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From Frustration to Solution:A Journey in Simplifying Calendar Syncing

Lessons learned from building a SaaS as a solo-founder

When Ed started Calensync.live, his goal was simple: build the best calendar syncing tool, at the cheapest cost. While looking for a solution for his personal use, he was surprised by the high cost of the various other solutions, for what seemed to be a pretty trivial problem. 

As is often the case, the devil is in the detail, and what was supposed to be a small SaaS built in 1 week, became a continuous side-project. However, the goal stayed the same: keep it simple, do one thing, and do it well.

Good Support: an Underrated Super Power

As with every software, it’s bound to contain bugs. This is a fact that all founders have to accept, otherwise they will keep on trying to improve, perfect, and end up either never launching, or worst launching a product that doesn’t get users.

However, what the team found was that as long as there’s an easy way to report the bug, and that the support is fast and good, people will value it considerably. There was even a case of a user encountering a bug, getting support within a couple of hours, and being so pleasantly surprised by the help that they would advertise the solution to other colleagues having the same issue. Imagine that: a user discovering a bug, and then becoming an advocate.

Differentiating from the market

This led to market research, and the realization that a lot of the other tools were minimal: you could add a suffix to the event title or hide it entirely for privacy reasons, you could pick the event color, and.. that was about it. In order to differentiate his solution from the others, he worked on implementing features that were missing. Amongst the ones that has been amongst the used is simply the ability to filter out which calendar events should be synced (or ignored) using ReGex.

Closing the Missing Gaps

Over time, as the product matured, the focus turned to gaps identified through user feedback and market research. As time went by, the ability to sync Outlook and Google calendars, as well as iCal calendars in .ics format was added. This expansion made Calensync.live more versatile and appealing to a broader audience, and concluded the product. Right?

.. but since no meal is really over without dessert, the team also implemented shareable scheduling links, allowing users to set up meetings based on their calendar availability. This feature has been particularly useful for freelancers and consultants who need to coordinate with multiple clients.

The Journey Continues

Today, Calensync.live stands out as a comprehensive yet simple calendar syncing tool. It has evolved from a personal project to a solution that helps hundreds of users manage their schedules more efficiently. As the solution continues to grow, the team remains dedicated to improving the user experience.

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launching

Launch Point Zero’s analytics is now public

LPZ has been using google analytics for monitoring traffic. Recently we came across a ruby gem called active analytics – https://github.com/BaseSecrete/active_analytics

LPZ is built with Ruby on Rails. We’re a big fan of the gem ecosystem and how easy it makes it to add new features. LPZ always wanted to make our traffic public, but we didn’t want to pay for a service. Active Analytics made sharing our web traffic easy and free. You can check it out here;

https://launchpointzero.com/analytics

Next week we’ll be welcoming a new sponsor, CalenSync. Thanks for checking LPZ for the most reliable information about launching your startup.

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launching

Tekpon.com boasts of 230 million reviews and charges $249 to be listed. It’s not worth the price and there’s no way all those reviews are real.

Launch Point Zero is typically skeptical about launch websites that charge startups to be listed and have no free option. We prefer when a site charges a fee to cut to the front of the line. We’re not here to quibble over charging a little. However ProductHunt.com, arguable the most popular site to launch on, is free. If PH doesn’t charge then how can anyone else justify charging that much money to launch or list your product?

Part of Launch Point Zero’s mission is to keep our readers informed about each site. We do our best to review each launch site and keep our readers informed and make good decisions. Since we’re bootstrapped we’re very price sensitive about paying for anything.

Recently while updating our data we decided to update our review of Tekpon – it is a paid only site that charges a hefty $249. We only became aware of Tekpon back in August of 2024, and we didn’t have a lot of information back then. Upon further review of March 2025, their homepage boasts of over 230 million reviews. That is an extraordinary amount of reviews!

It also strikes us as very dubious. As of March of 2025 G2.com, one of the most popular software review sites, currently claims to have 2.9 million reviews, and it has been around since 2012. Capterra, another well known software review site, claims is has 2.5 million reviews. Somehow Tekpon has accumulated nearly 80 times more reviews than G2 in a fraction of the time.

What’s even stranger is Launch Point Zero’s first notes about Tekpon was made in August 2024, where they boasted of 34 million reviews. That means that Tekpon has accumulated 196 million reviews in less than 8 months time. That alone should raise a red flag.

All we’re saying is it is highly unlikely that Tekpon got even a tiny fraction of their reviews through real people, its likely AI generated reviews and fake profiles. We strongly recommend AGAINST anyone paying $249 for the privilege of being listed on Tekpon’s website.

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launching product hunt

Indiehackers.com launches PH competitor

There have been a slew of Product Hunt clones launching in the past few weeks since some of the drama has been aired publicly on social media. It’s hard to start to compete against what is the #1 place to launch, no matter how unhappy people are. It’s always been my belief that the one place that had a chance to be a viable alternative to Product Hunt was if Indiehackers.com built something comparable.

This week that finally happened. You can launch on Indiehackers.com at https://indiehackers.com/products

Currently it’s free but eventually they will charge $20. We at LPZ normally advocate against paying to launch but this actually is a pretty good value based on Indiehacker’s audience and quantity of traffic.

We’re hoping that Indiehackers can be a viable alternative in the product launching space.

Categories
launching

Directory Cloudfindr.co is charging $300 for a lifetime listing

I submitted keenforms.com to a directory I found recently, called Cloudfindr.co – I don’t recall how I found it, I must have stumbled across it while surfing the web.

It wasn’t too bad of a submittal process, but I was surprised when I got an email a couple of days later asking for a $300 fee for a lifetime listing. If I had an affiliate project the fee would be $200.

I was even more surprised when I noticed that the email was thanking me for submitting Eurporic.ai, not Keenforms.com. So I decided to follow up with an email asking what their traffic was and how they could justify charging $300.

Next surprise the return email address generated an error “Undelivered mail returned to sender”. There’s a good chance that Cloudfindr.co is a scam. I don’t know if anyone has actually handed over money to be listed but it does appear there are quite a few people starting pay to list directories. LPZ would advice against paying to appear on any directory.

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launching product hunt

Product Hunt isn’t dying – its become gentrified

Small time makers have been “priced out” by VC startups, rent seeking profiteers, and others with deep pockets

There has been no shortage of content of how Product Hunt is either not worth the trouble, or has changed, or is dead. The incident involving Jason Levin leaving because the current CTO didn’t know who their most popular member was, the layoff of 60% of their staff, the number of paid for services offering to help your startup be the #1 product launch of the day, the number of complaints, all of these and more are symptoms of the same problem.

Product Hunt is not dying, it’s become gentrified.

PH used to be that cool little community where makers launch their side project in hopes of making a few bucks or even quitting their job to do it full time. However as it has grown in size and traffic and visibility, so has it’s value. And that is why it has changed, better or worse, for the the solopreneur or bootstrapped startup.

Product Hunt is just like that hip and cool coffee house that was started in an affordable part of the city. All those community members gathered in that space, which made that space more attractive, which eventually led to others with money want to be in that same space, and in turn increased competition, and made it more crowded, and therefore harder to get attention. The companies that already have attention are relaunching getting a second or third shot at the trough. VC backed companies have the funds to be able to boost their launch on PH to guarantee their launch will be in the top 5.

All of this means its going to be a lot harder for you, the side hustler, the soloprenuer, the full time bootstrapper, to succeed in getting some attention, and hopefully revenue, for your SaaS or service, whatever it is your building.

Hey for the makers out there Product Hunt was great while it lasted. However you want what PH was 3-4 years ago you probably have to go somewhere else. There are lots of places to launch but most of those sites don’t have the community or credibility that PH seems to have lost.

If you want to build the new Product Hunt you can’t just create a site where people can submit their product and launch. You absolutely should not be charging to launch. You might need some sort of chat space, anything that facilitates community. If you get any traction then you should fully expect scammers trying to game your system so they get the most upvotes. It won’t be so easy to just be the new Product Hunt, but I do hope someone tries.

Categories
launching

The best places to share your startup on Reddit without getting banned

Reddit can be an amazing resource for promoting your startup. However many subreddits explicitly ban self promotion. Here’s a list of the top 12 sub reddits that don’t ban self promotion;

  1. Alphaandbetausers – The perfect subreddit to launch on – low expectations, multiple daily posts
  2. indiebiz – For startups to offer and share, not a ton of activity but at least you’ll get backlinks
  3. Linkbuilding – Another good place to trade links, and no ban on self promotion.
  4. Micro Saas – Software as a Service businesses run by a very small team, perfect for launching a SaaS
  5. Plugyourproduct – Promotion here is encouraged, but traffic is infrequent
  6. Promotereddit – Meant for cross promoting other subreddits, so create a subreddit for your own Saas or App and then share it here
  7. RoastMyStartup – Promotion here is encouraged, so perfect for launching here
  8. SideProject – Self promotion is encouraged, and is very active
  9. Smallbusiness – Promotion here is permitted, traffic is active
  10. Software As a Service – Active subreddit where self promotion is allowed, if you are a SaaS then post here
  11. Startup – This is a subreddit to bring people together and help startups get help with their business needs
  12. Startups – “You MAY share your startup in the Monthly Share Your Startup thread”, very active and sharing is encouraged

You can see more info on all the subreddits that we’ve reviewed at Launch Point Zero here;

https://launchpointzero.com/launchsites?token=reddit

Categories
launching

Another resource for launch – UserBooster

Here’s the link – https://userbooster.co/spreadtheworld

More to come

Categories
launching product hunt

Building a Product Hunt Clone? Here’s what you should know.

Product Hunt is arguably the biggest place to launch a startup, SaaS, mobile app or project. And for that reason it’s very competitive to get a high ranking, or even get noticed on Product Hunt.

If you’re thinking of building a Product Hunt clone, here’s a few things you should consider;

  • You SHOULD NOT be charging money for companies to submit – if you have a waiting list and want to charge to expedite that’s fair trade, but charging before you’ve even launched looks ridiculous. Product Hunt doesn’t charge, how can anyone justify paying for your service. Don’t be this site Nextool, which hasn’t even launched yet.
  • You SHOULD establish a social media presence on every platform available; Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, Threads, whatever platform that is available.
  • You SHOULD be cross promoting the products being submitted – when you use social media to announce a product launching, that product should be sharing their launch on their own social media, which in turn helps give your site exposure. It’s a no brainer to increase traffic to your own site.
  • You SHOULD make your web traffic public – Maker Peak made their traffic public here. You should be too.
  • You SHOULD have a blog to give updates on how often you are launching new sites.
  • You SHOULD NOT reject submissions without an explanation – if you think a product is not appropriate for your site, that’s fin but for goodness sakes tell the companies that are submitting for consideration why you are not posting their company.

There’s room for competition in the launch game, but since you’re not the lead dog you’re going to have to put in a lot of effort to get noticed. Good luck with whatever you’re building, and reach out to us so we can add you to the Launch Point Zero directory.

Categories
launching

Hey we found another site like us!

Wheretopromote.co looks like another directory where you can launch your startup. It appears to be focused on AI directories. We’re more general purpose, but it does have some sites we don’t have yet, so well done. Go check it out.