HN Explorer

Show HN: I Built a Customer Feedback Tool (usefeedlyst.com)

34 points by xRxphael ↗ HN
Hey HN,

I've been making products for almost a year now. I always started projects and stopped after 2 weeks because I lost motivation. But this time, I’m determined to release it – even if it’s not perfect yet!

Let me introduce Feedlyst: a customer feedback tool where you can create boards, let customers submit & upvote feedback, and turn ideas into action.

I hope this tool will be helpful for you! Would love your feedback!

Raphael

35 comments

[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 80.3 ms ] thread
fbrchps
The problem with any tool like this is that people are often _terrible_ at knowing how to clearly explain what it is they want/what their actual issue is.

Key example: "login is broken!" Could be the captcha didn't load, captcha was blocked by their ad blocker, they are rate limited, they used the wrong email, they used the wrong password, they don't have an account, they aren't on the right website, etc.

xRxphael
That's not what my tool is for. A ticket system would be better for such cases. My tool is more for requesting features, such as “Please add PayPal as a payment method” or “Please implement website widgets, I need them urgently”.
edoceo
Customer/User is also not good at explaining those things either.

I've found the most success with collecting these requests internally, watching what bubbles up and then refining that into a solid use case - then present that to existing clients to vote/weight.

theverg
Kind of useless.... Something one can generate with a single AI prompt in a lunch break.
ttul
Even simple tools that someone can build in their lunch break can end up being very successful. That being said, the competition in customer feedback apps is intense. Unless you bring something really novel to the table, it’s gonna be a hard grind to make money.
xRxphael
Of course, I agree with you 100%. I have a few more features planned, some of which are nothing new, but which will definitely contribute to the overall value. But I'm not directly interested in the money (at least for now :D)
xRxphael
You can now say that about any tool, but that's not my point.

I'm more interested in gaining experience and getting tips on what I can do better for future projects!

risyachka
Tell me you never developed software without telling me you never developed software

The initial product is 5% or less

low_tech_punk
I'm curious how the lifetime pricing model work for you as a founder. Are you able to bootstrap this yourself and stay within budget with all the compute and hosting cost?
xRxphael
For me, the project was not primarily about money. It was more about gaining initial experience as a SaaS owner and what I need to do to run a successful project.

My costs are actually relatively low, I pay 5 euros a month for my VPS and the domain is only 7 euros a year... I can manage that!

Bilal_io
Your vps costs are low now. But won't be forever when your database usage and traffic grow. Even if a $10 vps can handle the traffic, the provider might rate limit you.

Let's be optimistic and assume the following over the next year: - You get 100 paid users from initial launch. You'll need an advertising budget to gain more. - And 500 free users over time because they'll keep coming.

Can you support 600 users with $1000 for a year? And this is not about vps costs, it's your time as well, you'll need to manage the vps and respond to customer tickets whether it's bug fixes, performance issues, or feature requests.

I think $10/first year is reasonable to test out your SaaS idea, you'll pay a lot out of pocket, but it'll give you the chance to evaluate and workout your pricing model over the first year.

turnsout
It's interesting to look at the top-ranked feature request, but you should also take it with a grain of salt. The demand for a particular feature might be expressing a deeper need or gap in the product. If you just blindly implement feature requests, you're going to end up with a Homer car.
xRxphael
The tool should only serve as a guide to which features should be shipped rather than others. Of course, this does not mean that this feature has to be done 100%.
arnath
My god there’s a lot of negativity here. Nice work! I’ve been looking for something like this for a very small test I’m running of a mobile app. It’s honestly surprising that there are so few offerings in this space
personjerry
What's the difference between this and like https://canny.io/ ?
[deleted]
(comment deleted)
xRxphael
It's not perfect and it's not quite finished yet. At the moment Canny.io has more features and is better known, but I prefer the simplicity of the tool and the price (10$ once and own it forever). It only has basic features right now, but feel free to request features you think it needs!
bcjordan
> turn ideas into action

Taking this to extreme degree — could wire up a GitHub/`claude` workflow that automatically generates pull request implementations of top-rated features (e.g. with branch previews hooked up so you can just try it and approve)

kissgyorgy
I don't really trust tools I can't put my name in the name field in 2025. It's insane how almost everybody got such a simple thing wrong.
[deleted]
(comment deleted)
xRxphael
I am really sorry.. What is your name (It sounds stupid, but I would really like to fix it :D)?
kissgyorgy
Just accept any Unicode character. That's it.
secretslol
This is something I would definitely try to guage what our customers want. Where are you based? When you say "We may share your information with trusted third-party service providers (such as payment processors) to provide our services.", could I see a list of all of those "trusted" service providers, so I can ensure that I also trust them?
xRxphael
Hey, sorry for the late answer.

I'm based in Austria. And we only use Stripe (payment processing) and Resend (email service).

dsmurrell
I think this is great, I was looking for something like this and I appreciate the minimalism.

One question... why do my users need to give you their email to leave a request?

Is there a way that I can send them through with a token that is valid for a time to leave the request?

dsmurrell
My magic link isn't coming through when I try to leave a test feature request. What postal service are you using? :)
xRxphael
I require the email address primarily to reduce spam as it discourages most people who don't want to give real feedback. and I plan to release a feature later for some kind of communication between the board owner and the feedback giver and I will need the email for that.

About the email: I use Resend. Could you give me the board ID and a time when you requested a magic link, then I'd be happy to take a look at it. Sorry for the little problem, it shouldn't happen :D

dsmurrell
cm8bw71d7000opl0kvjzjif9j, around three hours ago (17:30 UTC).

I see about the follow up comms, makes sense. Would still prefer if leaving the email was optional for the request leaver. I realise this complicates things :)

xRxphael
okay so I looked it up: I cannot really see why it doesnt work ;( It does work for me, even when I am trying it with your board id.. maybe give it another try

I will try to find a way to both being able to leave the email and reduce spam!

lord007tn
actually, I lost faith in a similar product I built previously (didn't see the sun ) as I believed the market was oversaturated. until two days when I started using resend and I wanted a feature so much (team-based access ) Resend didn't support it and I looked in the website and there is a small feedback tool like the one you provided

in a matter of minutes when I wrote, some one replied and added me to beta to test the feature. at that time I said there s a market for this kind of things after all

so good product, nice UI, keep up the good work ( after all what matter you shipped something and you are writing history )

willks
Looks good, I’ve been in the market for a tool like this before. One thing I found to be a crazy omission is that none of the existing tools enable people to leave feedback anonymously, they all require users to sign up in order to leave feedback, which is a level of friction that will prevent most people from bothering. I get that anonymous posting leads to spam, but I’d rather manage that myself than lose insights. I ended up using Canny, which let me log in users using credentials from my application, which is good but annoying to implement.