I Built a Subscription Tracker After Getting Blindsided by 3 Auto-Renewals - Here's What I Learned

Miloš Čech — Thu, 28 May 2026 07:31:40 +0000

Running a small operation means you're signing up for tools constantly. A new API service here, a design tool there, a project management platform someone on the team wanted to try.
Nobody keeps track. Until they do.
The Problem I Was Trying to Solve
Last year I got hit by three auto-renewals in one month for tools I'd either forgotten about or stopped using. None of them were huge individually but together they were real money — and more frustrating than the cost was the fact that I simply hadn't seen them coming.
I looked for a simple subscription tracker. What I found was:

Enterprise tools like Zylo and Torii — built for IT departments managing hundreds of licenses, priced accordingly
Spreadsheet templates — work for a week, go stale within a month
Tools requiring bank connections — I wasn't comfortable giving card access to something managing my recurring costs

So I built CostLoop.
What I Built
CostLoop is a lightweight subscription tracker for small teams and solopreneurs. The core features:

Manual entry (no bank connection — intentional design decision)
Renewal reminders sent to your email before each charge
Cancellation link storage — you save it once, find it instantly
Health score that flags unused tools, duplicate services, and trials about to convert
Invoice storage per subscription
Total monthly and annual spend in one dashboard

What I Learned From Early Users

The cancellation link feature won.
I thought the health score would be the standout feature. It wasn't. The feature that got the strongest reactions was storing the cancellation link. People lose these constantly. When they finally decide to cancel something, the page is buried six menus deep and they spend 20 minutes hunting for it.
Privacy matters more than convenience for this use case.
Every time I mentioned adding bank sync as a future feature I got pushback. People don't want to hand over financial credentials to manage subscriptions. Manual entry isn't a limitation — for this audience it's a feature.
The gap in the market is real.
Nobody is building for the 2–10 person team or solo founder in this space. The enterprise tools are genuinely excellent at what they do. But if you're a freelancer or a small startup, they're total overkill. That gap is where CostLoop lives.
The Technical Side

Built with privacy-first principles — no bank connections, no financial data stored, GDPR compliant. Hosted on Cloudflare with full SSL, HSTS, and security headers. Achieved 100/100 on PageSpeed and A+ on SSL Labs across all four servers.

Where It's At Now
Still early. Growing steadily. Free plan is genuinely free — not a 14-day trial.
If you're building something in this space or have thoughts on the approach, I'd love to hear them in the comments.

costloop.app

DEV Community: Miloš Čech

I Built a Subscription Tracker After Getting Blindsided by 3 Auto-Renewals - Here's What I Learned