Maintenant

Day 3 of trying to get my Docker monitoring tool noticed.

Yesterday I told you about Reddit banning me and HN blocking Show HN posts. Today I pitched a YouTube creator (DB Tech, ~100K subs in the self-hosted space) and got the most honest response I've received so far:

"The self-hosting marketplace has been overrun with AI nonsense that gets dropped into the community and then will likely never receive further updates."

He's not wrong. I've seen it too. New tool every week, nice dark UI, zero commits after launch. He told me he's concerned because my first release is only 2 weeks old.

And here's the thing — his concern is the exact same catch-22 I'm stuck in:

• I can't prove longevity without time

• I can't get users without visibility

• I can't get visibility because every platform either bans me or wants 6 months of karma first

• I can't fund ongoing development without users who convert to Pro

• If I can't fund it, it actually dies — proving everyone right

So I told him the truth: this is meant to be a business. I have a Pro tier at 9€/mo. If it converts, this becomes my livelihood. That's the strongest signal I can give that I'm not disappearing. I've been writing software for 25 years, I'm not a hobbyist who discovered Cursor last month.

He hasn't replied yet. But honestly, I respect the pushback. The self-hosted community should be skeptical. Too many projects have burned them.

The uncomfortable reality of launching open-source in 2026: you're guilty until proven innocent, and proving yourself requires the exact visibility that nobody wants to give you yet.

Current stats: 0€ revenue, 1 YouTuber on the fence, 1 newsletter pitched, 1 Reddit account still dead. But the IH post yesterday hit #6 on the Build Board, so at least something works.

Anyone else dealt with the "prove you'll stick around" problem when launching?

So I shipped Maintenant this week : a Docker monitoring tool, solo dev, AGPL-3.0, the whole thing.

Day 1: posted on r/selfhosted. Image gallery without description in the body. Mods removed it instantly. Fair enough, my bad.

Day 2: reformatted as a text post. Banned. Can't even message the mods. Can't access my account details anymore. Cool.

Day 3: ok forget Reddit, let's try Hacker News. "Show HN posts are temporarily restricted for newer accounts." Amazing timing.

Day 4 (today): I'm writing this post instead.

Turns out in 2026, launching a product as a solo dev with no existing audience on these platforms is basically impossible. Reddit wants 6 months of karma farming before you can share your own work. HN wants you to be an established community member. Both are fair rules I guess, but the catch-22 is brutal when you're starting from zero.

So here's the new plan: newsletters (selfh.st already pitched), YouTube creators (pitching Techno Tim, DB Tech and a few others), LinuxFr.org (french tech community), Lemmy, Mastodon, and this place. Basically every channel that doesn't require permission to exist.

Current stats: 0€ revenue, 1 newsletter pitched, 1 reddit account destroyed, 1 HN rejection. Momentum is great.

If you've launched a dev tool recently, what actually worked for distribution?

Solo dev, Bordeaux, France. Just shipped Maintenant — a single container that monitors your entire Docker/K8s stack.

Why

I run about 40 containers on a VPS. At some point I realized my monitoring "strategy" was Uptime Kuma in one tab, Healthchecks.io in another, a bash script I wrote at 2am for SSL certs, Portainer just to see if stuff was alive, and me doing docker pull every few weeks hoping nothing was critically outdated. Very professional.

I looked for one tool that did all of it. Didn't exist. So now it does.

What it does

You mount the Docker socket read-only, start the container, and 30 seconds later you have: container tracking with CPU/RAM metrics, HTTP/TCP endpoint probing, heartbeat URLs for cron jobs, SSL cert monitoring, image update detection from OCI registries (spots risky version jumps), network security checks (catches your Postgres port chilling on 0.0.0.0), and a public status page.

Single Go binary. <20 MB RAM. SQLite. No Postgres, no Redis, no "just add these 4 other containers." Also works on Kubernetes, auto-detected.

How I plan to eat

AGPL-3.0, full code on GitHub, Pro features included and visible. Community edition is the real product — complete, no nag screens, no "upgrade to unlock basic stuff."

Pro is 9€/mo for Slack/Discord/Telegram alerts, K8s support, CVE detection. Same binary, license key unlocks it.

Target: 5-12K€ ARR in two years. Not building a unicorn. Building something that still exists and still works in 5 years without a pivot to enterprise. The self-hosting crowd can smell a future rug-pull from miles away, and I respect that.

Where I'm at

v1.0.0 is out. Zero revenue (just launched). Reddit banned my account during the launch attempt and HN has restricted Show HN posts for newer accounts, so thats going great. Currently focusing on newsletters, YouTube creators, and not losing my mind.

If you've launched a self-hosted tool before and have advice on distribution channels that don't require 6 months of karma farming, I'm all ears.

maintenant.dev — github.com/kOlapsis/maintenant