I launched a free ATS 9 days ago. Here's the honest post-mortem.

What I built
KiteHR is a free, unlimited ATS for startups and small teams. Unlimited users, jobs, candidates — no credit card, no tiers. Pro plan at $49/mo adds AI features (resume parsing, candidate scoring, interview question generation).

The numbers after 9 days

184 total users
0 paying customers
0 signups converted to active use
167/184 users came from me manually sharing links
13 from organic search
Average engagement on the biggest traffic days: 0 seconds

What the data is telling me
The spike days were me posting on Reddit and LinkedIn. People clicked, landed, and left. The pSEO strategy (salary benchmarks, job description templates, interview question guides) hasn't kicked in yet — Google takes months.

The brutal truth: I was building and broadcasting instead of talking to people.

What I'm changing

Reaching out directly to founders who are actively hiring
Partnering with a startup accelerator in Lisbon to pilot with their portfolio companies
Less features, more conversations

What I'm not sure about
Whether the free + unlimited model is actually a hook or just confusing. "Too good to be true" might be working against me.

If you're a founder currently hiring and want a free ATS with a human onboarding — I'll set it up with you personally. kitehr.co

Happy to answer questions or hear brutal feedback.