I Grew My Free Tool Site from 50 to 1,000+ Tools ??Here's What Actually Changed

江僖 — Wed, 08 Jul 2026 04:48:24 +0000

I Grew My Free Tool Site from 50 to 1,000+ Tools ??Here's What Actually Changed

Two weeks ago, korelyy.com had 50 tools.

Today it has over 1,000.

Here's what I learned scaling a free tool aggregator from 50 to 1,000+ without a team, a budget, or a marketing department.

Why 1,000 tools?

After launching with 50 self-built client-side tools (PDF, image compression, JSON formatting, etc.), something unexpected happened: people started asking for more.

Not more features on existing tools. More categories. "Do you have tools for X?" "What about Y?" "Is there a Z alternative?"

The pattern was clear ??users don't want five perfect tools. They want one place that covers everything they need, even imperfectly.

So I built an aggregator layer: curated external tool recommendations alongside the original 50 self-built tools, organized by category, with honest notes on what each one does well and where it falls short.

What changed from 50 to 1,000

The curation problem is harder than the technical problem

Adding 950 more tools took far more judgment than code. Each external tool needed:

A real description (not scraped from the tool's homepage)
Honest pros/cons ??what it's good for, what it's not
A link that actually works
Categorization that makes sense

I wrote descriptions for all of them myself. No AI-generated lists, no scraped content.

Client-side tools stay client-side

The original 50 tools all run in-browser. Files never leave your device. This constraint shaped everything: the architecture, the performance model, the privacy story.

The external recommendations are links out ??but they're labeled clearly. No confusion about what runs locally vs. what requires uploading to a third party.

Six languages from day one

The site supports English, Simplified Chinese, Spanish, Hindi, French, and Arabic. Not because I planned a localization strategy ??because I needed it personally. Now 40% of traffic comes from non-English speakers.

The honest numbers after 2 weeks

1,000+ tools across 50+ categories
6 languages with consistent coverage
50 original client-side tools (PDF, image, text, code, dev utilities ??all browser-based, zero uploads)
No signup required for any built-in tool
No ads interrupting built-in tool usage
External links clearly labeled ??you always know when you're leaving korelyy.com

What I'm not proud of (yet)

The external tool descriptions could be deeper. The category taxonomy will probably change. Some tools will inevitably break or change over time ??maintaining a live aggregator is an ongoing commitment, not a one-time launch.

But the core promise holds: one place to find the right tool, with honest context, no friction.

Try it

?? https://korelyy.com

Whether you need one specific utility or want to discover something new ??the built-in tools run locally, the recommendations are human-curated.

Questions about the build, the curation process, or running a solo tool site? Drop them below.

I Built 19 Free Tools and Deployed to 6 Languages ??Here's What I Learned

江僖 — Wed, 01 Jul 2026 15:18:06 +0000

I still remember the moment I decided to build Korelyy.

Not because I had a grand business plan. Not because I did extensive market research.

But because I was frustrated.

I'm a developer. I write code every day. And every time I needed a simple tool ??compress a PDF, convert an image, format some JSON ??I had to:

Google for a tool
Upload my file to some random website
Wait for ads to load
Worry about privacy
Repeat for the next tool

So I built Korelyy. 19 tools. No signup. No ads. No tracking.

The Numbers

19 tools (PDF, Image, Text, Code, Math, Color, Network)
6 languages (EN, ZH, ES, HI, FR, AR)
0 registrations required
100% free (and always will be)

What I Learned

1. Next.js i18n is powerful (but tricky)

Next.js has built-in i18n support. But deploying to Cloudflare Pages? That's where it gets interesting.

You need to:

Use next export for static export
Configure trailingSlash: true (Cloudflare Pages doesn't auto-handle trailing slashes)
Set up wrangler.toml correctly

2. Cloudflare Pages is fast (but has limits)

??Free tier: generous (500 builds/month)
??Global CDN: built-in
??Function timeout: 10ms (for free tier)
??No Node.js runtime (you're in Cloudflare Workers environment)

3. SEO is hard when you're a tools site

Tools sites are hard to rank. Why? Because:

Low time-on-page (users get what they need and leave)
Few backlinks (who links to a PDF compressor?)
High competition (smallpdf, ilovepdf, etc.)

My solution: Build tools that are actually useful, and write blog posts that teach.

The Tech Stack

Frontend: Next.js 14 + TypeScript
Styling: Tailwind CSS
Deployment: Cloudflare Pages
Analytics: Google Analytics 4
Search: Google Search Console

Try it out

?? https://korelyy.com

No signup. No ads. Just tools that work.

I'd love to hear your feedback! What tools should I add next?

DEV Community: 江僖

I Grew My Free Tool Site from 50 to 1,000+ Tools ??Here's What Actually Changed

I Grew My Free Tool Site from 50 to 1,000+ Tools ??Here's What Actually Changed

Why 1,000 tools?

What changed from 50 to 1,000

The honest numbers after 2 weeks

What I'm not proud of (yet)

Try it

I Built 19 Free Tools and Deployed to 6 Languages ??Here's What I Learned

The Numbers

What I Learned

1. Next.js i18n is powerful (but tricky)

2. Cloudflare Pages is fast (but has limits)

3. SEO is hard when you're a tools site

The Tech Stack

Try it out