Show HN: Planlike.pro – New Estimating Tool | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Planlike.pro – New Estimating Tool

planlike.pro

98 pointsavdept86 comments

Hey folks, want to share the project I've been working on for past few years. It's a project estimation tool which can be applied to pretty much any project, not only software development, but any where you'd want to know cost or time it takes.

Core features:

* Project resources such as engineer, or anybody/anything that you need to include into project

* PDF Export

* Easy features management including drag & drop

* Sorting/filtering/search

* Projects sharing(share with your client via link)

Open articleView on HN

This is totally in my wheelhouse, but I'd love to be able to watch a quick demo before I commit to signing up for an account.

Whether it's a video or some kind of screenshot-based walk-through.. Just something that will tell me if this is a fit for me.

The abstract imagery on the site don't really convey the experience of using your app, and that doesn't tell me enough.

Good luck!

Hey and thanks for checking out our product. I'd like to run a quick demo for you to show some cool features that we have. How can I contact you?

> Hey and thanks for checking out our product. I'd like to run a quick demo for you to show some cool features that we have. How can I contact you?

Maybe just do the video like what they asked for, so we can all make the assessment, instead of turning it into a greasy sales pitch. Not going to lie, this response put me off completely.

That's great idea. Unfortunately I did it all myself(solo engineer) and didn't think of making demo video. But I will definitely make one!

Responding to someone actively expressing interest in your product by offering them a demo definitely doesn't qualify as "turning it into a greasy sales pitch". They've clearly built the product to be a low touch experience so offering to run through it with someone is actually very pro-active of them.

You got my point. I can't make video demo right away, will take some time, but gladly can demo it live and answer the questions.

> Responding to someone actively expressing interest in your product by offering them a demo definitely doesn't qualify as "turning it into a greasy sales pitch"

Direct contact introduces social pressure into what was previously a hands off window-shopping/product evaluation experience. If a person is expressly looking for a sales contact for 1-to-1 demos (e.g. after filling out a contact form), then that may be ok, but outside of that it certainly comes across pretty greasy.

The original comment was product & marketing feedback in general (suggestion to improve onboarding for all visitors), not a direct request for info solely for themselves. Replying with an offer of solving for them individually isn't in line with the intent of the original comment: it comes across as ignoring product feedback.

Fair enough the second reply stated the 1-to-1 demo would be quicker than creating a video, but the first reply gave no indication they'd take on board the video suggestion at all.

> They've clearly built the product to be a low touch experience

What makes you say that? If it was as clearly low touch as you say this thread would not exist.

I’d much prefer to talk directly with a founder than watch a pre-recorded video.

Hey, I understand the reaction (I'm sure many of us do) but can you please go easier on people who are sharing their work? There's no need to call names and it's against both the HN guidelines and the Show HN guidelines:

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html

Was going to say the same thing, the marketing website doesn't convey enough about the product.

Congrats on launching though. Step 1 complete.

It seems it was the easiest.

Exactly. I came to the comments to figure out what this is. I was intrigued, though.

I see a lot of negativity on this post, I just wanted to say, "way to go!". Building and finally launching is an amazing achievement on its own.

Thanks for your kind words. Turns out building so much easier than launching

Ouch. Felt that one in my bones.

So, so, so much easier lol

Keep at it, it does get better over time.

It helps to not take the feedback personally. Everyone has an opinion, and they're usually shit. But flowers grow great in shit. Let it inspire you, not cover you.

One important thing missing is the ability to specify approximate numbers, just like we do in real life.

Let’s say this item is going to cost me $90-120. I’d like to write down just that. Also I’d like to say that there is a 80% probability that I will be able to purchase the item for $90, 10% probability of spending $100, etc.

Then you can calculate all those estimations and probabilities and deliver a figure that is much more useful than just a =SUM() from an Excel table.

(I have used this method of estimation in software dev project management)

Yeah this makes sense. I'll think how'd I add something like that.

Meanwhile you can try our percentage type of cards - it allows you to add % amount of all cards in current block

In my experience, I've found that plans and estimates (whether in software or life stuff) are always more accurate if you just use the higher number in the range. If anything, it still won't be high enough, especially for software. And even if you overshoot a bit this way, it's a lot better to miss high than miss low.

Some feedback:

- I skimmed the whole page and screenshots and I still don’t have a clue how it actually works. You need a video/gif of the thing being used.

- I hate the title font, it’s too wide and doesn’t fit the aesthetic

- The info text below one of the carousel things kept changing with the carousel, making it impossible to read.

- The quotes and photos are clearly fake, which makes the whole thing feel kinda scammy

Heya, thanks for your feedback. I definitely make a demo video showing how it works. I will look into UI as well, there's surely a lot to make it better!

As for quotes I think that's really bad idea, probably remove them until I get a real ones

Some actual feedback about the product instead of just the marketing website:

- You need to make it possible to clone an existing template that shows of the features, see Notion as an example of where you almost always start from a template. (I see this is a paid feature maybe, but if so then you need a trial because it's not complete without it)

- When creating a project I'm not likely to know why I would want a label text and color.

- There is a lot of functionality and that makes it hard to make a path through the app (UX flow)

- For some cases, like Software Development estimating the cost/time is hard. Part of the reason that we do Fibonacci story points as a measure of complexity. This isn't going to apply to every type of project, but if I'm modelling out a tech startup using your tool then it's going to be an issue.

- Features, Pricing, Contact Us, How to's should not be in the top menu after I'm in the app.

Overall I think you have a solid problem that you're trying to tackle but it needs to be a lot easier to approach than it is currently. That means making it much easier to add common types of things (if it's a wedding the interface could look quite different, to planning a trip), it's the same mechanics under the hood but I'm not left drowning in options.

As I said in another comment. Congrats on launching.

Thanks for your feedbacks! We have something similar to templates - you can clone any existing project and use it as template. I wanted to provide more flexibility to user whether they want to use existing project and adjust it, or just create a project that will serve as template.

Generally speaking I want to add more hits and tips to help new users get used to application.

Yes but you can't clone from something that doesn't exist. YOU have to provide things to clone from.

What do you think should be the basic templates for? Like software development project, travel planning. What else?

I would say you need to reach out to potential customers and ask them what use cases they would want templates for.

it's a good project: I'll try it out (we are doing something similar, but it's pretty hard to have a general saas service ... too often project are too different so you need a lot of customization I think).

bwt

* this https://securityheaders.com/?q=https%3A%2F%2Fplanlike.pro&fo... can be easy to fix (I'll give you the settings for haproxy or apache if you need)

* https://tools.pingdom.com/#619d161622000000 can be improved, too

I would also disable TLS 1.0 (https://www.immuniweb.com/ssl/planlike.pro/72wS3s8G/ ) and enable HTTP2 or have both HTTP2 and HTTP1

On the reset password you should not show us the world messages like "This email is not registered" (security)

then maybe

* have https://www.planlike.pro redirect to https://planlike.pro

* populate https://planlike.pro/robots.txt

Thanks for suggesting on this. I used the default setup without any extra configuring. Will add those missing headers

Scrolling the marketing website on iOS feels choppy. I’d prefer native drag gesture.

Thanks for sharing, will have a look into!

"Fancy" scrolling often breaks my favorite way to scroll: by clicking the middle mouse button and just dragging the mouse relative to the anchor point to control the scroll speed. I'd advise anyone who wants people to stay on their page to just leave scrolling alone, but if you're gonna mess with it anyway, at least consider all of the possible modes of scrolling people use and how your new take on scrolling will affect their experience on the site.

Resolved

It’s impossible to reimplement scrolling in any way acceptably on the web, because the web doesn’t expose several of the primitives you’d need. Therefore I say: scrolljacking is always bad.

Same for me on chromium

Resolved

Congratulations on launching! A couple of quick nits that come to mind:

1. On the pricing page, you seem to use commas (',') as decimal separators despite the price in USD. In the US, a period ('.') is customary as a decimal separator while commas are used to separate groups of three digits, ie: 100,000.001

2. Pricing itself: free should just show "$0" without decimals; on that note, for a professional tool, flat numbers would be preferable. Also, the text should either say "per user per month" or "/ user / month".

3. Plans: I think you should limit the professional tier a bit more and decrease the price slightly; in other words: leave minimal branding on it, only allow say 10 new projects / month, don't give SSO, etc. Businesses that drive any meaningful revenue will have no issue whatsoever paying real money for critical features like no/custom branding, unlimited projects, Single Sign On (SSO is required at many companies), 2FA, priority support, custom billing (20+ users), etc

4. Plan pricing: if you follow #3 above, I'd say rename the professional tier to "Pro" and charge $7/mo; rename the business tier to "Enterprise" and charge $20/mo.

5. Contact: perhaps provide an email address where people can more easily get in touch with you if they don't want to use the form.

6. Put a video showing the product on the front page, it'll be helpful for users to better understand the utility of your software.

Hope this is all helpful and congrats again on launching!!!

Thanks. I like your ideas, especially SSO, that's definitely could be one more selling point for big clients

"Plan" makes me think of building/construction plans, even you describe it as a new "estimating" tool, so why not estimatelike.pro? (or any alternative that more closely connects the tool to the concept of "estimating").

For any given problem, I always think that the model (or "business logic") comes first, and then the GUI. I have no idea from you website what's the underlying model for your tool.

From browsing the home page it makes me think it this tool works kind of like "a frontend for a spreadsheet" ... but I'm just using my imagination, since you don't explain how it works or what it looks like.

Hope this doesn't sound too negative. Congrats on launching!

P.S.: the slideshow has to be the most cryptic I've seen in a long time... I can see tiny lil arrows left and right that are hard to click, next to "mysterious" integers that change every time I click the arrows. I'm guessing it may describe how many slides are to the left and right? Why not using the "de facto std" of showing one dot per slide, and highlight the current one?

Addendum 1: I found an (open source! [1]) app that I think does a better job of explaining the underlying model and showing how it works, maybe it could work as inspiration? (or at least to compare/contrast).

Addendum 2: My preference would be a DSL to describe this kinds of problems, rather than a drag-and-drop, GUI interface. Advanced users could do away with the mouse completely, or even run the models from the command line or embedded in another app. Any given "fixed GUI" will always have limitations, but if you want to make it easier for non-power-users, you can also build a simple GUI on top of the DSL.

1: https://github.com/getguesstimate/guesstimate-app

These are valid points, thanks for sharing. Will think how can I improve it

1. There's no indication of who created this (name, surname, legal adress). 2. Few indications the creator is not that customer oriented 2.1. Fake testimonials 2.2. Onboarding flow says I should create an avatar so that they better understand their customers "Help us to better understand our customers" - dude if you build a product for someone, your end goal is helping them, not yourself. 2.2. During onboarding, my default avatar is a bearded caucasian man - dude, the world is diverse. 2.3. language like "Discover killer features" is really a red flag

Looks like it has quite the set of features. Congrats on launching!

It would really help to explain somewhere what sections, blocks, and cards are. The FAQ didn't really explain this and with no example to work from, I'm really not sure how I'm supposed to use this.

As a minor piece of feedback, when I drag and drop to reorder cards, the card I just dragged opens for editing. This is rather atypical behavior and I think I would find it very annoying if I was trying to rearrange a lot of cards.

I'm working on demo video to put on landing page. It seems like project more complex to start with that I thought, so I will provide guidance on core features and how to use them.

Thanks for checking out. I'll fix that issue you have!

The dashed lines in the footer [0]. Why they are not continuous? They start in the purple background thing but as soon as that finishes, it starts another dashed segment, totally disconnected from the previous one. I know it is a little thing, but it irks me the wrong way.

I know it is a silly thing, but I felt the need to give this feedback for some reason.

[0] https://imgur.com/a/132V96x

Thanks for sharing mate, I'll see how can I improve it.

Slick idea, thanks for sharing.

Two minor points:

1.Some of the language on the site feels very 'translated to English'. One example: "It’s better try it once than read it many times".

2. The landing page says it's for "Simple cost estimation and planning"; The Features page presents it as a project management tool with client-sharing features. That feels like two overlapping but different use cases/audiences.

Yeah its definitely not a project management tool, rather project estimation with client sharing features, where your client can enable/disable some features that he thinks he needs/doesnt

PS: About being "too English" - yeah I'm from Ukraine, so English is not my native, but I'll do best!

Your English is fantastic, I'm just being nitpicky. Some native speakers might see certain things and judge the product accordingly, so just a minor point.

Pretty cool that all three of your customers[0] have also tried their hand at modeling!

* https://pixabay.com/images/search/womanpower/

* https://pixabay.com/photos/old-man-people-pensioner-wrinkles...

* https://unsplash.com/photos/W7pk4FfrSY0

---

[0]: https://dropover.cloud/d018d9#ca9916e1-b91c-4818-a6c3-92a644...

Hey, you've got me! How about to try a product and let me know your experience?

Honestly, it's a Show HN. They might not have customers yet, and in which case SOMETHING has to go on the marketing site or you'd be complaining about the lack of testimonials.

Lying about testimonials is worse than no testimonials.

FWIW, the quotes may be real but the photos not. Either way dishonesty is not a good way to start a business relationship…

Right, and now we're complaining about the fraud.

Project looks great. Some feedbacks - 1. Some template that the user can directly use would be great. 2. Also is there an option to show the interdependency of tasks on each other ?

1. Templates - that's in work already 2. No. Unfortunately I didn't not aim for any project management features. However for each card you can put a list of TODOs and sort of check status. But I'll think if I could add something like that

Scrolling is driving me nuts. Wtf do you need to hijack that for

Resolved!

This looks great, I will check it out. A tool like this would have been immensely useful for us in the early days.

Thanks bud. If you get any feedbacks - let me know. Looking for all types of feedbacks

Hi! Congrats on your launch! Sure this tool will help lots of people in their planning routine. Keep up:)

Thanks bud, appreciate your comment!

FYI: I just get redirected to an "Oops" (/not-found) page when I try to sign-up. Tried twice

Hey, thanks for sharing. Mind to provide details like what browser/platform do you use?

Hey, if I could follow a click-through of an example to understand the product that would be cool.

Working on it!

Great domain name

Thanks! It took a while to come up with this name

Do people really drop 8 bucks every month for things like this? I'm not trying to be hurtful or condescending to the authors.

I just feel like there is such a large disconnect between me and the people I know vs these new SaaS products popping up everywhere, each asking for 5-15 dollars each month. ~10 years ago I was totally on board when these same products where a one time AppStore purchase in the 1-5 dollar range. I wonder what changed.

Maybe it has something to do with me earning 1/5th of the average SV salary.

It depends on usage. If you use it once - then there's a free plan for that. But if tool helps you to generate income and makes if faster/easier - I think its fair to ask 8 bucks

This attitude is incredibly destructive and leads to a situation where the only options/solutions available are mediocre, corporate drivel.

Even if it's not for you, people building stuff independently (and charging for it so they can sustain effort) should be celebrated, not scorned.

You’re not alone. And imo the reason is, as always, money. Once developers/companies figured out that they could earn a lot more using subscriptions everything turned into a sub.

Plenty of subscription, web based projects used to be standalone apps you were only paying for once.

But this is the world we live in unfortunately.

Way to go! This looks cool.

Appreciate your words!

I think we hugged it.

Sure - https://planlike.pro/privacy-and-terms

Poor customers don't have money to plan.

Rich ones just don't care about how to plan, they care about earning more.

Useless stuff then ?

It's not about personal planning, it's about commercial planning. Whether you want to provide a quote to client, instead of spreadsheets you can use planlike.pro

Wait, why not spreadsheet ?

I’ve done a lot of estimating for plans in spreadsheets. It’s awful. I’m really happy someone’s trying to innovate with an alternative.

Thanks for support, reading this I understand I didn't waste over a year of my life working on this.

...are you seriously arguing against the very concept of planning in order to take a shot at this solo engineer's hard work?

This could be a warning/alert for hard work ? You want a praise ?

In my experience, rich people are rich because they know how to manage their money (in addition to earning it, building it). It's only the people that care about status (i.e. appearing rich) that flaunt their money around.

That's before you even add in customers like startups that need to budget with other peoples money (burn rate).

For pricing plans, is spreadsheet best use case for ?

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