Shroud.email
Email, meet privacy.
I launched on AppSumo in June. So far, it's going reasonably well -- I created a lifetime plan, and several people have bought it already. What remains to be seen is the retention after AppSumo's 60-day refund period!
Feature work continues to progress. Shroud.email is already a strong contender, though by keeping an eye on Reddit and other privacy communities, I've re-prioritised some features.
I finished implementing the final crucial feature; handling email attachments.
Getting from idea to MVP took over 3 months. That's longer than I'd have liked, ideally, but I'm very happy with the end result!
The next step is to launch! I'll spend the week thinking through exactly how I want to do it.
I invited some friends and family to start using Shroud.email, giving them a free lifetime account. I'd been using it myself for a while, but more users means more chances to catch critical bugs.
Things are close to feeling production-ready at this point.
I had started off using a component library called DaisyUI, but when I put everything together, it still didn't look great. I want to build a product that feels great to use, so instead, I bought the TailwindUI kit and moved to using that instead.
It made a world of difference. It now looks like a real product that you'd want to pay for. In future projects, I'll go with TailwindUI from the beginning!
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Do you feel that the TailwindUI kit was well worth the price? I'm considering using it for my SaaS, but I'm slightly worried there is not out of the box support for Angular.
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I use Vue 3, which is supported out of the box, so yes -- it's also great for e.g. landing pages that are pretty static.
If your SaaS needs lots of fancy interactive Angular components, though, I'd maybe look for another option!
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In a bit over a month, I got from the first commit to a decently-functioning prototype. It didn't look great, and it was still missing a key feature (handling email attachments), but the core functionality was there -- enough for myself to start using it!
2020 and 2021 saw an increasing focus on email privacy. Some email protection services started popping up, but all had downsides: some required you move your entire email to a new service. Others just gave you email aliases, but let creepy spy pixels through. Most were closed-source and just used AWS's email service -- not ideal for a privacy tool!
I decided to start working on the email alias service that I wanted to use.
1 Comment
Congratulations Tao!
Are you willing to share some details into the AppSumo sales? I'd love to hear more.
John