Hey fellow developers,
It’s now been 3 weeks since I launched my mini Project Management SaaS tool for indie developers, which I originally built for myself: https://swiftboard.dev.
Over the years, I’ve built more than 10 different SaaS projects, but none of them have really made any money. So this time, I decided to build something around a real pain point I had.
Owning multiple projects made it increasingly difficult to manage them all—keeping track of where each one was hosted, where I bought the domains, their project repositories, API keys, and most importantly, their progress and tasks. I could’ve used Jira, Asana, Trello, or similar tools to manage tasks, but they all felt like overkill.
Most indie developers, myself included, typically spend 2-3 months (or even less) building a project, so I wanted something as simple as a note-taking app yet powerful enough to track my progress and oversee all project-related info in one place. That’s when I started building Swiftboard.dev.
Since launching, it has grown to 165+ free users, and while I introduced a paid plan at just $6/month, no one is converting. This makes me suspect that maintaining the project might become too costly in the long run.
A lot of developers have suggested making it open source so that others can contribute and help sustain it. I’m seriously considering it now, but I have some concerns:
• What are the best practices for open-sourcing a project like this?
• Is there a way to prevent people from simply copying the code, rebranding it, and launching their own version?
• Since it’s cloud-hosted, how do open-source projects typically handle ongoing maintenance costs if donations or sponsorships don’t cover them?
Would love to hear thoughts from anyone who has been through this!
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