Yesterday I wanted to compress an image.
Not edit it with AI.
Not enhance it.
Not remove the background.
Just… compress it.
Five minutes later, I had:
- Accepted a cookie banner
- Closed two pop-ups
- Rejected browser notifications
- Been asked to create an account
- Seen a “Start your free trial” button
- Uploaded my file to a server I know nothing about
For a task that should have taken 10 seconds!
Somewhere along the way, we stopped building websites that simply solved problems.
Everything became an acquisition funnel.
Everything became another SaaS.
Everything wanted my email before proving its value.
I don’t think the web was supposed to work like this.
So instead of building another subscription product, I decided to build something much simpler.
A different philosophy
PixMidas isn’t trying to become the next unicorn.
It’s an attempt to make the web feel useful again.
The idea is simple:
- Open the website.
- Use the tool.
- Close the tab.
- Move on with your day.
No account.
No subscription.
No unnecessary complexity.
No waiting!
For almost every tool, your files never leave your device because everything runs directly inside the browser using client-side JavaScript, Canvas APIs, WebAssembly, and libraries like pdf-lib. There is no backend processing, no database storing your files, and no hidden upload happening in the background.
Building software that disappears
The biggest lesson from building more than 30 browser tools wasn’t technical.
It was philosophical.
Good software shouldn’t demand attention.
It shouldn’t make users learn a new workflow.
It shouldn’t try to keep people inside your product for as long as possible.
Sometimes the best software is the software you forget you even used.
Open. Use. Done!
The hardest part isn’t building.
Ironically, building the tools wasn’t the difficult part.
Distribution is.
Google is already dominated by huge companies with massive SEO budgets. Every search for “compress image” or “merge PDF” is incredibly competitive, regardless of whether your product is better.
That’s the challenge I’m trying to solve now.
I’d love your opinion.
As developers, we’ve all watched the web become increasingly complex over the last decade.
Do you think we’ve over-engineered simple tasks?
And if you launched a completely free product today, with a low marketing budget, how would you get your first 10,000 users?
I’d genuinely love to hear your thoughts.
⸻
PixMidas: https://www.pixmidas.com
Top comments (3)
On the distribution question, which is the real one here: I'd stop trying to beat the SEO giants on "compress image" head-on and instead win a hundred tiny, boring queries they don't bother with. "Compress image to under 200kb", "merge PDF without upload", "resize png for favicon", the long-tail stuff with clear intent and low competition. Your no-upload angle is actually a ranking asset too, since "no upload" and "offline" are things people search for specifically once they've been burned. One page per tool, each nailing one exact phrase, tends to compound faster than one homepage fighting for the big term. The privacy story is genuinely your wedge, so I'd lead with it everywhere, not bury it.
I support this - the web really has become increasingly more complex. Gone are the days were you could quickly open a site, perform the action and get your output. Everything is overly-optimized for those paid signups now I guess.
Nothing wrong with that, but I miss those niche useful tools that just did the thing and you could move on with your day.
Nice to see you building these useful tools - it's one way to get back at them!
My thoughts?
I'm honestly suspicious... why on earth are there suddenly so many posts around about 'resize tools', 'pdf tools', 'compress image tools'? A real rash of them over the past few months