I built a meeting room booking SaaS as a solo founder — here's what I learned about the hardest part (it's not the code)
Hey IH 👋
I'm Mounir, solo founder of SpotBooker — a SaaS for booking and managing meeting rooms, desks, and shared workspaces.
I wanted to share my journey because I think a lot of indie hackers face the same wall I hit: building a solid product is the easy part. Getting people to find it is where things get real.
## What SpotBooker does
The core idea is simple: in most offices, up to 40% of booked meeting rooms sit empty. People reserve rooms "just in case," forget to cancel, or simply don't show up. The room stays blocked all day while colleagues wander around looking for a free space.
SpotBooker fixes this with auto check-in. You book a room, you have to confirm you're there (QR code, NFC, or email). If you don't check in within the configured window, the room is automatically released and available again.
On top of that:
- SpotFinder lets you search rooms by capacity, equipment, floor, availability — find the right space in under 2 minutes
- Approval workflows for sensitive spaces
- Recurring bookings
- Analytics dashboard showing real utilization data
- Public booking mode (great for coworking spaces)
- 4 languages built-in: English, French, Spanish, Portuguese
## The tech stack (for the nerds)
Laravel 10, Vue 3 with Composition API, Tailwind CSS, Inertia.js, Stripe via Laravel Cashier with metered billing, Mailjet for transactional emails, Redis for queues and caching, FullCalendar 6 for the timeline view. Hosted on AWS. Multi-tenant architecture on MySQL.
I built everything solo. It took way longer than I expected, but I'm proud of how solid the product turned out.
## The real challenge: acquisition
Here's the honest part. The product works well. Users who find it tend to stick around — retention isn't the problem. The problem is distribution.
For a long time, my only real acquisition channel was Capterra. It generates qualified leads, but being dependent on a single channel is risky.
So I started diversifying:
- SEO with a multilingual blog (4 languages, targeting room-booking and flex-office keywords)
- SaaS directory listings (SaaSHub, AlternativeTo, and a bunch of tech showcases like MadeWithLaravel)
- Starting outbound campaigns targeting LATAM markets where the pricing is very competitive
- And now, sharing the journey here on Indie Hackers
## Pricing
- Free plan: 2 spots, core features included
- Paid: starts at $19/month (annual) with 8 spots included, then $2/spot/month
- 14-day trial, no credit card required
## What I've learned so far
1. Building the product is not the hard part. I spent months perfecting features. I should have spent that time on distribution earlier.
2. Multilingual from day one was a good bet. Having 4 languages built-in opens markets that English-only competitors ignore.
3. Free plans work as a funnel, not as charity. The free tier gets people in the door, and the upgrade path is natural once they add more rooms.
4. Capterra is great but fragile. One channel = one point of failure.
## What's next
- Scaling content across 4 languages
- Testing outbound in LATAM
- Building in public here on IH
I'd love to hear from other B2B SaaS founders: what worked for you to break past the "great product, no traffic" wall?
Check it out: https://spot-booker.com
