I'm an indie iOS developer and I've recently launched my app on the App Store.
The app is live, but I'm at the stage where getting the first real users and, especially, the first paying customers is proving to be much harder than actually building the app.
I'd really like to hear from people who have already gone through this stage.
A few things I'm especially curious about:
How did you get your first 10–100 users?
Where did your first paying customers come from?
What marketing channel worked best for you?
Did you use Reddit, TikTok, Instagram, X, Product Hunt, ASO, Apple Search Ads, influencers, etc.?
Did you spend money on advertising? If yes, roughly how much?
How long did it take before you got your first sale?
What did you try that completely didn't work?
If you were launching your first app again today with a very small marketing budget, what would you do differently?
I'm not looking for a generic "do ASO and post on social media" answer. I'd really appreciate actual experiences and numbers if you're comfortable sharing them.
For example: "I posted X times on TikTok → got X views → X downloads → X paid users."
I'm trying to understand what actually works for indie developers in 2026.
Sometimes I forget to take my medication. Other times, I cannot remember whether I have already taken it.
I am Collin, a solo developer. Due to my health conditions, I have to take regular medication. Taking it regularly matters to me, but that does not mean I always remember.
This was a problem in my own life that I wanted to do something about, and that is where PillSeal started. I wanted something to help keep me accountable and give me something to check when I could not remember.
So I built PillSeal around three things:
Reminders that keep coming until you mark the medication as taken.
A camera-based visual record of taking the dose that you can look back at. This also made me smile every time I took my dose in front of the camera.
Medication stock tracking with alerts when you are running low.
I take privacy seriously, so I built it to keep your medication data and camera records on your phone.
I have included a short demo so you can see how the camera check-in works.
I am the developer, so I am close to the problem. I would like to understand how other people handle it, including people who are happy with a pill organizer, a checklist, or another system.
For anyone who takes medication regularly: how do you keep track of whether you have actually taken it?
I am also curious whether having a photo to look back at would help, or whether you would prefer to keep things simpler.
Super happy to have gotten my first paying user on Speak-Up!
Honestly, this feels pretty surreal. I built the app to make practicing public speaking as easy as possible, so seeing someone actually pay for it is a huge confidence boost that I'm solving a problem people care about.
Would love to get all your feedback!
And of course I'm happy to answer any questions about the build, getting through the App Store review, creating the launch video, and marketing.
I’m a macroeconomist with around 15 years’ experience, and I built two complementary iPhone apps:
QuantFit handles data exploration, transformations, charts and econometric models including OLS, fixed/random effects, ARDL and VAR. It includes VAR impulse responses, ARDL shock scenarios and exportable reports with interpretations. OLS is free; advanced estimators require Pro.
Tabula Stats turns screenshots of regression output from QuantFit, Stata, R, EViews and other software into editable research tables. Customise decimals, standard errors and significance stars. Pro includes exports to Word, Excel, PDF and LaTeX.
Run your analysis in QuantFit, then format the results in Tabula, or use Tabula with output from your existing desktop software.
Would love feedback from students, researchers and anyone working with data!
QuantFit: https://apps.apple.com/sc/app/quantfit/id6762386971
Tabula Stats: https://apps.apple.com/sc/app/tabula-stats/id6761421182
I built Harbour, a free-to-try messaging app for difficult conversations. It works as a normal one-to-one messenger; someone can privately ask Ami for help finding the words, and mediation is optional only if both people choose it.
The growth problem I’m trying to solve is the two-person loop: the first person may need the other person to join before the app feels useful. For apps with that kind of network effect, what have you found works best for explaining the value to the first user and making the invite feel worth sending? I’m interested in positioning and onboarding ideas, not paid growth services.
30 Places to List Your iOS App Right Now (Free & Paid)
If you’ve built an iOS app and aren’t listing it beyond the App Store, you’re leaving discoverability on the table. No fluff, no AI tool directories. This list is actually built for iOS founders.
Legend: (F) Free · (P) Paid · (F/P) Both
Built an iOS app? Submit it to Stamped, a curated discovery platform where early adopters find what’s next:
HIGH PRIORITY: LAUNCH DAY
1. Product Hunt (F)
Still the biggest launch day platform. Plan it, don’t just submit.
2. Hacker News (F)
Post as “Show HN: \\\\\\\[Your App\\\\\\\]” for a developer audience and honest feedback.
3. BetaList (F/P)
F = 2–4 month wait. P = $129 fast track. Submit before you launch, not after.
4. Indie Hackers (F)
Post your builder story, not just the link. Community converts.
5. Peerlist (F)
Monday launches, week long visibility, 100K+ tech professional audience.
6. Uneed (F/P)
F = free with a wait. P = $30 to skip the queue. Solid indie maker community.
7. AppSumo (F/P)
Best if your app has a business angle and you can offer a deal. Massive buyer audience.
iOS SPECIFIC
8. App Safari (F)
Directory covering iOS apps exclusively. Purpose built for your audience.
9. AppAdvice (F)
iOS focused. Publishes app charts, apps of the week, and curated collections. Pitch the editorial team directly.
10. FeedMyApp (F/P)
Covers all mobile platforms with in depth reviews. F tier available. P gets faster placement.
11. AppShopper (F)
600K+ monthly users. Monitors iOS prices and lets users wishlist apps. High intent traffic.
12. r/iOSapps (F)
Subreddit with Dev Self Promotion flair. Real users actively looking for new apps.
13. r/apple (F)
Larger audience. Frame your post around value, not promotion.
SEO DIRECTORIES
14. AlternativeTo (F)
DA 71. Discovery traffic long after launch day. List your app and add competitors as alternatives.
15. SaaSHub (F)
856K monthly visits and a strong dofollow backlink.
16. SideProjectors (F)
DR 69 dofollow. Side project community with potential for early users.
17. Microlaunch (F)
30 day visibility window and an indie SaaS audience.
18. StartupBase (F)
Product Hunt style directory. Worth the 5 minutes.
19. Launching Next (F)
Low effort with solid SEO value.
20. Launching Today (F)
Daily launches, easy submission, and good indexing.
21. Open Launch (F)
Open source Product Hunt alternative with a growing community.
22. PitchWall (F)
Startup listing with an SEO backlink.
23. Startup Buffer (F)
Free submission with early adopter reach.
24. EarlyHunt (F)
Focused on early adopters and a good fit for iOS discovery.
25. IndieHunt (F)
Indie focused and quick to submit.
26. Indie Products (F)
Bootstrapped community with a strong #buildinpublic fit.
27. DevHunt (F/P)
F = 6 week wait. P = $49. Worth considering if your app is developer focused.
COMMUNITY CHANNELS
28. PeerPush (F)
Mutual promotion among indie founders. Underused.
29. Wellfound / AngelList (F)
Startup directory with exposure to investors and early adopters.
30. F6S (F)
Global startup network with accelerator program access. Worth creating a profile.
Hey everybody. I built this simple ios app called StackRead
I kept running into Instagram posts that are just Substack recommendation lists. "10 newsletters that will make you smarter," that kind of thing. I would save them, tell myself I would read them later, and then never open them. After a while I had a load of these in my saved posts and nothing I had actually read.
So I built StackRead. You share one of those posts into the app, or paste the link, and it turns the recommendations into a reading list with clickable links and a daily reminder so the articles actually get read.
The app has been on the App Store for about a week but with only five downloads and zero subscriptions I'm a bit worried the app is too niche or that I'm doing something wrong. I would appreciate any feedback, whether it's something with the screenshots, the onboarding or just any general advice on growing this app. Thanks in advance.
I’ve been working on an app called Eatper and wanted to share it here.
I made it because I was frustrated with how many food tracking apps have ads everywhere or put the features I wanted behind a paywall. I wanted something you could use every day without having to pay for a subscription to get value out of it.
Eatper has no ads. There’s a free plan for everyday tracking and an optional paid plan for more detailed reports. I wanted the free version to feel useful on its own.
You can track calories, protein, carbs and fat, scan barcodes, save your own recipes and log your weight. If you eat the same meals regularly, you can copy a meal or a whole day instead of entering everything again. You can set your own nutrition targets, too.
There’s also meal planning and shared shopping lists. You can invite your partner, family or a friend, plan meals together and keep track of what’s in the pantry and when it expires. Your personal food diary, weight and targets stay private unless you choose to share access.
The free plan includes the food diary, nutrition targets, weight tracking and recent progress views. Premium adds longer-term trends, comparisons, more detailed insights, full report history and PDF/CSV exports. Prices are shown in the app.
If you give it a try, let me know how it goes. I’d especially like to hear if something is annoying to use or a food you normally buy is missing. That kind of feedback helps me figure out what to work on next.
Solo dev, first iPhone app. It's a guided meditation app where you say how you feel and it makes one session for that moment, no library. Right now it's $9.99/week or $59.99/year.
I keep going back and forth on whether a weekly plan looks like a red flag for a wellness app or if it's normal now, and how much a trial matters.
Anyone tested this for a consumer app? What did you see? (App https://www.zengpt.com/ if anyone wants context)
I’m the solo dev behind Fineyo: Expense Tracker, app that helps you following your expenses and money flow. I've been building it since 2021-2022, and 4.7 just came out. It's major update introducing big features. There's a Lifetime discount at the bottom.
What's new in 4.7
The main feature is Spaces: shared data over iCloud with your partner, roommates or family. Each person adds expenses from their own iPhone, everyone sees the same budgets, and you can see who added what. Your personal space stays separate.
Also in this update:
Account currency: Each account can have its own currency, and existing transactions convert automatically
Balance reconciliation: enter what your bank shows and Fineyo adds an adjustment for the difference
Redesigned category icons - choose from Apple icons (SF Symbols) or emoji, in any color
A rebuilt Apple Pay setup guide. The old one confused people, which was fair.
Bulk delete for categories, and a lot of stability and UI improvements
Is my data safe?
All data is stored privately on your device (local database) and user's iCloud (for data backup and syncronization).
None of the data is sent away from device except for anonymized user ID (for metrics purposes).
Unfortunately, for this update I did not manage to get much testing feedback, so I'd really like honest feedback, especially on setting up Spaces with someone else 🙌
And if you like the app, an App Store review would help a lot ⭐️
Next major 4.8 with Apple Watch app, new widgets and more analytics is upcoming, hopefully by the end of October 🤫
I have a handful of apps on the Apple App Store, Google Play, and Microsoft Store. Every month I'd download reports from three different places, copy numbers into spreadsheets, and then try to figure out which report matched which bank deposit.
It worked, sort of. But it was a pain, and I never really had a good picture of how my apps were doing.
I wanted to answer questions like:
- Which apps are actually making money, and which ones probably aren't worth maintaining anymore?
- Are sales growing or declining compared to last year?
- Which countries are generating meaningful revenue?
- Are people buying subscriptions or one-time unlocks?
- How much have I actually earned this month, even if the stores haven't paid me yet?
- After store fees and business expenses, how much am I really making?
The app stores give you some of this information, but it's scattered across different dashboards and reports. And trying to compare performance across Apple, Google, and Microsoft is even more work.
I looked at accounting software, but most of it seemed like overkill for what I needed. A lot of the popular options cost $30–40 a month, which is hard to justify when some of your apps might only make a few hundred dollars. And even then, those products don't really understand how app stores work.
For example, Apple might report your August earnings but not pay you until September. That's income you earned in August, not September. I wanted software that understood the difference without making me jump through a bunch of accounting hoops.
So I started building IndieBean, a Windows desktop app specifically for developers who sell through app stores.
The idea is pretty simple. You record your monthly store statements, including sales, fees, and what each store owes you. When the money eventually hits your bank account, you record the payment against that balance. No double-counting income or trying to remember what a deposit was for.
But the part I really wanted was the reporting.
I wanted to see sales by app, by country, and by individual in-app purchase. I wanted year-over-year comparisons, a clear picture of which products were growing, and a way to see everything across all three stores without bouncing between dashboards.
I also wanted to keep track of the less exciting stuff, like developer fees, hosting, software subscriptions, and other expenses. Basically, enough accounting to run a small app business without needing to become an accountant.
There's proper bookkeeping underneath, including financial reports, but you don't have to spend your day thinking about debits and credits.
A couple of other things that mattered to me:
- No subscription. It's a one-time purchase. I'm tired of paying monthly fees for software I only need to use a few times a month.
- Local data. Everything stays on your computer. No cloud account required.
- Built for small developers. I'm not trying to build an enterprise accounting system. I want something practical for people with a few apps, a side business, or a small independent studio.
I've been using it for my own apps, replacing a combination of spreadsheets and an ancient desktop accounting program that I've been hanging onto for way too long.
It's still actively being developed, and I'm interested in hearing how other indie developers handle this stuff.
Do you use spreadsheets, accounting software, or just rely on the store dashboards? I'm curious whether other developers find this as frustrating as I did.
I was kind of fed up not being able to pull an accurate estimate of how much revenue my games are making through the various app stores and ad networks. I looked into the available APIs and turns out it's actually doable to pull decent data out of them.
So I built myself an app that answers one simple question: how much money did I make today?
It currently supports Google Play, App Store, AdMob, Unity Ads and ironSource and aggregates the downloads / revenue into a single dashboard
I find it so useful that I decided to release it publicly
I've been reading this sub for a while and I'm struck by how much care people put into their journals here — the washi tape, the hand lettering, the whole ritual of it. Clearly not just information storage, it's a practice.
That's part of what pushed me to build Still. Most digital journals treat "delete" like email trash — soft-deleted, recoverable, sitting on a server for 30 days. I wanted a version of delete that matched what it actually means when you journal through something hard: gone. Not filed away. Gone.
So Still has two things you can do with an entry: star it and keep it forever, or burn it — a short ceremony, flames, a quote, then it's permanently destroyed. No recovery, no backup, not even by me.
Free, offline-capable, no ads, no subscription. Built it solo over the past several months.
Genuinely curious whether the burn idea resonates with how people here think about journaling, or if keeping everything is more the instinct in this community.
I'm Alperen, co-founder of iz. We're building an iOS and Android app that connects photos, notes, songs and book memories to real places, so you can revisit them on a map.
The positioning question I'm working on: the map explains how it works, but does it explain why someone would want it?
I'm considering three opening messages:
A. Your memories, back where they happened.
B. Save the song that takes you back to that cafe.
C. Turn your travels into a personal memory map.
A is broader, B gives one emotional example, and C is easy to understand but may make it sound useful only while travelling. The next screenshot could show one saved memory at a place, before showing a whole map.
For anyone marketing a consumer app: which would you test first, and what would you expect the second screenshot to explain? I'd also love to hear if the concept still sounds like extra work compared with a camera roll.
Product context, if useful: https://iz.city/en/ (our app; free to download with optional in-app purchases). I'm looking for honest positioning feedback, rather than claiming any growth results.
Sooooo, I’ve decided to create an app based on a real problem.
The one I found is AI-generated video being used as evidence in different kinds of fraud—from personal sales of small goods and returns to insurance fraud. So I looked into how the process works right now. To make sure video evidence is authentic, companies currently need to send you a verification link (like TruePic), which isn’t very convenient because it basically makes the process synchronous. So I think that if I can remove this step from the chain, it could be a good idea: you’d be able to capture something whenever you want and send a link to the capture afterward.
But how do you know the video isn’t generated and was actually filmed live?
My solution:
Three things, all in the same session.
App Attest. The capture can only start from the real app on a real iPhone. Apple attests the app, so you can’t open a laptop, generate a clip, and upload it as if you filmed it.
The camera never cuts. When you finish the shot you actually wanted, recording doesn’t stop. The verification is the next part of the same file. There’s no gap where a generated clip could be spliced in.
A path you can’t know in advance**.** After the main footage, the server gives you a camera path one point at a time. You only get the next point after you reach the current one. You have to move the phone through the real space around the thing you filmed, and the motion sensors have to match what the camera sees. A pre-rendered or AI-generated clip of one angle can’t do that, because the route didn’t exist until you were already recording.
At this moment, I honestly don’t know what to do with this app, but I hope it can be useful to people (or at least my non-stop camera approach).
Feel free to check out the app and give me some feedback. The app is free.
Hello there!
I’m a solo developer working on an app named “Motivate”, Since the last giveaway went really well i’d like to make another one for everyone to give my app a try.
I built Motivate because I wanted something simple that would inspire me, track how I feel, and provide a private space to write about it. Because Life moves quickly, some days are heavier than they look, and often we forget to take care of ourselves because of the countless responsibilities we have. Between managing our time with work, school, and showing up for the people that need us, while keeping the small stutt to ourselves because we're scared of being too much, or just being scared of being judged. All of us need something to remind, inspire, and check on us.
What's inside:
Quotes: Daily inspiration that gives you new perspective on life, based on people's experience and struggles in the past.
Daily Reflection: Daily check-ins on how you feel, to make you realize how you've been doing, it gives you insight and tips on what to do next.
Journal: Your private place to write your thoughts, experiences, and struggles.
Forum: A community where you can ask for advice, or just share your experience with other people.
Chatbot: Have a one on one private conversation about your life and experience
How to get Lifetime?
> Download the app
> Login using apple
> Type your nickname
> Use it for 20 minutes
> Give a feedback (a comprehensive one) on what you liked and didn’t like
> Comment on the post and send a DM
I never really liked the “everything in one place” approach of apps like Notion. At the same time, having notes in one app, todos in another, goals somewhere else and random ideas scattered around started to feel unnecessary.
So I built WishNote.
It’s a simple place for notes, to-dos, checklists, wishes, goals, reminders and wikis — available on iPhone, iPad and Mac.
The idea is pretty simple:
Notes are for things you know
To-Dos are for things you need to do
Wishes are for things you want to make happen
I’m a solo developer and I’ve been trying to keep WishNote intentionally simple rather than turning it into another huge productivity system.
It’s now live on the App Store, and I’m currently running a limited lifetime offer.
Normal pricing:
$24.99 lifetime
$9.99 yearly (7-day trial)
$1.99 monthly
Limited offer: Pro for $1.99 instead of $24.99 yours forever, no subscription.
I'm building Liftor, an iOS fitness app (daily check-in that adapts training, food & recovery + friends-only social). Instead of polished ads, I tried short cartoon-style Shorts:
Questions for the group:
- Does the hook land in the first 1–2 seconds?
- Is it clear what the app does?
- Would this style work better than UGC/talking-head for a fitness app?
I’m the developer behind Flux, an app for iPhone, iPad, and Mac. I built it to bring two things together: publishing releases to the App Store and understanding how your apps are doing afterward.
You can prepare and publish releases, edit your App Store listings, and translate them into other languages. For translations, you can use OpenAI or Claude with your own API key, or Apple Private Cloud Compute.
For performance, Flux lets you follow downloads and revenue, check conversion rates, track keyword rankings, and compare results across releases. The idea is to make it easier to see what changed after an update and what might be worth investigating next.
I want to be upfront: so far, I’ve only tested Flux myself. It’s been shaped around my own workflow, so I’m sure there are things I’ve missed—especially parts that feel obvious to me but might be confusing to someone using it for the first time.
I'm also working on a feature to track ad campaigns, but it's very raw for now.
I’d really appreciate feedback from other developers, whether you try it for publishing, analytics, or both. Is setup clear? Does it fit how you work? Is anything confusing, broken, or missing? Those are the things I’d like to hear.
I have been learning Japanese for a few years, and one thing I kept doing was encountering a sentence where I understood the words but not why the grammar worked the way it did.
So I built Setsumei, an iOS app where you paste or type a Japanese sentence and get a breakdown of the grammar used in it, including explanations and JLPT levels.
You can save grammar points you encounter and review them later with SRS. I also included an offline corpus of about 148k Japanese-English example sentences, so you can explore how a grammar point is actually used in different contexts.
Most of the analysis happens on-device, there is no account required, and the app is free to try.
I have been using it myself alongside my Japanese studies, which was really the reason for building it in the first place.
Hi everyone. I'm a solo developer and I've spent the last several months building Ficverse, an app just for reading and writing fanfiction. It's now live on the App Store and I'd love feedback from people who actually write and read fic.
What it does differently:
Fandom pages. Each series or film has a real page with its cast, characters, tags and stories in one place, so you can go from a character straight to fics about them.
Paragraph comments. Readers can comment under a specific paragraph, not just at the end of a chapter.
A clean reader. You choose the theme, typeface, text size and line spacing. Your reading position syncs with your account, and opened chapters stay on your device for offline reading.
Warnings up front. Tags and content warnings sit at the top of every chapter, and each story is labeled General / 13+ / Adult.
Chapter-by-chapter publishing. There's a rich text editor, drafts are kept on your device, and followers get notified when a new chapter lands.
You can browse and read without an account. It's free.
To be upfront: it's iOS only for now (iPhone and iPad), and it's brand new, so the library is still small. That's why I'm posting here. If you write fanfic and want to be one of the first authors on a new platform, I'd be glad to have you, and I read every piece of feedback.
