Revisiting an Old Idea: Should I Finally Build This?
Hey Indie Hackers,
About two years ago, I put up a landing page for EasyMilestone.com: a simple tool to help freelancers and agencies manage milestone-based payments (e.g., 30% upfront, 20% after completing Milestone 1, 20% after completing Milestone 2, 30% on completion).
I got 30+ signups, but I never built the product. Now I’m reconsidering it, but I want to validate the real demand before writing any code.
For those who work with clients:
- How do you currently handle milestone payments?
- What’s the most annoying part—chasing payments, tracking progress, managing invoices?
- Would a tool like this solve a real problem for you, or are existing solutions (Stripe, QuickBooks, etc.) good enough?
I know not every idea needs to be built, so I’m looking for honest feedback before committing. If this resonates, what would be the most valuable feature to build first?
Appreciate any insights from fellow makers! 🚀
Getting sign ups is one thing, getting people to actually pay is completely different - I'd recommend you use cursor, chat GPT, Claude, Vercel, etc to code up a rough prototype - throw some money to get it featured on a popular blog and then see if you get any sales. After that you can see go on ahead and build the full thing out!
Don't bother. Been building startups for years now and have been hiring people and contractors left and right. This is not an issue for employers. Often we will just send 50% upfront 50% after. Or, none upfront and 100% after. Or, pay by hour.
I'm used to working with Upwork a lot. In my experience, their system is ideal for Upwork freelancers: they define the milestones, I fund the first one, and we complete them step by step.
That's what I try to achieve with EasyMilestone as well.
I went on the landing page and immediately I saw something that I really dislike, the pricing. This might be just me, so the pricing could be ok. But I don't like to pay per active clients. Instead of $x per client, which liniarely scales with the amount of clients I have, maybe do $x up to Y clients, $a up to Z clients. So $9 allows you to manage up to 20 clients, $29 (which is roughly 3 times to previous tier) allows you to manage up to 100 clients (roughly 5 times to previous tier because the more I pay, benefits should scale unliniarely).
This is just me on pricing. I don't use such software but there could definitely be people that wanna use it and if I were one of them, I'd dislike the current pricing. Keep building! https://x.com/RusuTCristian
Thanks for your feedback.
Yeah, the pricing is 'still in progress'. This is fully usage-based, but a subscription might work better.
Currently I try to get this idea validated, before I start building more.
Transparency is key—clients often dispute progress. A shared dashboard with real-time milestone tracking would save hours. QuickBooks invoices lack visual timelines. Would pay for this if it’s client-friendly!
How did you get the 30+ signups? Do that again..