Show IH: I built a "pizza tracker" for freelance client projects
Clients were emailing me "where is my project?" 3x a week.
I asked r/webdev how they handle it.
Most answers were some version of "just communicate better."
Weekly updates, set expectations upfront, etc. All correct.
All things I was already doing.
But one reply hit different:
"Knowing they CAN check kills 80% of the anxiety.
The other 20% who do check can see progress without
bothering you."
So the problem isn't communication — it's that clients
have nowhere to look. They email because that's the
only option they have.
I tried sharing my Notion board. Made it worse. Clients
saw "refactor auth middleware" and asked what that meant.
More emails, not fewer.
What they need is a separate, client-language view.
Not your internal tools. Just: here's the phase,
here's what's happening, here's what's next.
That thing didn't exist, so I built it.
WhereIsMyProject — you define phases in plain language,
share one link, update in 30 seconds. Client bookmarks it,
stops emailing.
Still pre-launch: whereismyproject.com
Curious if the landing page makes sense to someone
who hasn't felt this pain — would love brutal feedback.
"Love the 'pizza tracker' idea for transparency. I’m currently building RankyPulse, which generates a 2-page 'Surgical Plan' PDF for SEO fixes so freelancers can show exactly what they're working on. I just ran it against 30 giant domains (Shopify, GitHub) to see where they leak revenue. This 'pizza tracker' approach + a technical fix guide seems like the ultimate freelancer stack. Nice work!"
Hey thank you and good luck with your project!
The “knowing they can check” point is spot on.
I’ve seen the same thing outside of freelance work as well. It’s not just about updates, it’s about removing the uncertainty of not knowing where things stand.
Once people have a place to look, most of the noise disappears.
That quote about "knowing they CAN check kills 80% of the
anxiety" is spot on — I've never heard it framed that way
but it's exactly right.
The Notion board story made me laugh because I've been there.
You think you're being transparent and it just creates more
questions.
Landing page is clear — I understood the problem immediately
and I'm not even a freelancer. The headline does the job.
One question, are you planning to charge the freelancer or
the client? Feels like the freelancer pays to reduce their
own headache which is a pretty easy sell.
Hah, the pizza tracker framing is actually perfect for client psychology - people tolerate waiting way better when they can see something moving. Curious how you're handling the "quality check" stage, because that's where my client projects always stalled with revision loops. Did you build this for your own workflow first, or straight to productizing it?