u/Intelligent-Joey

https://preview.redd.it/ijfggmmmpo2h1.png?width=2708&format=png&auto=webp&s=078e4eeacb13318d8a49c9360c8876a91db5cc54

Hey r/nocode,

I'm an IT professional who spent the last 8 months building a SaaS on weekends. Wanted to share what actually worked and what wasted my time, in case it helps anyone else here trying to ship a product solo.

What worked:

1. Picking a problem I personally had. I hated every documentation tool I'd used at work (Confluence is bloated, Mintlify is $300/seat). Building for myself meant I didn't need to do customer interviews to know what sucked.
2. Visual-first thinking. I almost built a markdown/git-based tool because that's what "real" docs tools do. Then I remembered why I was building it in the first place: I didn't want to deal with git for writing docs. If you're nocode-adjacent, lean into that. Your instinct that things should be simpler is usually right.
3. Bring-your-own-key for AI features. Instead of marking up OpenAI/Anthropic costs and charging users a premium, I let users plug in their own API key. Way less infra to manage, no margin anxiety, and users actually appreciate the transparency.
4. Shipping ugly first. My landing page looked terrible for the first 3 months. Didn't matter. The handful of early users gave me feedback that shaped the product way more than a pretty marketing site would have.

What wasted my time:

1. Over-engineering the editor. I rebuilt the writing experience three times trying to make it "perfect." Should have shipped v1 and iterated based on actual usage.
2. Pricing paralysis. Spent weeks agonizing over tiers. Just pick something reasonable and adjust later.
3. Comparing myself to funded competitors. They have teams of 30. I'm one person. Different game entirely.

For context, the thing I built is a docs platform called Dokly.co . Not pitching it — just wanted to be upfront about where these lessons came from. Happy to answer questions about the build process, stack choices, or anything else.

https://preview.redd.it/ffkwdy0nuh2h1.png?width=2452&format=png&auto=webp&s=fac1bf90edbe37d0b3efb55f3efda1d3da931724

Hello folks,

I am an IT professional and work in a small company. Maintaining internal as well as public facing docs have always been a pain point for me.

Internally we use Confluence which I hate because it just feels too complicated. For public facing docs I tried looking out for different softwares like Mintlify, Gitbook etc but they all seem too catered to Enterprise clients. We have a small team and do not think paying 300 bucks a seat is worth it for us.

Plus most of them made us create a new repo and maintain it. We are just migrating to git so our systems were not built for it.

That made me think what if I make something for teams like us? I took it as a side project and after months of building it on weekends I am proud to share Dokly with you.

I designed it keeping myself in mind so I am sure it might be missing some features or might not be polished as my competitors but it gets the job done.

I am just looking for honest feedback. I do not care if anyone uses it or not. I am just proud that I was able to build it on my own.

Link : Dokly.co

Hello folks,

I am an IT professional and work in a small company. Maintaining internal as well as public facing docs have always been a pain point for me.

Internally we use Confluence which I hate because it just feels too complicated. For public facing docs I tried looking out for different softwares like Mintlify, Gitbook etc but they all seem too catered to Enterprise clients. We have a small team and do not think paying 300 bucks a seat is worth it for us.

Plus most of them made us create a new repo and maintain it. We are just migrating to git so our systems were not built for it.

That made me think what if I make something for teams like us? I took it as a side project and after months of building it on weekends I am proud to share Dokly with you.

I designed it keeping myself in mind so I am sure it might be missing some features or might not be polished as my competitors but it gets the job done.

I am just looking for honest feedback. I do not care if anyone uses it or not. I am just proud that I was able to build it on my own.

I has multiple apps on Vercel and a month ago I received the following email for each of my 10 projects

https://preview.redd.it/aqn08q4i172h1.png?width=1722&format=png&auto=webp&s=5a378323b6ca5bb3c31ccd650f6fdccf184ae578

All my env variables, secrets, configs gone. No one in the support replied to my multiple emails. Got the following general email after 2 weeks

https://preview.redd.it/t3nwiibr172h1.png?width=3874&format=png&auto=webp&s=85f2f07f9de31a5c049c54f7a052893d44e6368a

For a SaaS that's a make or a break situation. I migrated everything to railway, spending days to get everything deployed and then today

https://preview.redd.it/g3crog8x172h1.png?width=1652&format=png&auto=webp&s=78e2de3923349338b6565d67ede69448ec77a5aa

Whole railway infra is inaccessible including their home page.

Is it time to normalize using AWS and GCP directly? I believe that is more painful initially but much more dependable for the long run.

What do you guys think?

Running a Substack and the images are killing me. Stock-photo sites all look the same in 2026 — and the photos that were good two years ago are everywhere now. I tried generating with Midjourney/DALL-E but every issue ends up looking like it's from a different newsletter.

Curious how others are handling this:

• Do you accept the inconsistency?
• Hire a designer per issue?
• Use a specific tool that locks style?
• Just skip images?

Trying to figure out if it's a real pain or just me.

Hey folks,

Creating assets for blogs has been my pain point and specially creating images that match my brand style, logo and always gives consistent results.

Traditional tools are over complicated and have too many features that I don't want.

I created a react library which let's you create images just using:

<InkTag prompt="books on a wooden shelf" format="webp" />

and you get images matching your brand style ALWAYS.

I started working on this project last month and today I am proud to announce that it is in private beta.

Looking for feedback.

TL;DR: Solo founder, 6 months in, zero paying customers, competing with VC-funded players. Quit or push harder?

6 months into a docs platform. Think Mintlify/GitBook, but without Git, YAML, or deploys. Notion-like editor, live site in 5 mins, auto-generated llms.txt for AI discoverability.

Product works. I use it daily. Handful of free signups. Zero paying customers.

My real problem: no customers = no feedback. I can't tell if:

1. Product is good, I just suck at marketing
2. Product is fine but there's no market for another docs tool
3. I picked the wrong wedge (Mintlify $25M, GitBook $25M — category is real)

I'm an engineer. Never marketed anything. SEO is 6-12 months out and I'm not sure I have that runway emotionally.

What I need:

1. How do you get feedback when you have no users? I'd take 10 brutal critiques over 10 signups.
2. Solo founders who beat well-funded competitors — how did you earn trust when the alternative was a Series B company?

Happy to share the product with anyone curious — just DM me. Roast it. I can take it.

TL;DR : Building SaaS in a market dominated by big players. Have 0 customers. Do not know if I should quit or try harder.

I am 6 months into building a docs platform. You can think of it as Mintlify or Gitbook but for people who don't want to deal with Git, deploys etc.

It has a notion like editor, live site in 5 mins and has auto generated llms.txt for AI discoverability.

The product works but I have 0 paying customers. Just a handful of signups so far.

Here is my problem:

I have no customers that means no feedback which means I do not know if:

• The product is good and I just suck at marketing
• The product is fine but there is no market for it
• I picked the wrong domain with competitors like Mintlify and Gitbook having millions in VC funding

I am a SWE and never marketed anything except for some google ads. Doing SEO but that will take time and I do not know if I can continue till then without having a clear direction.

How do you get feedback when you have no users? I would take 10 brutal feedbacks over 10 signups.

For solo founders who have gone up against well funded companies, how to gain the trust of your users when the alternative is a big well-funded company.

Yesterday I received the email that all my accounts were suspended and now I am not even able to login to vercel. I have created support tickets but haven't heard back.

Team Vercel -- you should atleast give some explanation before just suspending the projects. Now I cannot do anything. My product was just starting to get some traction and now my users cannot access the website.

Worse, I cannot even easily switch providers since I have custom domain settings, configs, .env etc in vercel.

If anyone works at Vercel who can help, please reach out. All I have recieved till now is Ticket numbers and no response.