DEV Community: Mayank Joshi

I Built a SaaS From Scratch and Somehow Got 350+ Users in 90 Days

Mayank Joshi — Sun, 30 Aug 2026 12:07:52 +0000

90 days ago, PostDrop had zero users.

Today, more than 350 people have used it.

350 isn't a huge number compared to the massive SaaS companies we see every day, but for me, it represents something much more meaningful: 350+ people discovered something I built and decided it was useful enough to use.

Why I Built PostDrop

PostDrop started with a simple problem. I noticed how unnecessarily complicated it can be to add a form backend to a website. You can build a beautiful website with HTML, React, Next.js, or any other frontend stack, but the moment you need to handle a contact form, you suddenly need backend logic, email delivery, spam protection, domain validation, and infrastructure.

I wanted to make that simpler.

So I built PostDrop, a headless form backend that lets developers handle website form submissions without building the backend themselves.

The first version was small. I built the backend, dashboard, form integration, spam protection and everything else I needed to get the product working. At that point, I was mostly focused on code.

Then I Launched It

Nobody knew it existed.

That's when I realized that building a product and getting people to use it are two completely different things.

I started working on SEO and documentation, writing content, sharing the product with developer communities, experimenting with Product Hunt and Indie Hackers, and reaching out to people directly.

A lot of it didn't work.

Some posts got almost no attention. Messages went unanswered. There were days when I would check the analytics and see almost no movement.

Honestly, that was harder than debugging code.

When your code breaks, you can usually find the problem. When nobody uses your product, you don't always know why.

Is the product not useful? Is the website unclear? Am I reaching the wrong people? Is the problem too small?

You just have to keep experimenting.

## Building a SaaS Is More Than Writing Code

There were technical problems too. Email delivery, deployment, DNS, authentication, payments and all the other things that become your responsibility when you're running a real SaaS. Things that seem simple from the outside can take hours to get right.

But slowly, people started using it.

The first few users felt incredibly different from simply seeing the product work locally. These were people I didn't know, finding something I had built and trusting it enough to use it.

Then came 50 users , then 100 , eventually 350+ users .

The biggest lesson I've learned isn't really about getting users. It's that building a SaaS teaches you much more than programming. You learn that users don't care how elegant your code is. They care whether the product solves their problem.

You learn that marketing isn't something you do after building. Distribution is part of building.

And you learn to keep working even when nobody is paying attention.

## What's Next?

I'm still far from where I want PostDrop to be. There are plenty of things I want to improve, and I know the next 350 users will probably be harder to get than the first 350.

But that's what makes it exciting.

90 days ago, PostDrop was just an idea with zero users.

Today, 350+ people have used it.

And now I'm curious to see what happens with the next 350.

If you're building something right now and you're stuck at zero users, don't assume that zero means you're failing.

Every product starts there.

Build it. Put it in front of people. Listen. Improve. Repeat.

That's what I'm doing with PostDrop, and this is only the beginning.

From a Simple Contact Form to Building My Own SaaS: The Story Behind PostDrop

Mayank Joshi — Thu, 30 Jul 2026 13:28:19 +0000

Every developer has that one project that starts as a small idea and slowly turns into something much bigger.

For me, that project became PostDrop.

I'm currently a Computer Science student, and over the past year I've built numerous web projects. One problem kept appearing again and again: contact forms.

Creating the frontend was always easy.

Making the form actually send emails wasn't.

For a simple portfolio or landing page, setting up a complete backend just to receive a few contact form submissions felt unnecessary. Many developers either learned PHP, created a small Express server, or relied on services that required SDKs, complicated configuration, or pricing that didn't fit small projects.

That made me wonder:

Why should receiving a form submission require so much setup?

That question eventually led me to build PostDrop.

The Idea

The goal was simple.

I wanted developers to be able to build a contact form using plain HTML, React, Next.js, or any frontend framework and start receiving submissions in their inbox without writing backend code.

The experience should be straightforward:

Create a project
Copy a Public ID
Add it to the form
Start receiving emails

No backend ,No SMTP configuration and No server deployment.

Building the Backend

As the project grew, I realized there were many challenges hidden behind what looked like a simple product.

Some of them included:

Authentication
Secure project management
Email delivery
Spam protection
Rate limiting
Background job processing
Database design
Dashboard analytics

Every new feature introduced another engineering problem to solve.

Things I Learned

Building a SaaS taught me far more than building tutorial projects.

I learned about:

Designing REST APIs
Authentication with JWT
MongoDB schema design
Background workers and queues
Redis caching
Email delivery systems
Deployment
Logging and debugging
User experience
SEO
Technical writing
Product marketing

One of the biggest surprises wasn't writing code.

It was realizing that building a product is only half the job.

Getting people to discover it is just as important.

That pushed me into creating documentation, recording YouTube tutorials, writing blogs, improving SEO, and learning how developers actually search for solutions.

The Biggest Challenge

The hardest part wasn't implementing a feature.

It was polishing the product.

Handling edge cases.

Improving performance.

Making error messages understandable.

Building something that other developers could actually trust.

Those details often took more time than the initial implementation.

Why I'm Writing This

I'm documenting this journey because I believe building in public helps everyone.

If you're a student thinking about building your own SaaS, my advice is simple:

Start with a problem you've personally experienced.

Solve it well.

Ship it.

Improve it based on feedback.

Repeat.

You don't need to build the next billion-dollar company to learn an incredible amount.

What's Next?

I'm continuing to improve PostDrop with better developer experience, more integrations, and additional features while learning more about building software products.

If you're interested in backend development, SaaS, APIs, or modern web development, I'll be sharing more tutorials and lessons from this journey.

Thanks for reading!

Resources

🌐 Website: https://postdrop.online

📖 Documentation: https://postdrop.online/docs

🎥 HTML Tutorial: https://youtu.be/6P1NMM1Oalc?si=PDwi_6yvIb5QYa1R

💼 Connect with me on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mayank-joshi-7b0634317/