Live on the Google Workspace Marketplace, looking for honest beta feedback
Caldense has been live on the Google Workspace Marketplace for a month now: a small but real milestone for a side project built solo in Dart.
What's working:
Small but steady install volume from organic Marketplace search
Free during beta has kept onboarding friction near zero
Recent shipped features (AI emoji suggestions, paste-text-to-event capture, Telegram bot) are getting genuine use
What isn't:
Marketplace reviews. I don't have enough yet, and that's gating broader promotion (Product Hunt, HN, Reddit). Reviews are the social proof unlock for everything downstream.
LinkedIn posts get traction with builders, zero traction with end users. Different audience problem, my mistake.
What's next:
Finding ~20 beta testers willing to use Caldense for 2+ weeks and leave an honest Marketplace review (positive, negative, doesn't matter, just honest). Free now, lifetime perk when pricing ships.
Best fit: anyone calendar-heavy. Recruiters, consultants, salespeople, engineering managers.
Marketplace listing: https://workspace.google.com/marketplace/app/caldense/240393325809
Honest critique very welcome, especially from anyone who's solved the "first 10 reviews" problem on a Marketplace listing.
Congrats on getting live on the Google Workspace Marketplace.
I’m researching how early-stage founders choose the tools they use to build, launch, and collect feedback. What tools are you using right now for beta feedback, and how did you choose them?
The reviews-as-unlock problem on Marketplace is genuinely different from PH upvotes. Reviews need your users to remember you after the novelty window closes that friction is invisible until you're stuck at 3 installs wondering why nobody's converting.
The LinkedIn observation is the most useful thing in this post. Builders engage because it's familiar territory, but calendar-heavy operators live somewhere else. Recruiters vent in LinkedIn recruiter communities and r/recruitinghell. Consultants hang in consulting-specific Slack groups and forums. That's where the install happens without you having to explain what color-coding is.
One thing worth testing: your Telegram bot is already a direct line to active users. A simple nudge after 2 weeks, "you've been using Caldense, 2 minutes on the Marketplace listing would help a lot", is the lowest-friction review ask you have right now. No cold sequence, no email. They're already in the product.
What's your install-to-active-user drop-off looking like after week 1?
Outstanding and good work keep sharing
Two things that worked for me on a recent Workspace Marketplace-style launch:
Trigger the review ask after a "win moment," not after install. Watch for the behavior that means "this user just got value" (for Caldense: first time their week renders fully color-coded). Fire the review prompt then. ~4-6x conversion vs a generic post-install nudge.
Make the review collection itself painless. Most people bounce because writing a "good" review is cognitive work. We let users speak their answer instead of type — voice → AI transcription → they review/edit. Built it for exactly this (Anve Voice Forms), but the principle holds with any voice-enabled form tool. Completion went from ~12% to 70%+ in our own onboarding.
For Caldense: I'd embed a "Loved Caldense? Tell us why in 30 seconds" voice survey in the same email where you confirm their first auto-styled week. Behavior > timing.
Happy to share the exact trigger mechanic we use if useful.
Getting those first few reviews is a grind because most people just install and forget to ever head back to the marketplace page.
The real friction is usually the extra clicks required to find the review section rather than the feedback itself. Have you tried setting up a small trigger within the app that deep-links directly to the review submission modal after they've used a feature like the Telegram bot a couple of times?
What's been your main strategy for getting people from the "active user" stage over to the actual marketplace listing?