I launched 5 free image tools today — built solo, no signup, no watermark, no ads (yet)

Hey IH 👋

I launched my first product today.

It's called DailyProTasks — 5 free image/file tools in one place. No signup, no watermark, no file storage.

https://dailyprotasks.com

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Why I built it

Every few weeks I need to remove a background, upscale a photo, compress a PNG, or convert a file. Every time I Google it, I hit the same pattern:

• "Enter your email to download"
• A watermark that wasn't in the preview
• A 3-per-day limit that unlocks with a $9/month subscription
• A privacy policy that says they keep my uploads

After the 30th time, I got annoyed enough to build my own.

What's in it

Tool	What it does
✂️ Background Remover	AI cutouts in ~3s, single + bulk (20 files)
🔍 Image Upscaler	2× or 4× with Real-ESRGAN
📦 Image Compressor	Target a KB, lossless or lossy
🔁 File Converter	15+ formats: JPG, PNG, WebP, HEIC, GIF, TIFF, PDF, JSON, CSV, XLSX
📄 PDF Generator	Images → single PDF

All free. All working. All tested by me daily.

The numbers

• Time to build: 3 weeks (nights + weekends)
• Infra cost: ~$7/month (AWS t3.micro + Elastic IP)
• Total spend so far: ~$15 (domain + first month)
• Tools shipped: 5
• Signups required: 0
• Users before today: 0
• Users at time of writing: ~40 (mostly friends + PH testers)

The stack

• Backend: FastAPI + Python
• ML: U²-Net, Real-ESRGAN
• Images: Pillow + OpenCV
• Reverse proxy: nginx
• Hosting: AWS EC2 t3.micro (Windows Server 2025)
• SSL: Let's Encrypt via win-acme
• Services: NSSM
• Frontend: vanilla HTML/CSS/JS + PWA service worker

3 things I learned the hard way

1. Windows Server on EC2 is a trap if you don't need Windows.
Every doc assumes Linux. I lost 2 days to RDP lockouts (my ISP rotates IPs) before switching to AWS Session Manager. If I did this again: Ubuntu, no questions.

2. ML models eat RAM.
Loading rembg's U²-Net at startup pushed uvicorn from 150 MB → 700 MB. On a 1 GB server, Windows killed the RDP service under memory pressure. Fix: lazy loading with @lru_cache. Idle RAM is now ~180 MB.

3. Free SSL on Windows is painful but doable.
win-acme works — but the "selfhosting" validation mode fights nginx for port 80. Switch to filesystem mode and it just works.

The monetization plan

The site is 100% free with no ads right now — the launch goal is traffic, not revenue.

My plan:

1. Get to 10k monthly sessions organically (Reddit, Dev.to, PH, SEO)
2. Apply to Ezoic at 10k sessions
3. Move to Mediavine at 50k sessions
4. Target: $500–1,500/month by month 6

I know it's a long road. I'm sharing it publicly so I can be held accountable.

What I'm asking from IH

1. Try any tool — especially the BG remover. Does it feel fast enough?
2. What would you build next? Video compressor? SVG optimizer? Batch watermarking?
3. What would you pay for? I want to keep the base free, but a "pro" tier (bigger batches, priority processing, API access) is possible down the line.

What's next

• Week 1: Get to 500 visitors
• Month 1: Get indexed on Google, build Reddit/Dev.to presence
• Month 3: First $100 from ads
• Month 6: 10k sessions, Ezoic application

I'll post monthly updates. If this flops, at least the tools work.

Try it → dailyprotasks.com

Thanks for reading 🙏