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Show HN: I made a backdoor for web freelancers to avoid unpaid bills (braum.io)

2 points by raphaelgvl ↗ HN
I’ve been building websites for clients for years — and like many freelancers and small studios, I’ve dealt with that sinking feeling when a client loves the work… and then vanishes when it’s time to pay.

Chasing payments sucks. Going legal is slow, expensive, and messy.

So I asked myself: “What if we could prevent this from the start, without sounding aggressive or unprofessional?”

That’s why I built Braum.

It's like a legal backdoor to get back your peace of mind when you give the keys of your website to your client. If he pays, everything is ok, but if he doesn't, you can display a message, of an error page (404, 500, etc)...

8 comments

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AStonesThrow
Hey, this is a great idea and what you should do is extend it to motor vehicles and some kind of “remote kill switch” when people fail to make payments on time. And you could even blame it on “failed OTA updates” to be subtle!
raphaelgvl
Haha yes, I get the analogy! That’s exactly why Braum tries to stay on the soft side, no site deletion or hard shutdowns. Just a simple layer to nudge clients who ghost you after delivery. No OTA updates involved
stefanos82
Most shared hosting services I have used so far have a nice "account suspended" message when you forget to pay your invoice in time, enough to shake your soul to the core LOL!

You should apply that too and your serious customers will become extremely careful after the first shock...trust me! :D

raphaelgvl
You can totally do this with Braum ! A simple warning message. But if you don't have access to hosting or code anymore, and you didn't install Braum before the delivery, you can't even display this simple message, and client may vanish with your work without paying
stefanos82
That's why a friend of mine once told me "always work with a signed contract in your hands!"; I now get what he really meant when he shared that advice with me. Many customers don't want to deal with legal stuff and prefer to pay you on time; else, if you go with verbal agreements, good luck with that :/
raphaelgvl
I 100% agree with that statement. However, in France at least, even with a signed contract, if your client doesn't pay, it will be really long and costly to get back the money with the legal way. And you're not even sure it will happen :(