I built 100+ browser tools as a side project — here’s what I learned

Jacob — Wed, 23 Sep 2026 21:36:45 +0000

I’ve been working on a side project called FroggoTools.

It started pretty simply.

I use small online tools all the time — calculators, converters, date utilities, generators, formatting tools, etc.

And I kept having the same experience:

I search for something simple, open a website, and before I can actually use the tool I have to deal with cookie banners, popups, slow pages, unnecessary navigation or a huge wall of text.

So I thought:

Why not just build my own toolbox?

The idea

FroggoTools is basically a collection of small browser-based utilities.

The rules I try to follow are simple:

no account required
open the tool and use it immediately
keep the UI simple
make it work well on mobile
process things directly in the browser whenever possible
don't make a simple task feel complicated

The project has now grown to more than 100 pages/tools and it has become a much more interesting project than I expected.

Client-side whenever it makes sense

One of the main ideas behind the project is that a lot of small utilities simply don't need a backend.

If I'm calculating the difference between two dates, converting a value or generating random data, there is often no reason to send the input to a server.

So I try to keep those operations completely client-side.

That gives me two nice benefits:

Speed

There is no unnecessary API request.

And:

Privacy

Data doesn't need to leave the user's browser for many of the tools.

Obviously not every future tool will necessarily work this way, but it's the default approach I prefer.

Building one tool is easy. Building 100 consistent tools isn't.

This was probably the biggest thing I underestimated.

Building a percentage calculator is easy.

Building calculators, converters, date tools, generators and developer utilities while making all of them feel like they belong to the same product is much harder.

You suddenly have to think about things like:

consistent inputs
validation
result formatting
copy buttons
mobile layouts
accessibility
empty states
error handling
navigation
discoverability

A small UX decision becomes important because you'll repeat it across dozens of tools.

I've ended up spending quite a lot of time on the shared experience instead of just adding more tools.

SEO for a toolbox is also interesting

Another thing I'm learning is how search engines treat a completely new domain with many utility pages.

Technically the site is in good shape.

My latest crawl covers around 110 HTML pages with no broken pages, no orphan pages and no duplicate-content issues.

But technical SEO alone obviously doesn't mean Google suddenly puts a new domain on page one.

Some tools are already getting search impressions, while others are barely visible.

For example, Google has started testing some of my date and calculator pages for long-tail searches even though the domain is still very new.

That has made me rethink the strategy a little.

Instead of blindly adding hundreds of tools, I'm starting to focus more on improving the tools that already show some search demand.

Distribution is harder than building

This is probably the biggest lesson so far.

As a developer, building another feature always feels productive.

Marketing doesn't.

It's much easier to spend an evening adding three more tools than trying to figure out:

where to share the project
how to earn backlinks
which communities actually care
which tools people genuinely want
what is worth improving

But a technically good project that nobody knows about is still a project nobody uses.

So I'm trying to spend more time on distribution now instead of only writing code.

What's next

Right now I'm focusing on:

improving the tools that already get search impressions
adding useful tools instead of adding pages just for the sake of page count
better internal discovery between related tools
getting feedback from actual users
learning more about SEO and distribution

The project is still early and I'm changing things constantly.

If you want to take a look, it's here:

https://froggotools.com

I'd genuinely be interested in feedback from other developers.

Especially:

What small browser tool do you keep Googling because you still haven't found one you really like?