Week 1 of Launching EmailCheck.dev - What I Learned

Week 1 of Launching EmailCheck.dev - What I Learned About Zero to One
The unglamorous reality of launching a developer tool with no audience

TL;DR
Launched my email validation API a week ago. Posted on Indie Hackers and Dev.to. Got 50 visitors and exactly zero signups. Here's what I learned (and what I'm fixing).

The Launch Plan (That Didn't Work)
Last week I launched EmailCheck.dev - an email validation API that's 90% cheaper than NeverBounce ($9/mo vs $40/mo). I built it after getting a $487 bill from NeverBounce for my main SaaS.
My launch strategy was textbook indie hacker:

• Post on Indie Hackers ✓
• Write Dev.to article ✓
• Share on Twitter ✓
• Send DMs to founders ✓
• Wait for signups ✓

Results after 48 hours:

• Indie Hackers: 0 upvotes, 0 comments
• Dev.to: 0 reactions, 0 comments
• Twitter: Crickets
• DM responses: 0
• Beta signups: 0

Ouch.

What Actually Happened
I thought my posts would get buried because of bad timing or unlucky algorithms. But that wasn't the real problem.

The real problem: I have no audience.
When you post on Indie Hackers with 0 followers, you need engagement in the first 1-2 hours or the algorithm buries you forever. Same with Dev.to. Same with Twitter.

No followers → No early engagement → Algorithm thinks nobody cares → Post dies on page 5

I basically threw my launch into the void and expected it to echo back.

The Analytics Don't Lie
By day 3, I had 50 visitors total. Let me break that down:
Traffic sources:

• Me checking the site: ~15 visits
• A few random Twitter clicks: ~10 visits
• Unknown (probably me on different devices): ~15 visits
• Actual interested developers: ~10 visits

Conversion rate:

• 50 visitors → 0 signups = 0%

For context, a decent beta signup conversion is 10-20%. Even a terrible conversion rate is 2-5%.
0% means something is fundamentally broken.

The Form Friction Discovery
Here's the embarrassing part. My beta signup form asked for:

• Name
• Email
• "What will you use it for?" (text area)
• Twitter (optional)
• Company (optional)

I thought this was reasonable. I wanted to know my users!

But here's what actually happens in someone's brain:

1. Sees form
2. "Name... okay"
3. "Email... fine"
4. "What will I use it for? Ugh, I have to write something?"
5. "Is my use case good enough?"
6. "This seems like work..."
7. [closes tab]

Form friction is conversion death.

Industry benchmarks:

• 1 field (email): 20-30% conversion
• 2 fields: 10-15% conversion
• 3+ fields: 2-5% conversion
• My form: 0% (because even the 2% bounced)

I was literally asking people to write an essay to try my API for free.

The Wrong Traffic Problem
The 10-15 people who weren't me checking the site? They probably weren't even developers.

I posted on Twitter without any relevant hashtags. I DMed founders but sent them to my homepage instead of the beta page. I had no targeting, no strategy, just "post it everywhere and hope."

You can't convert visitors who don't have the problem you're solving.

A consumer seeing my site:
"Email validation API... what's an API? Eh, not for me." [leaves]

A developer who doesn't deal with signups:
"Email validation... I don't have this problem." [leaves]

A developer who uses NeverBounce and is happy:
"$9/mo is cheap but switching APIs is annoying." [leaves]

I needed developers who:

1. Have fake signup problems
2. Are currently paying too much
3. Are actively looking for solutions
4. Are willing to try new tools

That's maybe 0.1% of developers. No wonder I got zero signups from random traffic.

What I'm Changing
Fix #1: Email-only signup
Changed the beta form to literally just email. No name, no use case, no optional fields. Just:
[[e-mail]]
[Get Free Access]

I can ask about their use case AFTER they sign up, in a welcome email. Or never, and just watch what they do with the API.

Fix #2: Target actual developers
Instead of posting everywhere, I'm focusing on:

• Hacker News - Actual developers, chronological feed, everyone gets seen
• Reddit r/webdev - Developers dealing with forms/validation
• Dev.to with better tags - Using #api, #saas, #webdev, #showdev

Places where my target users actually hang out.

Fix #3: Lead with the pain, not the product
Old approach:
"Check out EmailCheck.dev - an email validation API!"
New approach:
"I got a $487 bill from NeverBounce last month. That's 25% of my revenue just validating emails. So I built my own for $9/mo."
Story first, product second. Nobody cares about features. They care about their own problems.

Fix #4: Build an engagement network
I reached out to 5 developer friends and asked them to:

• Upvote my posts
• Leave real comments/questions
• Share if they think it's useful

Not fake engagement, but genuine help from people who want to see me succeed.
Early engagement = algorithm boost = more visibility = actual users see it.

What I Learned About Building in Public
The hard truth about launching with no audience:
You need to post the same thing 10-20 times across different channels, with different angles, over 3-4 weeks before something sticks.

Your first post will probably die.

• Wrong time
• Wrong title
• No engagement
• Algorithm buries it

Your second post will do better.

• Better timing
• Better title
• A few upvotes from network
• Maybe 10 signups

Your 10th post might blow up.

• Perfect timing
• Compelling story
• Catches algorithm wave
• Hits front page
• 500 visitors, 100 signups

Most people quit after post #2.
I'm on post #3. I need 7 more attempts.

The Technical Side (For Nerds)
Since this is Dev.to, here's what I built:
Stack:
.NET 10 API (yeah, I know, but it's FAST)
Fly.io hosting ($3/month)
MaxMind GeoIP for IP validation
Supabase for auth/database
Stripe for payments

API endpoint:
bashPOST https://api.emailcheck.dev/v1/validate
X-API-Key: your_key

{
"email": "[e-mail]"
}

Response:
json{
"valid": false,
"email": "[e-mail]",
"syntax_valid": true,
"mx_records_found": false,
"disposable": false,
"suggested_email": "[e-mail]",
"confidence_score": 20
}

The hard parts:

• Disposable detection (used GitHub's 10k domain list)
• Typo suggestions (custom Levenshtein distance algo)
• Rate limiting per API key
• MX record caching (DNS lookups are slow)

The easy parts:

• Syntax validation (regex)
• Basic API structure
• Stripe integration (surprisingly simple)

Current Status
Week 1 metrics:

• Visitors: 50
• Signups: 0
• Lessons learned: Many
• Times I wanted to quit: 3
• Times I actually quit: 0

Week 2 goals:

• Simplify signup form (email only) ✓
• Post on Hacker News
• Post on Reddit r/webdev
• Get first 10 signups
• Actually respond to feedback this time

Realistic timeline:

• Week 1: 0-5 signups (learning)
• Week 2: 10-20 signups (fixing conversion)
• Week 3: 30-50 signups (momentum)
• Week 4: 80-100 signups (beta full)

Not the overnight success I fantasized about, but achievable.

What I'm Still Figuring Out
Pricing:

Am I too cheap? ($9 vs $40)
Should I raise prices?
Or is cheap pricing my only advantage?

Features:

Do people actually need catch-all detection?
Is email health scoring (0-100) useful?
Should I build CSV bulk upload first?

Marketing:

Keep posting organically?
Try paid ads? (Reddit, Google)
Sponsor dev newsletters?
Just focus on making it really good?

Target market:

Indie developers? (they love cheap)
Small SaaS companies? (they need features)
Agencies? (they need white-label)
All of the above? (confusing positioning)

No idea. I'm making it up as I go.

The Unglamorous Reality
Building in public sounds sexy:

Daily progress tweets
Indie Hackers success posts
"Made $10k MRR in 3 months!" screenshots

But the reality is:

Posting and getting crickets
Refreshing analytics obsessively
Checking beta signups every 10 minutes
Getting exactly zero for days
Wondering if you should quit
Deciding to try one more channel
Repeat

Nobody sees the 47 posts that flopped.
They only see the one that hit front page.
I'm still on flop #3. Got a long way to go.

Want to Help?
If you made it this far, here's how you can help:
If you deal with user signups:
Try EmailCheck.dev for free. Tell me what sucks. I'll fix it.
If you've launched before:
What actually worked for you? I'm all ears.
If you just want to follow along:
I'm posting daily updates on Twitter @yourhandle.
And if you have literally any feedback - good, bad, brutal - leave a comment. Zero engagement is way worse than negative engagement.

Links

• Beta signup: https://emailcheck.dev/beta (now just email, I promise)
• API docs: https://emailcheck.dev/docs
• GitHub (disposable domains): https://github.com/disposable/disposable-email-domains

Final Thought
Launching a product with no audience is humbling.
You think: "If I build something good, people will come."
Reality: Nobody will see it unless you make them see it, repeatedly, for weeks.
The difference between success and failure isn't the product.
It's whether you keep posting after post #7 gets zero engagement.
I'm on post #3. See you at post #10.