Built GQList.com because Trello + Discord completely failed our family shopping chaos
I’ve been building https://gqlist.com for a little over a year now.
I’m a father of 5, and our shopping/list system was an absolute disaster.
We tried Trello boards, Discord messages, random notes, screenshots, texts, “don’t let me forget this” conversations... and stuff still constantly disappeared or got overlooked by other text/msg. Kids would forget things they liked, we’d buy duplicates, or someone would remember something after we already left the store. /shrug
What made it worse is we shop at like 3-4 different stores regularly, so remembering WHAT we buy and WHERE we buy it became its own problem. some of the wholesalers have like items you only find there (Costco breakfast sandwiches are a must for me)
So I built GQList.
Originally it was literally just for my family. GQ are our family initials.
At first it was basically just a better shared shopping list, but over time it turned into a system where we store pretty much everything we regularly buy so people can quickly re-add stuff, favorite things they always want, use speech-to-text while walking around the house, etc.
A couple buddies started using it, then some of their friends wanted access too, so I just kept building onto it.
Honestly most of the features in the app now came from people asking for random stuff that would make their own shopping/family flow easier.
Right now it’s just a web app with PWA support, so you can save it to your phone and it works pretty close to an app.
Still working through some weird issues too:
Some store Wi-Fi networks randomly block it
Recently got BJs working again
Still trying to figure out why Publix Wi-Fi hates it
There’s a free tier for people who only need a small list here and there. I do have paid plans because server costs + AI dictation stuff adds up, but honestly this wasn’t some “get rich” startup idea.
I mostly kept working on it because I saw people around us actually using it consistently and figured maybe other families might find it useful too.
Would genuinely love feedback or feature ideas from people who deal with family shopping chaos or trying to coordinate across multiple people/stores.