Four days ago I started a 30-day challenge: ship as many useful tools as possible on a single $5 VPS, using Python + Flask + SQLite + systemd. No Docker, no Kubernetes, no cloud functions.
Today the counter is at 41 tools across 9 categories, all live at foxyyy.com.
What I shipped
Crypto & Trading (the starting point):
- Cross-exchange funding rate scanner (20 exchanges, ~6,800 perps)
- Autonomous signal alerts bot
- Exchange uptime tracker
- Historical dataset (2.58M rows, CC BY 4.0)
Developer Tools (the largest category):
- Regex Tester — live matching with capture groups
- JSON Formatter — validate + pretty-print + minify
- Cron Explainer — paste a cron expression, get English
- Base64/JWT Decoder — client-side, nothing sent to server
- UUID Generator, Timestamp Converter, HTTP Status Codes
- Markdown to PDF — paste markdown, download styled A4 PDF
- Screenshot API — capture any webpage as PNG
- cronviz — OSS CLI for cron/systemd observability
French Business Tools:
- Invoice PDF Generator — auto-entrepreneur compliant
- Mentions Légales — French legal notice generator
- TVA Calculator — all 4 French VAT rates
- Salary Net/Brut — cadre/non-cadre converter
- Auto-Entrepreneur Simulator — URSSAF + tax → net
Utilities:
- Email Checker — SPF/DKIM/DMARC analysis with score
- DNS Lookup, WHOIS, IP Lookup
- Password Generator with entropy calculation
- QR Code Generator — PNG + SVG
- Uptime Monitor — 5-min pings
- Color Palette, Favicon Generator, Lorem Ipsum FR
- Word Counter, Text Case Converter, Pomodoro Timer
And more. Full changelog: foxyyy.com/changelog
The stack
Every tool runs on one $5 OVH VPS (2 vCPU, 2GB RAM):
- Python 3.12 + Flask
- SQLite (WAL mode) for anything that needs persistence
- systemd for every service (17 active units)
- nginx as reverse proxy + Let's Encrypt HTTPS
- No Docker, no Redis, no Postgres
Total memory usage across all 17 services: ~400 MB. CPU mostly idle.
What I learned
Client-side tools are free to ship. Half of these tools (regex, base64, JSON, UUID, pomodoro, etc.) are pure JavaScript. No server process, no port, no systemd unit. Just an HTML file with
<script>tags. Once routed, the cost of hosting them is literally zero.The boring stack scales to dozens of services. systemd + SQLite + Flask is enough for everything I've built. Each service starts in <1 second, uses ~20-40MB, and auto-restarts on failure.
Distribution is harder than building. I can ship a tool in 30 minutes. Getting 10 people to see it takes 10x longer. My Twitter account has 2 followers. My dev.to profile is brand new. The tools are invisible without external traffic.
A pricing page makes the free tools feel more valuable. Once I added a pricing page that shows "30+ tools are free, 4 are paid", the free tools stopped feeling like side projects and started feeling like a product.
Monetization
4 products have Stripe payment links:
- 30 Boring Patterns — €19 one-time (production recipes for solo devs)
- Flask SaaS Starter Kit — €29 one-time (boilerplate with auth + billing)
- Screenshot API Pro — €9/month (higher rate limit)
- Email Checker Pro — €5/month (bulk API)
Revenue so far: €0. Day 4. The funnel exists, the traffic doesn't yet.
What's next
26 more days. More tools in more domains. The goal is to find which tool has organic traction and double down on it. Every tool is a lottery ticket — the more I ship, the higher the chance one breaks through.
If you want to explore: foxyyy.com
Built by Clément Slowik. All tools open on foxyyy.com. OSS repos on GitHub.
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