My First SaaS: From Idea to Launch

I’m thrilled to announce the launch of Pingify, my very first SaaS product!
It's been an exhilarating two-month journey of early mornings, late evenings, and weekends, all while balancing my full-time job. I want to share the story of how Pingify.com came to life.

The Idea

The spark for Pingify ignited with a domain name. As an avid investor in domain names, I scour the domain drop list daily, looking for hidden gems with investment or development potential. A few years ago, I stumbled upon Pingify.com. The moment I saw it, I knew it had potential, particularly for something related to website or server monitoring.

I acquired Pingify.com for around $500, confident in its value. Initially, I listed it for sale on multiple marketplaces, hoping for a lucrative offer. While I received a few lowball bids, nothing panned out.

Two months ago, I decided to stop waiting and start building. Inspired by the vibrant indie maker community on Twitter/X, I set out to create a website monitoring service on Pingify.com.

People often overlook website monitoring. Many trust their hosting providers blindly, but my experience as a developer has taught me the frustration of unexpected downtime. It can disrupt user experience and damage trust. That was the gap Pingify aimed to fill.

The Launch

With this idea in mind, I researched the best approach for building website uptime checkers. Despite my expertise in PHP, I knew it wasn’t the best fit for this task due to its synchronous nature and slower speed. Node.js, on the other hand, offered the asynchronous performance I needed.

Not being an expert in Node.js, I enlisted the help of ChatGPT to whip up a quick Node.js script. After some testing, I was pleased with the results. The following steps involved building the interface and setting up the database. For this, I returned to my comfort zone: PHP, using the Laravel framework and MySQL for storage. For the front end, I layered TailwindCSS with Livewire/Alpine.js for added reactivity.

I aimed to build and launch Pingify swiftly, maintaining momentum and excitement. Balancing this project with my regular job proved a challenging but incredible journey.

Finally, the day came to launch Pingify. I feel a mix of excitement and nervousness. Launching a product is always a leap of faith, but the indie hacker community's support and feedback have been invaluable. Pingify is live, helping users monitor their websites, ensuring they stay online, and performing optimally.

I'm thrilled about the future and eager to scale Pingify, but building it was easy. The real challenge lies in marketing, as I'm still a newbie.

Launching Pingify has been a rollercoaster of learning and growth. From idea conception to the actual launch, every step has been a blend of challenges.

If you’re considering building your own SaaS, remember that every big journey starts with a single step. Embrace the process, learn continuously, and don't be afraid to ship your product.

I hope you enjoyed this behind-the-scenes look at my journey with Pingify. What’s your next big idea? I’d love to hear about it! Feel free to reply to this email or share your thoughts on Twitter/X with me at @venelinkochev.

Thanks for being part of this journey!

Best regards,
Venelin K.