR" table (which I'm actually building this week but imagine slide 4: http://www.slideshare.net/dmc500hats/startup-metrics-for-pirates-long-version). Basically, the system will build that table out for you and then show you how your startup stacks up against others in your space. To be clear, I'll never share your data with anyone. So, if you're a "hosting" company, I'd…
2011
- 9ND
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
- 10LF
Hi HN, I built smollaunch.com, a lightweight launch platform for developers who want to share projects without the noise, voting games, or marketing theatrics of bigger launch sites. I’ve shipped a lot of small tools and noticed that most launch platforms are built around growth-hacking rather than genuine discovery. Many devs just want a clean place to publish something they built and get feedback from peers who care about the craft. So I made a simpler version of that. What it does: - Post your project with a short description and link - Get a clean, minimal launch page and profile - Other…
Dec 2025 · smollaunch.com
- 11MI
As you can tell, it's heavily influenced by Mark Bao's threewords.me. The concept is simple, upload three pics and let your friends vote on them. In fact, I think I may have ripped the concept off a post about threewords.me. Anyways... Basically, I just wanted to build something stripped down to a core functionality and a little different from my usual projects. I've spent a lot of time polishing the flow and trying to make sharing an inherent part of the app. It's built on Ruby/Padrino/Sinatra, Postgres and uses S3 for image hosting. This is actually my first Ruby project coming from a pure…
2011
- 12OS
Kshitij and Rahul here. We're building Playground, an open-source sandbox that lets your non-technical teams prototype directly on production codebases, without bugging you (developers) to spin up and maintain another repo. The repo is here: https://github.com/B1u3B01t/design-playground. We've been working together for six years. Last year we built an AI design agent because we thought designers were the biggest bottleneck. But we were wrong. After talking to teams, we realised designers, PMs, founders and even sales people all wanted to quickly change and explore flows…
Jul 2026
- 13OS
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
- 14IM
Hey HN, I'm Aydin, a 13-year-old developer and indie maker looking to improve the world with my small startups. Recently, I built 2 micro SaaS projects. I spent days & weeks coding features, always telling myself that after coding one more feature I was for sure to get traction. This never happened. The reason: I never launched. With IndieReq, you can launch your startup fast and get real user feedback so you know exactly what features to ship and improve. All you have to do is sign up for free, create a feedback board, and share the public link with your users. It's that easy! If you've…
2025 · indiereq.com
- 15IF
So, after many years of kicking about little apps and not putting the full effort in, I decided to bite the bullet and get on with it. Very much inspired by patio11 and Bingo Card Creator, I present Griddol (http://www.griddol.com) a tool to create and play word searches. Intended mainly for teachers, but encouraging those who like a word search too. This been churning around in my head for over a year in various forms, and I used the concept to help learn CoffeeScript, CouchDB and node.js, so even if the product itself is a failure, the learning process has been valuable. I'll be the first…
2011
- 16ML
I made a post a few days ago asking if any software companies/start ups needed technical video tutorial writers and I had a few very interested and serious respondents email me. I've been looking for something to do with this domain hence I give myself a Christmas present.
2013 · helpknow.com
- 17IM
After I posted about https://cosme.dev/ask-docs on Reddit I received some messages asking me how If I was going to make the code open source or if I could show them how I did it. So I decided to create this repo so you can take a look at the code and maybe apply the same techniques on your own apps. It's made using only PHP as language so I think is pretty different since most stuff out there is made using python or javascript. It uses the OpenAI API and Redis as a vector database.
2023 · github.com
- 18IM
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
- 19HF
I've been having a blast making multiple mini apps that run in the browser. I've been trying to see how far I can go without having a backend and relying on other services. I wrote these for fun and wanted to know what folks think.
Jun 2026 · joeheyming.github.io
- 20IM
I build a lot of small products myself and I realized how many indie founders want an exit that doesn’t involve platforms charging large commissions or requiring big revenue numbers. Sometimes a project makes $50/month, sometimes $500, sometimes $0 but has a great codebase, and that’s enough value for someone else. So I built buy-startups.com, a very simple, privacy-friendly marketplace for buying and selling small online startups. It’s not fancy. There’s no commission, no listing fee, no hidden funnel. Just a straightforward way for indie devs and bootstrappers to list a project and…
Dec 2025 · buy-startups.com
- 21SK
Hey HN! Over the past decade or so, every side project and startup I've built has used more or less the same framework: - a django backend - a react spa frontend - a separate seo-optimized static marketing site (I used to use jekyll, but now I use astro) As many of you can probably relate, I've always started from scratch or grabbed code from old private repos. Half the time this resulted in burning out before I started working on the main project. I decided to take a break and build a truly solid foundation for the things I use in nearly every project. Hopefully some of you find it as…
2024 · djangoreactkit.com
- 22MF
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
- 23IM
Hey friends! I’d like to introduce my latest product, Flashpost, a post scheduling tool for Reddit. The free tier includes 5 free posts per month so you can give the product a try. It is my first paid product as I try to make it as a solo indie dev! The goal is to offer a simple tool for creators to promote their projects on Reddit without breaking the bank for a single distribution channel. Now for the behind the scenes details. ## The Backstory When I launched my first project TechStackLeads on Reddit, the response was remarkable. My post received 700k impressions, resulting in 20k…
2023 · flashpost.stevennatera.com
- 24AF
As a product manager I've used different feedback tools and almost never liked the design and experience of the widget. And pricing of some existing tools is just way too high, at least for indie makers or small businesses ($35 for 100 responses...). That's why I've launched Freddy Feedback (today!). You can find it on www.freddyfeedback.com. Curious to hear your feedback (very meta ;-)).
2020
Ranked by how close each launch is in meaning, then by votes. Refine with a description →