Hey Indiehackers ✌️!
My name is Marcin, and I’m designer and graduated architect. I specialize in Branding and UI/UX design and I would call myself Visual Designer unless I’ve recently become a developer. Yes, I've built a fully functional product, from scratch!
So, there was this idea.
For a quite long time, I was reading a lot on the internet about growth-hacking and marketing, so I was browsing thousands of blogs, apps, portals, groups, etc. While discovering more and more interesting content, it turned out, it's impossible to read everything at once. So I’ve started to save the links in my Chrome bookmarks – as I always did with other materials, tools or design resources. The problem was, I kept forgetting about my saved bookmarks and the content I wanted to read.
That’s why I started to look for a tool which would allow me to save the links but somehow remind me of them after some time. I tried Pocket, but it was still another app I would have had to visit to browse things I'd saved there.
So the Idea came in – let’s build the app. I thought the product through, and I was thinking about my developer friends and whom I am going to ask for help. But as some of you might have already know that (non-developers 😉), developers are either very expensive or not available for such small projects. After talking about the idea with some of my close friends – validating it at the same time – I got so excited about it, I decided I was going to build it on my own. I've had some little experience with Rails before - did some tutorials in the past, therefore I decided I can get back to it. The frontend part was not that scary for me, so I decided to jump into deep water and try myself with building the whole product.
It took me over a week to build fully functional MVP.
Equipped with the internet knowledge (so-called „Stack Overflow Development” 😂), Youtube videos from Mackenzie Child and little help from my developer friends, I’ve managed to launch the product live!
For the backend part, I used Ruby on Rails, integrated with Mailgun. App’s layout is written with pure HTML + CSS (and some JS), and landing-page was designed and developed in Webflow (I love it, seriously!).
That’s how I've brought this product alive – Meet Mailist.app!
What’s Mailist?
Mailist allows you to save any links from the internet easily and store them for later, to read whenever you have time. Every week (on Saturdays) you receive an email with the list of the links you saved for later. Think about your personal, carefully tailored weekly newsletter, with the content you add on your own. It’s that simple, isn’t it? And the best part - it’s free, without any limitations forever!
More than that
My Dear early beta-testers pointed me a lack of a feature – „Hey, why don’t you add Chrome extension, so you can save a page while browsing it?”. My answer was: „Yeah, sure, but first I need to learn how to do it :D”. So I did – again with the help of „THE INTERNET” 🙏 I’ve managed to write and publish Mailist Chrome Extension. It simply allows you to add any Chrome browser tab to Mailist with just a few clicks.
The future?
For the upcoming weeks, I’m going to validate the idea with more users and see if there is a real need on the market. If that works, I have plenty of new features for this product. Its further development will be more than an exciting journey for me, and I’m looking forward to it, so dear Indiehackers, visit Mailist.app and give it a try!
👊🏻 Any feedback is much appreciated!
Any plans to make it possible to have people subscribe to other people's newsletters? This would be handy for me -- I find an interesting article, I clip it and it's automatically added to my queue. Then on Saturday, it gets sent out to all of my subscribers, looking something like hackernewsletter or the indiehackers newsletter.
Side note -- I signed up, and Gmail sent the confirmation email straight to junk. Possibly because it's too generic-looking?
Yes, thats’s the first big feature update on my roadmap but since it’s a bit more complicated it has to wait :)
Regarding Spam - i’m working on it!
Thanks for the comment!
cool idea!! a Firefox extension would also be extremely welcome :)
Roger that! Put it on my list of tasks :)
Hey, the Firefox extension is live: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/mailist-app-add-on/ 🎉🎉🎉
Mr. Efficiency!
Gonna try it out!! Thanks!
Nice! Let me know if it's working as it's extpected to.
Awesome!
I was about to write the same :D
This is something that I do all the time, so far I've emailed it to my account and create a special rule to store all this. Your product is definitely something I will use. Count me in!
Thanks a lot! Hopefully you receive your confirmation e-mail! (Please check the Spam folder as well)
I'm in! The Chrome extension is probably the feature that adds the most value here, instead of going to the website and painstakingly copy pasting the URL...that's too manual. Great job Marcin, I'm so excited that someone has built something like this.
A very good idea Marcin - I have never seen email newsletter like this before. Good luck with it!
Thanks a lot :) I hope you become one of the active users!
Inspiring! I'm in the same boat as you but haven't built the product yet. Hopefully I get to it soon
Good luck then! 💪
Fantastic work Marcin :). I had been meaning to do a similar thing but never got around.I tried registering and it gave an error message "Something went wrong, Are you the application owner." When I tried again, the entry form highlights the email address in red and doesn't say anything else.
Oh and I have not received an email, checked all my folders. Thanks again for the wonderful app.
Hey, thanks for reporting this. My bad, did some hot fix yesterday and didnt test on production. Now it works :) Please try again and let me know if it works for you!
Tried registering again and the form highlighted my email in red. So thought maybe the account is already there. Hence went to login but the login form said no luck. So clicked on forgot password and got a password reset link. Reset my password and tried logging in, still no luck.
And I have not received the original confirmation email so my guess the account is still inactive. Maybe you can allow inactive users to log in but not save anything until their email is confirmed. This will also allow you to show a "Send Confirmation Link again".
Cheers
Got it. Found the link to send my confirmation again in one of the comments below and I am in. I will let you know how I go. Cheers.
Love it so far. Definitely need an import from bookmarks option. Cheers
Yey 🚀 Sorry for all that mess! Fortunately you did it, enjoy!
No worries mate. All in the game. For first time developer, you have done wonderfully well. Also, where do you want me to report bugs/feature requests to you. Here or is there any other place ?
Please email me at: [email protected] :)
Love the idea, I'd actually use it a lot. I went on the site and tried to sign up but never got a confirmation email.
Hey, did you check your spam folder? I’m still trying to figure out how to fix this.
Yeah it was in the spam folder.
Hopefully, recent update will change something.
Anyways, enjoy your Mailist!
Thanks. I've bookmarked the page. Will let you know if I'm using it and what it's like.
How dare you teach yourself to code!? You should go to university and pay for an expensive vocational training program and a paper certificate. ;-) Seriously though, you have expanded your possibilities. Congratulations and keep up the good work. :)
Going from “Oh I wish there was some tool to help me with this problem that I’m facing” to “Hey, I was facing a problem, so I coded an app and now that problem is gone!”... I can understand how exciting your learning journey must have been!
Really love your method Marcin! I have written about it in a recent article how mine - https://medium.freecodecamp.org/how-and-why-to-start-building-useful-real-world-software-with-no-experience-46f265eaf38
I am long term user of Instapaper and also located in the EU. I am now locked out from Instapaper for several days now because they are implementing GDPR. So I am happy to start using your service instead of theirs... :)
Great to read that my very young product can compete with such big player! Thanks!
I love this. I just realised that this is my first ever comment on Indiehackers. Great work Marcin!
It an honor then! Thanks a lot :)
I've basically wanted this exact thing for a while now, but never got around to building it. Thank you for putting in the work. I'm going to try it out.
Please let me know about your experience :)
So far the signup process and using the chrome extension seems seamless. I'll let you know some more thoughts once I've used it for a while and actually gotten the Sturday email.
Do you plan on making a native app ?
Hey, plans of course are here, but for now try saving the website to your main screen. Works like a charm on iOS and Android :)
This is very interesting your approach to learning and solving a problem you've experienced
It works best for me to solve real problems instead of going through multiple tutorials. I recommend it to everyone!
Well done!
Thank you sir! Let me know about your experience with the app.
Love this product idea!
Cool! I hope you like the execution as well :)
Congrats! I needed an app like that. I'm the one who saves everything on pocket, then I forget to check. lol
I hope you are going to like it ;) Let me know about the experience!
Sure. I'm already trying and I'll let you know my thoughts soon. ;)
I can't confirm my account through the email I'm receiving. It's giving me a SSL error.
email.m.mailist.app uses an unsupported protocol.
ERR_SSL_VERSION_OR_CIPHER_MISMATCH
How can I fix this ?
Please go to:
https://my.mailist.app/confirmation/new
and request new link. I messed something yesterday in the email provider settings. Now it should work.
Thanks for spotting that! Hope you are going to enjoy the tool!
Hey, great. Thanks for fixing it. I started using it . This is pretty cool.
When I click the extension to add a page to my mailist , it opens a new tab and here only I can add it right ? It's be great if I can add it right away within the extension without opening a new tab. Because I find it bit annoying. Just a small suggestion.
Anyway, cool product ! Good Luck ! :)
Have this already on my TODO list :) thanks for the feedback :)
🔥 congrats! so much better than hiring someone to build it
It depends TBH, but in this case it was much better choice as the idea was simple enough I could spend my very limited time and ship it fast.
Let me know what is your feeling about Mailist so far :)
Wow! "The problem was, I kept forgetting about my saved bookmarks and the content I wanted to read." This issue was always there in my life when I just started learning frontend development and graphic design years ago. A while ago I started with UX and now just imagine my bookmarks.
My bookmarks were always a mess it is still a mess. As I was interested in multiple fields it became a nightmare and I was way far from being organized and never thought to build such a useful app. Great idea Marcin! It's a lifesaver for me, indeed.
It's so nice to read this :) I'm glad it helps you as well! Let me know if you had any issues with either confirmation email or the UI.
Thanks a lot for kind words! 😍
I love the idea. Simple yet powerful. Keep it up, Marcin!
Thanks! ✌️
Hey! Good job! Glad Coding is used as a tool by non-professionnal programmers.
For your next project and if you're not in a learning process, think about checking if alternatives exist before coding. You would be surprised how many projects are available for a small fee and sometimes as Free Software / Open Source.
Hey, thank you!
The whole idea behind this was to build something entirely by myself. I know there are dozens of tools, solutions which help build things better/faster. But is it fun to go that way? :)
This comment was deleted 10 months ago.
Thanks a lot :)
This comment was deleted 6 years ago.
This comment was deleted 7 months ago.
Thank you! :) Yes I do, but first I need to see how many active-weekly users this product is able to gather and that will allow me to validate monetization strategy. I will definitely share here some updates in the future.
I'd suggest including some ads in the Saturday newsletter?
That's my idea :) Inspired by Designer News.
I know that this will probably be very far into the future if at all, but you have all the links on their list so you could target suggested websites based on the websites on their list. This would lead to a higher click through rate and a happy user because the ads wouldn't be completely irrelevant. I have no idea how you'd go about developing this, just looking at it from a business model point of view 😅
That's basically my plan :)
Not sure if you would get enough users/clicks if you go with an ad-based monetisation model. Would someone pay $5/mth perhaps?
Hey, I just hate monthly subscription models :) The future will show.
Yes, me too!
We need more people like you in the world! :)