Building in public is one of the fastest ways to get early users, build trust, and stay accountable as a founder.
But there is a problem nobody talks about.
The updates you spend months sharing end up scattered. Tweets disappear. Milestone posts get buried. Notes stay private. Before long, even you have trouble looking back at how far you've come.
After building publicly myself, these are the tools I actually use. Each one solves a different problem. Together they make a system you can stick with.
You probably won't need all of them, but each solves a different part of the problem
Quick comparison
| Tool | Best for | Biggest limitation |
|---|---|---|
| X | Daily updates and community | Posts disappear quickly |
| Indie Hackers | Milestones and founder discussions | Not built for frequent updates |
| BuildTrail | Permanent public startup journey | Works best alongside other platforms |
| Notion | Internal planning and docs | Poor public sharing experience |
| Beehiiv / Substack | Newsletters and email audience | Needs consistency and existing audience |
| Plausible / Fathom | Product analytics | Doesn't tell your story publicly |
| Loom | Product demos and launch videos | Videos are hard to search |
1. X (Twitter)
Best for: Daily updates, networking, finding your audience.
The #buildinpublic community lives here. Founders share progress, get feedback, celebrate wins, and help each other in ways that don't really happen anywhere else at scale.
Where it falls short: Everything disappears. Great posts become difficult to find after a few days. Someone discovering you today has no way to see six months of your journey without endless scrolling.
X is essential for discovery. It is not where your story should live permanently.
2. Indie Hackers
Best for: Milestone posts and connecting with serious founders.
The community genuinely reads longer posts and leaves thoughtful feedback. Whenever you hit a significant milestone, posting there reaches a different and valuable audience.
Where it falls short: Not built for daily updates. Think of it as your monthly journal rather than your daily log.
3. BuildTrail
Disclosure: I built BuildTrail, so take that recommendation with that context in mind.
Best for: Keeping your startup journey in one permanent place.
After using X, Indie Hackers, and Notion together, I noticed something was missing. There was no single place where my startup story actually lived.
Tweets disappeared. Notion stayed private. Indie Hackers only captured occasional milestones.
That is the problem I built BuildTrail to solve. It works alongside your existing platforms — not instead of them. You still post on X first. BuildTrail is where those updates live permanently.
Milestones, product updates, founder stage, key metrics — all in one public page with one shareable link.
You can see an example at buildtrail.app.
4. Notion
Best for: Internal planning and organizing your thinking.
Excellent for roadmaps, notes, and documentation. Many founders also try using it as a public startup page because it is quick to set up.
Where it falls short: Notion wasn't designed to be public. Shared pages feel like internal documents. No discovery. No community. If your goal is public documentation, there are better options.
5. Beehiiv or Substack
Best for: Building an email audience.
Followers are borrowed. Email subscribers are yours. A newsletter gives you a direct connection independent of social algorithms.
Beehiiv has stronger growth features. Substack has a larger existing reader base. Both are excellent.
Where they fall short: Need consistent effort and an existing audience to be effective. Build your audience first, then launch the newsletter.
6. Analytics Tools
Best for: Understanding how people use your product.
Plausible and Fathom are privacy-friendly and simple. Google Analytics is more powerful but significantly more complex.
Where they fall short: Analytics explain your product. They don't explain your journey. They show numbers but don't capture the story behind them.
7. Loom
Best for: Product walkthroughs and launch announcements.
A 90-second Loom of you walking through your dashboard is more engaging than paragraphs of text. Personal, authentic, builds trust quickly.
Where it falls short: Videos aren't searchable. Best for important moments, not every update.
The stack I'd recommend
Start with two tools. Add others as you grow.
- X for daily updates and conversations
- BuildTrail for keeping your journey permanently documented
- Indie Hackers for monthly milestone posts
- Beehiiv or Substack once you have an audience worth emailing
- Loom for launches and major product demos
- Analytics to understand your users Consistency beats complexity every time.
Your story deserves more than a timeline
Most people find your product months after you started building it.
When they do, they want to understand how you got there. If your journey only exists across hundreds of old posts, they will never see it.
One permanent place that captures your milestones, updates, and progress makes it easier for new users, customers, and other founders to understand your story.
That's ultimately why I built BuildTrail. I wasn't trying to replace X or Indie Hackers. I just wanted one place where my startup journey could live permanently.
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