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Show HN: I built a text-based birthday reminder app (birthdays.app)

46 points by samfeldman ↗ HN
I bought the birthdays.app domain a few years ago and decided to build a simple birthday app, just text message reminders.

I had hacked together a duct-tape version for myself a couple years prior (using zapier + google sheets), and found it useful. It was a pain sifting through Facebook birthdays (90% irrelevant), and I found the text reminders simpler than a calendar.

The app has been slowly growing since 2023, and is now up to 739 paying users (mostly on the $9/yr plan, with a few paying $3/yr).

Earlier this year, I built a Google Calendar integration to automatically sync birthdays to the app. My goal is birthday reminders without the baggage a normal "social" app would have such as ads, engagement bait, etc.

I call it an app, but there's actually no app to download. Users log in via phone number + sms login code, then input birthdays manually, via text, or via Google Calendar.

At the moment, US users receive SMS messages (which are cheaper to send in the US), while other countries receive WhatsApp text reminders.

The app uses Twilio to text users (both SMS + WhatsApp) and Stripe for payments.

I'm hoping to build more features (iPhone contacts sync, easier birthdays importing) while also making video content that celebrates strangers' birthdays (such as, going to a farmers market with an "is it your birthday?" sign).

Thank you for reading, I'm open to any thoughts or ideas around the app!

19 comments

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samteeeee
Congrats on the successful product! What do you in terms of marketing?
flymasterv
I love this, but how do you end up with 739 users? That's both a lot of users, implying that this isn't just a total hobby, and also not a lot of users, which means it hasn't been marketed THAT heavily. What's your secret? Where do you find that niche?
jckahn
This is great! How much time do you spend per week dealing with customer issues? I'm SaaS-curious too, so I'm looking to see what other developers' experiences are like.
andrewstetsenko
It's a simple yet necessary app.

Is there a way to import my friends' birthdays from Facebook? It's by far the biggest database of birthdays that I'm using.

HelloUsername
Perhaps the website can have fewer external calls?

- bubble.io

- twitter.com

- cloudflare.com

- cloudflare.net

- facebook.net

- flagcdn.com

- googleapis.com

- googletagmanager.com

- gstatic.com

- jsdelivr.net

- simpleanalyticscdn.com

- tiktok.com

- wikimedia.org

And it shows me this error too https://www.twilio.com/docs/api/errors/60200

peterldowns
Hey, cool looking product! Why do I want this instead of just adding birthdays to my existing calendar and setting reminders there?
your_challenger
Do you use the WhatsApp cloud API? Isn't that expensive for a $3/yr price?
samfeldman
The app sends WhatsApp texts through Twilio's API. It's not exactly the same pricing model, but so far is approximately the same as SMS costs
kypro
This is absolutely brilliant. What a wonderfully simple idea!

> I'm hoping to build more features (iPhone contacts sync, easier birthdays importing) while also making video content that celebrates strangers' birthdays (such as, going to a farmers market with an "is it your birthday?" sign).

Build more features if you enjoy building and think it's worth your effort, but remember there's nothing wrong with a super simple product that does exactly what it says on the tin.

People clearly like what you've built. You may well find just focusing more on marketing is more financially rewarding.

Goofy_Coyote
This made me so happy to see this, I had the same idea, built the same kind of product but never shipped. So happy to see this out in the world. Will sign up for a premium plan today!
yapyap
Why not just a calendar that you hang on a place you visit a lot (like the toilet) where you write people’s name next to the date of their birthday

(this calendar being just numbers of course, since days change every year)

might be a fun low tech alternative for some people who aren’t fond of ‘yet another subscription’™

Imustaskforhelp
I am now actually inspired by this and have built something similar (vibe coded)

but I always thought it was impossible but I saw beeper interop with whatsapp and knew about the matrix bridge, the matrix bridge actually uses whatsmeow which is a golang package

and now I am having a blast creating something similar.. I don't like paying for software, so yeah I am gonna open source it lol.

samfeldman
Love to hear that! Texting apps are interesting ui
netsharc
Buzzfeed had one sentence per paragraph, this webpage has one sentence per screen...
samfeldman
Lol, aiming for a simple and intuitive way to explain the app. The app is simple, so is the website.
dommer
I’ve had this idea in my little book of ideas for almost a decade. Great effort getting this up and running.
Oceoss
nicee! I always think I should remember the birthdays of my close friends/relatives
chrismatheson
I am literally in the middle of building this same thing! (well almost the same, im trying to keep it 100% local device)

I'd love to connect and share ideas if your up for that?

chris at Matheson dot it