What we're building at Softscotch: a developer's look at 6 marketing tools

I'm Sanju Joseph, founder of Softscotch, a digital marketing agency. Alongside our client work, we build software for marketers, founders and small businesses. Six of those products are live today.

Most write-ups about marketing tools focus on what they do for marketers. This one is for developers. For each product, I'll explain what it does, how it works on a technical level, and the parts that developers usually care about: performance, structured data, crawling, embeds and integrations.

Everything here comes from how the products actually work today. No roadmaps, no promises.

Why an agency builds software

Agency work shows you the same problems over and over. One client can't tell which SEO issues matter. Another wants their Google reviews on their website without slowing it down. A third needs to know about platform changes before their results drop.

For years, we solved these problems by hand for each client. Eventually we started turning the most common fixes into products. Before we build anything, an idea has to pass three tests: we've seen the problem with several clients, we can solve it completely, and it saves people time every week.

Here's what came out of that.

DarnItSEO: a site audit for Google and AI search

DarnItSEO audits websites for SEO, AEO and GEO. SEO is ranking in Google. AEO and GEO are about showing up in AI answer engines like ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Perplexity.

How it works

DarnItSEO crawls your pages directly. There's no tracking tag to install and no integration needed to get started. It runs 75+ checks, grades the site overall and per category, and turns the findings into a numbered action plan sorted by impact. Each step names the page and describes the change in plain English, with an estimated impact and effort.

What the checks cover

• Crawling and indexing: robots.txt, XML sitemaps, canonical URLs, redirect chains and indexability.
• Performance: Core Web Vitals (LCP, CLS, FCP and TBT), using both field and lab data from PageSpeed Insights.
• Structured data: JSON-LD parsing and validation, including Organization and breadcrumb schema.
• Security: SSL, HTTP headers and mixed content.
• Accessibility and mobile: WCAG accessibility checks and mobile-friendliness.
• On-page elements: meta tags, heading structure, image alt text and image optimization.
• Links: internal and external link analysis.
• AI readiness: whether the site has an llms.txt file and whether content is structured to answer questions directly.

Parts developers will like

• Google Search Console integration: when connected, fixes are ranked by the real clicks they can affect, not just by severity.
• Audit history: results are saved, so you can re-scan after a deploy and see what changed.
• Bulk and comparison scans: scan many URLs at once, or compare two URLs side by side.
• CSV export: export the full issue scorecard for your own tracking.
• AI prompt tracking: choose the questions your users ask, and DarnItSEO checks on a schedule whether AI engines cite your site, a competitor or neither. It also lists which pages and domains each answer quotes.
• Content publishing: it can draft articles with internal links taken from your audit, then publish them to WordPress, Ghost, Shopify or Webflow after you approve them.

There are also more than 100 standalone tools that need no signup. A few that developers use often: a robots.txt tester, XML sitemap validator, redirect chain checker, hreflang validator, JSON-LD validator, schema generators, a Lighthouse report, a broken link checker and an llms.txt generator and validator.

Why we built it: Most audits list hundreds of issues with no order. Teams fix the easy items first and nothing improves. DarnItSEO puts the fixes in order.

VerifiedWidget: a Google reviews embed built for performance

VerifiedWidget shows a business's real Google reviews on its website. From a developer's point of view, the interesting part is how the embed is built.

How it works

1. Paste a Google Maps or Google Business URL. There's no Place ID to look up and no API key to manage.
2. Pick one of nine layouts: carousel, grid, masonry, list, badge, slider, service proof, pop-up or editorial wall.
3. Style it in a visual builder with a live preview: colors, fonts, spacing, card styles, borders and shadows.
4. Copy a two-line HTML embed into the site.

Under the hood

• Small: the script is about 12 KB gzipped.
• Non-blocking: it loads asynchronously, so it doesn't hold up page rendering.
• No iframe: the widget renders in the page's own DOM, so the reviews are part of the page itself.
• Isolated styles: widget styles are kept separate, so they don't clash with the site's CSS, and the site's CSS doesn't break the widget.
• Structured data: it adds business identity JSON-LD (Schema.org) for 14 business types, such as restaurant, dental, legal, real estate, hotel and home service, with a schema health score.
• Domain allowlisting: widgets only load on domains you approve.
• Embed JSON API: for developers who want to render reviews their own way.

It works on WordPress, Shopify, Wix, Squarespace, Webflow and plain HTML sites. Businesses with several locations can manage each Google listing from one account, and each location keeps its own reviews and widgets.

Why we built it: Our local business clients all wanted their reviews on their sites, and the tools they tried were slow, heavy or needed a developer to set up.

Marketing Newsfeed: platform changes, filtered and labeled

Marketing Newsfeed tracks 30+ sources and shows only the marketing updates that can affect results.

How it works

Updates are collected from sources across search, ads, social, email and AI, then each one is given:

• A priority level, so the most urgent changes stand out.
• A short summary of what changed.
• A category: SEO, local SEO, ads, social, email, AI, ecommerce, strategies, analytics, Google or Meta.
• An update type: for example a feature launch, a policy update, a feature being retired or a change that's switched on automatically.

There's also an action list of changes that need a response, a platform status panel for spotting outages, a glossary and email alerts for critical changes.

Why developers might care: a lot of "marketing" changes are really technical. A tracking change, a retired API feature or a new crawling rule can break things quietly. The update type labels make those easy to spot.

Why we built it: Our team kept learning about big platform changes too late, usually after something had already broken.

PostInstantly: an AI post editor that learns your voice

PostInstantly helps people write and schedule posts for LinkedIn, X, Threads and Instagram. It's useful for developers who want to share what they build without hours of writing.

How it works

1. Pick an idea from the ideas board, which shows trending topics and popular posts in your niche.
2. Answer three short questions, and it writes a first draft in your voice, based on your past posts and edits.
3. Refine the draft in an editor that scores the hook, readability and length as you type.
4. Schedule it on a visual calendar.
5. Review analytics to see which posts worked.

Parts developers will like

• Repurposing: turn blog posts, YouTube videos, podcasts, slide decks and PDFs into posts. Handy for turning a technical write-up into a thread.
• Thread composer: drag to reorder posts, with a character counter for each one.
• Browser extension: write and schedule without leaving the page you're on.
• Voice to post: record a voice memo, and it becomes a draft.

Why we built it: Most people know they should share their work regularly, but the blank page stops them.

BrandsForCreators: product collaborations between brands and creators

BrandsForCreators connects brands with US creators. A brand lists a product, creators who like it apply, and the brand chooses who receives it in exchange for real content.

How it works

1. A brand creates a listing with photos, the number of creator spots, a deadline and the content it expects.
2. Creators browse listings and apply.
3. The brand reviews each application, with followers, engagement and a trust score from 0 to 100 based on engagement quality and account health.
4. The brand ships the product and tracks the content that gets posted.

Interesting parts

• Natural-language search: type a plain-English description of the creator you want, and it's turned into structured filters for niche, location, follower range and engagement rate.
• Brand mention scan: it scans Instagram and TikTok to find creators who already tag the brand.
• Outreach sequences: follow-up emails stop automatically when someone replies, and each sequence gets a deliverability score.
• Creator CRM: pipeline stages, lists, tasks, notes and lead scoring.

Why we built it: Finding the right creators was the hardest step for our smaller clients, so we built a way for creators to come to them.

amlookingfor: a place to ask for exactly what you need

amlookingfor is a platform for founders and builders in India. The idea is simple: post exactly what you're looking for, and let the right people find you.

It has four main sections:

• People: requests for co-founders, teammates, interns, freelancers, mentors and beta users. Developers looking to join an early-stage team will find requests here.
• Launches: newly launched products from founders.
• Directories: places where you can submit and launch a product.
• Ranked lists: researched lists that compare tools and options.

Why we built it: Finding the right people for a startup shouldn't depend only on who you already know.

What ties them together

All six products came from problems we saw in client work at Softscotch. The agency keeps us close to real problems, and the products let us solve each one once, for everyone.

A few things we keep coming back to across all of them:

• Speed matters. Whether it's a 12 KB embed or an audit that loads fast, nobody wants a tool that slows them down.
• Plain English wins. Our action plans, update summaries and drafts are written so anyone can act on them, not only specialists.
• One job, done fully. Each product focuses on one problem and tries to solve it completely.

I'll keep sharing what we build here on DEV. If you have questions about how any of these work, or you're building something similar, leave a comment. I read every one, and you can also find me on LinkedIn.