I decided to give my app for free and here is why
Hi Indiedevs!
I released UniqMail, an app for generating and sending personalized emails, just a week ago on ProductHunt. It wasn't a hit, so I decided to change my strategy. Instead of seeking easy money with an app built in 4 days, I decided to make it fully free to use.
Recently, I added Google Gemini as another AI provider you can use and implemented a new AI.
My plan is simple:
- Make 1000 downloads
- Ask for feedback
- Iterate
- Find another way to monetize it
The app, available for Windows and MacOS, enables the use of AI to send personalized emails with just a few clicks.
Here’s how it works:
- You create multiple projects for each channel, communication type, or message.
- You add your own OpenAI or Google Gemini key, which helps reduce costs to zero (yes, the #geminipro API is currently free).
- You add your own email account if you want the app to send emails. It significantly lowers the likelihood of your messages being marked as spam.
- Choose the project, specify details about the addressee, type your email, and click generate. It can even guess the name from the email if you don't know it. 🙂
In my opinion, this tool may be useful for people in HR, Sales, Marketing.
I am also thinking about implementing the capability to generate and send many personalized emails in a few clicks from a file. This feature will be helpful for sending emails to your clients or people you need to respond to.
What do you think? Is it better to have a few paid users and some money or have 1000 free downloads and good feedback?
Here is the link if you want to give it a try: https://uniqmail.app
Your generosity in making your app free demonstrates a commitment to accessibility and inclusivity. By removing financial barriers, you're empowering more people to benefit from your innovation. Thank you for prioritizing impact over profit!
I’ll give it a try. It’s something I was looking for actually!
I would love to hear your feedback!
Try prioritising the user feedback and engagement and refining it based on their input. Also consider free paid tiers with giving advances features
I have couple ideas in my head about it. I am going to add sending and generating emails in batches for free but I am going to make one version for app store and windows store with in-app purchases. Because I can't publish it in stores with third-party AI providers I am going to make my own and sell it with monthly payments for people who don't want to deal with API keys.
Thank you,it is useful.
Sounds like a really cool idea! Keep us posted on what happens next.
wow awesme app , great job
good job Aleks 👍
Thanks!
1000 free downloads are way more valuable in my eyes. As you say you get feedback and iterate. This makes your product better. As a result, more people use it. At some point, you can monetize it or hide advanced features behind a paywall. And creating value first gives you goodwill with the people, which will make launching a paid version a lot easier. This is something I'm struggling with too atm, and just recently also decided to go free for the start with my business mentoring and value content. :)
I'd not wait too long to monetize. Other indie hackers may be your competitors and if you delay long enough to monetize, you'll be creating a price to the bottom discouraging them to continue building cool stuff. This happens on and on when niches evolve. Users win, but the niche as a whole loses. I have no clue if that's your case for your niche, but that's my 2 cents.
Thanks! Already working. Everything will be live in 1-2 weeks.
Is it built with no code?
Nope, it is built with Flutter and a little help of AI.
I had to give away our fun scratch to reveal your website email address tool for free too veilmail.io
Put it on your site if you are not boring.
Did you get any results with AI-generated emails?
I still feel kinda skeptical about them, spam filters easily identify such text, but most importantly, the human eye. When people see that it was not written by humans, they usually skip such emails.
I am not an english native speaker and for me it is hard to identify AI created text if prompt is good written but I can easily identify a text generated from a template. So for me a personalized AI generated message is still much better than template generated one.
Also let's take into account that AI is getting better pretty fast :-)
Starting free is great for feedback, but you have to monetize at some point otherwise this thing will burn a hole in your pocket. What's the plan for that? Paid "freemium" features?
I am gong to make a PRO version with features like generating and sending messages in bulk with one time payment and lifetime updates. Also I want to add my own GPT API with monthly subscription for people who don't want to deal with OpenAI or Google Gemini tokens.
makes sense. good luck!
Would you say your app is ready for the masses or are you in a form of beta?
I would consider it as a beta or a super simple MVP because I still have a huge amount of features I want to implement.
Nope, this is something I quickly build for myself. I use it to send messages to blog owners, my project's users and so on. It helps me to make more personalized messages.
I don't maintain the app for diff platforms. It is written on flutter so it supports all platforms out of box. I was thinking about chrome extension actually but desktop apps and desktop apps distribution is something I am not experienced so I decided to make an experiment and learn from the process.
How viable would it be to turn it into a web app only?
It is not a problem at all but the main benefit of standalone app is using your own API tokens and SMTP credentials. Storing it on server will add lot of security risks. It can be converted to PWA app actually, probably I will try to do it on weekend. Thanks for Idea.
But do your users use it on mobile? From what you said this sounds like a b2b product, especially for HR, marketing, and sales, which mainly work from desktop. You probably have data behind this decision, it is just contrary to what I know about how business customers operate.
Nope, I don't think this app is going to be useful on mobile. It work productivity tool for sending emails. So yes it is b2b.
Ok, then I might have misunderstood what you were saying above. Why would you ever need an app? Isn't that a waste of time when you can do it web-based and be done with it? Excuse my ignorance.
I see. Thanks for the clarification. :) If that is a serious need for your users go for it. :)
Yes, it seems good. If you have it already an Web app.
Google Chrome extension is very popular and very easy to start with. Just register a Developer account for $5 and you are good to go.