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16 Comments

Would anyone be interested trying my writing/editing tool for a "free month"?

Hey guys. We recently launched Shosho (https://shosho.co), a tool for writing, editing and collaboration. It was born out of the frustration of using too many tools for keeping notes, writing, editing, etc. Shosho is a minimalist editor which can also clean your text from all the clutter and make your text sound clearer and more confident (it can find more than 140k writing style mistakes + has a built-in grammar tool).

We are looking for people that write a lot to use our product and let us know what could be improved. We will give one month free if you are interested in trying it and providing feedback.

What we are looking for is:

  • Usability issues
  • Edit mode issues
  • What could be improved or what's missing for your flow to be complete

P.S. Yes, Shosho finds more mistakes than Grammarly (in certain cases) and way more than Hemmingway if you are asking.

  1. 2

    Hey Eugen, I've just gotten into a new Project Management based site and newsletter. I write at least one post per day, and the newsletter is a weekly.

    I'd love to work the project and provide feedback. ~ryan

    1. 1

      Hey Ryan, use the code INDIE5 and you will get the month free. Let me know your feedback :)

  2. 1

    Hi Eugen, I'd love to try it out for a month! I've used other apps like Hemingway App, Draftin, Ulysses, and others. I am a freelance writer for Techless.com and for myself at ScriptureSauce.com.

    1. 1

      Wonderful, thank you! Use the code INDIE5 — just type it and it will be applied when you click Checkout.

      Let me know how's your experience as we are trying to be a better writing app for writers, bloggers, etc.

      1. 2

        So, some initial thoughts after playing around with Shosho...

        First of all, it's super clean. It reminds me of the Hemingway Editor app, but I'd have to use Shosho more extensively to really compare its editing features to it.

        So, here are some features I'd love to see in order to drop $5 per month for it (since Hemingway is free to use)...

        1. The ability to use Markdown while writing. I found it odd that it can import and export in Markdown, but not write in it.
        2. Ability to add images with captions.
        3. Like the left hand side for "stories." I think nesting and folders would be a must in the left hand side. For instance, if I'm writing a book, I could nest in chapters and in parts. If I'm a content writer, I could nest by client/blog and then by month.
        4. (Down the road). If it could do all the above AND export directly to a CMS like (WordPress and Ghost), that would be stinkin awesome.

        I do like how you can adjust the font and look of Shosho (Hemingway lacks that).

        Thanks for listening!

        1. 1

          Thank you so much for taking time and writing this! Funny, but we actually work on these features already. They will be rolled out in the upcoming months.

          Hemmingway is free but doesn’t come close to our grammar checker, spellchecker and other mistakes it can find. But, yes, we plan to expand on this with add-ons, publishing, metrics, etc. So if you stick with us, I am sure you will see all of them :)

  3. 1

    Quick two feedback

    If I signed up with Google Account its asking for email confirmation and first confirmation email link does not work and need to do resend confirmation.

    1. When we add coupon there is no option to apply coupon to see if its valid or not. When we click next payment page it shows details of applied coupon.
    1. 1

      Thank you! Yes, we already fixing that with Google and email. And for the coupon, we did the fastest implementation — so yes, it looks a bit weird. Will add a "Apply Code" later this week

  4. 1

    Hi Eugen,

    Just checked out https://shosho.co and it looks awesome! I currently use https://draftin.com/ to compose posts for my personal blog and https://www.hometownindustriescoaching.com/. I've enjoyed Draftin so far, but your product appears to have more editing features that I am interested in. Would love to try Shosho and offer some feedback in the areas you specified.

    1. 1

      Thank you Sven! We just launched, and many more features will come. So you can have a unified experience. Have your first month on us ;) Use the code INDIE5

      Let me know how your experience will go. I am open to ideas/suggestions/feedback

  5. 1

    Hi Eugen a free month would be nice. We write a lot of blogs https://medium.com/uclusion and also my son could use it for his college application essays.

    1. 1

      Thank you David! Just use this coupon at the checkout INDIE5, and let me know here or via the chat your feedback

      1. 1

        The tool makes a lot of good suggestions and the basic layout is good. But the finer detail usability needs work.

        1. The title thing at the top is trying to do something fancy that I don't need. Let me start writing and I can set something to be title format if I want. This particularly got in the way when I imported an MD file.
        2. There must always be hover text explaining whatever highlighting Shosho is doing - some times things are high lighted and I don't know why.
        3. The color coding on the legend of stats on the right does not match the colors in the document - they have to match exactly or it is confusing.
        4. This didn't bother me but when I signed up with Google nothing ever asked me for a credit card or coupon. What was bothersome is that if I sign up with Google you should not send me a Confirm Your Email.
        5. If I omit text at the beginning of a sentence Shosho should automatically capitalize the next word.
        6. "Edit mode explained" in the left side bar is not helping. You also don't need an entire left side bar just to track open files.
        7. actionable is highlighted for replacement but it doesn't say why
        8. If you say a sentence is difficult to read you should give some indication of why it got flagged for that.

        Since https://shosho.co is being built by a team I hope you will check out Uclusion's collaboration tool and give us feedback as well.

        1. 1

          That's some really good points! I added them. Yes, we are just a team of two for now, so it's a bit hard to grasp everything at once. So we depend a lot on the users to let us know if something is not ok.

          And the one with Google we didn't notice. We will fix this :)
          And it didn't ask you for credit card or coupon because we give you a free trial for 7 days without needing credit card details. The coupon I gave you, you can use at the checkout for a 1 month free

          P.S. You can close the sidebar by clicking on the green button near the logo (left corner) or press cmd+\ to close it

          1. 1

            Closing the side bar is not useful to me as the text is not going to expand. All closing would do is reduce the utility of the sidebar from open files to blank. I'm saying you need to increase the utility of that real estate.

            1. 1

              Ah, now I see. Yes, we will add more stuff there soon. Like folders, and other features

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