LoveInvoice - Invoices for people who hate sending invoices
Hey IH!
This project started more from frustration than anything else.
When I was freelancing, money was tight. I didn't want to pay for invoicing software when I wasn't even consistently earning yet. Free tiers were limited, and trials feel like a trap... You sign up thinking it's 'free', then immediately are cautious to get used to using it as you don't know what's going to get locked away in 14 days.
I've used a lot of invoicing apps in my time (I used to review them for one of Envato's old app review blogs). The bigger players felt clunky and over-engineered. The smaller ones felt like they just wanted you on a paid plan as quickly as possible.
So I ended up building my own version with one simple idea: what if invoicing was pleasant?
What it is
LoveInvoice is a hosted invoicing app built for freelancers who just want to send invoices and get paid, without all the noise.
It's intentionally simple and opinionated around ease of use, not accounting complexity, but you can still customise and brand the hell out of it. Emails, invoice templates, all editable.
Stack-wise, it's built with Hono + TypeScript on the backend and React (Vite) on the frontend, with Drizzle for the ORM. I came from a PHP background, so this was also my first real dive into TypeScript - there was a fair bit of wrestling with tooling early on, but I've ended up really liking the stack and it's my go-to on other projects I've started since (which I hope to announce here shortly).
Pricing
This was the hardest part to figure out.
At one point I had a flat $5/month plan in mind (accessible, reasonable). Then I considered going free. Eventually I landed on something I think is more aligned with what I wanted to build:
LoveInvoice is free to use.
No paid tiers. No feature gating. No trials.
Instead, there's a 1% application fee on online payments via Stripe (min $0.50, capped at around ~$20 depending on currency).
So:
If you never get paid through it, it costs nothing
If you do get paid through it, I take a small cut of that transaction
If you just want to manually track payments or add bank details, you can do that too - no pressure to integrate Stripe at all, it's completely optional.
Where I'm at
It's currently open to sign-ups as a 'closed beta' while I iron out bugs and improve core flows.
I could probably polish it forever, but I'd rather get it into people's hands and iterate based on real usage instead of tweaking it in isolation.
There's also a community forum built in so users can suggest features, share workflows, and help shape where it goes next.
Website: https://loveinvoice.com
What I'd love feedback on
Mainly:
Does this idea actually resonate?
What do you hate most about invoicing tools today?
Would 'simpler + no upfront cost' actually make you switch, or is that not enough?
Also open to any advice on marketing this. This is my first solo project where I've genuinely thought 'I want to take this seriously', so I'm figuring a lot of it out as I go.
