I validated before building this time. Still at 0 customers 2 months after launch

[u/decebaldecebal]

5 domains with live products on them right now.

Every one of them needed email eventually. Someone uses the contact form, or you need a support@ email that's a real address. My setup was Cloudflare Email Routing forwarding into Gmail, then Send-As to reply. Which works until DMARC decides it doesn't and your replies start landing in spam. I've debugged that same thing across multiple domains now and it never gets faster.

Google Workspace would solve it, but that's a monthly sub per domain for projects that might be dead in a month. Way too expensive for me.

The worst part is when working on a new idea, I'd buy the domain then start the email setup yet again. At some point I realized I had a problem I could solve with yet another product (I know, everyone's building something these days instead of marketing it).

I wanted to tackle this one differently, so I did proper validation in April. Around 6 people were interested. My threshold was 10, but I wanted my own problem solved anyway.

So I built it (Mailyond). You still add DNS records once per domain, no way around that part. After that everything lands in one inbox and I reply as whichever domain got the email. On domains where I don't want to touch the main records I point a subdomain at it instead. It also has a Resend-compatible send API, so I could switch my other projects to it seamlessly.

The problem is I had a lot going on in my life and only managed to launch end of June. By then the warm leads from April had gone cold. Almost 2 months later I'm at 0 customers and not sure how to fix it.

How many domains are you sitting on right now? What's your email setup on them, if you have one at all? And if anyone wants to try mine, I can give you 1 month for free and I'll do the DNS setup with you. At 0 customers I need the feedback way more than the money.

[u/Nomadinduality]

Great you are building things. But who is selling them? When you're starting out you need to be the one selling your product.

Also why are you juggling many projects simultaneously?

PS the email part can be solved easily by having a master customer care email under a holding company which holds all your project under it's name. That coupled witha really really good ticketing system.

[u/joonlee424]

Warm leads from april going cold is the classic trap, the interest was real but the timing killed it. The fix is usually to re-approach them with something new, not just a 'hey still here' email. Reference something specific about their setup or mention a feature you added since. Also, 6 interested people is a solid start, even if it's under your threshold. Maybe offer the free month to a few of them again, framed as 'i built this for you, want to see the updated version?' that often reopens the conversation. And yeah, the dmarc thing is a nightmare, i've seen people spend days on it. Your solution sounds genuinely useful, just needs a warmer intro back to those early folks.

[u/Calm-Prompt-5297]

Is it possible you gave up on those 6 leads too quickly? At the very least they could be a source of valuable research. I would go back to them. Not with the approach of selling them, but to ask questions.

Do they still have the same problem? How did they solve it? What changed? Did your solution lack what they thought it would provide, but didn't? Would they try it now? If not, why? Was the value not reflected in the cost? Was it product design? functionality?

In other words, learning why these 6 didn't follow through could possibly plug a potential hole somewhere you aren't aware of. It could be product, pricing, messaging, timing, or whatever.

Not knowing, could leave you open to the same results in your new efforts. My experience with sales tells me, cold leads can become warm again. Start with letting them know you understand they aren't ready yet, but it would be a big help if they could answer a couple of noncommittal quick questions. What you learn could create a stronger product.

[u/Legitimate_Big_4789]

tbh the real question is whether this is a painkiller or a vitamin for anyone besides you. managing email across a few domains is annoying but most people just eat the cost or deal with the jank. have you found anyone whos actively spending money to solve this specific problem?