I just launched my first product as a solo indie hacker, here’s the stack I’m using

Launching a product or business is hard.

That’s why I decided to share how I’m doing it. This is far from a perfect stack or a technical recommendation, but I hope my real life experience can help other makers in their own projects.

A quick introduction

First, it’s important that you know what I’m building. Every product is different, and that will reflect on the technology used.

I’ve just launched Mya Bot: your WooCommerce companion for Slack.

Mya is a Slack integration that allows store managers to easily get the information they need without leaving Slack.

Since my product is an API, almost 100% of what I built was back end code.

Also, I’m building this by myself and without funding, my goal is for it to become a profitable side project but hardly it will be my full time job. So, I needed a stack that would be efficient for a one-man operation and had a very low fixed cost.

With that being said, let’s get started:

Technology and development

I decided to use a serverless architecture for my app. It’s very easy to set up and maintain, it’s ready to scale at any point and it’s free to get started.

I’m using Google’s Firebase (Cloud Functions and Firestore) because I really like this platform and I’ve had experience with it before. The only language I know how to code is JavaScript, so that’s what I’m using (Node.js).

To help with local development, ngrok is the best way I know to expose your localhost to the internet. It’s super easy to use, it works flawlessly and they have a good free tier.

For API testing my favorite tool is Postman.

Payment

This is the first product I’ve built with billing, so I didn’t have any real experience in this area. That’s why I tried to keep it as simple as possible.

I tried a few different options for subscriptions. In the end, I went with Stripe Billing for Mya. They are the industry leader, so it’s very easy to find content and help online, they have a very good documentation and their product is really good.

The fact that they have hosted customer portal was essential to me, since I didn’t want to build a front-end interface just for it.

My set up is: I create a Stripe customer for everyone who installs Mya Bot, and subscribe them to my top plan with a 15 days free trial. After this period, if they want to, they can add a credit card using the portal.

But I also want to do a shout out to Billflow, they’re an add-on for Stripe Billing. Even though I didn’t use their service they were super helpful and have a great support team.

Marketing

I still don’t have a full marketing strategy. My first goal is to finish my product (done), launch it (done) and fix all the unexpected bugs before investing in customer acquisition (doing).

So, the only marketing item I have for now is my landing page, which I’ve built using Wix. I’ve chosen Wix because it’s really simple to use and the cheapest option (at least for me in Brazil).

I don’t need anything fancy so it works perfectly (as you can see here). Though, I am thinking about adding a blog to my site in the future, and if that happens I will probably transition to Wordpress or another CMS.

Support

This is the area where I most need to improve on. Right now I only have a contact form on my website. This was the simplest and quickest way to allow people to get support, but I’m aware I’ll need to evolve this soon.

I’m planning on adding a FAQ session and possibly a ticketing system. I’m very interested in suggestions if you have any.

Business

I think it’s essential that every product, no matter at what stage they are, have at least the basic analytics in place.

That’s the best way to understand how people are using your product and what you should do next. You don’t need to (and shouldn’t) go crazy here, but basic metrics are really important.

I’m using Mixpanel for that. They have a great interface, very easy to set up in the backend and a nice free tier. That’s where I’ll be looking to make most of my development decisions.

For financial data, I’ll be checking the Stripe dashboard directly, but I plan to try out Chartmongul and similar softwares.

Side note:
Slidebean made a greeeat video about Saas metrics, it's worth taking a look: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DceOkRXHqf8

For email, my tip is to use Zoho. I was using Google Workspace before but if you’re just starting out they can be expensive. With Zoho you have a custom domain email for free!
Their interface is pretty good and they work just as you’d expect. It was a great finding for me.

Legal advice

I had zero experience with the legal aspect of business and services, so I was very anxious about creating my Terms of Services and Privacy Policy.

Lucky enough, I have a friend who’s a lawyer that offered to help me. Since not everyone have that opportunity I’ll leave here the services I’ve found while researching the topic (I didn’t try any of them): avodocs, getterms

Also, my thanks to Petar that was very kind and helpful when I reached out to him. He's an active member here and have some interesting content.

Conclusion

There may be other products or services I end up using while managing Mya Bot, but for now those are the main ones.
Please if you have any other recommendations or tips for me comment about it.

And let me know if you’d like to hear more about my experience about building and marketing a Slack App.

You can also find me on Twitter: @luismartins42 or LinkedIn