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51 Comments

I made a tool that converts Notion docs into a professional hosted knowledge base

  1. 5

    Knowledge base software has a huge market Dominik. Good luck to you.

    1. 2

      Interesting. Do you know this from experience or have you seen some data?

    2. 2

      Thanks for the cheer up ! 😊

  2. 3

    Damn that's a nifty idea, loved the UI so eye catching.

    1. 2

      Means a lot to me, thanks!!!

  3. 3

    After publishing the preorder page late July, I am finally launching the first version of HelpKit. My available time to work on projects is pretty scarce. I am doing a full time Master's degree on the "side" so I had decide on where I want to put my full focus on.

    Either:
    a) Continue marketing the preorder page and get more people to sign up

    b) Code out the first version ASAP and be much more comfortable marketing an actual working product instead of just some words.

    I decided to go with version b) and try to build the first version of HelpKit as soon as possible. Well... you probably already know this but literally nothing ever works "as soon as possible". I basically spent the past 30+ days just looking at red error messages, trying to wrap my head around how to design the UI/UX and getting anxious seeing similar projects getting launched.

    Can't tell you how good it feels to get it finally out there.

    To my surprise the Twitter post "blew" up a bit and has seen !15x my typical engagement which is a good sign 🥇

    1. 2

      Incredible! I love success stories like that.

  4. 2

    Love the product man! 'Notion' to 'something else' is always super interesting to me and the design of the website is so slick!

    I spotted a few typos on the homepage:

    1. "Use Notion as an CMS" as opposed to "Use Notion as a CMS"
    2. "Make us of Notion's" as opposed to "Make use of Notion's"

    Thought you might want to know!

    1. 1

      One can clearly see that copywriting is definitely not my strongest skill 🥲😅 Thank you so much for taking the time and telling me about it!

  5. 2

    Curious, did you use some no-code tool to build the landing page and/or the actual product?
    Nevertheless it looks great!

    1. 2

      Hey Evgeny, thanks for the feedback! While I am a fan of no-code tools, I did code both landing page and actual product myself. Wanted to have the full flexibility. That said, I am using Tailwind CSS for the styling which significantly improves my efficiency. Highly recommend to check it out if you haven't already.

  6. 2

    wow, Amazing concept. keep up the good work

  7. 2

    ahhh finally! That‘s what I have been waiting for!!!!

    1. 1

      Muito obrigado, Marijan 😉

      📽 Btw... @everyone: I have just published a short 60 seconds "How to get started with HelpKit" video here: https://youtu.be/-Xf6HkrAFNA

  8. 2

    Congrats on the launch Dominik! The site looks great! One quick question, are you using physical or logical multi-tenant in this case?

    1. 2

      Thanks 😊

      Not gonna lie, I had to first google the difference, haha. It’s a logical one. Having a separate database for each client didn’t make sense to me in that case. Almost all the m-t apps I know are using the logical approach. (If I understand it correctly)

      1. 2

        Thanks for the clarification, that totally makes sense. I have always been wondering about this concept but didn’t know what the proper terminology was. Learned a bunch from you today, 🙏 thank you!

        1. 1

          Glad I could help you out a bit :) Feel free to reach out if you have more questions. Always happy to help.

          1. 2

            Thank you Dominik, much appreciated!

  9. 2

    The site looks fantastic! Let's go man!!!

    1. 1

      Thanks boss!!! Great to see you here man 🚀

  10. 2

    Great idea, wish I had come up with this. Looks amazing!

    1. 1

      Thanks Tim! :) Well... I am sure you'll come up with one of these unicorn 🦄 ideas and then I'll be the one saying this 😎

  11. 2

    What's been the hardest part about launching this?

    1. 1

      Great question, Chris! Two things:

      1. Not giving up...Cheesy, I know. I have built a handful of apps already and none of them seemed to be really taking off. So going into HelpKit I was quite (I still am...) anxious that it won't either. Building products is hard and takes a lot of time and effort. I believe perseverance is key for us Indiehackers and there is a lot of trial and error associated with the journey 🎢

      2. Technically speaking HelpKit is far more advanced than it might look like. There are a lot of quirks when working with Notion and I had to come up with a bunch of creative ways to solve some tasks. Last week I realized the initial page speed was too slow for me and so I had to basically rewrite 90% of the application 😵

      Besides that I also had to learn how multi-tenant SaaS, custom domains (s/o to @damon) and embeddable widgets work which was quite some work as well.

      1. 2

        Cheesy works for me.
        I'm subscribing more to the camp of you'll always be doing rewrites. Everything evolves and if it doesn't the stagnation kills it.

        1. 1

          Great point, Chris.

  12. 2

    Wow this looks really amazing-nice work! If you put this all together in a little over a month then I am very impressed. I'll probably be looking to use this as a knowledge base for my app!

    1. 1

      I would be more than happy to have you onboard Gareth :) If you want a demo, send me an email to [email protected] (Twitter DM works fine as well) and I'll show you around.

      Oh and yes... it was a little over a month but I can tell you that I have aged probably a year while building HelpKit in speed-mode 👴🏽 Appreciate the feedback.

  13. 2

    Well what can we say! Had our onboarding
    session with Dominik today and considering this is the first version we found it excellent and it already feels like a polished product.

    We will be creating all our knowledge base articles over the next few weeks and integrating it into both our website and our app.

    Keep up the great work.

    1. 2

      Was a pleasure onboarding you and Louise today, James 🙏🏽 Thanks for all the valuable feedback as well. I hope you will be ready for the lack of support tickets now 😎

    2. 2

      Crazy that you actually came back to prop him up lol 👌

      1. 2

        Well not that crazy. He is doing a great job with HelpKit.

  14. 2

    This is sick, nice work!

    1. 1

      Muchísimas gracias, Chris :)

  15. 2

    Create landing page 👌 I'm not your target customer but I believe you will have a lot of success! Keep it up.

    1. 1

      Thanks Maxime! Let's see what the future holds 🚀

    1. 1

      Appreciate it Filip! 😊

  16. 2

    This looks awesome, nice work!

    1. 1

      Appreciate it Ryan! Super interesting what you are doing with Shoppe Boutiques 💃

  17. 2

    Nice execution well done!

    1. 1

      Thanks Steph! 💪🏽

  18. 2

    Awesome, I love seeing more Notion-based tools 🚀
    Great design btw! ✨

    1. 2

      I believe there will be much more now that they have opened up their API 👌

    2. 1

      Thanks Janniks, I try my best 👨🏽‍🎨

  19. 2

    As someone who is running his company almost entirely inside Notion this is super useful. Will try it out tomorrow. Do you also have a widget that I could install on my own website?

    1. 2

      I believe it can do this. There‘s a widget that you can even trigger from inside your own codebase (like a ℹ️ button). Super smart solution

      1. 1

        No way, you responded faster than I did 😎🙏🏽

    2. 1

      Awesome to hear! Definitely reach out to me (best probably at [email protected]) if you need any help.

      Yes, HelpKit has a widget that you can embed on your own site. You can even open individual articles with our widget API. You can learn more here: https://support.helpkit.so/Widget/7jVzK8XC36g72ELsmEkepf

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